“Sfumato: (it., evaporated) The soft gradation of light tones into dark ones, such that all sharply defined contours are eliminated. About light and shade in painting, Leonardo da Vinci wrote that they should blend imperceptibly,’without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke.’ Compare CHIAROSCURO.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“We have a pretty low tolerance for reading unknown words. And writers use a lot of words, many more than speakers do. If I’m talking about my cheap friend, I might use the word cheap three times within a few sentences. But writers like to mix things up, so my friend will be ‘frugal,’ ‘stingy,’ ‘thrifty,’ and ‘tight.’ Texts that students typically encounter in school have about 85,000 different words. Somehow we need to ensure that children have a broad enough vocabulary so that they are not constantly colliding with unknown words.”
Excerpted from: Willingham, Daniel T. The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017.
“Unimportant * Irrelevant * Nonsensical * Embarrassing * Distressing
Patients undergoing Freudian psychoanalysis must be free to say whatever comes into their head, however unimportant, irrelevant, nonsensical, embarrassing, or distressing it might seem to be, and yet be sure of receiving the same level of intent listening from their analyst.”
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.
“This discussion rejects the doctrine that students should first learn passively, and then, having learned, should apply knowledge. It is psychological error. In the process of learning, there should be present, in some sense or other, a subordinate activity or application. In fact, the applications are part of the knowledge. For the very meaning of things known is wrapped up in their relationships beyond themselves. Thus, unapplied knowledge is knowledge is knowledge shorn of its meaning.”
Essays in Science and Philosophy
Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.
“Anglo-Saxons: A compound name used from the early c5 AD after movements of the Angles and Saxons from their homelands led to a merging of their separate identities. This took place in the Elbe-Weser region of the North Sea coast, whence they crossed to settle in England after the breakdown of Roman rule. Other Germanic peoples who part in the migrations, such as the Jutes and the Frisians, have become included under this name. The language, culture, and settlement pattern of medieval and later England can be traced directly to them.
The movement probably began in c4 with the arrival of barbarian Foederati to serve with the Roman army, a situation mirrored in the legendary invitation of Vortigern to Hengist and Horsa to settle in Thanet in exchange for their military support. The main immigration began in the middle of c5. Bede, writing early in c8, gives the only reliable historical record for this period, though incidental information can be found in the Old English literature, particularly in the poem of Beowolf.
By late in c6 this movement was coming to an end and the English kingdoms were taking shape. Though they were traditionally seven in number (the Heptarchy) there were more than this to begin with, the less powerful gradually being absorbed by Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex. East Anglia and Kent retained their independence longest. The increasing number of detailed contemporary documents shows the varying fortunes of these kingdoms. Wessex became the nucleus of an increasingly unified England between 886 and 927. In 1016, however, the kingdom fell to the Danes under Canute, and then to William of Normandy in 1066, the date generally accepted as marking the end of the Anglo-Saxon period.
Archaeologically, the period can divided into three, not counting the poorly documented preliminary phase overlapping the Roman occupation. The Early or Pagan Saxon period ends with the general acceptance of Christianity in c7, following the arrival of St Augustine at Canterbury in 597 and St Aidan at Lindisfarne in 635. Its remains are limited largely to burial deposits, these often being very rich. Burial was by cremation in urns, or by inhumation in cemeteries of trench graves or occasionally under barrows. Grave goods often include knives, a sword or spear, a shield boss, and occasional brooches and buckles with the men, brooches, beads, girdle-hangers and pottery with the women. Recently villages have come light, such as at West Stow, Suffolk, and Mucking, Essex.
The Middle Saxon period is less well known since the practice of burying grave goods with the dead went out with the advent of Christianity, Few buildings have yet been identified, the most outstanding being the royal palaces in Yeavering in Northumberland.
The invasion of the Vikings or Danes in C9 introduce the Late Saxon period. Grave goods are again not found but more is known of the doubtless commoner and more substantial dwellings. Large timber-built town houses have been studied at Thetford, Winchester, and Southampton, with some stone-built churches survive (Bradford -on-Avon, Earl’s Barton, Escomb, etc). The pottery of the period is also beginning to be understood, with the recognition of distinct fabrics made by industry based on St Neots, Thetford, and Stamford.”
Excerpted from: Bray, Warwick, and David Trump. The Penguin Dictionary of Archaeology. New York: Penguin, 1984.
“Angkor: The capital of the Khmer empire, in Kampuchia [sic], founded in c9AD. Most of the surviving ruins date from c!2. They were lost in jungle and rediscovered in the last century. The city of Angkor Thom was 2.8 km square and moated, with the fantastically sculptured temple of the Bayon at its center. Other temples such as Ta Prohm and Angkor Vat [sic] cluster in the neighbourhood.”
Excerpted from: Bray, Warwick, and David Trump. The Penguin Dictionary of Archaeology. New York: Penguin, 1984.
Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“authoritarian personality: A term coined by Theodor Adorno and his associates through a book of the same name first published in 1950, to describe a personality type characterized by (among other things) extreme conformity, submissiveness to authority, rigidity, and arrogance toward those considered inferior.
Adorno was a member of the Frankfurt School who fled the Third Reich, first to Britain and then to the United States, where he conducted extensive empirical research on the anti-Semitic, ethnocentric, and fascist personalities. In attempting to explain why some people are more susceptible to fascism and authoritarian belief-systems than are others, Adorno devised several Likert attitude scales which revealed a clustering of traits which he termed authoritarianism. Several scales were constructed (ethnocentric, anti-Semitic, fascist) and part of the interest in the study came from examining these scales. During interviews with more than 2,000 respondents, a close association was found between such factors as ethnocentrism, rigid adherence to conventional values, a submissive attitude towards the moral authority of the in-group, a readiness to punish, opposition to the imaginative and tender-minded, belief in fatalistic theories, and an unwillingness to tolerate ambiguity. These authoritarian attitude clusters were subsequently linked, using Freudian theory, to family patterns. Intensive interviewing and the use of Thematic Apperception Tests identified the authoritarian personality with a family pattern of rigidity, discipline, external rules, and fearful subservience to the demands of parents.
The Authoritarian Personality is a classic study of prejudice, defense mechanisms, and scapegoating. The term itself has entered everyday language, even though the original research has attracted considerable criticism. Among other weaknesses, critics have suggested that the Adorno study measures only an authoritarianism of the right, and failed to consider the wider ‘closed mind’ of both left and right alike; that it tends, like all theories of scapegoating, to reduce complex historical processes to psychological needs; and is based on flawed scales and samples. For a detailed exposition and critique see John Madge, The Origins of Scientific Sociology (1962). See also CRITICAL THEORY.
Excerpted from: Matthews, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
It’s time for me to wrap this up and trudge into downtown Bennington to run a couple of errands. If you teach social studies, particularly European history in the 19th century, you might find this reading on Giuseppe Garibaldi and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet of some use in your classroom. Garibaldi, when it comes to European nationalism, remains a representative figure.
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.
“megavitamins and ADHD: the use of very high doses of vitamins and minerals to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is based on the theory that some people have a genetic abnormality that requires higher levels of vitamins and minerals.
However, there is a complete lack of supporting evidence for megavitamin treatment for learning disabilities, and there are no well-controlled studies supporting these claims. Both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have concluded that the use of megavitamins to treat behavioral and learning problems is not justified.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“Generative topics have several key features: They are central to one of more disciplines or domains. They are interesting to students. They are accessible to student (there are lots of resources available to help students pursue the topic). There are multiple connections between them and students’ experiences both in and out of school. And perhaps most important, they are interesting to the teacher.”
Excerpted from: Blythe, Tina, et al. The Teaching for Understanding Guide. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998.
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