Faking Cultural Literacy Summary

In the article “Faking Cultural Literacy”, Karl Taro Greenfeld explains how in our society we need to admit that we do not know everything, and that we should start learning more of certain topics. Greenfeld uses different stories from his life to allow the reader to connect with him and see how this problem occurs in our lives as well. Greenfeld talks about how this has become an epidemic in our society, that we would rather fake knowledge about a topic rather than admit we do not know something. Greenfeld also raises the point of how people will comment on something even if they have not seen or read the article. He demonstrates this by the NPR April fool’s joke, that people reposted the article without realizing it was a trick to see who …show more content…
Throughout the article Greenfeld makes the point that we need to be culturally literate to make it through a conversation, instead of expressing how a conversation should be an enjoyable experience. Greenfeld says that we try to “survive” the conversation, and with that thinking we are never going to make closer relationships. With this logic, we are going to “learn” events to simply make it through awkward small talk rather than make connections. We need to be able to make these connections and while cultural literacy can be the first step to talking to people, it does not allow for lasting communication. With a world becoming more technical we need to place more value in face-to-face conversation and not just survive a meeting we have with someone. Greenfeld discusses that conversation cannot happen without cultural literacy, however, I strongly disagree. This article manipulates how the reader looks at conversation and devalues genuine conversation. Cultural literacy does nothing to help improve our relationships with people. As a society, we have become more distant by having the world at our fingertips, and it has become evident with our everyday conversation. We need to be able to step out of the comfort zone of talking about the latest new trend and start making real connections with people. We do not need to fall back on cultural literature, we need to be able to make connections with people. We need to stop placing so much value on making conversation about pop culture, and to start bringing more value to actual