“I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Letter from Birmingham Jail,” 16 April 1963
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
“It bears mentioning that cultural differences have nothing to do with intelligence and aptitude. It is hoped that the cognitively savvy educator will appreciate the unique perspectives—literally—that students from various backgrounds may have and exploit those differences to optimize and expand the learning opportunities for all students in a classroom.”
Excerpted from: Rekart, Jerome L. The Cognitive Classroom: Using Brain and Cognitive Science to Optimize Student Success. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2013.
Over the years I have been intermittently interested in the Trivium as a way of helping students to think in a linear manner. Anyone dealing with this medieval division and taxonomy of knowledge will quickly come into contact with Scholasticism, and, working backward chronologically, Aristotle. I still haven’t decided if a teacher could or should return to medieval categories of knowledge, but I do think there is a case to be made for teaching rhetoric in high school English Language Arts class.
Because I have some old-fashioned ideas about the equality of opportunity in society, I have made working in struggling, inner-city schools my office for my entire career. Last November, I made the move from one of these schools in New York City to one in Springfield, Massachusetts. One of the first documents to cross my purview in the service of a student was a writing assignment for a work of fiction in an English Language Arts class. My talented colleague, and I thank her for this, asked her students to use one of three rhetorical strategies in this assignment. It was a treat to see.
Anyway, along the way in trying to develop instructional materials related to rhetoric, I transcribed the gravamen of Aristotle’s analysis of rhetoric (from this edition of his treatise) for use in planning a unit on the it. If you can use it, there is a several-page Word document under that hyperlink
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.
“(1919-1987) Jewish-Italian memoirist, novelist, short-story writer, and poet. Levi was active in the resistance during World War II and was captured and sent to Auschwitz. After the war, he worked for many years as an industrial chemist. His best-known works are Se questo e un uomo (1947; tr If This Is a Man, 1959; U.S. Survival in Auschwitz, 1961) and La tregua (1958; tr The Truce; U.S. The Reawakening, 1963), the first and second volumes of his autobiographical trilogy. Both are Holocaust memoirs distinguished by a combination of compassion and detachment and an extraordinary absence of personal bitterness. A chemist by profession, Levi gained international attention with is final volume of autobiography, Il sistema periodico (1975; tr The Periodic Table, 1984), a brilliant tour de force consisting of twenty-one imaginative pieces, each named after a chemical element robing personal, social and political experiences. After the appearance of The Periodic Table Levi attracted much more attention among English-language readers; several translations of his books have appeared, including Se non ora, quando? (1982; tr If Not Now, When?, 1985), a novel, and The Monkey’s Wrench (1986).”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Here is an independent practice worksheet on Christianity that I wrote at some point for a freshman global studies class in New York City.
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.
“Oracle (noun): A shrine where deities were consulted for prophecies or revelations; a priest or other interpreter of supernal pronouncements or prophecies; any person thought to be a source or medium or divine communication, or one revered for his profound knowledge, foresightful wisdom, or authoritative counsel; a divinely inspired utterance, especially an enigmatic or ambiguously allegorical statement; a wise or purportedly wise opinion. Adjective: oracular, oraculous; adverb: oracularly; noun: oracularity, oracularness.
‘Presumably he prefers the anonymous ‘it’; and likes to see an expression like ‘I think that…’ replaced by ‘it is hypothesized…’ which, (apart from expurgating the dirty word “to think”) ministers to the bureaucratic underlings predilection for submissive autonomy combined with oracular authority.'”
Stanislav Andreski, Social Sciences as Sorcery
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“Preference, n. A sentiment, or frame of mind, induced by the erroneous belief that one thing is better than another.
An ancient philosopher, expounding his conviction that life is no better than death, was asked by a disciple why, then, he did not die. ‘Because,’ he replied, ‘death is no better than life.’ It is longer.”
Ambrose Bierce
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged humor, literary oddities, philosophy/religion
“What was the name of Socrates’ wife? Famed for her shrewishness, the wife of the fifth-century B.C. Athenian philosopher was named Xantippe.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged literary oddities, philosophy/religion
“If we were not all so excessively interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
This seems like as good (or the best) a time as any to post this short reading on the problem of evil and vocabulary building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it. This has tended to be high-interest material for the students I’ve served in my career, particularly high school juniors and seniors.
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.
 | A Measurement Conver… on An Elegantly Simple Cooking Co… |
| A Measurement Conver… on The Weekly Text, October 25, 2… |
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