Famous Quotations Research Articles

Unraveling the Enigma of Neonatal Herpes: A Novel Tool for Assessing Risk of Infection.

* Abbreviations: CNS — : central nervous system HSV — : herpes simplex virus SEM — : skin, eye, and mouth In October 1939, the world was on fire. Nazi Germany had invaded Poland on September 1, and 2 days later Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. The war on the western front was hot, but, initially at least, all was quiet on the eastern front. During those tumultuous first months of the Second World War, it was unclear what Russia’s involvement would be. On October 1, 1939, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered one of his most famous quotations during a radio broadcast on the BBC: “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” Although obviously very different from global war, herpes simplex virus (HSV) also is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. The virus can be devastatingly brutal to the body of a neonate who acquires the virus at the time of delivery, but it also is exceedingly rare, occurring in only 1 in roughly 2000 deliveries.1 We have powerful molecular testing tools that can identify minute amounts of HSV DNA, technologies that have revolutionized our diagnostic capabilities for neonatal HSV2 but that also can be prone to false-positive results given how … Address correspondence to David W. Kimberlin, MD, 1600 Seventh Ave South, CHB 303, Birmingham AL 35233. E-mail: dkimberlin{at}peds.uab.edu

SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF IDIOMATIC IN THE MAZE RUNNER: THE DEATH CURE MOVIE

This research discussed the semiotic analysis of idiomatic expressions found in The Maze Runner: The Death Cure movie by Wess Ball and its impact on English. This research aimed to find idiomatic expressions revealed in the dialogue in the movie; to find the meaning of symbols contained idiomatic expressions in dialogues; to find the impact of semiotic analysis in idiomatic expressions found in movie. In this research, researchers used qualitative research in the type of content analysis using descriptive approach to help the analysis of the data that found in the movie. The researchers looked for idiomatic expressions in the movie and symbols of idiomatic expressions. Finally, researchers reveal the impact of semiotic analysis in idioms found in movie on English. From the results, there are 59 idiom expressions divided into lexemic and sememic idioms. From lexemic idiom found 37 phrasal verbs; 2 irreversible binomials; 10 phrasal compounds; and 1 incorporating verb. From the sememic idiom found 2 idioms of politeness; 1 idiom of detachment; 4 idioms of greeting; and 2 famous quotations idioms. There are 26 symbols from 59 idiom expression in the movie. Its effects on English make students more fluent in English and look like native speakers, add new vocabulary, make students aware of cultural differences in language, and know more about meaning.

Handwriting, Spelling, Sense

The author of the essay, a linguist, argues that a certain part of the so-called wise sayings and quotes are mere platitudes. Some of them are believed to be indisputable truths but they make no sense; among false assertions are the well-known statements “There is no rule without exceptions” and “The exception proves/confirms the rule”. One of the famous quotations, namely Gandhi’s statement that “Bad handwriting is a sign of an imperfect education” is dealt with separately and extensively. The author thinks that schoolteachers’ efforts are to little avail if the student has no talent for calligraphy and spelling (as well as for other subjects). The priority of sense is contended with regard to all statements including philosophical ones. The authors draws on Gandhi’s “Autobiography” and Oscar Wilde’s “The Decay of Lying” and their Russian translations to show that foreign texts reach the Russian reader with the meaning/message of the original more or less distorted. The Russian translation of Ludwig Feuerbach’s exposition of Spinoza’s philosophical views is subjected to criticism.

Love, Work, and Striving for the Self in Balance: Anaclitic and Introjective Patients' Experiences of Change in Psychoanalysis.

One of the most famous quotations credited to Freud is that, when asked what he thought a psychologically healthy person should be able to do, he said: “to love and to work.” A central goal in psychoanalytic treatment is to bring about changes in basic, mostly unconscious, mental structures. The aim of this study was to investigate, applying an inductive thematic analysis, the experiences anaclitic and introjective patients have had of change after psychoanalysis with regard to the domains Love and Relationships and Work and Achievements. Analyzing patient interviews, we identified a third domain of experienced changes, The Self, which refers to increased self-understanding, self-acceptance, and self-care rather than an improved dynamic balance between love and work. All patients experienced several positive changes in their lives during and after psychoanalysis. We also found distinctive patterns that appear to be closely linked to the patients’ initial personality orientation with regard to relationships and achievements. Generally, the patients described symmetrical, but opposite, change processes within the two specific domains of Love and Work. For the anaclitic patients, this indicated a movement inward in the domain of Love (from an excessive preoccupation with issues of their relationship with others toward more distinct self-boundaries and increased agency) and outward in the domain of Work (from unenterprising toward becoming more outgoing and daring). For the introjective patients, this pointed to a reverse movement outward in the domain of Love (from an excessive preoccupation with issues of autonomy toward increased responsiveness to others and desire to be establish close, mutual relationships) and inward in the domain of Work (from an excessive orientation on achievements toward increased becoming more grounded in their own feelings, needs, and desires). In conclusion, patients in both groups have experienced a reduced preoccupation with issues related to their initially predominant personality dimension (relatedness or self-definition) and increased receptivity to needs typical for the complementary dimension. These changes seem to be mediated by changes in the domain of The Self. Our study suggests the clinical relevance of focusing the therapeutic work on fostering a better and more dynamic balance between love and work, relatedness, or self-definition.

Confessions of the Antedater

The author relates the story of how, beginning with the word tiddly-winks, he became interested in antedating the earliest uses of words and phrases documented by the Oxford English Dictionary and then pursued this passion for forty years. His thousands of antedatings included improving the historical record of many important terms relating to sports and games, popular entertainment, American slang, politics, law, linguistics, the social sciences, the natural sciences, and other subjects. These discoveries have received extensive coverage by The New York Times and other media. Along the way, he pioneered in the use of searchable online historical text collections for linguistic investigations. Antedatings found by the author and others can shed considerable light on etymology, on history and culture through a lexical lens, and on other linguistic matters with a historical dimension. In addition, the author has extended the methods of historical lexicography to quotations and proverbs, compiling the Yale Book of Quotations and coediting the Dictionary of Modern Proverbs. Our knowledge of the origins of famous quotations has been revolutionized by the online searching and other research employed by the YBQ and DMP.

On Finding the Source of Human Energy: The Influence of Famous Quotations on Willpower.

Positive psychology focuses on aspects that human beings can improve, thereby enhancing their growth and happiness. One of these aspects is willpower, a quality that has been demonstrated to have various benefits on people, as widely shown in the literature. As a result, a growing body of research is attempting to establish the conditions under which an individual’s willpower can be increased. This work attempts to confirm whether the famous quotations that people often use to inspire or motivate themselves can have a real effect on willpower. Two experiments were conducted assigning randomly subjects to a group and priming them with famous quotations, and afterwards comparing their performance in a willpower task with a control group. The second experiment added a willpower depletion task before priming. As a result, primed subjects endured the willpower task significantly more time than control group, demonstrating that famous quotations related to willpower help to increase this capacity and to counteract the effect of willpower depletion.

Let them eat cake

Let them eat cake

Apophthegmata, Collected Works of Erasmus , vols. 37 and 38 by Desiderius Erasmus, and: Apophthegmatum Libri I-IV , Erasmi Opera Omnia IV-4 by Desiderius Erasmus (review)

Reviewed by: Apophthegmata, Collected Works of Erasmus, vols. 37 and 38 by Desiderius Erasmus, and: Apophthegmatum Libri I-IV, Erasmi Opera Omnia IV-4 by Desiderius Erasmus Willis G. Regier Desiderius Erasmus. Apophthegmata, Collected Works of Erasmus, vols. 37 and 38. Translated and edited by Betty I. Knott and Elaine Fantham. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2014. xxxii, 1012 pages. Desiderius Erasmus. Apophthegmatum Libri I-IV, Erasmi Opera Omnia IV-4. Edited by Tinke L. ter Meer. Leiden: Brill, 2010. x, 399 pages. Collections of sayings, or apophthegmata, have a distinguished history, descending to our era through gnomologia, chrestomathies, proverbia, florilegia, golden treasuries, table talk, quotation collections, and the multiple wit-and-wisdoms of celebrated figures. Tinke L. ter Meer describes apophthegms as “pointed remarks which characterized the person who expressed them.” For example: Quum accepisset esse quondam qui conuiciis ipsum impeteret, “Regium est,” inquit, “quum facias bene, audire male.” (ASD IV-4.302) When Alexander found out that someone was assailing him with abuse he said, “It is a king’s lot to act kindly and be spoken of unkindly.” (CWE 37.357) If a minor genre, apophthegms have immense prestige. In his Institutio principis christiani (1516), Erasmus recommended that the first secular book a prince should read is Plutarch’s Apophthegmata. Erasmus’s Apophthegmata is largely drawn from Plutarch, supplemented with pieces from Quintilian, Suetonius, Athenaeus, Valerius Maximus, Diogenes Laertius, Philostratus, Macrobius, Stobaeus, and others. In the dedicatory letter prefacing his collection, Erasmus proposed several uses for apophthegms. As statements they “let us see the mind of person truly reflected.” As extracts that represent larger works they save time. When gathered as Plutarch gathered them they reveal the character of nations. Arranged chronologically, as Plutarch arranged them, they sketch a nation’s history. While their primary use is education (his editions were used for that purpose for years) they are also entertaining. A sprinkling of playful apophthegms “relaxes tired spirits,” “cheers and enlivens the minds of the young, make life more civilized, our speaking more attractive.” These are the same rationales offered in modern quotation collections, which add another: they enable people to locate sources for famous quotations. Yet Erasmus was already suspicious of sources. Often enough he provides them, while recognizing that even in antiquity it was common practice to attribute a quotation to whomever it seemed most suited. “We find the same remark attributed to different speakers in different authorities” (37.12). His Apophthegmata proves the point. A saying attributed to Archidamus is also attributed to Lysander (37.79 and 135); a remark of Agis is also attributed to Theopompus and Panthoidas (37.61, 98, and 140); an anecdote of Philip of Macedon is identical to one of Hadrian (37.346 and 38.627); a saying of Demosthenes is said also by Zeno (37.453 and 38.844); and so on. Despite its original purpose, his collection can hardly be expected to show up in current curricula. Instead, it has aged into an artefact of the late Renaissance, [End Page 1248] testifying to its appetite for classical learning. It played some role in the rediscovery of Plutarch and built another bridge between Renaissance Latin and classical Greek. It was a project Erasmus could complete while working on Ecclesiastes, his book on preaching, and on new editions of his Adagia and Novum Testamentum. He was in his sixties, infirm, battling adversaries, defending his reputation as the Prince of Humanists, and still hard at work keeping printers busy. His Apophthegmata was a publishing opportunity. Erasmus met it with his usual haste, publishing three editions with Froben in Basel in 1531, 1532, and 1535. The first edition was promptly reprinted in Paris, Venice, and Lyons; nearly fifty reprints followed in the 16th century. The first edition included only six books. Following its success, Erasmus added two more books for the 1532 edition. He amplified the text in 1535 and moved some apophthegms from one book to another. Although most of his apophthegms were taken from Plutarch, Erasmus made them his own. “My own policy has been, for several reasons, to take my cue from Plutarch rather than translate him.” His apophthegms combine details from other classical sources and...

'History is Past Politics, and Politics Present History': Who Said It?

‘HISTORY is past politics, and politics present history’ must surely be one of the more famous quotations of Victorian historiography. Not only a clever turn of phrase, it also has the benefit of expressing a widespread belief about the inherent relationship between history and politics that was one of the hallmark assumptions underpinning much Victorian historical writing, ranging from the work of mid-century belles lettres to the more specialized histories produced by university historians at the turn of the century. But who actually coined the phrase?...

City That Ripens on the Tree of the World by Robin Davidson

Alessandro Marzo Magno Bound in Venice Gregory Conti, tr. Europa Editions Described by one reviewer as a “hymn to books,” Bound in Venice is an essential read for anyone who loves books. The book follows the life of the Michelangelo of publishing, Aldus Manutius, and uses him as a springboard to launch into both the historical development of reading for pleasure and the history of the sixteenth-century Venetian empire. Brigitte Lozerec’h Sisters Betsy Wing, tr. Dalkey Archive Press Two talented artists, husband and wife, follow their callings in pre–World War I avant-garde Paris. Life is complicated by the jealous machinations of a younger sister and a variety of friends and relatives. Brigitte Lozerec’h’s narrative is characterized by nuanced emotion and intricately described scenery, resulting in a novel that is itself a work of art. Nota Bene hesitates to say, / afraid to disturb the balance the wheels require.” Still, there is more: a love of life mixed with a keen sense of its brevity , a scintillating appreciation that simultaneously sees the skull grinning at the banquet, the fly crawling among the perfect flowers. There is caution about seeking to escape these terms through the idea of God. In one contemplation of a past time with loved ones now gone, when the speaker’s early notions of God led her to look upward, away from the present, she considers how the word God “can carry you / dangerously up like a balloon over what you’d / give anything to be in the middle of, now.” This poetry justifies itself. Time and again, the weave of sight and insight gathers into luminous statements that have a poetic authority, which we recognize immediately as if they are to-be famous quotations we are experiencing for the first time. As readers we might find ourselves not unlike the speaker in “Venus de Milo,” looking with her grandson at the full moon: “we step / into the dark and enter beauty, where there never was a foothold. // I might have told him that, but just then we were looking at the moon.” Fred Dings University of South Carolina Robin Davidson. City That Ripens on the Tree of the World. Philadelphia. Calypso Editions. 2013. isbn 9780988790308 We are being buried alive under the huge number of poetry titles published not only each year but each month. Most of the books are by younger poets, many of whom are recent graduates of MFA programs. As someone who tries to keep up with the latest trends and preoccupations of poetry, I can attest that much of what’s being written by the emerging poets has no chance of making a lasting impression; that’s how gimmicky and mannered it feels. So when a poet who’s been working on her craft for years finally decides to publish her work, I take notice. Such is the case with Robin Davidson , a professor of English and translator of Polish poetry who published not one but three collections this past year, including the full-length Luminous Other. At the heart of City That Ripens on the Tree of the World is Davidson’s preoccupation with the past and how it informs the present. Dredging up one’s personal history isn’t always a welcome strategy, but Davidson’s poetry shines with insights and riveting images largely because she allows her poems to travel along wherever she goes. For instance, in the gorgeous “Window,” the poet observes “the October Polish sun . . . flooding the room” and recalls a photograph, taken in 1978, featuring her father, “drunk with the presence of all he loves.” The layering of time and place leads to a stark epiphany when the speaker equates the world with a window, that “Porous realm of what is or was or could be.” A keen eye is indispensable to anyone wishing to stop time, if only momentarily. In “Self-Portrait: Trieste ,” Davidson visits her birthplace, but her humility suggests she longs to experience the city metaphorically and physically anew each time. “I am listening for what is not there,” she begins, and then, after a few snapshots of her parents, ends the poem by reminding us of the “forty...

VENI VIDI VICIAND CAESAR'S TRIUMPH

Without doubt,veni vidi viciis one of the most famous quotations from Antiquity. It is well known that it was Julius Caesar who coined the renowned expression. Less frequently discussed is the fact that ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’ was announced as written text. According to Suetonius, Caesar paraded a placard displaying the wordsveni vidi viciin his triumph held over Pontus in 46b.c.(Suet.Iul. 37.2):Pontico triumpho inter pompae fercula trium verborum praetulit titulum VENI VIDI VICI non acta belli significantem sicut ceteris, sed celeriter confecti notam.In his Pontic triumph he exhibited among the biers of the procession a placard (titulus) with three words VENI VIDI VICI, not to show the deeds performed in the war, as in the others, but to mark out how fast the war had been concluded.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela: The iconic freedom fighter

On Thursday, 5 December 2013, South Africa and the world received the shocking news that the iconic freedom fighter and founding father of the democratic republic of South Africa, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, was no longer with us. He had passed away peacefully after over 95 years on earth, 27 of which he was incarcerated on Robben Island near Cape Town. We were told that Madiba, as he was fondly called, inherited the name “Nelson” from Miss Mdingane, his primary school teacher in Qunu, who gave every student an English name. His Xhosa name, Rolihlahla, literally means “pulling the branch of a tree”, but its colloquial meaning is “troublemaker”. Madiba fought the apartheid system before and during his incarceration, as well as after his release from prison. This was exemplified during his inaugural address on 10 May 1994, which contained one of his famous quotations, which was: “Never, never, and never again, shall it be that this beautiful land will experience the oppression of one by another”.

“So This Is Dyoublong”: A Report on the Dublin James Joyce Summer School, 5–11 July 2009

“So This Is Dyoublong”: A Report on the Dublin James Joyce Summer School, 5–11 July 2009 Amanda Sigler Leaning over the area railings in Georgian Dublin and debating whether they should dare to hang over the edges like Bloom but eventually opting to recline against them like Stephen, students at the 2009 Dublin James Joyce Summer School flashed their cameras and smiles, combining literary curiosity with a documentary impulse as they proceeded on the School’s walking tour. The lively tour, led by Keel Geheber of the James Joyce Centre, was the concluding activity in a richly rewarding week of lectures, seminars, workshops, and social events—all organized under the expert academic directorship of Anne Fogarty. When participants gathered at Hourican’s Pub on the opening evening, a convivial spirit of reunion pervaded the atmosphere as longtime friends embraced and joyfully recounted the highlights of past Joycean gatherings. But there were many newcomers as well, and students traveling from places as varied as Asia, Europe, America, and the Middle East were quickly welcomed into the community. This year’s Summer School had a particularly youthful touch on account of the attendance of ten eager teenagers from the Oak Park and River Forest High School in the Chicago suburbs. Their teacher, Brendan Lee, plans to continue the tradition and take a group to Dublin every other year. [End Page 210] On the first day of the School, I sat in on Christine O’Neill’s A Portrait seminar with them and was both impressed by their ability to summarize the morning’s lectures and enlightened by their amateur readings of Joyce’s work. Though “Flaubert” occasionally morphed into “Flow-burt” on their lips (and here “flow” was often pronounced like the abbreviated flower of U 11.861), the students nevertheless extracted the essential points from Scarlett Baron’s characteristically sharp presentation, “‘I will have shown somebody the way’: Flaubert and the Making of James Joyce.” In class, students reported that Stephen Dedalus’s dependence upon literary precedence, as outlined by Scarlett, made him “less of a smarty-pants” and “more accessible.” Responding to Anne Fogarty’s lecture on “Inventing Dublin,” students expressed surprise over how inconsistent Joyce could be in statements about his fictional recasting of Ireland. Flipping through her handout, the class re-examined such famous quotations as “I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis” (LettersII 134). In an earlier comment, Joyce had described “the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city,”1 casting yet further doubt on the precise subject of his project: is it hemiplegia or paralysis? A city or only a place considered to be? The week’s subsequent lectures and seminars were equally thought-provoking. For the remainder of the School, I attended Terence Killeen’s fascinating Finnegans Wake seminar at Boston College, where we sank into overly comfortable chairs and closely studied the henpecked letter of I.5. Other, simultaneous seminars included Peter van de Kamp’s Dubliners, which, I heard, sparked spirited interpretive debates between students and instructor, and two Ulysses classes, led by Fritz Senn and Tom Halpin, which incorporated student-led presentations, included one ambitious high-school participant, and received enthusiastic reviews. In lectures, topics covered a broad spectrum, ranging from the Hungarian and Romanian translations of Ulysses (Erika Mihálycsa) to error (Matthew Creasy), Shakespeare (Laura Pelaschiar), and the textual-genetic origins of Leopold and Molly Bloom (Luca Crispi). Delivered by a combination of seasoned Joyceans and newly-minted doctors of philosophy, the lectures were often enhanced by multimedia presentations or humorous anecdotes. In “A Bloom for No Seasons,” Fritz Senn, Patron of the Dublin James Joyce Summer School, described how Bloom is often defined by what he does not do—in “Cyclops,” for instance, he passes up the drinks and opts instead for a cigar. Here Fritz related a corollary story: an Irishman once asked a Swiss man, “Can I get you a drink?” “No thanks,” the Swiss replied. “I’ve already had one.” Just as the fictional Bloom and his modern-day Swiss counterpart fall short of Irish drinking expectations, so Bloom also refrains from...

The Yale Book of Quotations (review)

Reviews203 The Yale Book of Quotations. Edited by Fred Shapiro. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Pp. 1104. i; [n recent years, the composition of dictionaries on historical principles has been radically transformed by die rapid growth of digitized archives of texts. Fred Shapiro's Yale Book of Quotations (YBQ) officially ushers in a similar transformation in the world of quotation dictionaries. Shapiro has set a very high bar for any future reference work of this kind: no longer will a book of quotations with pretensions to comprehensiveness be able to throw around such vague words as "attributed to..." and "anonymous" with reckless abandon. Under FUQstandards, those are terms of last resort, used only when all other avenues of research have been exhausted. Shapiro, a law librarian at Yale University, has been a trendsetter in exploring the possibilities (and the pitfalls) of tracking the usage of words, phrases, and sayings via digital corpora of historical texts. As early as the 1980s, he was blazing the trail by exploiting databases such as LexisNexis for the purposes of discovering antedatings and other citations of interest for projects in historical lexicography (most notably the Oxford English Dictionary) . For YBQ Shapiro applies his formidable research skills to create a quotation dictionary unlike any other. The book is rife with gems of detective work, based on the latest investigations by Shapiro and other devoted researchers. (Many of those researchers, including this reviewer, made contributions that eventually entered FUQvia the American Dialect Society mailing list.) Who first said, "No man who hates dogs and children can be all bad"? Most quotation dictionaries would simply attribute the line to W.C. Fields, or perhaps Leo Rosten speaking about Fields, and go no further. Shapiro tells us that Harper's Magazine quoted the journalist Byron Darnton as saying this classic bit of cynicism in 1937, trumping claims by Fields and Rosten. What about the saying popularly attributed to Horace Greeley, "Go West, young man"? In a typically enlightening note, Shapiro calls this "one of the great examples of the prevalence of misinformation about famous quotations" (322). Some sources claim that Greeley used it in an 1850 book, while others give credit to an 1851 editorial byJohn Babson Lane Soule that supposedly inspired Greeley. The latest historical research has determined, however, that Soule actually had nothing to do with the quote, and attributions to Greeley only begin showing up in 1870. Besides being at the forefront of attribution sleuthing, FUQ is also noteworthy for expanding the usual boundaries of quotation dictionaries, which, for the most part, have been heavily skewed toward prose and literature of the nineteenth century and earlier, especially from British writers. Shapiro has created a reference work in tune with die times, with more Groucho Marx Dictionaries. Journal ofthe Dictionary Sodety ofNorth American (2007), 203-205 204Reviews than Karl Marx, more Bob Dylan than Dylan Thomas, more Monty Python than Montaigne. Its particular forte is American popular culture of the twentieth century, and in this regard it is unmatched by any reference work that I have seen. This is most evident in the special sections on categories of quotations typically neglected by quotation dictionaries, such as advertising and political slogans, television and radio catchphrases, and film lines. What makes these special categories of quotations particularly compelling is that Shapiro has enriched them with historical background and intricate cross-references. To take one example, an item listed in the section on radio catchphrases is the original opening narration for Superman, broadcast in 1940. In the explanatory note, Shapiro also provides the more familiar variation from later broadcasts ("It's a bird! It's a plane!"), along with crossreferences from the Superman canon (the superhero's first appearance in Action Comics no. 1, the opening of the television series Adventures of Superman ), as well as literary echoes (Nietzsche on the Übermensch or George Bernard Shaw's "Man and Superman") . This intertextual layering is so impressive that it is surprising to find occasions where Shapiro has missed a potential cross-reference. For instance, though FUQ lists both Buddy Holly's 1957 song "That'll Be the Day" and the appearance of that catchphrase in the John Wayne movie "The...

Exploring Being: An International Dialogue

Nurses and other health professionals are in a privileged position in that they are called to be with people and their families at some of the most important moments in persons' lives. In order to better prepare nurses for this awesome and challenging responsibility, a session of the 11th International Human Becoming Conference held in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, on November 6, 2004, reflected on famous quotations on Being and related Being to nursing practice. The human becoming school of thought is unique in its willingness to face the important but difficult question, what is Being?

Don't Know Much about History — Never Did

Surveys of students' knowledge of history are guaranteed to produce hand-wringing and accusations of appalling ignorance. Mr. Paxton challenges both the validity of such surveys and the assumption that today's students know far less than those of previous generations. Children nowadays love luxury, have bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect for their elders. -- Socrates COLUMNIST David Broder ranted about illiteracy. A resolution co-sponsored by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) declared that the next generation is danger of losing America's civic memory. A headline published by the CATO Institute trumpeted, Civic Ignorance Threatens American Liberty.1 Grave charges. Are they true? This round of educational allegation American-style was ignited by a survey of 556 college seniors that was released during the summer of 2000.2 In a telephone interview, the students were asked 34 multiple- choice questions about United States history, government, popular culture, and famous quotations. The average score of these young people was 53%. The dismal results (this highly charged adjective is brought to you courtesy of a story on the Education World website3) were fodder for a news cycle or two. The conclusions of opinion makers ranged from the usual bashing of teachers and schools to the supercilious fogyisms young people have endured at least since the days of Socrates. Let's face it: mocking youthful ignorance rarely fails to satisfy. That said, those who draw alarmist conclusions from the recent spate of drop-from- the-sky history surveys seem to have forgotten one thing: history. Shorn of historical perspective, the results certainly seem dreadful. But are they really that bad? What does dreadful mean in this context? Were the results markedly worse than those of past surveys? How does modern students' knowledge of history stack up next to that of generations past? For that matter, how do the results of history surveys compare to those of surveys of other school subjects? These are relevant questions for the historian. But apparently they don't occur to those who ply their trade as part-time critics of education. A search of their critiques reveals a sharp focus on the here and now, but hardly a mention of the historical record that could bring depth and breadth to the discussion. My purpose here is to add context to these periodic (if flawed) gauges of students' historical knowledge and to provide an alternative interpretation of the apparently anemic results. My focus is not on history tests, because surveys and tests are two different beasts.4 A test is an exercise in educational measurement that students prepare for by studying both individually and in groups. While the questions themselves are typically unknown to the test-takers, the general content of the test is well known. Time to prepare and test-prep materials are often available. Surveys, on the other hand, come without warning. These days, they frequently take the form of a telephone interview. In the account that follows, I make no claim of having examined every history survey ever given in the United States. Rather, I offer a cross-section of survey results going back almost 90 years. A Brief Survey of History Surveys In the United States, there is a long tradition of assessing students' knowledge of history by administering recall-on-demand surveys. Whether this is a reasonable method of measuring students' knowledge of the past is a topic for another article. But what is apparent from the historical record is that, when it comes to history surveys of students in the United States, the results have been remarkably consistent. Comparing surveys done over the course of almost a century is not a straightforward task. Different surveys ask different questions and even different kinds of questions (multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, identify names/terms, etc. …

Famous Quotations Network

Famous Quotations Network

Preventing school violence: A time for "hard, solid thinking"

Preventing school violence: A time for "hard, solid thinking"

The Poets' Inner Circle: Gaming Strategies Based on Famous Quotations

The Poets' Inner Circle: Gaming Strategies Based on Famous Quotations

Money's Famous Quotations

Money's Famous Quotations