Tag Archives: philosophy/religion

Emerson on the Importance of a Free Press

“Democracy becomes a government of bullies, tempered by editors.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

Joseph Addison on Education as Sculptor

“What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.”

Joseph Addison (1672-1719), as quoted in The Spectator (1711)

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

Strategies for Creating Cognitive Apprenticeships

During the month of July, I generally try to work on planning and professional development, so I’ve had my nose in both for the past three weeks. The summer’s reading is The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences, which, 205 pages in, I have not found as useful to my own practice as I did The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy. Still, there are plenty of important ideas articulated in the book (Cambridge University Press has thoughtfully posted as a giveaway this PDF of the introduction to the book, by its editor, R. Keith Sawyer; if you search The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy, you’ll find a couple of different PDFs from its pages for free download as well.)

One of the first articles in this volume is by Allan M. Collins, who, as you can see from his Wikipedia page, is an important figure in the learning sciences. I like his ideas about cognitive apprenticeship. Here is an outline describing cognitive apprenticeship strategies that I took from his article and typed into a Word document.

I hope you find it useful.

George Santayana on Advertising

“Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.”

George Santayana

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

Wise Words from Africa on Willful Ignorance

“Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse.”

African Proverb

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

Edward C. Banfield on Intellectual Independence

“A good professor is a bastard perverse enough to think what he thinks is important, not what the government thinks is important.”

Edward C. Banfield, as Quoted in Life (1967)

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

William James on Cognition

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”

William James

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

Cicero’s Advice for Modern Legislators

“What better or greater gift can we offer the republic than to teach and instruct our youth?”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

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

Chronology (n)

I use this context clues worksheet on the noun chronology in the first week of school in any social studies class I teach. For reasons I don’t fully understand, we have too many students in my high school who don’t know this fundamental word.

It’s an important word and concept to know and use when discussing just about anything that occurs across a span of time.

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.

Bertrand Russell on Patriotism

“Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.”

Bertrand Russell

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.