Betty Wells
eNotes Educator
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2
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47
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About
I hold a Masters degree in History from The State University of New York at Buffalo and have permanent New York State certification as a social studies teacher, grades 7-12. I have always especially enjoyed tutoring students, helping them to understand how finer points help paint the bigger picture, and encouraging them to apply knowledge of the past to current and future issues. As the philosopher George Santayana has said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
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Recent Activity
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Answered a Question in Literature
The White Man’s Burden was published in 1973 by Winthrop Jordan, an historian from the University of Mississippi, whose research focused on the roots of racism. It is an abridgment of his 600 page... -
Answered a Question in History
Confucius, the great Chinese philosopher and teacher who was born in 551 BCE and died in 479 BCE, based his moral and ethical philosophy on the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do... -
Answered a Question in Literature
It is impossible to separate the writings of Roger Williams from religious themes, as everything he wrote (and all of his actions) was about the human conscience and its relationship with God.... -
Answered a Question in Reconstruction
During the Civil War, President Lincoln began formulating a plan to reunify the nation when the war came to an end. He felt reunification should be a gentle and gradual process. He planned to... -
Answered a Question in The Inheritance of Loss
This, the second novel by the acclaimed writer Kiran Desai, was published in 2006 and won the Man Booker Prize that year, as well as the National Book Critics Award for Fiction in 2007. This is a... -
Answered a Question in John Burroughs
I believe you are referring to the writing “Riverby” written in 1894 by John Burroughs, which is part of his twenty-three volume Complete Writings. John Burroughs was a literary naturalist (that... -
Answered a Question in The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Ivan Ilyich was a cold man, interested only in the comfort, power, and prestige that came to him through his official capacity as a magistrate. In his musings at the end of chapter 2, he recognizes... -
Answered a Question in Tuesdays With Morrie
The relationship between Mitch and Morrie in this gem of a book is deep and multi-layered, as all true relationships are. On the one hand, it is a relationship between a valued teacher and a... -
Answered a Question in European Exploration of America
Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, European traders traversed the relatively safe Silk Road to Asia in order to procure the silk and spices that were in high demand. By the... -
Answered a Question in Love and Hate in Jamestown
Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of a New Nation by David Price (2003) is a meticulously researched and well-written work of historical nonfiction. It recounts the... -
Answered a Question in European Colonization of North America
The term Manifest Destiny was coined in the mid 1840s by John O’Sullivan, who wrote in an editorial in a New York newspaper that it was ordained by Providence that the United States was to expand... -
Answered a Question in David Hume
David Hume (1711–1776) was a Scottish philosopher who attended the University of Edinburgh at the age of twelve. He spent his life reading, contemplating, and writing on a wide range of topics,... -
Answered a Question in History
The agricultural (agrarian) revolution began in England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Prior to that, most farmers lived in villages and walked out to common fields to tend... -
Answered a Question in Francis Bacon
Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is widely accepted as a progenitor of the scientific method and the father of the modern essay. In both areas he relied on systematic empirical thinking in order to... -
Answered a Question in History
In this book, published in 1993, Mark Wyman delves into a little discussed fact about European immigration to the United States between 1880 and 1930, namely that approximately one third (roughly... -
Answered a Question in History (General)
Machine politics became prevalent in big city politics in the mid-to-late nineteenth century because of the confluence of several social factors during that time. This was a time of great...