Category Archives: Reference

These are materials for teachers and parents, and you’ll find, in this category, teachers copies and answer keys for worksheets, quotes related to domain-specific knowledge in English Language Arts and social studies, and quotes on issues of professional concern. See the Taxonomies page for more about this category.

Phyllis McGinley

Posted on March 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

“Phyllis McGinley: ((1905-1978) American writer of light verse. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker and other magazines, McGinley was known for her clever and humorous poems about various aspects of modern life. Among her best-known collections are A Pocketful of Wry (1940), Love Letters (1954), Times Three: Selected Verse from Three Decades (1960: Pulitzer Prize), and Christmas Con and Pro (1971). She also wrote essays and numerous books for children.”

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

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Ivy Compton-Burnett

Posted on March 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

“Ivy Compton-Burnett (later Dame Ivy): (1887-1967) British novelist. She graduated from the University of London and published her first novel, Dolores, in 1911. Her second, Pastors and Masters (1925), introduced the style—employing clipped, precise dialogue to reveal her characters and advance the plot—that made her name. Her novels often dealt with struggles for power: Men and Wives (1931) featured a tyrannical mother. A House and Its Head (1935) a tyrannical father. She was created Dame of the British Empire in 1967.”

­­­­­­­­­Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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Equal Rights Amendment

Posted on March 17, 2023 | Leave a comment

“Equal Rights Amendment: Proposed but unratified amendment to the U.S. Constitution designed mainly to invalidate many state and federal laws the discriminated against women. Its central tenet was that sex should not be a determining factor in establishing the legal rights of individuals. It was first introduced in Congress in 1923, shortly after women obtained the right to vote. It was finally approved by the U.S. Senate 49 years later (1972) but was subsequently ratified by only 30 of 50 state legislatures. Critics claimed it would cause women to lose privileges and protections, such as exemption from compulsory military service and economic support by their husbands. Supporters, led by the National Organization of Women, argued that discriminatory state and federal laws left many women in a state of economic dependency.”

­­­­­­­­­Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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Judy Chicago

Posted on March 17, 2023 | Leave a comment

“Judy Chicago originally Judy Cohen: (b.1939) U.S. multimedia artist. She studied at CULA, and in 1970 she adopted the name of her hometown. Motivated by perceived discrimination in the art world and alienation from Western art traditions, she developed the concepts of ‘vaginal iconography’ and ‘central core’ imagery. Her most memorable work, The Dinner Party (1974-79), is a triangular table with place settings for 39 important women represented by ceramic plates with feminine imagery and table runners embellished with embroidery styles typical of their eras. In 1973 she cofounded the Feminist Studio Workshop and Woman’s Building in Los Angeles.”

­­­­­­­­­Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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Wellesley College

Posted on March 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

“Wellesley College: Private women’s college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, chartered in 1870. Long one of the the most eminent women’s colleges in the U.S., it was the first to provide scientific laboratories. It grants bachelor’s degrees in humanities, including Chines Japanese, and Russian languages; in social science, including African studies, religion, and economics; and in science and mathematics, including computer science. Among its facilities are an advanced science center and an observatory. Enrollment is about 2,3000.”

­­­­­­Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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Mabel Luhan Dodge

Posted on March 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

“Mabel Luhan Dodge: (1879-1962) American patroness of the arts and memoirist, Famous for her salons in Italy and New York in the early 20th century, Luhan cultivated close associations with D.H. Lawrence, John Reed, Gertrude Stein, and Carl Van Vechten. She had three husbands before she married a Pueblo Indian and settled in Taos, New Mexico, where she was a vital force behind the art colony there. She also wrote Lorenzo in Taos (1932) about her relationship with Lawrence, and a four-volume autobiography, Intimate Memories (1933-1937).”

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

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Bessie Head

Posted on March 3, 2023 | Leave a comment

“Bessie Head (originally Bessie Amelia Emery): (1937-1986) South African-Botswanan writer. Born in South Africa of an illegal union between a white mother and a black father, she suffered rejection and alienation from an early age. She described the contradictions and shortcomings of pre-and postcolonial African society in morally didactic novels and stories, including When Rain Clouds Gather (1969), Maru (1971), A Question of Power (1973), The Collector of Treasures (1977), Serowe, Village of the Rainwind (1981), A Bewitched Crossroad (1984) and The Cardinals.”

­­­­­­­­­Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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Louise Bennett

Posted on March 3, 2023 | Leave a comment

“Louise Bennett: (1919-2006) Jamaican poet and folklorist. Louise Bennett is a distinctive and challenging female presence in Jamaican literature. Writing in Jamaican creole, she was one of the first to challenge the cultural hegemony of the Caribbean elite, and has been a model for the experimentation in language and rhythms of contemporary Caribbean poetry. Her celebration of African-Jamaican culture and promotion of black cultural self-confidence is apparent in her major collections (Jamaica) Dialect Verses (1942), Jamaica Labrish (1966) and Selected Poems (1983). Aunty Roachy Seh (1993) is a more recently published work.”

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

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Bernard Coard on the Middle-Class Bias

Posted on February 22, 2023 | Leave a comment

“The Middle Class Bias: In most cases, the teacher and the educational psychologist are middle class, in a middle class institution (which is what a school is), viewing the child through middle-class tinted glasses, the child being working class in most cases. Both on the basis of class and culture, they believe their standards to be the right and superior ones. They may do this in the most casual and unconscious ways, which may make the effect on the child even more devastating. The child may, therefore, not only because of problems with language but also because of feeling that he is somehow inferior, and bound to fail, refuse to communicate or to try his best in the tests for assessment….”

Excerpted from: Coard, Bernard. How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Sub-Normal in the British School System: 50th Anniversary Expanded Fifth Edition. Kingston, Jamaica: McDermott Publishing, 2021.

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W.E.B. Du Bois on Poverty

Posted on February 15, 2023 | Leave a comment

“To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.”

W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk ch. 1 (1903)

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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