Solitude (away from High School students)

Chapter 5 - "Solitude"

Thoreau makes a case for nature being a better companion than humans.

"I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time.  To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating.  I love to be alone.  I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude." (131)

"Next to use the grandest laws are continually being executed.  Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman, who work we are." (130)

NOTE - ANAPHORA

I have occasional visits . . . from an old settler and original proprietor, who is reported to have dug Walden Pond, and stoned it, and fringed it with pine woods; who tells me stories of old time and of new eternity; and between us we manage to pass a cheerful evening with social mirth and pleasant views of things.

Monday

Chapter 3 READING

Reading literature is the closest thing to live.

Reading great books requires training such training as athletes undergo.

Nothing truly can be translated.

"Most men have learned to read to serve paltry convenience, as they learned to ciper in order to keep accounts... but reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet this only is reading, in a higher sense, not that which lulls us as a luxury .. but what we have to stand on tip-toe to read and devote our most alert and wakeful hours to."

"The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers."

"I do not make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsman who cannont read at all, and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects."

"We spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment."

Chapter 4 - "Sounds"

This is a strange, but poetic chapter that focuses on the sounds that Thoreau hears when living at Walden (and how the sounds make him feel).  There is this idea of Thoreau's that most of humanity doesn't quite listen to its soundings.  To be in-tune with the place you live is - in part - to listen closely to it, to hear it, and perhaps to respond to what you hear.

Micah has too really good dialectical journals on this chapter:

#16: "Much is published, but little is printed" p. 108

By published, Thoreau means made public, as in, anyone can observe/hear. There are so many sounds and things of that nature that are able to be observed, each with their own meaning and cause, but very few care to listen, and fewer still, care to write them down. This continues the thought that man uses nature only for what it can get out of it, and tries its best to remove itself from it. Mankind in general doesn't care about the chirping of a bird, or the chirping of crickets. When they do care, it is as an annoyance, a reminder of the world they seek to leave behind by becoming civilized.

#17: The train

In the 'Sounds' chapter, Thoreau goes to great lengths to personify the train that he talks about. How it perspires steam, how it must put on snow shoes, etc. This is done because in a way, the train represents a concentration of what makes humans terrible, at least to Thoreau. They are cold, calculated, used to transport things from one end of the world to another, all the while cutting surgically precise lines through the wilderness that Thoreau believes greater than man. It is a machine made for business, and the making of money on the backs of those who are too lazy and too luxurious to get what they need from the land around them.

"I am refreshed and expanded when the freight train rattles past me, and I smell the stores which go dispensing their odors all the way from Long Wharf to Lake Champlain, reminding me of foreign parts of coral reefs, and Indian oceans, and tropical climes, and the extent of the globe." (116)

"Now that the cars are gone by and all the restless world with them, and the fishes in the pond no longer feel their rumbling.   I am more alone than ever.  For the rest of the afternoon, perhaps, my meditations are interrupted only by the faint rattle of a carriage or team along the distant highway."  (119)

Thursday

CHAPTER 2 - "Where I Lived and What For"

He goes to Walden Pond because he wishes to live deliberately, to slow down the fast pace of modern life and actually enjoy it.  He claims that you can't learn anything from newspapers about live ("The Revolution will not be Televised")

Quotes:
"As long as possible live free and uncommitted.  It makes little difference whether you are committed to a farm or a county jail."

"Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.  Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep.  Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been slumbering?"

"The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life."

"I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.  How could I have looked him in the face?"

"Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity."

"We do not ride on the railroads; it rides upon us."

"Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?"

"To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip."

"Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature."

"I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born."

Chapter 3 READING

Reading literature is the closest thing to live.

Reading great books requires training such training as athletes undergo.

Nothing truly can be translated.

"Most men have learned to read to serve paltry convenience, as they learned to ciper in order to keep accounts... but reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet this only is reading, in a higher sense, not that which lulls us as a luxury .. but what we have to stand on tip-toe to read and devote our most alert and wakeful hours to."

"The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers."

"I do not make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsman who cannont read at all, and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects."

"We spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment."

Today we will continue with Chapter 1 of Walden.  Here is the reading schedule:

 

10/28 page 100

10/29 page 125

11/4 page 144

11/11 page 228

11/22 Finish 

 

ESSAY QUESTION:

As describe in Walden what is Thoreau's assessment of American Culture (what is wrong with it)?  Using specific evidence from the text discuss and outline his argument.  Then respond to it.  Do you agree or disagree with his insights?  Discuss.

 
Transcendentalism was an intellectual movement that emphasized the dignity of the individual and advocated a simple, mindful life.

Key tenets of transcendentalism included:

1) A theory that "transcendent forms" of truth exist beyond reason and experience; every indvidula is capable of discovering this truth on his or her own, through intuition.

2) A conviction that people are inherently good and should follow their own beliefs, however controversial they may be

3) A belief that humankind, nature, and God are all interconnected
 
Chapter 1 - ECONOMY

DEFINITION (from dictionary.com)
- thrifty management; frugality in expenditure or consumption of money materials
- the management of the resources of a community
- the prosperity or earnings of a place

Questions:
What is real wealth?
What are the necessities of life?
Do luxuries corrupt?  Humans work their entire lives for luxuries.
What does it mean to be philanthropic?

Discuss Thoreau's house?

Quotes: "Cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately, or in the long run."

Example - house that costs $800 and which takes ten to fifteen years to pay off

"But lo! men have become the tools of their tools."

"Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants.  Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made."

Transportation - "the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot."  The fare of a train is almost a day's wages.

"This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it."

"Letter from Birmingham Jail"

Today we are going to read MLK's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and relate it to "Civil Disobedience".

HW: Write a precise for the essay and do questions # 1 and #2 at the end of the essay.

Today, we are going to talk about Thoreau and "Civil Disobedience" and then connect it to movements in the world right now.  Then we will read "From the Destruction of Culture".

Homework: Questions 1-6 on page 956

Unit 2: Civil Rights

Today - we will start with "Civil Disobedience"

Second Quarter: A Study of Justice or Civil Rights and Responsibilities
Everyday Use chapters 4-6 (pages 93-153)
“The Times They Are a-Changin’” by Bob Dylan
“Ain’t I a Woman?” by Sojourner Truth
“Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau
“Letter from the Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr.
“The Position of Poverty” by John Kenneth Galbraith
“Notes of a Native Son” by James Baldwin
“The Gettysburg Address” by Abraham Lincoln
“Second Inaugural Address” by Abraham Lincoln
“How It Feels to be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston
“A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” by Mary Wollstonecraft “Speech on the Signing of the Treaty of Port Elliott” by Chief Seattle “The Declaration of Independence” by Thomas Jefferson

Walden by Henry David Thoreau and keep a dialectical journal.  

• Analyzing appeals to logos, pathos, and ethos
  
• Hand-outs on keeping a Dialectical Journal and OPTIC
  
• Group and individual analysis of readings
  
• Writers workshop – grammar and style exercises
  
• Group edition and assessment sessions
  
• Vocabulary lists
  
• Film clips: “I Have A Dream” by Martin Luther King Jr., National Forensic
  League: Orations from National Championships, The Heart of the Game
  
• Delivery of Election Orations written in Quarter 1 and in-class election
  BLOG WRITING:
  Students will continue to write précis on selected readings and on all film clips. Further, they will keep their dialectical journal on The Autobiography of Malcolm X on their blog so that it can be reviewed and commented on by the teacher while in- process, and by fellow classmates. They will do 1 media write up (like quarter 1) every two weeks.
  Writing Assignments:
  Synthesis Essay on a topic of the students choice that relates to the theme of Justice and Civil Rights. Students must use at least five sources, one of which must be visual – either a chart, photography, political cartoon, video, etc. All sources must be cited in MLA format. The essay will go through multiple drafts.
  Analytical Essay – explained above, a response to a prompt based on one of the assigned readings.
  2 In-class Timed Essays based on AP prompts.
  The Synthesis and Analytical Essay will be graded on rubrics developed by the instructor. The In-class Timed Essays will be graded on the AP rubric.

Synthesis

Allegory of the Cave

SYNTHESIS
Paragraph 1
1) Hook (something that is engaging both also relates to your topic and ideally you can return to at the end of the essay).
2) Identify, clarify, explain the issue.
3) Clear, direct thesis statement.  This is a position for or against (usually) the prompt.  You can also have an order of development if you need it.  Just remember that sometimes these appear really mechanical, and if you present one you need to follow it in the order that you give.

Body Paragraphs
You can have as many body paragraphs as possible.  This is not a 5-part essay.  Actually it will look better if you don't write a 5-part essay.

In your body paragraphs you need a topic sentence.
Explanation of topic sentence (generalizations).  An transition or introduction to your specific evidence.  Source citation.  And you'll need to explain the significance of the supporting evidence.

NOTE - you need to analysis the evidence not just present it or summarize it.  What does the evidence me and how does the evidence back up your position.

Technically, you should annotate the sources as you read them and write a short main idea of each.

Concluding Paragraph
Return to your thesis statement (reword it), return to your hook, perhaps significance from the reasons and evidence presented, and bring the paper to a thoughtful ending.