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Author Archives: JAMES F. O'NEIL

“. . . the freedom to choose or reject ideas, to read books of one’s choice, and to publish freely is the very bedrock of our free society.  . . .  No book placed in a public library should be forcibly removed.  No textbook should be burned.”  –Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

 

 

  1. I Am the Cheese: Robert Cormier, 1977.
  2. Fahrenheit 451: Ray Bradbury, 1971.
  3. Anthem: Ayn Rand, 1975.
  4. 1984: George Orwell, 1975.
  5. Native Son: Richard Wright, 1940.
  6. The Catcher in the Rye: J. D. Salinger, 1951.
  7. Slaughterhouse-Five: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., 1969.
  8. To Kill a Mockingbird: Harper Lee, 1960.
  9. Forever: Judy Blume, 1975.
  10. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Mark Twain, 1884.

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“Rather than dictating information as absolutes, teachers should try to inspire their students to think for themselves.  We cannot focus on the teaching of facts alone, but rather, on the teaching of content as a means to the process of critical thought.”  –Joan F. Kaywell, U of South Florida, 1987. 

“All students have the right to be happy and productive citizens.

“The primary purpose of English is to provide each student with the reading, writing, listening, speaking, and viewing skills necessary for effective communication.

“Learning experiences must deal with current concerns of the students, bear some relationship to life outside the school…

“The study of literature provides vicarious experiences where direct experiences are impossible or undesirable.  Students may be prepared for various experiences through their reading…: teen relationships, death, injustice, prejudice, war, drugs and alcohol, crime, suicide.  It doesn’t matter how many facts our students know if the final choice is drug addiction, imprisonment, or the taking of their own lives.

“…it is far more important that students know HOW to find, use, and apply content to their lives rather than be able to ‘bubble-in’ WHAT they learn on any given day.

“An English teacher has the capability of offering students the skills necessary to learn anything (assuming there is motivation and confidence).

“No other subject can compete with English in the integration of school with everyday life.

“If a person cannot read, write, and communicate effectively, many doors to a successful future are closed for that person.

“There is no way we can teach all the facts in 17 years; there is no way we will ever agree on what facts must be learned….  But there are ways to teach students to think critically and creatively about the world in which they live.”

“The teacher’s task is not simply to implant facts but to place the material to be learned in front of the learner and through sympathy, emotion, imagination, and patience to awaken in the learner the restless drive for answers and insights which enlarges the individual’s life and gives it meaning.”

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Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

 

“Religious man experiences two kinds of time: profane and sacred.  The one is an evanescent duration, the other a ‘succession of eternities,’ periodically recoverable during the festivals that made up the sacred calendar.  The liturgical time of the calendar flows in a closed circle; it is the cosmic time of the year, sanctified by the works of the gods.”  Mircea Eliade,   The Sacred and the Profane

“There is a time for everything, and for everything there is a season and a purpose under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to harvest what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up.  A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time not to embrace.  A time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew, and a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.  And there is a time to love, yet a time to hate; a time for war, but also a time for peace.”  –Ecclesiastes 3.1-8.

 …And I’m not alone,
While my love is near me,
And I know, it will be so, till it’s time to go…
So come the storms of winter,
and then the birds in spring again.
I do not fear the time.
Who knows how my love grows?
Who knows where the time goes?  –Sandy Denny / Judy Collins

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Stop all the clocks,…
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;…–W. H. Auden

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EXPERT: One who usually has advanced knowledge AND skills in a field and who UNDERSTANDS technical language and information in that field.  (He or she handles THEORY and practical applications with ease.)

PROFESSIONAL (non-expert): One who has the education and the ability to read and to understand difficult and technical information in a field.  (She or he is able to handle practical information and applications with some ease.)

GENERALIST:  A person with a broad general knowledge, especially one with more than superficial knowledge in several areas and the ability to combine ideas from diverse fields.

HUMANIST: Someone trained in the humane letters of the ancient classics, who uses those skills, or studies the humanities as opposed to the sciences.

SOCIALIST: A socialist is one who believes in “socialism” yet finds it difficult to define “socialism.”  (There are “socialists,” and then there are “socialists.”)  (One who collects monthly Social [-ist] Security income checks and complains only about the amount.) 

THEORIST: One who formulates principles or assumptions into some kind of system for understanding, whether scientific or not, or who attempts to provide explanations for “wonderosities” or “events.”

REALIST: One who deals with objective data, “just the facts”; one who “sees” practicalities, using the past and the present to extrapolate for the future.

IDEALIST: One who is not usually a pragmatist/realist, but is one who cherishes noble, often “ideal” principles.  Sometimes the idealist is seen as a visionary reformer, optimist, dreamer, perfectionist, and “romantic” with lofty goals–often impracticalities. 

PLAGIARIST:  One who dishonestly presents words or thoughts of another as if they were those of the writer or the speaker himself or herself.

OPTIMIST:  Someone who always seems to believe that good things will happen, seeing the brightness of the half-full glass, most often taking a favorable view of dire situations while predicting positive outcomes. 

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In 1989, at Stockholm, the 18th Congress of the Socialist International adopted a new Declaration of Principles, saying: Democratic socialism is an international movement for freedom, social justice, and solidarity.  Its goal is to achieve a peaceful world where these basic values can be enhanced and where each individual can live a meaningful life with the full development of his or her personality and talents, and with the guarantee of human and civil rights in a democratic framework of society.”  [–Wikipedia]

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