Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the humanist as, well, a human concept. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two long, compound sentences–yes, you will probably want to shorten them for striving readers–and three comprehension questions.
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.
“Acropolis: (Gr, ‘high city’) The citadel of a Greek city, generally situated on a hill. The Acropolis at Athens, a rocky plateau about two hundred feet high, was the site of the ancient town. It was surrounded by walls, which were destroyed by the Persians in 480 BC, and later rebuilt by Themistocles. The Acropolis was the center of religious activity; many temples and statues of Athene were located there. The Erechtheum, the Parthenon, and the Propylaea are among the best known of its monuments. The acropolis at Thebes was the Cadmeia; that of Corinth, the Acrocorinth.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“sensory impairment: Any impairment of the sensory system; the most prominent and predominant forms of sensory impairment are hearing and visual problems. All standard and legal definitions of learning disability rule out sensory impairment as a contributing cause because those sensory impairments are classified separately in their own handicap categories. However, it is possible for a child with sensory impairment also to also have a learning disability. It is also difficult to tell the difference between the effects of a sensory impairment on learning and those effects that may be associated with a learning disability. It is likely that children with significant sensory problems who also have learning disabilities may generally be underdiagnosed and largely overlooked.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on individualism. This is half-page worksheet with a three-sentence reading (the last one is longish, which may need to be shortened) and three comprehension questions.
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.
“L(ev) S(emyonovich) Vygotsky: (1896-1934) Soviet psychologist. He studied linguistics and philosophy at the University of Moscow before becoming involved in psychological research. While working at Moscow’s Institute of Psychology 1924-34, he became a major figure in post-revolutionary Soviet psychology. He studied the role of social and cultural factors in the making of human consciousness; his theory of signs and their relationship to the development of speech influences such psychologists as A.R. Luria and Jean Piaget. His best-known work, Thought and Language (1934) was briefly suppressed as a threat to Stalinism. He died of tuberculosis at 38.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
The other morning, one of my favorite shows on National Public Radio, On the Media ran a repeat show on Christian Nationalism, the latest scary manifestation of religious lunacy in the United States. The guest, Matthew Taylor, explained well this latest manifestation of what is basically a form of aggressive Protestant cultural militancy with something of a long history in this country.
So, now seems like a good time to post this reading on the Second Great Awakening along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. And if you are so inspired, you might familiarize yourself with the term “Burned-over district.”
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.
“Barons: Robber, Press, Etc.: Individuals operating in spite of—or perhaps thanks to—a severe inferiority complex transformed into megalomania.
As Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller demonstrated, the robber variety can find some inner peace through the semi-physical therapy of having people make and do things. A select few may even come to resemble the sort of medieval barons who bullied King John into signing the Magna Carta. The press sector offers less scope for improvement. Devoid of practical therapeutic tools, it leaves the mentally unstable to pontificate publicly while using their power to bully others into silence. So long as the widespread ownership of newspapers prevents them from limiting the public’s general freedom of speech, these unhappy individuals provide others with the welcome distraction of colorful comic relief.”
Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.
“fascism: [E20th] The term fascism was first used of the right-wing nationalist regime of Mussolini in Italy (1922-1943), the Partito Nazionale Fascista (National Fascist Party), and later applied to the regimes of Franco in Spain and the Nazis in Germany. It comes for the Latin fascis “bundle.” In ancient Rome the fasces were the bundle of rods, with an axe through them, carried in front of the magistrate as a symbol of his power to punish people.”
Excerpted from: Creswell, Julia. Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
OK, for the final documents post of Women’s History Month 2025, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Carry Nation, the once-famous temperance crusader. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences and two comprehension questions.
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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Elizabeth Cady Stanton. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences, the first a bit long, and three comprehension questions.
Incidentally, the reading on this document terminates with the imperative to “See Seneca Falls Convention” in parentheses. You’ll find a Cultural Literacy worksheet on that event here.
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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