I have thought long and hard about this book and this review and have written several different versions of the latter. I think, in the end, what I want to do is to emphasize the intelligence and insight of this slim volume. So my plan, is to simply point out some insights that I got from reading it.
The first point I want to pass on is that his is a largely Aristotelean view of culture. If I am understanding Scruton correctly, he believes that culture is a way of passing on a framework of emotional intelligence which then cultivates behavorial habits which then become moral standards.
These standards are then embodied in the canon of high art- those books, paintings, buildings and music which are the highest exemplars of the ethical reflection that the members of that culture have created.
Religion is the best way to do this. Not so much through the understanding of doctrine but through ritual, through "holy words and examples" (p.39)
The problem is that over time Western culture began to seperate itself from religion. I want to make one thing clear here about a way in which I may differ from Prof. Scruton. I believe that this seperation began in Athens; it is the central theme of The Clouds by Aristophanes, it is the reason that the people of Athens put Socrates to death. It is a central tension in Western culture. It is certainly not the gift of the nineteenth century or the Enlightenment or postmodernism (although all those periods and movements did yeoman's work in widening the rift).
Regardless of all that, I think Prof. Scruton's ideas about culture are very interesting and worth further reflection. One small issue that came up for me out of his discussion on culture and religion is the question of whether it is even possible to have a definition of the obscene without some form of religious belief in a soul (p. 49). I think he would say no and it is worth thinking about.
Like the other reviewers, I also found his discussion of the purposes and methods of education to be useful. I have a (wonderful) daughter who is finishing first grade. Consider the following quote from Prof. Scruton:
"Those who understand a subject can deal with its foundations. Those who have yet to understand it must concentrate instead on its most vivid and easily memorized results" (p.58) When I help my daughter with her math homework, I find myself wondering why we aren't struggling with addition and subtraction tables instead of what seem to be exercises designed to teach the commutative property.
I also found insightful his point about culture being perserved for the group not for the good of the individual. I liked his insight into the results of making education relevant:
"A relevant curriculum is one from which the difficult core of knowledge has been excised, and while it may be relevant now it will be futile in a few years' time. Conversely irrelevant -seeming knowledge, when properly acquired, is not merely a discipline that can be adapted and applies; it is likely to be exactly what is needed, in circumstances that nobody foresaw." (p. 29)
Prof. Scruton also feels that it is possible to talk about high and low culture, about what deserves to be in a cultural canon in the same way it is possible to talk about what makes for a good joke:
"Those who think there are no aesthetic values ought to look more closely at the practice of human laughter, which is-judged from one perspective-a continuous search for them..." (p.46) This is a very interesting approach that is worth further development.
Now the discerning reader will note that all my quotes from Prof. Scruton's book have been from the first half of it. I consider the first half to be the philosophical foundation that he lays for the cultural critique of the second half. Which, unfortunately, I found far less convincing. I will submit but one example, that of his critique of modern pop singing that he offers on p. 63. Prof. Scruton feels that "Sometimes serious doubts arise as to whether the performers made more than a minimal contribution to the recording, which owes it trademark to subsequent sound engineering, designed precisely to make it unrepeatable...Hence it is often impossible to sing for yourself the tunes and words of a pop-song"(pp.63-4). All I will say is that any philosophical argument that you make that is instantly refuted by millions of pre-teens singing Hannah Montana songs is just not a good argument. But let us leave such quibbles aside. Prof. Scruton has written something valuable. Indeed, I dare to say something wise. And it would serve well as a basis for conversation between those of us who are secular leftists with those who (while being people who practise/live a faith and who are conservative) would like to have a good chat about politics and culture and about whether there is a soul. In the meantime, I leave you all with a question. If we as a culture have grown away from God and our rational inheritance is the basis for that movement then where does that leave us?
We cannot simply decide to reverse the movement. If we try to do so because of the bad effects that secularlism has had on our sense of moral community, then isn't our faith merely manipulative?

Roger Scruton's "Culture Counts" is much more than just another tiresome, stale screed attacking the postmodernist establishment. Instead, it is a refreshing defense of the actual, if neglected, inclusiveness and meaningful "multiculturalism" of traditional Western culture, and, simultaneously, an expose of the rigid orthodoxies and crude censoriousness which mark that allegedly open-minded, postmodernist "culture" flourishing at our universities, one he calls the "culture of repudiation." This regnant "culture" he sees as unworthy of a university, since it is in grave contradiction, for it argues that all cultures are relative and therefore of equal value, at the same time as it demonstrates a fashionable self-loathing by bashing traditional Western culture as beyond the pale. It is, in fact, merely nihilist and has nothing substantive to offer in place of what it would destroy.

Scruton is equally provocative in suggesting that current education has things just backwards. To him, the purpose of education is not merely the private benefit to the student, but rather the benefit to the culture, of which a truly educated student will himself be a future guardian. (Pace, John Dewey!)

Finally, it should be pointed out that Scruton is as versed in contemporary art, architecture, music and literature as he is in the traditional, and thus he does not follow his serious analysis with a counsel of impotence and despair, seeing instead convincing "rays of hope" in such current practitioners as, for example, Jacob Collins, Quinlan Terry, David del Tredici, Ian McEwan, Michel Houellebecq, Alain Finkelkraut, Tom Stoppard, Alan Bennett, Paul Johnson, Gertrude Himmelfarb, and James Wood.

Roger Scruton's book "Culture Counts" is meant as an answer
to Western culture's two current threats: radical Islam and,
from within, multiculturalism. To that end he offers up an
examination of just what culture is: its origins and importance
for a civilization.

In a compact (108pp) format of seven chapters, Scruton discusses
the development of cultures generally, using relevant topics from
philosophy and religion, anthropology, and general history. When
commenting on Western Culture in particular, he offers up specific
examples of both popular and high culture drawn from literature
and drama, painting, architecture, and music. In the chapter
"Culture Wars" aim is taken at several factions of the
multiculturalist brigades.

The book is quite readable. However, for those only at the level of
interested layman (such as myself), there are some passages that wend
off into the esoteric. Fortunately, these excursions are few and
brief, and they did nothing to dissuade me from enjoying the book a
second time several weeks later.

Just about everything Roger Scruton writes I enjoy reading. He has one of the most penetrating and illustrious minds in all of conservadom, and Culture Counts is a book worthy of his reputation. Scruton is the type of intellectual heavyweight who can score points on every page which is exactly what he does here. Central to his theme is that western education exists to preserve knowledge and transmit it to the generations which follow. Our accumulated observations, values, and judgments must be conserved. Educating individuals is a secondary, and never the primary, goal of organized schooling. One's education is bigger than his person.

The idea I found most intriguing is that no information is superfluous or unworthy of accumulation. Almost every fact we gather in life adds to our general understanding of the world and is, thus, invaluable. Most people don't seem to comprehend this and act as if they are above many things and many individuals. Such attitudes are counter-productive, and are what make an ignoramus an ignoramus. The intrinsic merits of contemplation are today largely forgotten, but not to Mr. Scruton. He reminds us Aristotle regarded contemplation as being the highest good. I also appreciated his short section on the importance of laughter and the way it saves us from despair.

My only criticism is that, at just over 100 pages, Culture Counts is really more of an extended essay than a complete book. Twenty dollars is too expensive a price in my opinion. Of course, the great thing about Amazon is that stuff always sells at a discount here. Furthermore, the z shops have been a godsend for my wallet and I am sure they have been for yours as well.

Written by Roger Scruton (Research Professor, Institute for the Psychological Sciences in Arlington, Virginia), Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged declares that rumors of the demise of Western culture are greatly exaggerated. Countering academic, external, and internal critics of Western Culture, such as dismissive attitudes toward the legacy of "dead white European males", Culture Counts reveals Western cultural contributions to moral education, defends traditional architecture and figurative painting, and urges renewed respect for the positive achievements of Western civilization. "We should see culture as Schiller and other Enlightenment thinkers saw it: the repository of emotional knowledge, through which we can come to understand the meaning of life as an end in itself. Culture inherits from religion the 'knowledge of the heart' whose essence is sympathy. But it can be passed on and enhanced, even when the religion that first engendered it has died. Indeed, in these circumstances, it is all the more important that culture be passed on, since it has become the sole communicable testimony to the higher life of mankind." A highly recommended, thought-provoking philosophical treatise.