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.

Postmodernism

They’re very likely something nobody at the elementary or secondary level needs, but here nonetheless are a reading on postmodernism and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. The one-page reading does a nice job of explaining what, for me, has always been a slippery concept. So if you’re teaching some or any of the authors discussed in this reading–among others you’ll find Thomas Pynchon, Italo Calvino, Toni Morrison, and Jean Rhys mentioned here–these documents probably aren’t of, uh, surpassing use to you.

On the other hand, as the reading points out, postmodernism is “notoriously difficult to define, whether in reference to literature, art, or anything else….” So there is the question of semantics to entertain here; a point of debate might be “Is there a stable definition of ‘postmodernism’ with concrete applied examples of the word?” Another might be an assertion in the reading, mostly accurate in my understanding of postmodernism, that the doctrine (such as it is) prescribes a view of the world that that “secure truths [do] not exist and that the world was therefore hopelessly fragmented.” That’s a grim assessment in many respects; but how, if at all, has it lent credibility to and generally abetted tyrants around the globe who began almost immediately, after a former president of the United States began flogging the term, began proclaiming most journalism (or journalism that doesn’t flatter the supreme leader) “fake news”? There, I think, is another point for debate.

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.

Term of Art: Task-Based Instruction

“task-based instruction: An instructional approach that relies on specific activities to teach students the skills and knowledge they need in the ‘real world.’ The curriculum designer or teacher identifies specific needs—such as taking part in a job interview, applying for a credit card, ordering from a menu, or finding one’s way in an unfamiliar city—and builds the daily activities of the classroom around these tasks. See also scientific management; Taylorism.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

Jacob Bronowski on Scholarly Work and Virtue

“By the worldly standards of public life, all scholars in their work are of course oddly virtuous.”

Jacob Bronowski in a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1953)

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

Cultural Literacy: Bacchus

OK, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Bacchus. He is, as my late, great friend Fritz Hewitt once said, “the god of rave-up.” If you prefer, the reading in this worksheet puts it, a bit more academically: Bacchus is the “Greek and Roman god of wine and revelry.” This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of five sentences–all short–and three comprehension questions. Even a reading this short, from The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, hits all the bases, including associating Bacchus with Dionysus, which is useful.

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.

Quintilian

“Quintilian Latin Marcus Fabius Quintilianus: (AD35?-after 96) Latin teacher and writer. Born in Spain, Quintilian was probably educated and trained in oratory in Rome. From about 68 to 88 he taught rhetoric, becoming Rome’s leading teacher and was an eminent advocate in the law courts. His Institutio oratoria is a practical survey of rhetoric in 12 books and a major contribution to educational theory and literary criticism, His dual emphasis on intellectual and moral training appealed to humanists of the 15th-16th centuries and through them influenced the modern view of education as all around character training to equip a student for life.”

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

Elizabeth Hardwick on Reading

I recently found myself in receipt of The Uncollected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick, published by The New York Review of Books for its fine series of “Classics.” I couldn’t help but notice, and feel a need to transcribe for future use, this essay on reading, titled, simply, “Reading.” There is a great deal in these 2,158 words to provoke thought–especially for teachers.

But what do you think?

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.

Realism (In Literature)

“realism: In literature, the theory or practice of fidelity to nature or to real life and to accurate representation without idealization. The 18th-century works of Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and Tobias Smollett are among the earliest examples of realism in English literature. It was consciously adopted as an aesthetic program in the mid-19th century in France, when interest arose in recording previously ignored aspects of contemporary life and society; Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857) established the movement in European literature. The realist emphasis on detachment and objectivity, along with lucid but restrained social criticism, became integral to the novel in the late 19th century. The word has also been used critically to denote excessive minuteness of detail or preoccupation with trivial, sordid, or squalid objects. See also naturalism.

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

Realism (In Visual Art)

“realism: In the visual arts, an aesthetic that promotes accurate, detailed, unembellished depiction of nature or of contemporary life. Realism rejects imaginative idealization in favor of close observation of outward appearances. It was a dominant current in French art between 1850 and 1880. In the early 1830s, the painters of the Barbizon school espoused realism in their faithful reproduction of the landscape near their village. Gustave Courbet was the first artist to proclaim and practice the realist aesthetic; his Burial at Ornans and The Stone Breakers (1849) shocked the public and critics with their frank depiction of peasants and laborers. In his satirical caricatures, Honore Daumier used an energetic linear style to criticize the immorality he saw in French society. Realism emerged in the U.S. in the work of Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins. In the 20th century, German artists associated with the Neue Sachlichkeit worked in a realist style to express their disillusionment after World War I. The Depression-era movement known as Social Realism adopted a similar harsh realism to depict the injustices of U.S. society. See also naturalism.

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

Cultural Literacy: Avatar

Here is a Cultural Literacy on the concept of the avatar. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three short sentences and three comprehension questions. Interestingly, the reading in this worksheet deals with the concept of the avatar in Hinduism, but not the avatar as a graphical representation of a computer user that is usually reflective of a person’s character or persona.

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.

Realism (In Philosophy)

“realism: In philosophy, any viewpoint that accords to the objects of human’s knowledge an existence that is independent of whether they are perceiving or thinking about them. Against nominalism, which denies that universals have any reality at all (except as words), and conceptualism, which grants universals reality only as concepts within the mind, realism asserts that universals exist independently of their being expressed in language and conceived by human minds. Against idealism and phenomenalism, it asserts that the existence of material objects and their qualities is independent of their being perceived. Similarly, moral realism asserts that moral qualities of actions (such as being morally good, bad, or indifferent, or being ethically right, wrong, or obligatory) belong to the actions themselves and are not to be explained as mere products of a mind that perceives and feels attracted to or repelled by the actions. In opposition to conventionalism, realism holds that scientific theories are objectively true (or false) based on their correspondence (or lack or it) to an independently existing reality.

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