INVENIRE

One of the major drawbacks of democratic countries is that they are susceptible to the potential ignorance of the people. There are two antidotes to this, one of which has long been ignored. The parliamentary system, in which the electorate chooses representatives, is the first. This, to some extent, eliminates ignorance, as less-informed candidates are less likely to be elected to hold office. The second antidote, an antidote that has been ignored, is cultural literacy. The term was first coined by American educator E.D. Hirsch, and it describes the cultural and historical knowledge required to function as a citizen of a particular country. Hirsch has correctly identified that Western curricula place too little emphasis on the learning of facts, and rather that they inaccurately assume that children will naturally acquire knowledge as they increase in their critical thinking skills. Hirsch first devised this concept in the early 1990s as a college lecturer in Richmond, Virginia. He ...