Here, on the Fourth of July 2022, is a reading on Benjamin Franklin along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. And that’s about it: a couple of Microsoft Word documents you can adapt to the needs of your students.
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.
It’s Independence Day in the United States, so I can think of no better time to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the republic as a form of government. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences–all of them compounds–and six comprehension questions. The reading, incidentally, does a nice job of differentiating republics and democracies.
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.
“Queen Anne Style: An American architectural style of the late 19th century which exuberantly combined many unlike textures, materials, and forms into an asymmetrical, composite building. Towers, turrets, elaborate chimney pots, bays, projecting porches, and verandas are all hallmarks of a Queen Anne structure.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Given the zeitgeist, particularly as defined by the current Supreme Court of the United States, now seems like a good time to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of the separation of church and state. This is a full-page document with a reading of five sentences, two of them longish compounds, and seven comprehension questions. The reading does a nice job of explaining the ambiguity of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment (which I, like other First Amendment absolutists, I expect, wish weren’t there) without ever mentioning the term.
So there might be a way of turning this document into something of a treasure hunt for the term “Establishment Clause.” Or something else entirely.
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.
“Arthur Tappan: (1786-1865) U.S. merchant and philanthropist. Born in Northampton, Massachusetts, he operated various mercantile businesses, including a silk-importing firm in New York (1826-1837) with his brother Lewis Tappan (1788-1873); they also founded the first commercial credit-rating service (1841). He used his wealth to support missionary societies and the abolitionist crusade, helping found the American Anti-Slavery Society and serving as its first president (1833-40). After breaking with William Lloyd Garrison, he created the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (1840). The brothers later supported the Underground Railroad.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“Benchley and Dorothy Parker shared a tiny $30-a-month office for a time in the Metropolitan Opera House studios. As Benchley described it, ‘One cubic foot of space less and it would have constituted adultery.’”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
“If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.
Democracy: An existential system in which words are more important than actions. Not a judgmental system.
Democracy is not intended to be efficient, linear, logical, cheap, the source of absolute truth, manned by angels, saints or virgins, profitable, the justification for any particular economic system, a simple matter of majority rule or for that matter a simple matter of majorities. Nor is it an administrative procedure, patriotic, a reflection of tribalism, a passive servant of either law or regulation, elegant or particularly charming.
Democracy is the only system capable of reflecting the humanist principle of equilibrium or balance, The key to its secret is the involvement of the citizen.
Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston.The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on fascism. This is a full-page worksheet with a seven-sentence reading (a couple of which could easily be broken up) and nine comprehension questions.
Fascism, as you may know, is a notoriously slippery concept, but is nonetheless thrown around casually–I myself once (fortunately, before I was of voting age) ludicrously characterized President Jimmy Carter as a fascist. I studied authoritarian political movements as an undergraduate and can report that even experts on fascism–e.g. Walter Laqueur and George Mosse–were careful with the term and were circumspect about using the word casually. Indeed, Professor Mosse in particular, with whose work I am quite familiar, grappled for much of his career with his agnosticism about fascism and fascist movements.
All of this is a long way of saying that while this worksheet is far from perfect, it is a decent general introduction to some of the cultural, economic, and political aspects of fascism. As much as the seven sentences of text in this document expose, they are notable for the questions they leave unanswered and therefore arouse. In fact, this may be a good document for starting students’ questioning of the conceptual elements of fascism (trust me, they are wide-ranging, disparate, and frequently just plain crazy).
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.
Aretha Franklin: (1942-2018) U.S. popular singer. Her family moved from Memphis to Detroit when she was 2. Her father, C.L. Franklin, was a well-known revivalist preacher; his church and home were visited by such luminaries as Aretha’s aunt Clara Ward, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, and Dinah Washington. She made her first recording at 12. At first she performed only on the gospel and ‘chitlin’ circuits, but in 1967 her powerful and fervent voice took the country by storm in a string of songs including “I Never Loved a Man,” “Respect,” “Chain of Fools,” “Think,” and “Natural Woman.” Her later albums include Amazing Grace (1972), Sparkle (1976), Who’s Zoomin’ Who (1985), and One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism (1989). She was the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
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