What's Worth Knowing

       E.D. Hirsch Jr. wrote a list of all of the things that he thought a literate American should know.  I consider myself and most of the people in my life literate, I went through this list with some of them, and many of them either had never heard of certain things or have heard of them but couldn't tell me a single thing about them.  Does this make them illiterate? Does this make me illiterate? I am going to come straight out with it and say that I absolutely do not agree with Hirsch.  While I think it would be great is someone knew about each and every item on his list, I definitely don't think that is is necessary in order to be considered literate.

       Here are some of the things that I think are worth knowing:

• Respect for yourself and others 
• Honesty 
• Integrity
• Discipline
• History - Enough to be able to talk about where your family is from and important aspects of their culture as well as how the country that they lived in came to be (basically..not every single date and detail)
• How to figure things out -  How to be able to answer a question on your own.  How to go to the library and find an answer in a book or how to search the internet to find accurate information.

       Overall, I do not think that there is a set list of things that people need to know.  I think that people should never try to stop learning and should take the chance to expand their minds and discover new things whenever possible but I do not thing that a list can be made that simply names things that people need to know to be required literate.  I think it is more important to have the basic life skills and certain personality traits to help someone be able to communicate with others around them and be able to learn and discover constantly.