Category Archives: Independent Practice

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of conspicuous consumption–an idea which requires attention, I submit, in our benighted age. This is a simple, half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and two comprehension questions.

Which includes a reference to Thorstein Veblen, the progenitor of the idea of conspicuous consumption, as well as conspicuous leisure. Veblen is, I think, an important figure in the history of American thought. I’ve posted several quotes from him on this blog, which you can find simply by searching his name in the search bar above.

If you find typos in this document, 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.

Not that demand for it is likely to be great, but here, nonetheless, is a reading on Friedrich Nietzsche along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

I wrote this material for a student I worked with at the very beginning of my teaching career. After he used it, I don’t believe I ever printed another copy of it. I have some history with Nietzsche, so I can tell you that this is a workmanlike, mostly superficial account of his philosophy. But how, really, to deal with a thinker of Nietzsche’s range, depth, and insight in one page? Impossible, I say.

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.