I was just perusing a section in Geoffrey Nunberg's the way we talk now, and my eye was caught by the unusual title. He says that in the late nineteenth century, Americans began using the words literate and illiterate as a way of classifying people according to whether they could read and write. And that since then, these two words (literate and illiterate) have led "double lives", referring both to basic skills and to broader cultural and intellectual achievements. He also states that recently Americans have expanded the idea of literacy to include "skills and knowledge that don't seem to have any immediate connection to basic reading and writing". He cites such terms as media literacy, economic literacy, geographical literacy, scientific literacy, computer literacy, mathematical literacy, etc.

Is there another language that has a single word for this that includes such a wide variation in meaning?

Here's my real point in making this post: he says that Americans are "skittish" about using the word culture as a positive term, and that "a phrase like 'a person of culture' has an elitist, PBS ring to it". He also asserts that literacy is America's way of getting culture in "through the back door of the schoolroom. Literacy strips culture of its connotations of class and refinement and turns it into a civic duty and a subject matter, something you can objectify and quantify."

I am not sure I agree with this. What do you all think?