1. What have you inherited?
The reading before the reading: equipping students with cultural literacy
What have you inherited?
Jude Hunton
@judehunton
Chris Peirce
@peirce_chris
If we take culture seriously, we see that a people does not need merely enough to eat but a proper and particular cuisine [. . ] Culture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living. T.S. Eliot, Notes towards a Definition of Culture, p. 27

2. What is ‘cultural literacy?’

3. What is ‘cultural literacy?’
Cultural literacy is a term coined by E. D. Hirsch , referring to the ability to understand and participate fluently in a given culture.
Cultural literacy is an analogy to literacy proper. A literate reader knows the object-language's alphabet, grammar, and a sufficient set of vocabulary; a culturally literate person knows a given culture's signs and symbols, including its language, particular dialectic, stories, entertainment, idioms, idiosyncrasies, and so on. The culturally literate person is able to talk to and understand others of that culture with fluency, while the culturally illiterate person fails to understand culturally-conditioned allusions, references to past events, idiomatic expressions, jokes, names, places, etc.
Watson, R. (1987). "Learning Words from Linguistic Expressions: Definition and Narrative". Research in the Teaching of English. 21 (3): 298–317. Quoted on Wikipedia.

4. Firstly, is ‘cultural literacy’ a moot point? Maybe.
1.) Eliot writes predominantly about culture as a form of social cohesion, celebrating diversity and unity in equal measure across class, region and belief system. He does little to address what constitutes culture- although he does explicitly name religion as an unavoidable and problematic characteristic: The way of looking at culture and religion which I have been trying to adumbrate is so difficult that I am not sure I grasp it myself except in flashes, or that I comprehend all its implications. (p. 30)
2.) We are more interested in inducting students into culturally rich study in order to bring about a ‘culturally literate’ approach to reading: The interconnectedness and subtlety of comprehension and analysis. Something both galvanised and potentially made redundant by our experiences of the new GCSE English specifications. English Language Paper 1 was abridged, wasn’t it?

5. Firstly, is ‘cultural literacy’ a moot point? Maybe.
3.) What even is culture? Who are we to define it? Is it too big? Is it too limiting?
Who defines it and what knowledge gets prioritised?
A colleague on Ashlawn’s KS3 review
This approach is a little bit like going through Lewis Caroll’s looking glass: once you go through, it’s hard to imagine going back. Such is the analogy used by David Didau to describe the shift from unit planning that starts from overarching skills, to unit planning that starts from underpinning knowledge.
Joe Kirby- ‘How to plan a knowledge unit in English’

6. Some observations on ‘culture’
Conceptually difficult to define: Kroeber and Kluckhorn (1952) compiled a list of 164 definitions.
Perhaps the most revealing we’ve read:
‘Culture is a fuzzy set of basic assumptions and values, orientations to life, beliefs, policies, procedures and behavioural conventions that are shared by a group of people, and that influence (but do not determine) each member’s behaviour and his/her interpretations of the ‘meaning’ of other people’s behaviour.’
Spencer-Oatey, H. (2008) Culturally Speaking. Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory. 2nd edition. London: Continuum.
“the set of attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors shared by a group of people, but different for each individual, communicated from one generation to the next.’
Matsumoto, D. (1996) Culture and Psychology. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Spencer-Oatey, H. (2012) What is culture? A compilation of quotations. GlobalPAD Core Concepts. Available at GlobalPAD Open House

7. Making the ‘invisible, visible’
We know that literacy itself is strengthened by making the ‘implicit, explicit’
Is teaching cultural literacy making invisible meanings behind visible signifiers equally visible through acquired knowledge?
“Hofstede (1991:8) makes the important point that although certain aspects of culture are physically visible, their meaning is invisible: ‘their cultural meaning ... lies precisely and only in the way these practices are interpreted by the insiders.’”
Teaching ‘culture’ is equipping students with necessary knowledge for interpreting meaning.
Are we assuming that they have ‘insider knowledge?’
Spencer-Oatey, H. (2012) What is culture? A compilation of quotations. GlobalPAD Core Concepts. Available at GlobalPAD Open House

8. The future is curriculum
Because education should be about broadening minds, enriching communities and advancing civilisation. Ultimately, it is about leaving the world a better place than we found it. As Professor Michael Young wrote in his article, ‘What are schools for?’:
Schools enable young people to acquire the knowledge that, for most of them, cannot be acquired at home or in the community.
Yet all too often, that objective, that real substance of education, is getting lost in our schools. I question how often leaders really ask, “What is the body of knowledge that we want to give to young people?”
As one head, Stuart Lock, put it during a typically insightful thread of tweets:
Most schools don’t think about curriculum enough, and when think they do, they actually mean qualifications or the timetable.
But, instead, ‘the active promotion of British values’ means giving young people a real civic education. The sort of education that teaches young people not just what British values are, but how they were formed, how they have been passed down from generation to generation and how they make us a beacon of liberalism, tolerance and fairness to the rest of the world.

9. What does it boil down to?
1.) Knowing your students: not assuming knowledge as inherited; noting patterns of low comprehension; curtailing the ‘greatest hits’ and/or the ‘zeitgeist’ impulse. 2.) Making ‘cultural capital’ as useful, meaningful and practical as possible. 3.) Designing a knowledge curriculum which is logical, empowering and fully rationalised. KS3 with an eye to KS4- not KS4 in KS3.

10. Understanding your students
1.) The qualitative: teacher experience
Frequent observation that students were missing meaning in unseen elements of GCSE texts.
This is separate from ‘taught’ elements of the GCSE where teachers can impart the required knowledge for understanding (think ‘Cain’s heresy’ in Jekyll and Hyde.)
This is also separate from vocabulary- which is another complex hurdle. I recently heard the excellent Alex Quigley discuss ‘Closing the Vocabulary Gap.’

11. Understanding your students
1.) The qualitative: teacher experience
Allusion to Shakespeare’s sonnet 116
“the Midas light/turning your limbs gold.”
“love spins gold, gold, gold from straw” (Rumpelstiltskin)
The teacher can tell students what these mean- but the ‘culturally literate’ will use knowledge to lead to better understanding and insight.

12. Understanding your students
1.) The qualitative: teacher experience
The white gloves: a Pontius Pilate gesture. She was washing her hands of me. Of all of us. What had she been thinking of as the car sailed off the bridge, then hung suspended in the afternoon sunlight, glinting like a dragonfly for that one instant of held breath before the plummet? Of Alex, of Richard, of bad faith, of our father and his wreckage; of God, perhaps, and her fatal, triangular bargain. Or of the stack of cheap school exercise books that she must have hidden that very morning, in the bureau drawer where I kept my stockings, knowing I would be the one to find them.
Credit

13. Understanding your students
1.) The qualitative: teacher experience Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't ( )
Am I even doing ‘taught’ elements of culture a disservice?
Sly
Sneaky
Venomous
Garden of Eden/Edith
Supposedly a nod to Virgil
The serpent is a stronger symbol from mythology: the Gorgon snake-women; Medusa; ‘unblinking intelligence.’
King James commissioned this medal to commemorate the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot.

14. Understanding your students
1.) The quantitative: a data sample
Are we handling our inherited knowledge as Schein’s (1984) ‘basic assumptions’?
Are we content with teaching students specific context and cultural references only when relevant to a GCSE ‘chosen text’?
What about a wider and deeper cultural knowledge to enable students to develop layers of interpretation?
We took a mixed-comprehensive sample of 50 students and asked them to complete the following brief questionnaire. The questions were basic- designed to test cultural literacy in isolation. Affirmative answers were content analysed, with some being classified as ‘misconceptions’ in understanding.

15. Understanding your students
1.) The quantitative: a data sample

16. Understanding your students
1.) The quantitative: results

17. Understanding your students
1.) The quantitative: results

18. Understanding your students
1.) The quantitative: results

19. Yes, but isn’t it still just about vocabulary?
Making cultural capital useful, meaningful and practical
Yes, but isn’t it still just about vocabulary?
Alex Quigley’s presentation referenced…

20. Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theater, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. "I incline to Cain's heresy," he used to say quaintly: "I let my brother go to the devil in his own way." In this character, it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of downgoing men. And to such as these, so long as they came about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanour.
The vocabulary is challenging.
So too is the ability to interpret. Doesn’t it require knowledge of:
The Bible?
Psychology?
Class?
Occupation?
The Gothic?

21. Making cultural capital useful, meaningful and practical
Yes, but isn’t it still just about vocabulary? The often misquoted Wittgenstein: “The limits of my language are the limits of my world” The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world. (5.62) Wittgenstein is possibly discussing solipsism more than genuine literal understanding of words. Perhaps a useful paraphrase would be “I can only find the meanings that I already know.”

22. Designing a knowledge curriculum which is logical, empowering and fully rationalised.
Previous KS3

23. Designing a knowledge curriculum which is logical, empowering and fully rationalised.
Previous KS3

24. Designing a knowledge curriculum which is logical, empowering and fully rationalised.

25. Designing a knowledge curriculum which is logical, empowering and fully rationalised.

26. KS3/KS4: Knowledge Organisers (with credit to Joe Kirby)
Utilising an interleaved, tested and repeated approach to knowledge enables an ‘unlocking’ of texts and an flexibility of knowledge.
Once acquired, how can teachers maintain students’ knowledge for future application?

27. Our English Summative Assessment Model: KS3
Two mark schemes for use in assessing KS3: Reading and Writing
A simpler and more focused handling of Assessment Objectives
Fluidity between Preparation levels and GCSE criteria
80% of assessment grades will be through reading/writing extended tasks
20% of assessment through multiple-choice questions to test literacy and contextual/cultural knowledge
Overall assessment levels through a numerical combination of these two areas (out of 48)

29. What have you inherited?
The reading before the reading: equipping students with cultural literacy
What have you inherited?
Jude Hunton
@judehunton
Chris Peirce
@peirce_chris
If we take culture seriously, we see that a people does not need merely enough to eat but a proper and particular cuisine [. . ] Culture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living. T.S. Eliot, Notes towards a Definition of Culture, p. 27