Tag Archives: readings/research

The Doubter’s Companion: A La Recherche du Temps Perdu

Posted on April 18, 2022 | Leave a comment

“A La Recherche du Temps Perdu: A work of genius written in bed. It opens with the narrator tucked between his sheets. It is rarely read for any length of time on a mattress.

It is also rarely read, but is often talked about and has had a major impact on many people who haven’t read it, if only because of the strain of waiting for Marcel Proust to be mentioned in conversation, which can happen as many as three times in a year. The educated person may the be required to make a comment on what they have only read about.

That literature could mean, as the French novelist Julian Gracq once complained, books more talked about than read indicates the extent to which language today may be used more to obscure and control than to communicate.”

Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.

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Time

Posted on April 18, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a reading on time as a philosophical concept, along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. The reading invokes Kant, Leibniz, and Newton; as I recall, I wrote this about ten years ago for a student interested in philosophy. I don’t know that I or anyone else as looked at it since. Here it is for your use. Remember that like everything else on Mark’s Text Terminal, these are Microsoft Word documents, so you can tailor them to your students’ needs.

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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Grammar

Posted on April 15, 2022 | Leave a comment

Grammar: Rules of a language governing its phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics; also, a written summary of such rules. The first Europeans to write grammar texts were the Greeks, notably the Alexandrians of the 1st century BC. The Romans applied the Greek grammatical system to Latin, The works of the Latin Grammarians Donatus (4th century BC) and Priscian (6th century) were widely used to teach grammar in Medieval Europe. By 1700, grammars of 61 vernacular languages had been printed. These were mainly used for teaching and were intended to reform or standardize language. In the 19th-20th centuries linguists began studying languages to trace their evolution father than to prescribe correct usage. Descriptive linguists (see Ferdinand de Saussure) studied spoken language by collecting and analyzing sample sentences. Transformational grammarians (see Noam Chomsky) examined the underlying structure of language (see generative grammar). The older approach to grammar as a body of rules needed to speak and write correctly is still the basis of primary and secondary teaching.

Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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Term of Art: Small School Movement

Posted on April 14, 2022 | Leave a comment

“small schools movement: A movement initiated in the 1970s, mainly in New York City, to establish small schools. Some of these schools were alternative schools for adolescents in need of intensive remediation, whereas others set out to demonstrate that students would get a better education in schools containing fewer than 500 students. Interest in the small schools movement was propelled by pioneers Deborah Meier and her Central Park East schools in East Harlem in New York City and Theodore Sizer and his Coalition of Essential Schools. The movement continued to grow during the 1980s and 1990s and gained momentum with the commitment of $1 billion by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in the late 1990s. With funding from the Gates Foundation, many cities across the United States agreed to divide their high schools into small schools. Advocates claim that small schools offer a warmer, more personalized climate than do large schools and consequently boast higher achievement, attendance, and graduation rates. Critics contend that the small schools are unable to mount a strong curriculum with advanced courses and that the administrative costs of small schools are excessive, the burden on teachers is greater, and the academic results are uncertain.”

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

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Cultural Literacy: Organization Man

Posted on April 14, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of the organization man. This is a half-page worksheet with a one-sentence reading and two comprehension questions. This is a term coined, as a title of a 1956 book, The Organization Man by sociologist William H. Whyte. I don’t know what place, if any, this document might find in the secondary classroom. But if you are concerned about the increasing bureaucratization of everyday life (and if you’re a teacher and not concerned about this, I would like to suggest that you pay greater attention to what is happening in your school and school district–e.g. look for job titles like “assistant vice superintendent”).

I’m just about to finish the late David Graeber’s book on rapidly expanding bureaucracies, Bu****it Jobs, so I suppose this is on my mind–hence this post, even though this document has lain around at the Text Terminal warehouse for several years.

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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Dada

Posted on April 14, 2022 | Leave a comment

“Dada: An international movement in fine arts, drama, and literature that took shape in Zurich in 1916, with other major centers in New York (1915-1920), Germany (1918-1923), and Paris (1919-1922). Symbolizing their antirational stance, founding artists ‘chose’ the word ‘Dada’ (Fr., hobby horse) by sticking a penknife into a dictionary at random. The movement reflected the cynicism engendered by World War I in improvised, sarcastic expressions of intuition and irrationality. Dada artists—among them Marcel Duchamp, Jean Arp, Francis Picabia, Kurt Schwitters, and Max Ernst—appropriated papiers colles for their witty collages and ready-mades for their sculpture. A forerunner of Surrealism. See Anti-Art.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Book of Answers: Leo Tolstoy

Posted on April 8, 2022 | Leave a comment

“In what war did Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) serve? He served in the Crimean War (1853-1856), though he is best known for his treatment of the Napoleonic Wars in War and Peace (1863-69).”

Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

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The Weekly Text, 8 April 2022: A Lesson Plan on the Denominations of U.S. Paper Currency from The Order of Things

Posted on April 8, 2022 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the denominations of paper currency in the United States from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s excellent reference book, The Order of Things. For students, here is the combined reading and comprehension worksheet to use for this lesson.

Nota bene please that I conceived of and prepared this material for students who find it a challenge to navigate and manipulate two symbolic systems–that is, numbers and letters–at the same time. This is a comfortable way to ease into more complicated work like word problems in math–or at least I like to think it is.

But what do you think?

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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Argot (n)

Posted on April 8, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun argot. It means “an often more or less secret vocabulary and idiom peculiar to a particular group.” I assume this was a Word of the Day at Merriam-Webster at some point, because this is not exactly a high-frequency word in the English language. In fact, I think there is a case to be made that argot is a linguistic term of art rather than a noun in everyday use.

So, unless you are teaching a unit on, or mounting a production of, Guys and Dolls (or if you need to explain the patter in a Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, or Chester Himes novel, or explain the use of an adjective like “two-bit”) I expect this document will have little utility in the primary or secondary classroom. But what the hell, I wrote it, I have basically unlimited storage capacity on this blog, and maybe someone can use it.

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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Term of Art: Perseveration

Posted on April 7, 2022 | Leave a comment

“perseveration: Persistent repetition of a behavior or activity regardless of the result, or having trouble switching from one activity to another. Extreme examples of perseveration may be seen in individuals with a developmental disability or autism., for whom repetitive hand motions, rocking, or other movements are common characteristics. More typical examples in childhood might involve singing a song from a video again and again.

In a school setting, perseveration can be used to describe the fixation on a specific element in a broader task, such as spending all of the time of an exam on a single essay question. Psychologists often encounter perseveration in students they evaluate for learning disabilities. For example, if a student is told to copy six small circles in a straight row, the student may make all the circles all the way across the width of the page, drawing 30 or more. Teachers and parents often report perseverative behaviors among students with learning disabilities and ADHD. For example, if they ask the student to hop four times on the left foot, the student may hop 20 or more times or until he or she lose balance.

This type of behavior may be caused by inflexible strategies and problems in shifting from one task to another.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

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