“Federal Style: An American architectural style of about 1780 to 1820 which reflected English Georgian models, especially the influence of Robert Adam. Symmetrically designed facades, smooth surfaces, and restrained classical ornament typify buildings in that style.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Last but not least today, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on The Federalist Papers. This is only the merest introduction to these foundational documents to our republic, but sometimes that’s what a teacher needs. If so, help yourself.
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.
Charles Manson’s death in late 2017 prompted a flurry of questions from the students I was serving at the time. As I do whenever students demonstrate an interest in something, I worked up some new materials, to wit, this reading on Charles Manson and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
And while I’m neither proud of or happy with the fact, these documents quickly became high-interest materials in my classroom. Ergo, they appear here. Did I mention I’m not exactly happy about students’ interest in this monster?
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.
Because a our legislative branch is interviewing a candidate for a job on the United States Supreme Court, now seems like a good time to publish this Cultural Literacy worksheet on cruel and unusual punishment, more specifically the fact that the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution forbids 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.
“How many Pulitzer Prizes did Eugene O’Neill win? Four, for Beyond the Horizon (1920), Anna Christie (1922), Strange Interlude (1928), and Long Day’s Journey into Night (1957).”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Again, and as below, hearings on Amy Coney Barrett’s elevation to the United States Supreme Court are in session as I write this. Judge Barrett’s presence on the high court could be consequential indeed, especially for the LGBTQ community.
So you’ll understand why I think now is a good moment to post this reading on Gay Rights along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
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.
“Balance of terror: Mutual fear of commencing a nuclear war, a concept which postulates that no country will use nuclear weapons because of the fear of retaliation by the other side. Such a balance has been held because nuclear war, believed to be mutually destructive, would be non-productive to the aggressor. However, the concept is now questioned by proponents of a ‘limited’ nuclear war who believed that the use of nuclear weapons can be closely controlled and restricted to certain areas without provoking massive retaliation.”
Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.
“Balance of payments Macroeconomic term to denote the balance between a nation’s expenditure on imports and its receipts from exports, including invisible imports and exports. If the receipts from exports exceed the cost of imports, the balance is said to be in surplus: if vice versa it is in deficit. It is possible, and is often the case in the UK, to have a deficit balance on visible trade and a surplus balance on invisible trade. The sum of the two balances is known as the ‘balance on current account.’
A deficit can be financed by loans from abroad or by using national gold and foreign currency reserves to finance foreign payments which cannot be met any other way. However, if a deficit persists a government has to readjust permanently the pattern of trade. This may be done: (1) by reducing the value of its currency, making exports cheaper to foreigners and imports dearer, thereby discouraging demand for them; (2) by exchange controls, making it difficult to convert its own currency into foreign currency, thereby restricting investment of capital and spending abroad; (3) by import controls and tariffs to place foreign competitors at a disadvantage in competing with home producers, thereby decreasing demand for imports; (4) by deflating the home economy, by cutting employment and income and reducing the demand for both home-produced and imported goods.”
Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged readings/research, term of art, united states history
This week’s Text, in the ongoing observation of Hispanic Heritage Month 2020, is a reading on Emiliano Zapata along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Any study of the history of Mexico, United States policy there or elsewhere, or revolutionary movements across the world probably ought to include something on this patriot and revolutionary.
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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on The Birth of a Nation, the infamous 1915 film by D.W. Griffith. I think now is a good time for students to learn about this piece of racist propaganda.
There, I got that out on the page. I’ve been walking around this document, metaphorically speaking, for months. In fact, I have a good deal of material about this film–and know more about it than I care to admit. Suffice to say this: this film innovated production techniques and really represents the birth of the long-form, narrative cinema we take for granted today. Even the Marxist auteur Sergei Eisenstein admired D.W. Griffith’s advances in technique while deploring the racism of The Birth of a Nation.
Generally, this film in its “artistic” and commercial dimensions offers a lot of grist for the critical mill. I am still working up to posting more material about this hot-button issue. For now, this short exercise will have to suffice.
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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