Abstract This paper focuses on the feasible path to enhance the traditional cultural literacy of college students and analyzes the role of teachers’ teaching ability to enhance students’ cultural literacy in college cultural literacy education. Based on the enhancement of college students’ cultural literacy ideologically, morally, behaviorally and psychologically by college cultural literacy education, the primary evaluation indexes of teachers’ teaching ability are set, including basic ability, teaching method, teaching content, teaching attitude and teaching effect. Using the fuzzy C-mean clustering algorithm, we preprocess the teachers’ basic information data, select the evaluation indexes for teachers’ teaching, and complete the clustering optimization. According to the FCM clustering results, teachers’ teaching was classified into three categories, among which the first category T 1 = 0.885, T 3 = 0.923, T 4 = 0.742, indicating that teachers in this category should adjust their working status to achieve the optimal teaching effect and effectively improve students’ cultural literacy.