“Art Brut: A term coined by French artist Jean Dubuffet to characterize spontaneous and rough artistic expression of children, prisoners, and the insane. Dubuffet’s collection of art brut inspired him to reclaim untrained and marginal artistic elements in his own work. See naïve art and ‘outsider’ art.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“Belles-Lettres (noun): Fine or imaginative , usually sophisticated, writing that, however limited in general appeal, is an aesthetic end in itself, including poetry, drama, light essays, and literary criticism. Adj. belletristic; n. belletrism, belleslettrism, belles-lettrism, belletrist, belle-lettrists.
‘The fear, as in literary criticism, is that one will lapse, or will be accused of lapsing, back into the old belles-lettristic mode, than which it is rightly felt that nothing could be more deadly—though other things can be as bad.’ Michael Tanner, in The State of Language.”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“theology: The systematic study of religious beliefs and systems of thinking about God (or gods), often from within a given tradition, such as Judaism or Catholicism. Theology is not far removed from philosophy and the sociology of religion when considerations of meaning and empirical manifestations of religion are primary.”
Excerpted from: Matthews, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged philosophy/religion, professional development, term of art
“Where in literature did Merlin the sorcerer first appear? In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain [Historia Regum Britanniae] (1137). This Latin prose work by the English chronicler also helped build the legend of Merlin’s protégé King Arthur.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged fiction/literature, readings/research
“Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged drama/theater, humor, literary oddities, music
“ability grouping: The practice of assigning students to classes on the basis of their past achievement or presumed ability to learn. In schools that use ability grouping, low-performing students will be in one class, hig-performing students in another, and average-performing students in yet another. This grouping by ability is called homogenous grouping, whereas the practice of mixing students of different abilities in the same class is called heterogenous grouping. Some schools group students by ability in certain subjects, like mathematics, but not in others, like social studies or English. Researchers disagree about whether ability grouping is beneficial. Advocates say that a certain amount of grouping is not only inevitable but also better for students, Many teachers find it daunting to teach classes with a wide range of ability because they must worry about boring students at the high end or ability while moving too rapidly for students at the other extreme. Critics of ability grouping contend that those placed in lower tracks encounter low expectations and are not sufficiently challenged. They also say that in most subject areas, students with lower or higher skills have much to learn from one another.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“Pillage, v. To carry on business candidly.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities
“abolitionists: Party opposed to slavery founded in the northern states of the USA in the late 18th century. In 1774 an Abolitionist Congress was held and in April 1776 legislation against slavery was attempted in the US Congress. Abolitionist sentiment, previously only loosely coordinated, was given a focal point in 1833 when William Lloyd Garrison founded the American Anti-Slavery Society. Originating in Boston, by 1840 the movement had some 200,000 members nationwide. However, in 1839 the national organization had split into a radical wing, led by Garrison, which denounced the US constitution as pro-slavery, and a more conservative wing. In 1840 a splinter group, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, founded the Liberal Party to represent directly the abolitionist cause in national politics. Greatest activity took place at state and local levels, ensuring that the anti-slavery cause remained an important element in US politics: it was promoted by the Freesoilers and the Republican Party. The victory of the north in the Civil War (1861-65) led to the emancipation of slaves and the American Anti-Slavery Society formally dissolved itself in 1870.
Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.
Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged black history, readings/research, united states history
“A society of free individuals in which all, through their own work, contribute to the liberation and enrichment of the lives of others, is the only environment in which any individual can really grow normally to his full stature.”
John Dewey (1859-1952)
Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.
“By giving each letter a number from its order in the alphabet you can deconstruct the name ‘Bach’ as follows: 2 for the B, 1 for the A, 3 for the C, 8 for the H—which makes 14. A pleasing mirror, or reversal, of this number can also be formed from ‘J.S. Bach’—which gives 41. This pseudo-science of substituting numbers for letters is known as gematria, (or abjad in Arabic) and has innumerable variations depending on whether or not you include vowels or which language you translate back to or transcribe into. It has often appealed to creative minds and may have been behind Bach’s playful manipulation of the number 14, achieved by itself (in the fourteen canons of the Goldberg Variations for instance) or in pairs of sevens that occur throughout his work.
Gematria is a very ancient tradition, particularly in the Near East, where it has often had official sanction, with poetic inscriptions commissioned by rulers to reveal the date of the publication of a book or the construction of a building. There are examples dating back to Sargon II of Assyria (in the eighth century BC). In the first century AD gematria became a recognized tool of Jewish hermeneutical scholarship and it was tradition respected by many of the Ottoman Sultans. It seems only to have taken root in the imagination of Western Europe, however, in the seventeenth century.”
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.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged music, numeracy, philosophy/religion
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