“Shallow, violent, and scurrilous.”
William Edward Hartpole Lecky, A History of England in the 18th Century, 1882
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
By any standard I recognize, the 2016 presidential election season is hands down the most appalling in my lifetime–and I am not a young man. If it is true (as I believe it is), that the election of Barack Obama, the first President of the United States of African descent, exposed latent racism and bigotry in the United States, then this election has in every respect put the icing on that ugly cake. Moreover, it appears that the specter of a Trump administration has aroused anxiety in children and that in general there is “Trump Anxiety” among adults as well. I don’t much care for either candidate, but it is undeniable that the Republican candidate has engaged in dog-whistling bigotry, sexism and misogyny, general vulgarity, and a combination of grotesque vanity and whining self-pity that really ought to put off anyone with reasonably stable mental health.
So this week, less than two weeks before the general election, seems as good a time as any to post a reading on George Washington’s famous letter on toleration for today’s Weekly Text. Finally, here is a reading comprehension worksheet to accompany 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.
Last week I posted a complete lesson plan on mercantilism, which you’ll find three posts below this one. This week’s Text is a lesson plan on laissez-faire capitalism , which is the free-market orthodoxy that arose, mostly due to Adam Smith, to challenge mercantilist trade policy.
As I mentioned in last week’s companion post, it often takes students in my classes up to three days to complete an assignment of this length. To that end, here are three context clues worksheets on merchant, merchandise, and mercantile. These are meant to reinforce the lesson on mercantilism by providing context for the examination of laissez-faire; they also provide teachers and opportunity to familiarize students with the relatively productive Latin word root merc. In addition to forming the basis for the three words in these context clues worksheets, merc (it means “trade”) is found in words like mercenary and commerce.
This lesson, like almost everything I develop, aims to promote literacy. particularly reading comprehension. Here is the intellectual devotional reading on laissez-faire that is the mainstay of this lesson. Finally, you’ll need this reading comprehension worksheet on laissez-faire.
School is started, and I’m already much busier than I want or need to be. I hope your year is off to a good start.
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.
Over the years, I have become convinced of the utility of teaching the parts of speech in order to build literacy in general, and in particular to assist students in developing their own understanding of how to write grammatically complete, syntactically meaningful, and stylish sentences. To that end, I have developed units for each of the parts of speech, and these constitute an almost-year-long cycle of English Language Arts instruction.
So, this weeks text is the first lesson of the first unit of this cycle, on nouns. This lesson calls upon students to use this teacher-authored reading passage to identify all the nouns in it; as you will see, this is a three-part scaffold that asks students to read, then apply their understanding of nouns, first in modified cloze exercises, then in writing sentences from subject to period. The lesson opens with this Cultural Literacy do-now exercise on syntax. You might also find useful this singular and plural nouns formation review
You’ll notice that the plan for this lesson doesn’t list the standards met. Because of the way I manage my work flow, I list all the standards on the overarching unit plan. (That way if I must print a lesson plan to appease a bureaucrat, I don’t burn too much ink.) For that reason, I have posted typescript copies of the Common Core Standards I use in my practice in the About Weekly Texts page that is above the banner photo on the home page for this site. They are in the penultimate paragraph there.
22 September 2016, Post Scriptum: I have just updated the singular and plural nouns formation review worksheet linked to above.
15 July 2022, Post Scriptum: I have revised the work for this lesson. The reading and worksheet now contains a reading from The Fight (Boston, MacMillan, 1975), Norman Mailer’s account of the legendary “Rumble in the Jungle” in 1974; it follows then that the teacher’s copy of the worksheet received an update as well.
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.
One of the subtexts in The Great Debaters is Melvin B. Tolson’s political organizing, specifically his commitment to helping African American sharecroppers and workers achieve something like social and economic equity in the Jim Crow South. In the film, Mr. Tolson (again, Denzel Washington plays him) is seen meeting with African American farmers, which is soon broken up by the KKK. The redneck sheriff, played with drawling, ignorant, aplomb by John Heard, holds Mr. Tolson’s political and social activism over his head, and the viewer understands that Melvin B. Tolson is probably a communist.
Anyone who had read the novel Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison or, more specific and literal to the subject, Richard Wright’s memoir Black Boy, has some background knowledge on the relationship between African Americans and the Communist Party, particularly in the 1930s.
Here, in the last of three Weekly Texts for Black History Month, is a reading on the allure of the Communist Party USA for African Americans, particularly in the 1930s. I understand that in certain school districts, this reading may well be forbidden fruit. That being so does not, I think, diminish the importance of understanding this part of our American past. I would think for educators teaching units on either Invisible Man or Black Boy. this reading would be de rigueur.
And that’s what I have to offer for Black History Month, 2016. As always, if you used any of this material, I hope you found it helpful; I would, again, as always, be grateful to hear from you about what worked or didn’t in your use of these readings.
Until next week….
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.
The Weekly Text for this week follows last week’s on readings related to Denzel Washington’s film The Great Debaters. This is the second of three entries on this unit; because I will not post a Weekly Text for February 19th (we have President’s Day Week off for a mid-winter break), I’ll post two readings here this week.
The first is a reading on Melvin B. Tolson, the peripatetic (although he was associated with Wiley College and other post-secondary institutions in the Southwestern United States, he went to Columbia to pursue a graduate degree in 1930-31, was present at the end of the Harlem Renaissance, and counted Langston Hughes among his close friends) poet and political organizer who coached the legendary Wiley Debate Team of 1935.
Following the article on Mr. Tolson, there is a reading on one of his mentees, the legendary civil rights activist, James L. Farmer, Jr. Mr. Farmer’s list of accomplishments is substantial. He was a great American whose efforts made this nation a more just and decent place.
If these are useful to you, I’d be much obliged if you’d leave a comment explaining how or why.
Until February 26th….
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.
February is Black History Month. Initiated by Carter G. Woodson in 1926, Black History Month is justly a staple in school curricula in the United States. Far, far be it from me to second-guess Dr. Woodson or any of the proponents of Black History Month, but I have never been entirely at ease with the concept of one month of the year set aside for the study of the myriad and vital contributions Americans of African descent have made to our nation, because I think it is insufficient. It seems to me, when studying the history of the United States from the colonial period to yesterday, every month ought to be Black History Month. African Americans are an integral part of the history of the United States, and the U.S. History curriculum really ought to reflect that.
At the same time, I appreciate the opportunity to teach material that isn’t part of the standard curriculum. For the next four weeks, I’ll post reading assignments from a unit I developed to attend the film The Great Debaters, directed by and starring Denzel Washington. After watching the movie for the first time, it struck me that it would serve nicely as the foundation of a unit on both Black History and using prior knowledge to understand new material. I outlined a unit plan, fleshed it out, and began using it to great success. I’ve yet to present it to a class that wasn’t immediately interested in and engaged by the material–it has been that successful with the students I serve. The fundamental educative goal for this unit is to provide students with prior knowledge of the personalities and events–to wit, the 1935 Wiley College Debate Team led by Melvin B. Tolson–by way of reading comprehension worksheets and discussion in class. The first five lessons of the unit work to prepare students for a viewing of the film.
So, here, in the first of three Weekly Texts on The Great Debaters, is the first reading from the unit, on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
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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