Tag Archives: cultural literacy

Cultural Literacy: Charlotte and Emily Bronte

Posted on March 15, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Charlotte and Emily Bronte. Are the Brontes taught in high school?

If nothing else, this is an interesting artistic family: lesser-known sister Anne also a writer, perhaps because she originally published her novels under the name Acton Bell which may account for her public status among her more famous sister; she also died young, at 29, of tuberculosis. She was also the youngest of six children–in addition to the four siblings mentioned here, two elder sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, rounded out the family. Branwell Bronte, also a writer and an accomplished translator, was also a painter, for which he is primarily known. He too died young, the result of unhappiness and, apparently, drug addiction.

The patriarch of the family, Patrick Bronte (Branwell Bronte carried the full name Patrick Branwell Bronte, after his father and his mother’s–Maria Branwell–maiden name), was a clergyman of humble Irish origins.

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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Cultural Literacy: Lizzie Borden

Posted on March 11, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Lizzie Borden. If you are my age (or perhaps younger–do kids still recite this?), you might remember her from this piece of doggerel, recited on finer playgrounds during recess from the horrors of the elementary school classroom:

“Lizzie Borden took an axe
She gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one.
Lizzie Borden got away
For her crime she did not pay.”

I wrote this worksheet for this year’s Women’s History Month 2021 which is under way now. So I’ve never used it in the classroom. But it’s a safe bet that it will be a high-interest item–especially if paired with a deeper examination of the facts of Lizzie Borden’s case, and the fact that one may, if one chooses, lodge at the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast/Museum while traveling through Fall River, Massachusetts.

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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Cultural Literacy: Fannie Farmer

Posted on March 10, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Fannie Farmer. I knew so little about her that I confess I cannot honestly say (to my chagrin) that I understood that she was even a real person.

Rest assured she was: in fact, she possessed the kind of indomitable spirit that makes for interesting and inspiring reading. At age 16, she suffered a paralytic stroke, which prevented her from finishing high school in Medford, Massachusetts. At age 30, with a limp she would endure throughout her life, Ms. Farmer enrolled in the Boston Cooking School. When she submitted her famous cookbook, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, to Little Brown for publication, the publisher couldn’t imagine a market for the book and so limited the first edition to 3,000 copies; moreover, the book was published at Ms. Farmer’s expense. Unsurprisingly, there appear to be no true first editions of this book for sale in online used book sites–but quite a few reprints, to the annoyance of this bibliophile, identified as firsts.

I asked two friends of mine about Fannie Farmer, both of whom are talented and adventurous cooks. They responded immediately. The first noted that Ms. Farmer’s cookbook is “The first cookbook I ever bought and I still use it from time to time. Basic and reliable.” This friend also sent along a photograph of the copyright page of her copy, which shows, as of 1968, that the book had been through 18 printings (HA! Take that, Little Brown!). My other friend declared himself agnostic where Ms. Farmer is concerned: “My thoughts on Fannie Farmer? I don’t have any. She’s more an historical allusion but I’m late coming to the cooking game.” At least he knows she’s a real person, which, again, was more than I could say for myself before I prepared this post.

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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Cultural Literacy: Queen Elizabeth I

Posted on March 9, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Queen Elizabeth I. This is a full-page worksheet, so it is suitable in its present form for a variety of learning needs. It can also be revised–as always, this is a Microsoft Word document–for your and your students’ particular needs.

I can’t imagine what needs to be said about Elizabeth. This is a timely topic, given what’s I’ve heard about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, broadcast the other evening. The House of Windsor is racist? Imagine my surprise! Anyway, while the link may not age well, it is worth noting that #AbolishTheMonarchy is trending on Twitter this morning. I particularly liked the bootlicking meme.

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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Cultural Literacy: Amelia Earhart

Posted on March 8, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Amelia Earhart. She requires no commentary from me.

That said, the enduring mystery of her disappearance is just the kind of thing, in my experience, that motivates alienated students to work to get to the bottom of it. Stories, like this one from just over a year ago, continue to appear in the popular press. In fact, the question “Where, how, and why did Amelia Earhart disappear?” is the kind that starts synthetic research papers.

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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Cultural Literacy: Women’s Movement

Posted on March 4, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Women’s Movement. This is a full-page worksheet with seven questions, so it is appropriate for, among other things, an independent practice assignment. But, as it is a Microsoft Word document, it is adaptable for whatever use to which you may see fit to put it.

Nota bene, please, that this document supplies students with a relatively broad overview of the Women’s Movement, rightly tracking its roots in the United States back to the nineteenth century. The text quickly pulls into sharp focus on the key issues in the struggle for equality for women; it is, therefore, a good general introduction both theory and practice in the fight for women’s rights.

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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Cultural Literacy: Hillary Rodham Clinton

Posted on March 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Hillary Rodham Clinton. This is a full-page, in fact two-page, worksheet. In all there are ten questions. Like almost everything else on Mark’s Text Terminal, this is a Microsoft Word document that you may alter and adapt to the needs of your students.

Other than that, I haven’t much to say about Secretary Clinton. She remains basically au courant, so this material may well qualify as a current events exercise.

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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Cultural Literacy: Martha Graham

Posted on March 2, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Martha Graham. Ms. Graham, as you may know, is a distinguished figure in the world of modern dance with a plethora of accomplishments to her record.

Did you know that her pedagogy of dance, the Graham Technique, is still taught worldwide? Or that the Martha Graham Dance Company still performs, even in this pandemic time? If ever the term “cultural literacy” applied to a knowledge of a single person, it is Martha Graham.

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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Cultural Literacy: Mary McLeod Bethune

Posted on March 1, 2021 | Leave a comment

On the first day of Women’s History Month 2021, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Mary McLeod Bethune.

While I would like to think Ms. Bethune requires no introduction, it seems safe to doubt that is the case. This important American heroine was an early and unequivocal champion of gender and racial equality, as well as an educator. In 1904, she started the Daytona Literary and Industrial School for Negro Girls. By 1931, her school had grown to such an extent that it became Bethune-Cookman University, now one of the preeminent Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the United States.

In other words, Mary McLeod Bethune is a world-historical figure. All of this is another way of saying this: to those southern cities taking down statues of white men to fought for (Confederate generals and political leaders), argued for (Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney) or otherwise abetted the practice of slavery in the United States, a nice bronze casting of Mary McLeod Bethune would make an appropriate, indeed just, replacement for any of those vacant plinths. You know?

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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Cultural Literacy: Black Panthers

Posted on February 25, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Black Panthers. Because the authors of The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, from which, like all the books I use to inform instructional material, I copy verbatim, use the term “Black Panthers,” I have preserved their text.

However, I have always thought of the Panthers, and therefore referred to them as the Black Panther Party, which is how they refer to themselves, and which represents them as the agents of history I would argue they have been in my lifetime.

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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