According to this perspective, it is essential for the educational system to teach those ideas to successive generations of students to facilitate communication and to perpetuate the shared quality of culture. There is a specific "cultural literacy" in criminology, as in all disciplines, and this assumption is reviewed in three areas: the history of criminological thought, the measurement of crime and delinquency, and etiological theories of crime and delinquency. A list of those cultural publications considered to be essential reading in the field of criminology is included. 3 tables, 74 references. (Author abstract modified)