Category Archives: Social Sciences

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on ghettos. This is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and two comprehension questions.

Generally, I try to guide students toward the definition of ghetto that characterizes the concept the word represents as “a quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure.” If you need to teach about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April of 1943, this worksheet could serve as a good instruction: the first sentence reports that ghettos were, “Originally, areas of medieval cities in which Jews were compelled to live.” However, the second sentence continues, “Today, the term usually refers to sections of American cities inhabited by the poor.” Happily, then, this document does not racialize the noun ghetto–making it, I would argue, useful for opening a discussion about the racialization of certain words in English–if you’re so inclined to do so.

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.