Category Archives: Social Sciences

You’ll find domain-specific material designed to meet Common Core Standards in social studies, along with adapted and differentiated materials that deal with a broad array of conceptual knowledge in the social sciences. See the Taxonomies page for more about this category.

Will Rogers on the Advance of Civilization

Posted on July 2, 2021 | Leave a comment

“You can’t say civilization isn’t advancing; in every war they kill you in a new way.”

Will Rogers

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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Cultural Literacy: The Burr-Hamilton Duel

Posted on July 2, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton in 1804. It is a key event in the early history of the United States; this half-page worksheet, with three questions, serves only as the briefest introduction to the event itself.

If you know only a little bit about this event, as I do, you know enough to understand that there is a professionally, politically and socially fraught backstory to it. Burr and Hamilton had been antagonizing each other for years, and the duel was in many respects the logical culmination of this conflict. I would think this affair would provide just the right kind of interesting challenge to an engaged and enterprising high school student preparing a research paper to satisfy requirements in the advanced grades.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Bait and Switch

Posted on July 1, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Bait and Switch (adjective): Describing or pertaining to advertising that offers a product insincerely, with the true intention being to sell another, more expensive or profitable product.

‘Ads that deceive or claims that can’t be backed are no-nos, and techniques such as “bait and switch” in which goods are offered to lure customers to buy higher-priced substitutes are also verboten.’ Bernice Kanner, New York Daily News”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Boethius

Posted on July 1, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a reading on Boethius along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

Like a good deal of the biographical material on philosophers, and expositions of philosophical concepts, from the Intellectual Devotional series, I wrote this for one student. Boethius was born in 477, the year after the Fall of Rome. He is best known for his book The Consolation of Philosophy. Did you know that the popular game show Wheel of Fortune is named for one of Boethius’s conception of fate? I didn’t either.

In any case, this reading is a cogent one-page biography of Boethius which doesn’t dumb down his ideas. Like almost everything you’ll find on Mark’s Text Terminal, these are Word documents, so easily manipulated and adapted for a variety of needs.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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The Devil’s Dictionary: Bear

Posted on June 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Bear, n. In the stock market, a broker who, having sold short, uses his customers’ stocks to break the price.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000. 

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Cultural Literacy: Bond

Posted on June 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on bonds, the financial instrument, not the force that holds atoms and molecules together, nor the ineffable thing that grows between friends, lovers, and humans and their pets.

I worked for ten years in a economics-and-finance-themed high school in Manhattan’s financial district. The word bond, which is extravagantly polysemous, really confounded the students I served there. Over the years, I developed a range of materials to teach this word in all its meanings in all the parts of speech. So, be on the lookout for those documents on this blog.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Prehistoric Art

Posted on June 29, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Prehistoric Art: The art of painting on the walls of caves lasted from the beginning of the Old Stone Age to the end of the New Stone Age, around 3000 B.C. The Paleolithic cave paintings at Altamira (Spain) and those at Lascaux (France) have been dated between 40,000 and 10,000 B.C.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Native Americans

Posted on June 29, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a reading on Native Americans and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

This reading is only four paragraphs. It uses the story of the Nez Perce Tribe, and especially Chief Joseph’s legendary speech–“Hear me, my chiefs!” I am tired. My heart is sick. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever”–to tell the story of the destruction of the indigenous civilizations that inhabited North America prior to the arrival of the first European immigrants from England.

Given the disturbing, but unsurprising, discovery of mass graves at Canadian Indian Residential Schools, now is a very good time to take a look at what (if you happen to be of European descent, as I am) our forefathers wrought. It is not a pretty picture. But neither is ignoring these crimes. In any case, I think we are just seeing the first of the remains of this genocide.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Walter Lippmann on the Creation of Perception

Posted on June 29, 2021 | Leave a comment

“The subtlest and most pervasive of all influences are those which create and maintain the repertory of stereotypes. We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them.”

Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion ch. 6 (1922)

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

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Cultural Literacy: Bull Market

Posted on June 29, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of a bull market. This is a half-page worksheet with three questions. The reading is one compound sentence on one line which nonetheless manages to contrast bear markets with bull markets. In other words, a succinct general introduction to the topic.

Enough, in other words, for students to understand the symbolism of the cast bronze sculpture Charging Bull on lower Broadway, right by Bowling Green Park, in Manhattan.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, New York City, Social Sciences, Worksheets

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