“single-sex education: Classes or schools that enroll only girls or only boys. Advocates of single-sex schooling claim that it helps adolescent students concentrate on their studies, free of distracting socialization with or potential intimidation by the opposite sex. Critics claim that single-sex education is comparable to racially segregated schooling.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“Linoleum Block: Linoleum glued to a block of hard wood and used as a surface on which to carve designs for relief process prints.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“To learn English, you must begin by thrusting the jaw forward, almost clenching the teeth, and practically immobilizing the lips. In this way the English produce the series of unpleasant little mews of which their language consists.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
“Bibliography (noun): The study or historical cataloguing of books and writings, including dates, places of publication, description of editions, etc., or a volume containing such information; textual scholarship; listing of writings, or of sources of information in print, dealing with a particular subject, period, or author, often with descriptive notes; in a particular book, a list of works consulted by the author. Adj. bibliographic, bibliographical; adv. bibliographically; n. bibliography, bibliographer.”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged professional development, readings/research, term of art
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: A long poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), published in Lyrical Ballads (1798), his joint collaboration with William Wordsworth. The poem opens with the Ancient Mariner buttonholing a guest at a wedding to tell him his tale. Having shot an albatross (traditionally bad luck at sea), the Ancient Mariner and his shipmates were subjected to fearful penalties. On repentance he was forgiven, and on reaching land told his story to a hermit. At times, however, distress of mind drives him from land to land, and wherever he stays he tells his story of woe, to warn against cruelty and to persuade men to love God’s creatures.
The story is partly based on a dream told by Coleridge’s friend George Cruikshank, and partly gathered from his reading. Wordsworth told him the story of the privateer George Shelvocke, who shot an albatross while rounding Cape Horn in 1720, and was dogged by bad weather thereafter. Other suggested sources are Thomas James’s Strange and Dangerous Voyage (1683) and the Letter of St Paulinus to Macarius, In Which He Relates Astounding Wonders Concerning the Shipwreck of an Old Man (1618). A full examination of the possible sources is to be found in The Road to Xanadu (1927) by J.L. Lowes.
‘The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.’
Samuel Butler, Notebooks (1912)”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“survival skills: The term can mean more than one thing depending on the context in which it is used. Survival skills may refer to daily self-help skills necessary to survive in life, such as feeding, dressing, and communicating. In higher education, survival skills often refer to the study skills necessary to be a successful learner.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“…dreadfully long and padded and it often degenerates into drivel…as a philosophical novel, it is a sham. Stripped of its excesses, however, it does not have enough substance to have made a good Raymond Carver short story.”
Saturday Review
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities, readings/research
“John Humphrey Noyes: (1811-1886) U.S. social reformer. Born in Brattleboro, Vermont, he studied for the ministry at Yale and declared his belief in ‘perfectionism,’ announcing that he had achieved a state of sinlessness. In 1836 He organized a community of ‘Bible communists’ in Putney, Vermont, where he advocated free love and ‘complex’ marriage as opposed to ‘simple’ or monogamous marriage. Arrested for adultery in 1846, he fled to Oneida, New York, where he established the Oneida Community, which he led until 1879, when he fled to Canada to avoid legal action. He wrote several books on perfectionism and a history of U.S. utopian communities.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“How long was Poor Richard’s Almanack published? Benjamin Franklin published it in Philadelphia from 1733 to 1758. After 1748, the almanac was called Poor Richard Improved. Franklin sold it in 1758, but it continued to be published until 1796.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
“teaching to the test: The practice of devoting extra time and attention in the classroom to the skills and knowledge that will be assessed on the state or district test. Critics claim that it reduced education to a limited range of skills, ignores the importance of comprehension, and neglects subjects that are not tested, such as history, civics, geography, and the arts.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
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