PsTL 1908W Urban Literacy

I never thought about the fact that the more you know the faster you learn, and the better you can understand what you are trying to take in. But when I come to think of it, it is very true in everyday life. The classes I do the best in are classes that I have some interest in, and have some outside information going into it. For example, I do not really like science, and in high school I had some not so good experiences learning from some teachers that did not teach very well. I did not learn much from them and as a result do not have very much background knowledge or intuitiveness for science. This year I have biology and it takes me a while to pick up on the ideas, because I have no foundation to build on and am not able to conceptualize what I am being taught. On the other hand, on the ACT, I was immediately drawn to the history passages. They made since to me, and were relevant to what I had learned in AP History. One ironically, was on the same topic that I was writing an essay on over the weekend. When I came across this passage, I read straight through it, answered the questions and moved on. When I came to the science passage, I had to read twice as slow, read it over , look for the answers, and then answer with some uncertainty. The fact that I had some knowledge going into the history passage really helped, and the lack of science was unhelpful. Thus this book is a very helpful tool for defining cultural literacy, and should be used as a minimum standard for really understanding our country. I myself, think of it as a challenge to learn many knew things and grow in knowledge beyond what I can learn from expert textbooks. Looking over some of the words, I have a lot of work to do!