Tucker Max cre­ates a list of what he believes is the infor­ma­tion any edu­cated per­son should know. By no means a defin­i­tive list (far from it), but some good infor­ma­tion regardless.

Eng­lish lit: Read lots of nov­els, espe­cially the clas­sics. There are hun­dreds of sites out there that pur­port to list the West­ern Canon, browse a few and just start read­ing. It gives you a base from which to work and to under­stand the world. Almost all cul­ture is based on pre­vi­ous culture–you can­not hope to under­stand mod­ern media with­out expe­ri­enc­ing the base it is built on. And don’t just focus on the obvi­ous ones like Shake­speare and Chaucer; there are a lot of writ­ers on the mar­gins of the canon who are just as good. A few things to remem­ber:
1. If you don’t under­stand some­thing, don’t just quit. Shake­speare is hard to get through with­out the guid­ance of some­one who can place it in con­text for you and help you wade through the lan­guage. Some things you need to take in a class­room set­ting, but if thats impos­si­ble, don’t be afraid to use a study aid or read a crit­i­cal essay. It does not make you stu­pid to ask for help; quite the con­trary, know­ing your lim­its is very wise. [But at the same time, just because some­thing is in the canon, doesn’t auto­mat­i­cally make it good. For instance, I think James Joyce is pretty shitty.]
2. This is not easy. It’s not sup­posed to be.

Update: Tucker Max has since taken down his mes­sage board and the orig­i­nal post was lost. I believe the copy linked-to above is the best cur­rently available.