Tag Archives: cognition/learning/understanding

Some Hopeful Thinking from Mark Edmundson

Posted on June 13, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Many humanities teachers feel that they are fighting for a lost cause. They believe that the proliferation of electronic media will eventually make them obsolete. They see the time their students spend with TV and movies and on the Internet and feel what they have to offer–words, mere words–must look shabby by comparison.

Not so. When human beings try to come to terms with who they are and describe who they hope to be, the most effective medium is words. Through words we represent ourselves to ourselves; we fix our awareness of who we are and what we are. Then we can step back and gain distance on what we’ve said. With perspective comes the possibility for change. People write about their lives in their journals; talk things over with friends; talk, at day’s end, to themselves about what has come to pass. And then they can brood on what they’ve said, privately or with another. From that brooding comes the possibility of new beginnings. In this process, words allow for precision and nuance that images and music generally don’t permit.”

Excerpted from: Edmundson, Mark. Why Read? New York: Bloomsbury, 2004.

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Chris Hedges on the State of the American Intellect

Posted on June 6, 2025 | Leave a comment

“We are a culture that has been denied, of has passively given up, the linguistic and intellectual tools to cope with complexity, to separate illusion from reality. We have traded the printed word for the gleaming image. Public rhetoric is designed to be comprehensible to a ten-year-old child or an adult with a sixth-grade reading level. Most of us speak at this level, are entertained and think at this level. We have transformed our culture into a vast replica of Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island, where boys are lured with the promise of no school and endless fun. They were all, however, turned into donkeys–a symbol, in Italian culture, of ignorance and stupidity.

Functional illiteracy in America is epidemic. There are 7 million illiterate Americans. Another 27 million are unable to read well enough to complete a job application, and 30 million can’t read a simple sentence. There are some 50 million people who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate or barely literate–a figure that is growing by more than 2 million a year. A third of high-school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives, and neither do 42 percent of college graduates. In 2007, 80 percent of the families in the United States did not buy or read a book. And it is not much better beyond our borders. Canada has an illiterate and semiliterate population estimated at 42 percent of the whole, a proportion that mirrors that of the United States.”

Excerpted from: Hedges, Chris. Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. New York: Nation Books, 2009.

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Achievement Motivation

Posted on April 25, 2025 | Leave a comment

“achievement motivation: The need to perform well, or achievement motivation, significantly determines a person’s effort and persistence in reaching some given standard of excellence, or in comparison with competitors, and the level of aspiration that is involved in that standard or competition. This motivation is seen by psychologist D.C. McClelland (1961;1971) as a major determinant of entrepreneurial activity and as a cause of rapid economic growth when widely dispersed in a society. Many managerial roles are also said to require individuals with a high need for achievement if they are to be performed well. McClelland believes that such needs are learned in childhood, when individuals are socialized into the culture of their societies, rather than being innate. Other needs that may be learned are the needs for power, affiliation and autonomy.”

Excerpted from: Abercrombie, Nicholas, Stephen Hill, and Bryan S. Turner. Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Penguin, 2006.

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Term of Art: Sensory Impairment

Posted on April 17, 2025 | Leave a comment

“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.

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Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky

Posted on April 17, 2025 | Leave a comment

“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.

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The Weekly Text, 11 April 2025: A Lesson Plan on Poker from The Order of Things

Posted on April 11, 2025 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is the last, for now, of 50 lessons that I adapted during the pandemic from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s comprehensive reference book The Order of Things.

So here is a lesson plan on poker, which, as I have reminded users of this blog when I posted each of these 50 lessons, is written for striving readers and/or students who struggle with interpreting and in general dealing with two symbolic systems–in this case numbers and letters–at the same time. This list as reading and comprehension questions serves as the worksheet for this lesson. It includes a relatively complicated list of denominations of poker chips and a hierarchy of winning hands from highest to lowest. As I write this, having never used this lesson, I find myself wondering if a few hands of poker would serve as a satisfying and edifying form of application for this exercise.

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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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Lesson Plans, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

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Term of Art: Stretch It Out

Posted on April 4, 2025 | Leave a comment

“stretch it out: A replacement for the customary expression ‘sound it out,’ referring to a technique for analyzing an unfamiliar word. When a student who has had little exposure to phonetic methods of analyzing letters and words confronts a new word, the literacy coach may tell the student to ‘stretch it out like a rubber band’ in hopes of finding the meaning of the word or perhaps similar associations.”

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

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Carter G. Woodson on the Deliberate Act of Limiting Horizons

Posted on February 21, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Negroes, then, learned from their oppressors to say to their children that there were certain spheres into which they should not go because they would have no chance therein for development. In a number of places young men were discouraged and frightened away from certain professions by the poor showing made by those trying to function in them. Few had the courage to face this ordeal; and some professional schools in institutions for Negroes were closed about thirty or forty years ago, partly on this account.

This was especially true of the law schools, closed during the wave of legislation against the Negro, at the very time of the largest possible number of Negroes needed to know the law for the protection of their civil and political rights. In other words, the thing which the patient needed most to pass the crisis was taken from him that he might more easily die. This one act among many others is an outstanding monument to the stupidity or malevolence of those in charge of the Negro schools, and it serves as a striking demonstration of the mis-education of the race.

Almost any observer remembers distinctly the hard trials of the Negro lawyers. A striking example of their difficulties was supplied by the case of the first to be permanently established in Huntington, West Virginia. The author had entrusted to him the matter of correcting an error in the transfer of some property purchased from one of the most popular white attorneys in the state. For six months this simple transaction was delayed, and the Negro lawyer could not induce the white attorney to act. The author finally went to the office himself to complain of the delay. The white attorney frankly declared that he had not taken up the matter because he did not care to treat with a Negro attorney; but he would deal with the author, who happened to be at that time the teacher of a Negro school, and was, therefore, in his place.”

Excerpted/Adapted from: Woodson, Carter G. The Mis-education of the Negro. Eastford, CT: Martino Fine Books, 2018.

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Cultural Literacy: Namibia

Posted on February 14, 2025 | Leave a comment

Alright, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Namibia. This is a two-page (!) worksheet whose reading, somehow, in four sentences, manages to give a relatively thorough introduction to this African nation, including its colonial and post-colonial struggles. As you can imagine, these four sentences are relatively long and complex. If I were to give it to most of the students I have served over time, I would edit the reading to ease its understanding.

There are ten (again, !) comprehension questions that could easily be reduced by half. Indeed, many of the questions are there to test comprehension of fine details, in this case the African nations that border Namibia. In terms of content, it’s far from vital–unless you want to see how students track details in a relatively complex reading.

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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Bernard Coard on Material Conditions, Social Consciousness, and Learning

Posted on February 14, 2025 | Leave a comment

“The Black child in Britain, facing a white examiner, remembers the white landlord who has pushed mum and dad around; he remembers the face of Powell on the television screen demanding the repatriation of Black people and their ‘piccaninny’ children; he has seen on the news and heard his parents talk about white skinheads and the white police who have beaten up black people in the streets at night. More than likely he has encountered a racist teacher in the past; he has certainly been called ‘Black bastard’ or ‘Wog’ by many of the white children on more occasions than he cares to remember. If he lives in Haringey, he would almost certainly have heard Alderman Doulton of the Haringey Education Committee stating that Black children had achieved significantly lower IQ scores than white children, the inference being that ‘something must be done about these Black children’. He might have put two and two together and realized that this is why he sees so many Black children, including some of his friends, going to ESN [Educationally Sub-Normal] schools. The thought will not have escaped him that the test he about to sit before the white examiner, who is an official of white society, will undoubtedly be used against him, as it has been used against so many of his friends.

Under these circumstances, and in this entire racial context, the Black child feels (and quite rightly) that he is fighting a losing battle. He becomes so consumed with fear, inner rage and hatred, that he is unable to think clearly when attempting the test. Under these circumstances, the very bright child does averagely, and the average child does poorly.”

Excerpted from: Coard, Bernard. How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Sub-Normal in the British School System: 50th Anniversary Expanded Fifth Edition. Kingston, Jamaica: McDermott Publishing, 2021.

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