Baltimore Polytechnic Institute

Summer Reading

BALTIMORE POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE SUMMER READING ASSIGNMENTS

ATTENTION STUDENTS: Courses are listed alphabetically by title; please scroll down. If your course isn't listed here, please call the main office (410-396-7026) and arrange to pick up a paper copy of the assignment.

American Government: Directions for completing 30-article, current event notebook were given to each student in June. Hard copies are available in the main office. Additional information for A Course students is available on Mr. Headley's assignment page on the Poly website. (Ignore all due dates. Everything posted is summer reading.)

AP Biology Summer Reading: The Beak of the Finch, by Jonathan Weiner

1. From which experience did Darwin learn about the inheritance of characteristics in birds?

2. Give an example from the Grants’ research that demonstrates how variation in a characteristic can mean the difference between life and death.

3. Distinguish among courtship, mating, laying eggs, fledging offspring, and becoming a grandparent. Which of these is ultimately the most important for the continuation of an individual’s genes in a population?

4. Explain how natural selection and sexual selection work against each other.

5. Distinguish between competitive exclusion and character displacement.

6. What is the cause of “invisible shorelines” between species of birds?

7. Supply an advantage and a disadvantage of hybridization between species.

8. Since the volcanic Galapagos Islands were geologically similar, to what did Darwin attribute the differences between species on the various islands?

9. Specifically (at the molecular level) explain how insects became resistant to the effects of DDT.

10. Why does the author compare the beak of the finch to the brain of the human?

AP Econ

AP Psychology Summer Reading

Each of the books on the list below is about a particular psychological disorder. Choose a book from the list, and do some research on the disorder it involves. Then, read the book. As you read the book, take note of several instances described therein that are typical of the disease. You should have at least a page of observations.

Darkness Visible, by William Styron (depression)

The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Washing, by Judy Rapoport (obsessive compulsive disorder)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon (autism)

An Unquiet Mind, by Kay Redfield Jamison (bipolar disorder)

The Best Little Girl in the World, by Steven Levenkron (anorexia)

ALSO

During the summer, keep a dream journal. Get a small notebook and keep it next to your bed. Any time that you remember a dream after you wake up, write down what you remember. Try to relate the content of the dream to what is happening in your life. Please don’t just say, “I don’t remember my dreams.” If you try to remember immediately upon awakening, you will probably be able to recall some things.

English I, II, III, IV, AP:

Assignments for all English courses are only available in hard copy from the main office.

Genetics Summer Reading: Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

I. Huxley wrote this book in 1932, when technology was far from what it is today. Many things that existed only in his imagination at that time have become reality in the ensuing decades. Below are several such ideas. For each of them, please do the following:

(a) state today’s counterpart, (b) explain how it is like Huxley’s idea, and (c) explain how it is different from Huxley’s idea.

1. soma

2. embryos grown in bottles

3. the feelies

4. Malthusian belt

5. hypnopedia (Do NOT use the example of tapes used during sleep. Rather, think of an example from your own life in which you are repeatedly given messages, perhaps without even being conscious of them, that are intended to make you believe certain things.)

II. Write a brief essay in answer to the following question: If you were given the opportunity to live as an alpha in the society of Brave New World, would you accept, or not? Explain why you answered as you did.

ALL PAPERS MUST BE TYPED, AND ARE DUE ON THE FIRST DAY OF GENETICS CLASS.

United States

History Summer Reading Assignment: Founding Brothers by
Joseph Ellis (published by Vantage Books--obtain from a library/bookstore/online bookseller)

* All work must be typed – (12 font, New Times Roman, double-spaced, 1 inch margins). Neatly written work will be accepted, but only as a last resort.

* All work must be available for submission on the first day of school.

* This assignment will carry the value of two test grades.

* The grade for this assignment will drop by one letter grade for each day it is late, and failure to turn in this assignment will disqualify the student from any extra credit opportunities for the first semester.

* All work must clearly feature the name of the student.

* All work must be the original work of the student.

* While this is not an English summer reading assignment, it is expected that all students will utilize proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling in the completion of this task.

* Students will select FIVE of the following questions and prepare a well organized response to each in no less than one page for each question. (An accurately completed assignment will be no less than five pages in length).

* Students should clearly identify which question they have elected to answer by indicating its #.

1. The anecdote that Benjamin Rush liked to repeat about an overheard conversation between Benjamin Harrison and Elbridge Gerry on July 4, 1776, makes clear that the signers of the Declaration of Independence felt some doubt about their chances of surviving their revolutionary act. As Ellis points out, if the British commanders had been more aggressive, "The signers of the Declaration would . . . have been hunted down, tried, and executed for treason, and American history would have flowed forward in a wholly different direction" [p. 5]. Why is it so difficult to grasp this notion of the new nation's utter fragility? How successful is Founding Brothers in taking the reader back in time, in order to witness the contingencies of a historical gamble in which "sheer chance, pure luck" [p. 5] were instrumental in determining the outcome?

2. Ellis has said, "We have no mental pictures that make the revolutionary generation fully human in ways that link up with our own time. . . . These great patriarchs have become Founding Fathers, and it is psychologically quite difficult for children to reach a realistic understanding of their parents, who always loom larger-than-life as icons we either love or hate." How does Founding Brothers address this problem, and how does it manage to humanize our image of the founders? How does the book's title relate to this issue?

3. What was really at stake in the disagreement and duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton? If Hamilton felt that the disparaging statements he had made about Burr were true, should he have lied in order to save his life? Was this merely a war over words? Did words have more significance then than they do now? What role did newspapers play in the drama, and how is the media's role different or similar today?

4. Because of the founders' refusal to press for abolition, the slavery question was bequeathed to Abraham Lincoln to solve--and the Civil War illustrated just how divisive the issue was. How accurate was George Washington's belief that "slavery was a cancer on the body politic of America that could not at present be removed without killing the patient" [p. 158]? Should the nation's leaders have pressed harder, given that "the further one got from 1776, the lower the revolutionary fires burned and the less imperative the logic of the revolutionary ideology seemed" [p. 104]? What difference might it have made in the racial currents of contemporary American life if slavery had been abolished in the early days of the nation?

5. How does the character of George Washington come across, as Ellis presents him and in the quoted extracts of the farewell address? How does Washington measure up to the mythology that surrounded him even in his own time? What qualities made Washington so indispensable to the new nation?

6. Ellis focuses more intensively on the plight of the slaves than that of the Indians, but he does point out that Washington addressed their situation with the suggestion that they abandon their hunter-gatherer way of life and assimilate themselves into the general population as farmers [p. 159]. Was this a viable solution, or merely a pragmatic one? What other solutions might have been offered at the time?

7. What is most surprising about Thomas Jefferson's character, as presented by Ellis? Which aspects of his personality, or which particular actions or decisions, seem incongruous in the man who wrote the idealistic words of the Declaration of Independence?

8. What is most impressive about Abigail Adams's intervention on her husband's behalf in his quarrel with Thomas Jefferson? Is it possible to compare the political partnership of John and Abigail Adams with, for example, that of Hillary and Bill Clinton?

9. In the conflict between Republicans and Federalists described by Ellis throughout the book, readers can understand the origins of party factionalism that is a strong factor in American politics to this day. If, as Ellis writes, "The dominant intellectual legacy of the Revolution, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, stigmatized all concentrated political power and even . . . depicted any energetic expression of governmental authority as an alien force that all responsible citizens ought to repudiate and, if possible, overthrow" [p. 11], what compromises were made in order to bring a stable national government to fruition? Does the apparent contradiction between Republican and Federalist principles still create instability in the American system?

10. In recent years historians have tended to avoid focusing on such issues as leadership and character, and more is being written about popular movements and working people whose lives exemplify a sort of democratic norm. Ellis clearly goes against this trend in offering Founding Brothers as "a polite argument against the scholarly grain" [p. 12]. Does he effectively convince his readers that the founding of the American nation was, in fact, largely accomplished by a handful of extraordinary individuals?

World History: