Goodwill

I love Goodwill. I like browsing through other people's junk. And a lot of it, at my Goodwill, anyways, is just that. Today however, I found some good stuff. Mainly fall clothes for the kids. I like buying their clothes there. I feel good about using someone's old stuff instead of buying new, the price is right, and I like that they don't look like everyone else who just went to Children's Place or Target. At least my kids' stuff from Children's Place and Target are a couple years old!

Anyways, I was excited to find some books today. I got two I wanted. One is called TET, which is Teacher's Effectiveness Training or something like that. It was recommended by a professor. I haven't looked at it yet. The other one I looked at a lot, mainly because it pissed me off. It's called Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. I don't completely disagree with Hirsch's premise, which from my perusal seems to be that every American needs to have "cultural literacy" which are things from our history, science, technology, literature, etc. that we should all have a basic knowledge of so we can understand what others are saying, as they assume we have this knowledge. What I don't like at all is he thinks this is the educational system's saving grace. Teachers should teach his alphebetized list of dates, names, and titles and educational crises will be largely prevented. Certainly, a more literate society is something to strive for. But, come on. I think the problem goes much deeper than this. So far, while reading it, I can only imagine middle-aged white folk patting themselves on the back for knowing so many of the terms in the back. But hey, maybe I'm just jealous because I am not as culturally literate as I should be.