An investigation of cultural literacy among high school students and prospective high school teachers

Given the large increase of knowledge as well as changing views of how it is acquired, the question of what to teach students is of pivotal importance. One controversial suggestion, that of cultural literacy in Hirsch's 1987 book, was considered here. An attempt was made to validate an objective test based on the terms in Hirsch's book and to measure the effect of schooling on the construct, cultural literacy. The test was reliable and valid; scores on cultural literacy increased with education. In addition, test scores correlated strongly with other measures of academic success, i.e., scores on the American Cultural Literacy Test, correlated .77 with scores on the verbal aptitude part of the Scholastic Aptitude Test and .63 with high school grade point average.