If it's true that children in New York don't know Cinderella, in some version or other, something would be drastically wrong. I doubt if it's actually true. Maybe in some deprived high-minded households where the parents have a distorted sense of what is appropriate for their children.

Penny's got her finger on what is significant about this whole thing. It's not that the syllabuses in schools leave out lots of things that are a vital part of our cultural understanding - it's that we seem to have a culture which takes it as read that the way people learn those things are through being taught them in school. (And it seems to me that this is the assumption that underpins a lot of the posts in this thread.) And if that were actually the case, it'd be a bit scary, because it's never how it's been done in the past, and there's no way any syllabus can include all the things we need to learn if we are to nourish our cultural roots.

In fact it's not true, because the things children learn outside the classroom are still far more important than the things they learn inside the classroom. The worry is that maybe, as Penny suggests, the realm within which children are in charge of and involved in passing on and adjusting the culture has been invaded. It seems to have been largely usurped by manipulating adults in the business of packaging stuff they can sell for money - TV programmes, trashy toys, computer games. Or engaged in social engineering and censorship, which is the other side of the counterfeit coin.

As I said, I'd be surprised if there are many children who don't know about Cinderella. But I'd be less surprised if, for many of them, all they know of Cinderella is a video of a Disney cartoon.