Getting Culture.

So far on this blog I've mostly recorded my ups and downs, but through the midst of all this I'm also learning a lot. I'm currently reading a great book called "The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy" by E.D. Hirsch, author of "What Your 2nd (3rd 4th, etc) Grader Needs to Know" which were books I grew up on and always wished extended further than 6th & 7th grade. It turns out, that in this book they do! It covers basically ANYthing you would need to know. I've always wanted a book like this and have searched high and low for it ever since I finished reading the Grader books. Mom really introduced it to me, in an indirect way. It was what she was TRYING to give me in the first place. She gave me a book called "Cultural Literacy" for Christmas a couple of years ago. It is also by E.D. Hirsch and she thought it would be something like the Grader books, but instead it speaks of the need for cultural literacy across the nation: in the schools, in homes; children (and adults!) need more of it! That was basically the premise of his book. It wasn't until the end of the book that he speaks of how to get cultural literacy. Obviously it's by reading, but he wrote a book to give you kind of a jump-start, and the book he wrote was the aforementioned Dictionary. I've been pretty much gobbling it up since I found it. It carries a veritable goldmine of information!! I loooove it. It's like a whole Master's Degree worth of education all in one book. Of course, to go more in-depth you'd have to read more books, but this is an amazing start.