Part 3 (1/2)
The Disneyland near Paris, overnment wanted it badly) than an export product, was called a ”cultural Chernobyl” Tourists froer taken to Lenin's Mausoleum but to Moscow's McDonald's The japanese, reluctant to import American-ricultural goods (except marbled beef), will bend over backwards for baseball Add to all this the symbolism of blue jeans, Madonna or Heavy Metal (as music or comic books), Coca-Cola, the television series Dallas, the incessant cho, Texan boots, and the world-wide sneaker craze, and you have an ie of the visible threat of Americanization But appearance is deceitful
Taken out of their context, these and many other Americanized aspects of daily life are only exotic phenomena, easy to counteract, and indeed subject to counteraction Italians protested the culture of fast food near the Piazza d'Espagna in Roiving out free spaghetti carbonara and pizza (They were unaware of the irony in this: the biggest exporter of pizza restaurants is no longer Italy, but the USA) The rightist Russiannational dishes, the good old high-calorie reater than in our days (even in that part of the world) The Germans push native Lederhosen and Dirndls over blue jeans The German unions protest atteh dian that echoes like a hollow threat: American conditions will be met by a French response, by which they mean that strikes will paralyze the country The japanese resisted the Disney teical marvels When an athlete born in America, naturalized as japanese, won the traditional Sues decided that this would be his last chance, since the sport requires, they stated, a spirituality (translated by den-born sportsman cannot have
On closer examination, Americanization runs deeper than what any assortment of objects, attitudes, values, and imitated behavior tell us It addresses the very core of hulobal community It is easy to understand why America appears to embody efficiency reached at the expense of many abandoned values: respect for authority, for environment, for resources, even human resources, and ultimately huh which American identity is constituted is on li social existence, standard of living, political action, econo obsession is freedomatics affords becomes the new expectation and is projected as the next necessity The right to affluence, as relative as affluence is in Aranted, never shadowed by the thought that one's wealth and well-being ht come at the expense of someone else's lack of opportunity
Competitive, actually adversarial, considerations prevail, such as those al and political systeo the spoils”
is probably the most succinct description of what this means in real life
The American way of life has been a hope and pros they have towards America does not necessarily reflect this The entire world is probably driven by the desire for efficiency thatpossible more than by the pressure to copy the A, politics, behavior, etc) This desire corresponds to a praglobal scale of humankind, and by the contemporary dynamics of human self-constitution Each country faces the battle between efficiency and culture (so back thousands of years), in contrast to the USA, whose culture is always in status nascendi
The American anxiety over the current state of literacy is laden with a nostalgia for a tradition never truly established and a fear of a future never thought through It is, consequently, of more than documentary interest to understand how America epitomizes a civilization that has made literacy obsolete
For the love of trade
As a country forration, Ah, as a civilization of hborhoods are still a fact of life Here one finds stores where only the native language is spoken, with newspapers printed in Greek, Hungarian, German, Italian, Ukrainian, Farsi, Armenian, Hebrew, Romanian, Russian, Arabic, japanese, Mandarin, Korean Cable TV caters to these groups, and so do many importers of products reoods ”last forever” All of these carried-over literacies are, in final analysis, es between cultures that will be burned by the third generation In practicing the literacy of origins, hus constitute thematic contexts One embodies expectations characteristic of the context that relied upon literacy- hoeneity, hierarchy, centralism, tradition The other, of the adopted country, is focused upon needs that effect the transition to the civilization of illiteracy- heterogeneity, horizontality, decentralism, tradition as choice, but not way of life
Aspects of iration) need to be addressed, not from the perspective of parallel literacies, but as variations within a unifying prag fro to many nations is probably a unique feature of America It impacted all aspects of life, and continues to be a source of vitality, as well as tension
Irants arrive as literates (some more so than others) only to discover that their literacy is relatively useless That things were not always like this is relatively well documented Neil Postman reported that the 17th-century settlers were quite literate in terms characteristic of the time Up to 95 percent of the e reported is 62 They also read other publications, so of the second half of the eighteenth century supported a printing industry soon to becolish, as well as the French and Dutch, imported all the characteristics that literacy iovernration, unskilled and skilled workers, intellectuals, and peasants arrived They all had to adapt to a different culture, do farther away from it as the country started to develop its own characteristics Each national or ethnic group, shaped through practical experiences that did not have a corew quite fast, as did its industry, transportation syste, and the many services made possible and necessary by the overall econoral part of these acco country soon established its own body of literature, reflecting its own experience, while re true to the literacy of the former mother country I say to some extent because, as the history of each of these accomplishments shows, the characteristics inherent in literacy were opposed, under the banner of States' rights, deress
With all this in mind, it is no wonder that Americans do not like to hear that they are a nation of illiterates, as people from much older cultures are so reasons) No wonder either that they are still committed to literacy; moreover, that they believe that it represents a panacea to the problee, by new modes of human interaction, and by circumstances of practical experiences to which they have to adapt Educators and business-people are well aware, and worried, that literacy in the classical sense is declining The sense of history they inherited makes them de Areatness, or at least to soreatness is misunderstood or misconstrued, since there is not much in the history of the accomplish the cultural giants of past and present civilizations
Throughout its history, Aree, a break with the values of the old world The Europeans who calish colonies had at least one thing in coious domination, and fixed rules of social and cultural life representing a systeion-one of the ht after-is freedom from a dominant, unified church and its vision of the unconditionally sub one's own land, another hope that animated the settlers, is freedo nobility on those lower on the hierarchy John Smith's maxim that those who didn't work didn't eat was perhaps the first blow to the European values that ranked language and culture along with social status and privilege
Most likely, the ihborn and low, did not co the sense andat the time The phase of imitation of the old, characteristic of any develop, enjoying, educating, dressing, and relating to outsiders (natives, slaves, religious sects) In this phase of imitation, a se the Englishthe taxes and punitive laws ie III, the upper-class colonials were delishmen, with all that this qualifier entailed Jefferson's rarian state best embodied the classic ideals that animated him Jefferson was himself the model of literacy-based practical experiences, a landed aristocrat ned slaves, a e ca his various interests in architecture, politics, planning, and adh Jefferson, a others, rejected monarchy, which his fellow citizens would have set up, he did not hesitate to exercise the alovernment entailed His activity sho monarchic centrality and hierarchy were translated in the new political for democracies, within which elective office replaced inherited power In the history of early Aalitarian hts and before the law, the power of rules, and a sense of authority inspired by religion, practiced in political life, and connected to expectations of order
Just as new trees sprout frorated to Aed by the need to provide a framework for their own self-identification, they ended up establishi+ng an alternative context for the unfolding of the Industrial Revolution In the process, they changed in more ways than they could foresee Politically, they established conditions conducive to emancipation from the many constraints of the syste, and thinking changed In 1842, Charles dickens observed of Aned as a reason for that co no fireside of their own, and seldoht, but at the hasty public meals The love of trade is a reason why the literature of A people, and don't care for poetry: though we do, by the way, profess to be very proud of our poets'” dickens cahest achieve to Jane Austen, Shakespeare could be particularly appreciated by the English alone (cf Mansfield Park) She gave cultivation of the hest priority Literature was expected to assist in defining values and pointing out the proper moral and intellectual direction France was in a very siard to its culture and literature; so were the German lands and Holland
Even Russia, otherwise opposed to acknowledging the new pragmatic context of industrial production, was affected by the European Enlightenment
De Toqueville, whose journey to America contributed to his fame, made his historic visit in the 1830's By this time, America had time and opportunity to establish its peculiar character, so he was able to observe characteristics that would eventually define a new paradig values, based on a life relatively free of historic constraints, caught his attention: ”The Aeneral education only the early years of life [] At fifteen they enter upon their calling, and thus their education generally ends at the age when ours begins If it is continued beyond that point, it aims only towards a particular specialized and profitable purpose; one studies science as one takes up a business; and one takes up only those applications whose inized [] There is no class, then, in America, in which the taste for intellectual pleasures is transmitted with hereditary fortune and leisure and by which the labors of the intellect are held in honor Accordingly, there is an equal want of the desire and power of application to these objects”
Opinions, even those of scholars of de Toqueville's reputation, are inherently liovernment to examine prisons and penitentiaries in the New World, he wound up writing a study of how a highly literate European understood America's social and political institutions Many of the characteristics of the civilization of illiteracy were ehted the shortness of political cycles, the orality of public administration, the transience of co ”is soon wafted away forever, like the leaves of the sibyl, by the smallest breeze”) Severance from the past, in particular, made this visitor predict that Americans would have to ”recourse to the history of other nations in order to learn anything of the people who now inhabit them” What we read in de Toqueville is the expression of the surprise caused by discontinuity, by change, and by a dynamics that in other parts of the world was less obvious
The New World certainly provided new themes, addressed and interpreted differently by Americans and Europeans The more European cities of the Northeast- Boston, New York, Philadelphia-maintained cultural ties to the Old World, as evidenced by universities, scholars, poets, essayists, and artists Nevertheless, Washi+ngton Irving co as a writer in the United States as one could in Europe Indeed,as journalists (which is a way of being a writer) or as civil servants The real A form west of the Hudson River and beyond the Appalachian Mountains This was truly a world where the past did not count
America finally did aith slavery (as a by-product of the Civil War) But at the sa structure reflected in literacy The depth and breadth of the process escaped the full understanding of those literate Founding Fathers who set the process in motion, and was only partially realized by others (de Toqueville included) It clearly affected the nature of human practical experiences of self-constitution as free citizens of a democracy whose chance to succeed lay in the efficiency, not in the expressive power, of ideas Around different fro in relative autarchy for a short tie deter as ardless of how this was to be accomplished
The process still affects economic development, financial markets, cultural interdependencies, and education
”The best of the useful and the best of the ornaone by and the American character has been shaped by more than the love of trade They will point to the literary heritage of Washi+ngton Irving, Mark Twain, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James Indeed, 20th century American writers have been appreciated and iway are the best known examples Today, American writers of lesser stature and talent are translated into the various European languages, for the saht to France Americans will point to theaters (which presented European plays) and opera houses, forgetting how late these acquisitions are, instituted when econoress was on a sound track Indeed, the response to these assertions is sie of course, but a much faster ood exaes and universities founded in the 18th and early 19th centuries atte for its own sake; that is, e-old classics This lasted until various interest groups, in particular businessramatic value These schools were in the East-Harvard, Brown, Yale, Columbia, William and Mary- and the curricula reflected that of the Old World In general, only the elite of America attended thees, later called state universities (such as Ohio State University, Texas A & M), established west of the Allegheny River during the last quarter of the 19th century, did indeed pursue riculture and mechanics-to serve the needs of the respective state, not the nation
In view of this demand for what is useful, it is easy to understand why Ah (and so for what high school rarely provided Pragmatic requirements and anti-elitist political considerations collided with the literate e hybrid resulted A look at how the course offerings changed over tiic, rhetoric, culture, appreciation of the word and of the rules of grammar and syntax-all the values associated with a doated to specializations in philosophy, literature, or written co, repertory of elective classes, which reflect an obsession with free choice and a leveling notion of deive up its romantic claim to permanency, associates itself with transitory approaches thatopportunistic speed, whatever the current agenda ht be: feminism, multiculturalism, anti-war rhetoric, economic upheaval Human truth, as literary illusion or hope, is replaced by uncertainty No wonder that in this context prograuish or disappear from the curriculum Economics lost its philosophic backbone and became an exercise in statistics and mathematics
When faced with a list of courses that a university requires, ory fall literature,else definable within literacy as formative subject matter or discipline Blame for this attitude, if any can be uttered, should not be put on the young people processed by the university systeht be for them to understand their conforet a driver's license and a college diploma, and to pay taxes The expectation of a diploma does not result from requirements of qualification but from the Aainst hierarchy and inequality, has never tolerated even the appearance of individual superiority This led to a de as not equal-rights or aptitudes, opportunities or abilities-at any price College education as privilege, which America inherited from the Europe it left behind, was considered an injustice Over ti mall Today, diplo attended college, a mere prerequisite to a career, not necessarily the result of rigorous o to college because they heard that one can get a better (read higher paying) job with a college education
The result of broadening the scope of university studies to include professions for which only training is required is that the value of a college diploma (but not the price paid for it) has decreased Soe diploineer) Actually, a person will not need a diploe of a sanitation worker will be so high (inflation always keeps pace with deraduate will feel h school dropout When Thomas Jefferson studied, he realized that none of his studies would help hieometry were subordinate to a literacy-dominated standard