Grading the ‘cultural literacy’ project

The essay examines the argument advanced by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., for instituting ‘cultural literacy’ as a fundamental priority of schools. A number of confusions and equivocations in Hirsch's reasoning are identified, and the propensity of his project to indoctrinate is exposed. Among the features of Hirsch's argument shown to be troubling are his shifting construal of ‘language’, his inconsistency about the requirements of cultural literacy, and his uncritical relation to traditional images of the American past and present. The upshot is to raise the question why Hirsch's project has elicited wide support and praise.     

Moving the debate forward in small steps: A reply to Morrison

Morrison (1996) criticised the authors' 1995 evaluation on three main grounds: that it was too narrow, that it was circular, and that the model evaluated was contradictory. It is argued that the narrow focus was deliberate, that the methodology was standard and logical, and that the framework evaluated was coherent. Although the authors agree with Morrison in some respects, e.g. on the value of variety of methodology, there seems to be a basic difference in view on scientific method. The authors see research as (mainly) small steps which are erratic but generally cumulative; Morrison appears to favour grand-scale, multi-purpose research.     

Referenzsemantik in der Partnermodellierung

How can we explain that an assertion on something perceived can be understood in the same manner by somebody who cannot perceive that scene? This problem bases the interest in computational linguistics in how listener modeling could possibly be harmonized with reference semantics. Mental images substituting real perception appear as a way out. The architecture of the listener model has to be adapted to the creation and use of such pictorial data structures. Furthermore, the relation between the latter and a verbal (i. e., propositional) representation must be understood. The resulting architecture of a listener model with reference semantics can be employed to solve communicational problems from three general classes in a better way, as is demonstrated by an example implementation.