Cultural Literacy
What skills do we need to read a changing world?
Our identities comprise different senses of belonging to different groups at different times. These are the cultures of which we are all a part, and our world is one of many cultures. The problem is that there is a real lack in our skills to read other cultures. One result is that our newspapers, media and websites carry numeorus stories about hostility between people, breeding a cycle of fear, insecurity and ultimately violence and prejudice. To overcome this, we need a new skill: cultural literacy.
Ever so Hidden Dragon
at 10:16am on Thursday, 17th January 2008
Literature, the arts and cultural production are one of the most crucial means by which we learn about norms, behaviours, outlooks and attitudes.
In Cultural Diplomacy, we argued that we need to start thinking about cultural literacy, and how we build not only greater awareness of the many cultures that we encounter, but also to take that beyond simply informing of facts to providing skills to accommodate and respond to them in every situation, everyday or institutional, in which we meet them. One of the ways we could go about doing this is through building engagement with everyday culture from around the world.
In that light, this article in The Guardian, whihc points out the gap between ideas of China's importance in the world today, and general knowledge of its contemporary and everyday culture makes for interesting reading.
In Cultural Diplomacy, we argued that we need to start thinking about cultural literacy, and how we build not only greater awareness of the many cultures that we encounter, but also to take that beyond simply informing of facts to providing skills to accommodate and respond to them in every situation, everyday or institutional, in which we meet them. One of the ways we could go about doing this is through building engagement with everyday culture from around the world.
In that light, this article in The Guardian, whihc points out the gap between ideas of China's importance in the world today, and general knowledge of its contemporary and everyday culture makes for interesting reading.
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