Transcript Document

The Scholar Pack
A guide on the Scholar
Pack, how it works and
why it works.
By Phoebe Kelleher
The Scholar Pack
The scholar pack was designed to help students develop a repository
of knowledge that they can draw upon to write argumentative
essays, especially in timed circumstances such as the A.P test.
It helps students understand a complex text through using not only
their own summarization but also analyzing the text at hand.
The scholar pack requires that students select and memorize four
quotes from each text. These quotations should be selected
because the student feels they reflect some of the most important
ideas in the text.
The Scholar Pack Note cards
Each Note card contains:


Side One
 Title
 Author
 Important Quote
Side Two
 summary of central
arguments
 Brief analysis of text
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave
-Frederick Douglass
“Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and
no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell.”
“That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red
with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of
harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of
a demon.”
-When he was denied education, he was unaware of what he lacked.
But once he begun to learn and use his mind to it’s full potential, his
determination to learn was stronger than any oppression from his
master. Once the mind has sampled literacy and education, it desires it
most of all.
- Slavery is the most cruel of practices; it poisons the kindest of
persons with cruelty. Where there is slavery, there is both ignorance
and injustice.
Scholar Pack Assignment



Each student must complete 12 scholar note
cards per quarter.
Students are required to memorize the quotes
and have a strong knowledge of the central
arguments in the text.
The nonfiction books students choose to read
must be approved in advance by the teacher.
Approval will be based upon the book’s
appropriateness for the Advance Placement
Language and Composition curriculum.
Examples of Useful Texts for
the Scholar Pack Include:
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Tips for remembering note card
quotes and summaries.
Recite material out loud.
 Sing it.
 Read (aloud) in context.
 Write it.
 Assume different roles
while reciting material
aloud.
 Read it before you
sleep.


Type/write material in big
letters and post it in the
shower so you can read
or recite it in a relaxed
state.
 Make the beginning
letter of each.
argument/quote/note to
the first letter of each
word in the title.
 Ask someone to quiz
you.
Scholar Note Card Examples
Civil Disobedience
-Henry David Thoreau
“Government is best which governs least or not at all.”
“The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do
at any time what I think is right.”
- The best kind of government is one which exercises the least
amount of control and intervenes only when necessary.
-Only one person is needed to initiate change in a corrupt
society,
-It is every person’s responsibility to critique the
government’s actions and laws and take action against any
that are unjust. If the punishment for doing this is
imprisonment, then jail is the proper place for a responsible
honorable person to be.
- Only when a person denounces the government’s unjust
laws and accepts the punishment willingly is he or she free.
- The wealthier a man, the less virtuous he is.
From: Civil Disobedience
Letter from Birmingham Jail
-Dr. Martin Luther King jr.
-Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and
foster such a tension that a community which has constantly
refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice anywhere.”
“Freedom is never voluntarily given up by the oppressor, it
must be demanded by the oppressed.”
-When a people, such as African Americans during this
time, suffer intense oppression for a long enough time and
their government refuses to amend society’s discrimination,
these people must take direct action to peacefully protest.
“It is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends.”
-It is a person’s responsibility to disobey unjust laws for
they are not true laws.
From: Letter From Birmingham Jail
The Allegory of the Cave
-Plato
“He would rather suffer anything than entertain these false
notions and live in this miserable manner.”
“Will they rule who are truly rich, not in silver and gold, but
in virtue and wisdom, which are the true blessings of life.”
-Many people are in a state of mental captivity. They have not been
shown the true ways of humanity–the light.
-After people have reached an enlightened intellectual state, they will
find it difficult to return to their previous land of intellectual darkness
and pity others who have never ventured out of this darkness. When
they argue with others who have not reached this enlightened state, the
others will think the enlightened ones to be crazy and worthless
because their ideas seem alien and bombastic.
-People are born with the knowledge and ability to understand
enlightened ideas of the soul and self, they need only to be educated to
find this enlightened understanding.
-Wisdom is divine, but people do use it for both good and evil.
-Enlightened people of the government must descend to serve the
lower people, as well as the more the fortunate enlightened and
wealthy, because it is their duty to serve all classes equally.
From: The Allergory of the Cave
Meditation: The Path to Enlightenment
-Thoughts from the Tao-te Ching
Lao-Tzu
“Because he believes in himself, he doesn’t try to convince
others. Because he is content with himself, he doesn’t need
other’s approval. Because he accepts himself, the whole
world accepts him.”
“The World is sacred.
It can’t be improved.
If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you’ll loose it.”
-To get rid of evil, remove good.
-The government or leader should lead passively and
subtly so that the people are unaware of it’s presence.
-Not striving for fail, lawfulness, or righteousness and
simply being who you are, is they way to achieve balance
through the Tao.
-Do not attempt to control nature for it is not an object.
Do not attempt to control a person for people are part of
nature.
1421
-Gavin Menzies
“The emperor. . . has ordered us [Zheng He] and others
[Zhou Man, Hong Bao, Zhou Wen and Yang Qing] at the
head of several tens of thousands of officers and imperial
troops to journey in more than a hundred ships. . . to treat
distant people with kindness. . . We have gone to the
western regions . . . altogether more than three thousand
countries large and small. We have traversed more than a
hundred thousand li (forty thousand nautical miles) of
immense water spaces”
-Europeans did not discover the New World.
-Between the years 1421 and 1423 the Chinese built a fleet of 800
massive ships called junks. The fleet’s orders/ goals were to reach
every continent and trade peacefully with the natives in the new
lands. They accomplished these goals.
-Remnants and evidence of their journey can be found on every
continent.
-The Chinese, during this time, discovered how to accurately
measure and navigate by longitude and latitude using the stars.
- “[The Chinese fleets] had sailed through sixty-two island
archipelagos comprising more than seventeen thousand islands and
charted tens of thousands of miles of coastline. Admiral Zheng
He’s claim to have visited three thousand countries large and small
appeared to be true. The Chinese fleets had voyaged across the
Indian Ocean to East Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope to the
Cape Verde Islands, through the Caribbean to North America and
the Arctic, down to Cape Horn, the Antarctic, Australia, New
Zealand and across the Pacific.”
All Africa and Her Progenies
-Richard Dawkins
“ The story of African Eve is a parochial, human microcosm
of a grander and incomparably more ancient epic.”
“As we follow our genetic river back through remote
antiquity, there were probably lots of Eves and lots of
Adams.”
-Mitochondrial Eve is one woman who, through the
female’s only gene path, is the most recent common
ancestor of every human alive today. She lived between
150 thousand and 1/4 million years ago.
-The Focal Ancestor, the most recent common ancestor of
all modern people through any gene path, was probably a
man.
-Both lived in Africa, therefore, all people originated in
Africa. Our ancestors were living in Africa only about a
few hundred thousand years ago.
The Morals of a Prince
-Niccolo Machiavelli
“It is necessary for a prince who wishes to maintain his
position to learn how not to be good.”
“ For one can generally say this about men: that they are
ungrateful, fickle, simulators and deceivers, avoiders of
danger, greedy for gain.”
-No prince possesses all of the good or necessary
qualities a leader should have, but it is his job to appear
as though he does. A prince should always appear
virtuous.
-A prince should not distribute his money to the poor
throughout his country for he will be left with empty
coffers. Instead, he should steal money from other
countries (so it is not his own money he gives away) and
publicize his generosity as much as possible.
-He should not reveal all of the truth, he should only
reveal what he thinks the public should know. But he
should convince the public that they know all.
-It is better to be a feared leader than a loved leader. No
one would cross a cruel leader but they might take
advantage of a compassionate one.
The Mystery of Zen
-Gilbert Highet
“Do not try to use words. Do not think. Make no efforts
toward withdrawal from the world. Expect no sublime
ecstasies. Live. All that is the ultimate reality, and it can be
understood from the motion of a finger...”
- Zen is being present within the space and the world.
- It is not thinking or feeling but letting the thing happen.
- It is not expecting to find success at the end of every
struggle.
- It is responding to impulses passively without judging or
analyzing actions.
Existentialism
-Jean-Paul Sartre
“They envisage a number of possibilities and when they
choose they realize that it has value only because it’s
chosen.”
“Thinks will be as man will have decided they are to be.”
- People control themselves and are fully responsible for
every action they take.
- People are free because an individual’s personal morals and
restrictions do not exist when they are born.
- People have the freedom to explore any choice they wish.
Any decision an individual makes is the right decision
because it was the one he or she ended up making.
- People have no responsibility to follow the laws of religion.
Of Youth and Age
-Francis Bacon
“A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he
have lost no time.”
“The errors of young men are the ruin of business.”
-Young people can achieve the wisdom and cautious skill
of experienced elders if they waste no time with
impulsive decisions and spend all their time learning
good judgment. But this rarely happens. In business, the
young bring their bold energy and grand ideas but often
fail because they are not fit to make decisions with good
judgment, serve counsel or advise, or settle business.
-Elders have the experience and wisdom but can fail
because they are too cautious. Some lack the spontaneity
to take risks and so their businesses floats below success.
-A successful business is most likely to be built of a
collaboration between the young and the experienced.
The elders will ground the business with their good
judgment and wisdom and the young will provide the
catalyst to make the business unique.