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.

Professor Daniel Willingham on Learning to Love Reading

Posted on February 18, 2020 | Leave a comment

“The sources of some emotional attitudes are easy to appreciate. Here’s Oprah Winfrey on reading: ‘Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered that there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.’ One source—probably the primary source—of positive reading attitudes is positive reading experiences. This phenomenon is no more complicated than understanding why someone has a positive attitude toward eggplant. You taste it and like it. Oprah tasted the mental journeys reading affords, and loved them.

But we can elaborate a bit on this obvious relationship. Kids who like to read also tend to be strong readers, as measured by standard reading tests. Again, not terribly surprising—we usually like what we’re good at and vice versa. The situation yields a positive feedback loop….

If you’re a good reader, you’re more likely to enjoy a story because reading it doesn’t seem like work. That enjoyment means that you have a better attitude toward reading; that is, you believe that reading is a pleasurable, valuable thing to do. A better attitude means you read more often and more reading makes you better at reading—your decoding gets still more fluent, lexical representations become richer, and your background knowledge increases. We would also predict the inverse to be true: if reading is difficult you won’t enjoy it, you’ll have a negative attitude toward the activity, and you’ll avoid it whenever possible, meaning that you’ll fall still further behind your peers. This cycle has been called ‘The Matthew Effect’ from the biblical verse ‘For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath’ (Matthew 25-29). Or more briefly, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”

Excerpted from: Willingham, Daniel T. The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017.

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6 Patrician Families of Rome

Posted on February 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

“6 Patrician Families of Rome

 Manlii (gens Manlia) * Fabii (gens Fabia) * Aemilii (gens Aemilia) * Claudii (gens Claudia) * Valerii Cornelli (gens Cornelia)

The six major Patrician families of Rome—the gentes maiores—claimed descent from the priesthoods held by their ancestors at the time of the city’s foundation by Romulus and the first seven kings, when the senate was just a gathering of priests checking that the royal decrees were consistent with the will of the gods. The Manlii remembered their origins from the Etruscan Tusculum. Fabians claimed descent from Hercules through Sabine highlanders and kept control of the ancient Lupercalia festival—though their detractors argued that their name derived either from ‘peasant,’ ‘bean,’ or ‘ditch [cleaner].’ The Aemilians traced their origin to Sabine highland chieftains invited to Rome by the second king, Numa Pompilius, and their bloodline to Aemylos son of Ascanius—though others argued that they were descended from Romulus and Remus’s sinful uncle, Amulius.

The Claudians were yet another Sabine family ‘distinguished by a spirit of haughty defiance, disdain for the laws and an iron hardness of heart,’ who were divided into either the very good or the very bad-and contributed the Claudian line of emperors (Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero) along with twenty-eight consuls, five dictators, and seven censors. The Valerians had their own throne on the Circus Maximus and tended to ally with the Fabians to form a power block second in influence to the Cornelli.

The Cornelli were the most powerful of all the families, and it was said that one in every three of all the consuls of the Republic owed them some allegiance in blood. Their subsidiary clans included such powerful factions as the Scipio, Sulla, Lentulus, Dolabellae, and Cinna families.”

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: Youth

Posted on February 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Youth: Typically regarded in sociology as an ascribed status, or socially constructed label, rather than simply the biological condition of being young. The term is used in three ways: very generally, to cover a set of phases in the life-cycle from early infancy to young adulthood; in preference to the rather unsatisfactory term adolescence, to denote theory and research on teenagers, and the transition to adulthood; and, less commonly now, for a set of supposed emotional and social problems associated with growing up in an urban industrial society.”

Excerpted from: Marshall, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

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Ama Ata Aidoo

Posted on February 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Ama Ata Aidoo: (1940-) Ghanaian dramatist, poet, novelist, and short-story writer. Aidoo’s career as a writer began while still an undergraduate at the University of Ghana with the 1964 performance of The Dilemma of a Ghost (pub 1965). Her work, consistently engaged with women’s issues, uses Africa’s oral traditions and styles to place these concerns in the larger context of the African struggle against colonialism, neocolonialism, and exploitation. Aidoo’s second play, Anowa (1970), is set in the late 19th, and is an adaptation of an old Ghanaian legend. In her collection of short stories, No Sweetness Here (1970), Aidoo turns her critical yet compassionate attention to the postindependence era, demonstrating her ability to as a storyteller and witty social critic. Our Sister Killjoy (1979) is an innovative novel which examines, through an interplay of prose and poetry, the maturation of a young Ghanaian woman who travels to Germany and England. Her second novel, Changes: A Love Story (1991), which won the 1992 Africa Section of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, recounts the trials and tribulations of the Esi Sekyi, a young educated career woman. In Aidoo’s sensitive depiction of Sekyi’s second marriage to a polygamous man, she explores the uses of Africa’s past to women and men who are attempting to create more meaningful personal and public lives. Aidoo’s other works include her two volumes of poetry, Someone Talking to Sometime (1985) and An Angry Letter in January (1991), and The Eagle and the Chicken and Other Stories (1987) and The Eagle and the Chicken and Other Stories (1987) and Birds and Other Poems (1987), both written for children. Aidoo is one of the most important African writers today.

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

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Daniel Willingham on Prior Knowledge and Inferring

Posted on February 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

“I noted that making inferences is sometimes possible when you lack background knowledge and vocabulary the writer assumed you have, but that doing so is mentally taxing. Much of the reading expected of students (especially in the later elementary grades and beyond) is difficult. It’s not only difficult in terms of vocabulary and knowledge; they read texts with more complex structures, texts that convey abstract and subtle ideas, and they are asked to put these texts to new purposes, like understanding the author’s technique. In short, students don’t do the type of reading where comprehension is smooth and there’s an opportunity to get lost in the story. They mostly read in situations where reading feels like work. What impact do you think that has on students’ attitude toward reading? Do they confuse leisure reading with the reading they do for school? If so, what might be done to disabuse them of that notion?”

Excerpted from: Willingham, Daniel T. The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017.

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Term of Art: Metacognition

Posted on February 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

“The awareness and knowledge of an individual’s own mental processes; the ability to think about thinking, Metacognition refers to one’s understanding of what strategies are available for learning and what strategies are best used in which situations, It involves the ability to select and manage cognitive strategies effectively. Ordinarily these abilities develop in childhood; children learn that mental activities go along with decision making. They know when they know something and when they do not.

Metacognition skills are directly related to reading, writing, problem solving, and any process that requires error monitoring. Students must be able to examine how they learn best and what resources they can draw upon in order to set and achieve academic goals.

One of the reasons individuals with learning disabilities tend to have academic difficulties is a lack of skills in selecting and managing task-appropriate strategies. Many theorists and educators believe these skills can be intentionally taught and developed.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

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Rotten Rejections: Jerzy Kosinski

Posted on February 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

“In 1969 Steps, a novel by Jerzy Kosinski, won the National Book Award. Six years later a freelance writer named Chuck Ross, to test the old theory that a novel by an unknown author doesn’t have a chance, typed the first twenty-one pages of Steps and sent them out to four publishers as the work of “Erik Demos.” All four rejected the manuscript. Two years after that he typed out the whole book an sent it, again credited to Erik Demos, to more publishers, including the original publisher of the Kosinski book, Random House. Again, all rejected it with unhelpful comments–Random House used a form letter. Altogether, fourteen publishers (and thirteen literary agents) failed to recognize a book that had already been published and had won an important prize.”

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

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Term of Art: Divergent Thinking

Posted on February 12, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Divergent thinking: Imaginative thinking, characterized by the generation of multiple possible solutions to a problem, often associated with creativity. The concept was introduced in 1946 by the US psychologist J(oy) P(aul) Guilford (1897-1987) and is one of the five different types of mental operations in Guilford’s cube.”

Excerpted from: Colman, Andrew M., ed. Oxford Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

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Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

Posted on February 12, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Go Tell It on the Mountain: The first novel (1953) of the black US writer James Baldwin (1924-1987). The book has autobiographical undertones, and the climax is the religious conversion of a 14-year-old Harlem boy. At the center of the book are the boy’s troubled relations with his stepfather, a preacher of the storefront Temple of the Fire Baptized. Aspects of the slave era and of life in a dysfunctional family are recounted in flashbacks. The phrase ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain’ appears in the refrain of an African-American spiritual:

‘Go, tell it on the mountain,

Over the hills and everywhere

Go, tell it on the mountain,

That Jesus Christ is born’”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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Term of Art: Analysis

Posted on February 12, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Analysis: A detailed splitting up and examination of a work of literature. A close studies of the various elements and the relationship between them. An essential part of criticism. As T.S. Eliot put it, the tools of the critic are comparison analysis. Analytical criticism helps to make clear an author’s meaning and the structure of his work. It is argued that analysis spoils an intuitive and spontaneous response to a work of literature. Those in favor of “deep” analysis content that, on the contrary, it enhances the reader’s enjoyment.”

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

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