“self-efficacy: The belief that an individual can produce effects through personal effort. Like self-esteem, self-efficacy is important in setting and meeting goals for students of all ages.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“Reading—what sort of subject is this? There are ‘reading scores,’ and ‘my early reading,’ and ‘reading the future.’ There are neurology and pedagogy and linguistics and dyslexia and lipreading. And then there is plain reading for information and pleasure—neither very plain indeed….”
[If you’d like to read the rest of this important essay, you can find it here transcribed as a Microsoft Word Document.]
Excerpted from: Hardwick, Elizabeth. The Uncollected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick. New York: New York Review of Books, 2022.
“To be adult is to be alone.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
“Warsaw Uprising: (August-October 1944) Insurrection in Warsaw in World War II that failed to prevent the pro-Soviet Polish administration from gaining control of Poland. In July 1944, as Soviet troops approached Warsaw, the Polish underground was encouraged to stage an uprising against the Germans. Though wary of Soviet promises of self-government, the Polish home army of 50,000 troops attacked the weakened German force and gained control of most of Warsaw in four days. German reinforcements then bombarded the city with air and artillery attacks for 63 days, The approaching Red Army halted, and the Soviets refused to allow aid from the Allies to the beleaguered Poles, who were forced to surrender when their supplies ran out in October; the Germans then deported the rest of the city’s population and destroyed most of the city itself. By allowing the Polish home army to be eliminated, the Soviets diminished potential resistance to their establishing political domination for Poland in 1945.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“Biographical Films: Since attention to historical detail ruins filmed drama, the essential property of biographical cinema is that it improves in quality by not telling the truth.
These films, whether describing the lives of American presidents or criminals, French generals or Russian kings, are among the beneficiaries of the ‘big lie’ idea. As a result they have helped to create a modern mythology which erases the Western idea of intellectual inquiry and returns to the pre-intellectual tradition of mythological gods and heroes. This is the context in which the portraits of John Kennedy, James Hoffa, Napoleon and so on can most easily be understood.”
Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.
“Museum without Walls: Phrase describing the illustrations and reproductions that today make works of art widely available. Introduced by Andre Malraux in his book The Voices of Silence, 1954.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“student study team: A team of educators, convened at the request of classroom teacher, parent, or counselor, that designs in-class intervention techniques to discuss the needs of a particular student. The team may consist of the primary teacher; the parent or guardian of the student; two specialists (for example, in speech therapy, psychology, or counseling); a teacher who does not teach the student in any class; and the principal. Six weeks after implementing a program for the student, the team reconvenes to determine whether further steps, including a transfer to special education classes, are necessary.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“Jason * Orpheus (the lyre-playing musician) * Mopsus the seer * Heracles and his male love of the moment, the handsome young Hylas (who gets kidnapped by water nymphs) * Pollux the champion boxer who kills the king of the Bebyrycians * Shape-shifting Periclymenus * Fast-footed Euphemus * Winged Calais and Zetes (sons of the North Wind who repel the Harpies) * and 40 more
The Argo, which had a magical keel crafted out of a sacred oak from the oracle of Dodona, was crewed by fifty heroes of ancient Greece—the Argonauts. Jason was the leader of this warrior band (sometimes referred to as the ‘Minyans’) sent on what was presumed to be a suicidal quest by King Pelias, his usurping half-uncle. Their mission was to sail to Colchis (Georgia) and seize possession of the Golden Fleece of a divine ram what hung from a tree in a grove sacred to Ares, god of war, guarded by a sleepless dragon.
Every city in Greece liked to imagine that they contributed a hero to this mythical band, which means that the list has had to grow in number, though if you examine the text of Apollonius of Rhodes, written in third-century Alexandria, it is easy enough to identify all the named Argonauts. Even this cast, however, numbers fifty-five, though by juggling who comes on, as others go off, the good ship Argo, it is just about possible to keep to fifty.
If you add other famous names and such ubiquitous heroes such as Bellerophon, Nestor, Perseus, Atalanta, and Theseus, you can grow the crew to eighty, which has a hidden harmony with the text of Apollonius, who has embedded eighty aitia in his epic. These are short verse sequences which give the mythical origins or such curious things as the sacred water-carrying race held on the island of Aegina or how the island of Thira is linked with Libya. The final text comprise 6,000 lines, which can be recited in one day to reasonably alert ancient theater audience.”
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.
“authoritarianism: A style of government in which the rulers demand unquestioning obedience from the ruled. Traditionally, ‘authoritarians’ have argued for a high degree of determination by governments of belief and behavior and correspondingly smaller significance for individual choice. But it is possible to be authoritarian in some spheres while being more liberal in others. Frederick the Great is alleged to have said, ‘I have an agreement with my people: they can say what they like and I can do what I like.’
Authoritarianism has become simply a ‘boo’ word, referring to overweening and intolerant government irrespective of the justification, or lack of it, of such practices. Thus is often means exactly the same as despotism, an older word. A number of American political scientists in the Cold War period distinguished between ‘authoritarian‘ and ‘totalitarian‘ governments. The former (mainly military regimes) had two advantages over the latter: they did not last as long and though they would repress their political opponents as brutally as any known regimes, they left a larger sphere for private life. (Totalitarian regimes were, in this context, invariably communist.) Thus, where conditions were not yet ripe for democracy, there were relative advantages to authoritarianism.”
Excerpted from: McLean, Iain, and Alistair McMillan, editors. Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
“…a copyeditor’s despair, a propounder of endless riddles.”
Atlantic Monthly
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
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