Q:

What does “Being brought up to speed is as important as being brought up to grade” mean?

There was an interesting (tantalizing to me) commentary written by Adam Gopnik on these fantasy fictions: The Sword of Shannara / The Lord of the Rings / The Simarillion / The Children of Hurin, JRR Tolkien and so-called his follower Christopher Paolini (the Eragon series) in New Yorker (December 5), which was titled “The Dragon’s Egg.”
I say tantalizing because I have almost no knowledge of these works apart from “The Lord of the Rings” (that I only know as a movie). I know even less of Ossian (third century Irish bard) and other medieval bards quoted in the article as if they are common knowledge.
The commentary ends with the following sentences:

We mostly learn that lore in the form of conventions - how you hold the knife, where you put it, that John was the witty Beatle, Paul the winning one. Learning in symbolic form that the past can be mastered is as important as learning in dramatic form that your choices resonate; Being brought up to speed is as important as being brought up to grade. Fantasy fiction tells you that history is available, that past counts.” 

I don’t understand what the phrase “being brought up to Speed is as important as being brought up to Grade” means. What have “Speed” and “Grade” to do with the benefits of fantasy fictions?
Can somebody explain it for me?

A:

I think it's basically bad writing (the usage "winning" where it should be "winsome" put me off straight away), but let that pass...
The common idiom to bring [someone] up to speed means to quickly give a someone the basic information relevant to some ongoing problem/project/process, so they can usefully understand and/or contribute.
If you go round someone's house and they've just started watching a movie half an hour ago, they might quickly bring you up to speed so you know what's happening and can watch the rest of it with them. Or someone might come into a business meeting late, and need to be briefly filled in on what was covered before you arrived.

In a variety of "engineering" contexts, to bring [something] up to grade means to raise the level of something that's currently physically lower than it needs to end up, as a result of work being carried out.
For example: a trench is dug, a pipe laid, and most of the material dug out is replaced and compacted down. This normally results in a slight depression where the trench was, which must be brought up to grade to give a completely flat surface. A similar context arises when filling and sanding scratches in car bodywork.

Google Books also has references to bring up to grade for failing schoolchildren who aren't achieving their target academic grade level. It's hard to see how this is any more relevant than the established idiomatic usage above.

TL;DR:
That's the background to factors that a reasonably educated reader might be expected to take into account. As regards what the writer actually intends to convey - basically he's contrasting [superficially irrelevant] knowledge gained from studying the past (getting up to speed) with knowledge of immediate practical value in the present (making the grade).
Since I'm wracking my brains over this one, I'll hazard a guess that learning in symbolic form means by study (of the past), and dramatic form means by doing (passing exams and otherwise succeeding in the present).

A:

Seems to me like speed signifies quantity and grade, quality, here.  
Up to speed is a known idiom suggesting 'to know all that matters'. By analogy, up to grade should imply the quality of the knowledge, as in 'high grade' material.  
Together, the literary device should mean, to gain knowledge in all its breadth and quality.

