THE DEPARTMENT OF FACTUAL VERIFICATION

This year’s other surprise best-seller, hovering around number three on the New York Times list, is Cultural Literacy, by E. D. Hirsch Jr. It is a very different book from Bloom’s, but they share an important part of their thesis: American schools and colleges are failing to impart to their students our common culture. As a people, we are no longer reading from the same text.

This wouldn’t be half the catastrophe Bloom and Hirsch say it is if the text itself were the point. But the question