Category Archives: Essays/Readings

This category often, but not always, designates a piece of my own writing on a topic on a variety of topics. So, if you are interested in listening to me bloviate, click on this category! The Essays/Readings category may also include extended quotes from books, particularly on pedagogy, literacy, terms of art, and philosophy.

Grant Wiggins, Jay McTighe, and John Dewey on Learning Ideas

Posted on March 5, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Dewey’s genius grasped the educational principles underlying such sequences. Coming to understand an established idea in school must be made more like discovering a new idea than like hearing adult knowledge explained point by point. We learn complex and abstract ideas through a zigzag sequence of trial, error, reflection, and adjustment. As the facets tell us, the student needs to interpret, apply, see from different points of view, and so forth, all of which imply different sequences than those found in a catalog of existing knowledge. We cannot fully understand an idea until we retrace, relive, or recapitulate some of its history—how it came to be understood in the first place. The young learner should be treated as a discoverer, even if the path seemed inefficient. That’s why Piaget argued  ‘to understand is to invent.’”

Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.

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Feminism

Posted on March 2, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Feminism: The progressive social movements of the 1960s produced their own academic and theoretical equivalents of revision and interpretation. The recognition of women’s historical oppression in a patriarchal society produced numerous reactions in the art world. In the early 1970s exhibitions that recovered ‘forgotten’ women artists began to establish a canon of great women artists. Judy Chicago produced The Dinner Party from craft techniques traditionally associated with women, such as needlepoint and ceramics. By using blatant female imagery, she and other sought to make explicitly ‘female’ works. By the late 1970s second-generation feminism coupled with a measure of psychoanalytic theory shifted the emphasis away from biological determinism to notions of self-identity. This approach was seen as more empowering, enabling both men and women to reexamine questions of gender and sexuality in contemporary art as well as in old masterworks previously rejected for their sexism. Contemporary artists working with this approach include Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Term of Art: Antithesis

Posted on March 2, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Antithesis: (Greek: “Opposition”) Fundamentally, contrasting ideas sharpened by the use of opposite or noticeably different meanings. For example, Bacon’s apothegm (q.v.): ‘Crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them.’

It is common in rhetoric (q.v.) and was particularly favored by the Augustan poets and users of the heroic couplet (q.v.). These lines from Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel are strongly antithetical:

‘Rais’d in extremes, and in extremes decry’d;

With Oaths affirm’d, with dying Vows deny’d.

Not weighed, or winnow’s by the Multitude;

But swallow’d in the Mass, unchew’d and Crude.

Some Truth there was, but dash’d and brew’d with Lyes;

To please the Fools, and puzzle all the Wise.

Succeeding times, did equal folly call,

Believing nothing, or believing all.’

Pope was an expert at the antithetical, as this compact example in his Moral Essays shows:

‘Less with than mimic, more a wit than wise.’

It is used frequently in prose to telling effect, as in this example from Dr. Johnson (in the London Chronicle, May 2nd, 1769) on the character of the Reverend Zachariah Mudge: ‘Though studious, he was popular; though argumentative, he was modest; though inflexible, he was candid; and though metaphysical, yet orthodox.’”

Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.

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Do Not Break Sentences in Two

Posted on March 2, 2020 | Leave a comment

[If you would like this quote as a Word document to use as a teaching and learning support, here it is.]

“6. Do not break sentences in two.

In other words, do not use periods for commas.

I met them on a Cunard liner many years ago. Coming home from Liverpool to New York.

She was an interesting talker. A woman who had traveled all over the world and lived in half a dozen countries.

In both these examples, the first period should be replaced by a comma and the following word begun with a small letter.
It is permissible make an emphatic word or expression serve the purpose of a sentence and to punctuate it accordingly.

Again and again he called out. No reply.

The writer must, however, be certain that the emphasis is warranted, lest a clipped sentence seem merely a blunder in syntax or in punctuation. Generally speaking, the place for broken sentences is in dialogue, when a character happens to speak in clipped or fragmentary way….”

Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.

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7 Sages of Ancient Greece

Posted on March 1, 2020 | Leave a comment

 “Thales of Miletus * Biasof Priene * Heraclitus of Ephesus * Cleobolus of Lindos * Solon of Athens * Pittacus of Mytilene * Periander of Corinth

This is an acceptable list, though there are many variants, not least because the great kings of antiquity liked to keep seven sages—in Greek hepta sophoi, in Latin septem sapientes—around their courts.

There also seem to have been competitions for sage advice in verse, which allowed various pantheons of seven sages to be formed. This was especially true of the Pythian Games held in honour of Apollo, the god of wisdom. Some of the most pithy couplets were then carved on the porch of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The two best known, as reported by that great guidebook writer Pausanias, are ‘Know thyself’ and ‘Nothing in excess.’”

Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.

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Term of Art: Differentiated Instruction

Posted on February 21, 2020 | Leave a comment

“differentiated instruction: A form of instruction that seeks to maximize each student’s growth by recognizing that students have different ways of learning, different interests, and different ways of responding to instruction. In practice, it involves offering several different learning experiences in response to students’ varied needs. Educators may vary learning activities and materials by difficulty, so as to challenge students at different readiness levels; by topic, in response to students’ interests; and by students’ preferred way of learning or expressing themselves. Differentiated teaching assumes that classrooms will be grouped heterogeneously, mixing students of different levels of ability in the same class, although the strategy may also be used in classes for gifted students. Advocates of differentiated instruction say that it helps students progress by meeting their diverse, individual needs. Critics say that planning multiple learning experiences is time-consuming and that it requires extensive training. In addition, teachers of mixed-ability classes containing students of widely divergent abilities sometimes find the instructional burden to be overwhelming. Some parents of high-ability students in such classes complain that their children are neglected or not sufficiently challenged.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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Term of Art: Heuristic

Posted on February 20, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Heuristic (adjective): Serving as the discovery of truth or furthering investigation, as in the case of a useful and stimulating (if not logical or conclusive) method, presentation, or argument, and especially one used by a student to learn for himself. Adverb: heuristically; noun: heuristic.

‘My coarse distinctions between two kinds of fiction are useful heuristically, but they give a damaging impression of clear boundaries and a misleading impression of two armed camps.’ Annie Dillard, Living by Fiction”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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4 Elements

Posted on February 20, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Fire * Earth * Air * Water

The ancient division of the world of matter into four categories underwrote a whole interlinked system of equivalences that helped define human character, tend imbalances, mend illness and peer into the future. For the four elements were also assessed on a scale of hot and cold, wet and dry and given particular associations.

Thus, Fire was both hot and dry and linked with one of the four humours (the choleric) and the astrological signs of Aries, Leo and Sagittarius. Earth was dry and cold, and allied to black ‘melas’ bile (melancholic) and the three earth signs of Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn. Air was both hot and wet, and connected with blood and a sanguinous character and the three air signs of Gemini, Libra and Aquarius. Water was wet and cold, allied with a phlegmatic character and the water signs of Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces.

The elements can also be allied to the four suits of cards, either our modern symbols or the fourteenth-century forms that are used in the tarot pack: Cups (water), Swords (air), Batons (fire) and Coins (earth).”

Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.

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Prime Numbers

Posted on February 20, 2020 | Leave a comment

OK, here is a short reading on prime numbers along with the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Chinua Achebe

Posted on February 18, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Chinua Achebe: (1930-2013) Nigerian novelist, poet, essayist, and short story writer. One of Africa’s best-known writers, Achebe gained an international audience with his first novel, Thing Fall Apart, now regarded as a classic. In his early novels, the theme of struggle and the transformation of traditional Nigerian society is dealt with compassionately, ironically, and with a sense of the tragic. Achebe’s vision of the writer as teacher and conscience of society informs his No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), and some of his short stories in Girls at War (1972). A Man of the People (1966) is a biting satirical farce that provides an expose of corrupt African politicians. His latest novel, Anthills of the People (1987) retains the wit and satiric humor of the earlier works as he explores the complex issues and problems which beset contemporary Africa. This novel, which was a finalist for the Booker Prize in England, is one of Achebe’s most optimistic and stylistically engaging works. Achebe’s style is characterized by a clear narrative and the use of local imagery, proverbs, and folklore. Among his other books are Beware Soul Brother (1972), a volume of verse which won the Commonwealth Poetry prize, U.S. title Christmas in Biafra and Other Poems (1973); and children’s stories, The Sacrificial Egg and Other Stories (1962), Chike and the River (1966), How the Leopard Got His Claws (1972), The Flute (1977), and The Drum (1977). His three collections of essays, Morning Yet on Creation Day (1975), The Trouble with Nigeria (1983), and Hopes and Impediments (1989) continue to underscore his belief that ‘A writer who feels strong and abiding concern for his fellows cannot evade the role as social critic which is the contemporary expression of commitment to the community.’”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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