On Sundays the BBC makes a point of having vaguely religious “news” and last Sunday morning’s wake me up story was how most of the population (more than 75%) say they own a Bible and it is “meaningful” to them, and yet only a fraction of those surveyed could list all 10 commandments, mention a single fact about Abraham or could tell the story of Good Samaritan. One man noted the amazing coincidence of Jesus being crucified on Good Friday. Another young women, an art student shown a series of nativity scenes, complained of sexism: all the babies in the pictures were boys.
Because last weekend’s other news was mainly about Michael Jackson and the Glastonbury Festival (Bruce Springsteen was playing for the first time), I began to think about cultural literacy. Would my mother understand this news bulletin? Would my children?
A long time ago I had a high school teacher who said he couldn’t teach American literature any more because the kids didn’t know scripture. He made us read a lot more than we wanted. Later, when I went to college and took an English degree there were only two non negotiable requirements: Shakespeare and the Bible.
It’s coming to the end of Wimbledon fortnight in the UK, and I guess because Wimbledon is so perfectly British, it always reminds me of the first years I lived in this country. I have written before about my second Wimbledon, when I had my tiny, first son in my arms and he and I dozed together to the gentle thwap thwap of tennis balls, barely visible on a little black and white tele while a commentator with impossibly clipped vowels murmured, “Oh, I say! Good shot!”
Though the broadcasters clung to standards, not all the players did; that year, for the first time the men’s singles champion, the young John McEnroe, was not invited to join the All England Club, because of his ungentlemanly behaviour on court. (These days he is a great favourite here, though he is still teased and asked to repeat, “You can not be serious!” – that being pretty much the worst of his shocking remarks.)
One year earlier I had spent my first summer in England. My friends, fellow graduate students at Oxford University, were as engaged with Wimbledon as Brits ever are, but the real television draw in 1980 was something else, a drama repeat just before each day’s tennis broadcast .
A friend explained, Of course everyone is watching the repeats in case they can spot a clue to who shot JR.
I asked, Who is JR?
My friend’s jaw dropped, and then he declared I must be the only person in the UK – and probably in the English speaking world – who could be quite so ignorant.
Bjorn Borg won the men’s singles. I got pregnant and I got married. My British husband filled me in on Dallas. When our son was born my husband assured me that American cultural imperialism – of which that show was but a small example – meant I needn’t fear to raise good Americans anywhere where television reception was guaranteed.
These days I forget who shot JR and just about recall who Absalom is (the survey didn’t ask about him; he’s my bonus for extra points). I can tell you quite a lot about Abraham, and am reliable, I think, on all the parables. But tonight, at least, I could only manage 9 commandments. (If you want to play this game with me I’ll tell you which one I forgot and which I remembered last, if you’ll tell me yours – no googling. Or we could play a different game where we think about what would be the best 10 commandments for the 21st century.)
As for cultural literacy, it is hard to know what counts any more. I’m pretty comfortable in my BBC radio world, but if I read the internet I realise I don’t know a damn thing (oops that’s a commandment) that anyone’s talking about.
I’m to the point where I truly believe ignorance is bliss. We’ve got so much information at our fingertips and some is reliable and some isn’t so I’ve decided that most times it’s best to just worry about things I CAN change and not about the things I can’t or don’t care to. Is that a cop out? Maybe. But it’s going to make the rest of my life a little more enjoyable and that’s the point, right?
Comment by Midlife Slices — July 5, 2009 @ 4:13 pm
Hmmm, the ten commandments…
Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy…
Don’t worship anything or anybody besides God…
Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain…
Honor your father and mother…
Don’t lie about other people…
Don’t commit adultery…
Don’t covet your neighbor’s stuff…
Don’t commit murder…
Don’t steal…
Yup – I’m short one, too. Enlighten me, because it’s probably something I do on a regular basis.
We get almost ALL of our information from the internet. We do watch CNN, too, but they are usually covering something we read about on the internet first. I can’t remember the last time I listened to the radio – even in the car, we plug in our iPods.
J.R. was shot by some crazy woman named Crystal, if memory serves. I never watched the show either (and I’m from Dallas!!) – it’s just one of those things I picked up via osmosis.
Comment by Jan — July 6, 2009 @ 3:44 am
Isn’t there one about graven images?
Comment by Old Woman — July 6, 2009 @ 6:30 am
Jan really has them all. She just merged the thou shalt have only one God one with the thou shalt have no graven images one.
The one I forgot is the one Jan put first — the Sabbath. I guess mine aren’t usually holy though I often listen to Sunday Worship on the radio.
MLS — I wasn’t really thinking about the volume of information. I was wondering what you need to know to be culturally literate. My teacher thought, and I think, you do need to know your Bible, and yet it seems most people in the UK, judging by the survey, don’t even know the most basic stories.
But what else? Does it matter if you know who Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen or Bjorn Borg are? Was I a cultural illiterate in 1980 because I had never heard of JR let alone who shot him?
Comment by Duchess — July 6, 2009 @ 1:33 pm
I think I’m right (playing by your rules and not googling) that Catholics number them differently from Protestants, by merging the No-gods-but-me and the No-graven-images into one, which serves to downplay the latter (as well they might, patrons of Michelangelo and all), and throwing the numbering off by one (Catholic 2 through 8 are Protestant 3 through 9), but making a bigger deal about Don’t-covet which they spread over two: Don’t-covet-neighbor’s-wife (is their 9) and Don’t-covet-neighbor’s-goods (their 10). Anybody tell me if I’m right about this. Maybe it changed after Vatican II when ecumenicism was in.
I learned them as a choirboy because they were read (impressively I might add) aloud by Reverend Burhans in the morning prayer service and after each we chimed in with “Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.” It got kind of boring by the ninth time. The wording was different after the tenth, and ended “we beseech Thee.”
I thought I was the only American who never once saw a single episode of Dallas, though I heard it discussed enough in the workplace. We’re such a slim minority we ought to hang together, like a support group.
I love the girl who finds the nativity sexist. There is a story told by an English teacher that one of his students thought Yeats’s “Second Coming” was about two sexual climaxes in one night.
When is Number One son’s baby due?
Comment by T P — July 7, 2009 @ 10:54 am
Whose culture, and who is to say whether you are culturally literate or illiterate? Ignorance is definitely bliss. Who cares who shot JR – I didn’t watch a single episode of Dallas either. And Duchess, I don’t believe anyone else knows what anyone’s talking about on the internet ‘cos they’re making it up!
Comment by Janet — July 7, 2009 @ 11:54 am