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.

George Bernard Shaw on Youth

Posted on June 6, 2017 | Leave a comment

“Youth is a wonderful thing. What a shame to waste it on children.”

George Bernard Shaw

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

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Rotten Reviews: The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan by James T. Farrell

Posted on June 6, 2017 | Leave a comment

“Unfortunately, the author’s interest in attempting to shock his readers appears to be greater than his interest in an accurate characterization of the young men around whom this story is developed.”

American Journal of Sociology

“A case history, true for this boy Studs Lonigan, but not completely valid as the recreation of a social stratum which it also would seem to aim at being.”

New York Times Book Review

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

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Education as the Foundation of Democracy

Posted on June 5, 2017 | Leave a comment

“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

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Euripides on Differentiated Instruction

Posted on June 5, 2017 | Leave a comment

“The same man cannot be skilled in everything, each has his own special excellence.”

Euripides (480-406 B.C.)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

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Neil Postman on Print Culture and the Development of Intellect

Posted on June 5, 2017 | Leave a comment

“…In his books The Disappearance of Childhood (1982) and Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), Postman makes the case that as society moves away from print culture–wherein knowledge is amassed in stages, sequentially, forcing greater levels of rigor, maturity, and comprehension upon the reader–and toward mass media, we begin to lose the mechanism for civic life. Indeed,Postman contends that greater literacy is inextricably linked with the core defining traits of adult cognition and discourse: ‘A child evolves toward adulthood by acquiring the sort of intellect we expect of a good reader: a vigorous sense of individuality, the capacity to think logically and sequentially, the capacity to distance oneself from symbols, the capacity to manipulate high orders of abstraction, the capacity to defer gratification,'”

Excerpted from: Natasha Vargas-Cooper. “Childhood’s End: Which Disney Princess Is Neil Postman?” The Baffler No. 35 (Summer 2017)

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Rotten Reviews: Tom Jones

Posted on June 2, 2017 | Leave a comment

“A book seemingly intended to sap the foundation of that morality which it is the duty of parents and all public instructors to inculcate in the minds of young people.”

Sir John Hawkins, Life of Samuel Johnson 1787

“I scarcely know a more corrupt work.”

Samuel Johnson, quoted in Memoirs, Hannah More 1780

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

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David Broder on the Problem with Presidential Candidates

Posted on June 2, 2017 | Leave a comment

“Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he’ll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office.”

David Broder

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

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Rotten Reviews, William Faulkner III: Absalom, Absalom!

Posted on June 2, 2017 | Leave a comment

“From the first pages of this novel to the last we are conscious that the author is straining for strangeness. He will say nothing simply. His paragraphs are so long and so involved that it is hard to remember who is talking or the subject which began the paragraph… We doubt the story just as we doubt the conclusion… We do not doubt the existence of decadence, but we do doubt that it is the most important or the most interesting feature in American life, or even Mississippi life.”

Boston Evening Transcript

“The final blowup of what was once a remarkable, if minor, talent.”

Clifton Fadiman

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

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Rotten Reviews, William Faulkner II: Light in August

Posted on June 2, 2017 | Leave a comment

“Despite Mr. Faulkner’s great gifts and deep sensitivity, what he is actually offering us is a flight from reality. It’s horrors and obscenities in no way contradict this, for many persons, tired of ordinary life, have been known to seek amusement courting nightmares.”

The Bookman

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

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Rotten Reviews, William Faulkner I: As I Lay Dying

Posted on June 2, 2017 | Leave a comment

“…the critic can hardly be blamed if some categorical imperative which persists in the human condition (even at this late date) compels him to put his book in a high place in an inferior category.”

New York Times Book Review

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

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