Books In Print

This valuable resource helps teachers guide ESL and EFL students through learning the alphabet and English sounds, grammar patterns, conversation, self-expression, and culture.
This charming little picture book about a pair of pet rats introduces young readers and pocket pet lovers to the basics of domestic rat care.
An invaluable handbook and ideal resource for novice and veteran substitute teachers - and for the administrators who hire, train, and supervise them.

Nonfiction Author

Cicely Rude lectures on educational linguistics in the Gladys L. Benerd School of Education at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California where she prepares future teachers to effectively evaluate and support the needs of diverse English language learners in their classrooms.

As the author of newspaper and academic journal articles on the subject of education, as well as resource materials for teachers, Cicely has developed teacher education workshops for numerous organizations including California Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (CATESOL), the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program, and the Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco. She has lived and worked in numerous countries and taught learners from a wide variety of linguistic and sociocultural backgrounds.

Focus on Education
Education and free inquiry are keys to global unity, equity, and sustainability. In fact, they are essential to the future of humanity. In 1656, Thomas Ady warned that “the Nations [will] perish for lack of knowledge. As Carl Sagan wrote in 1995, “Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance.” At the beginning of the 21st century, we have arranged a world in which crucial elements, including transportation, communication, education, agriculture, medicine, protection of the environment, entertainment, commerce, and the key democratic institution of voting depend on science and technology. At the same time, we have also arranged our world such that relatively few people understand science, technology, or the democratic process of government. Even the government officials whom we elect to represent us have low to non-existent understandings of the scientific method of inquiry. This is a recipe for disaster. As Sagan wrote, “We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”

Focus on Critical Thinking
The viability of a democratic system of government depends on an educated electorate. Without the ability to identify significantly reliable evidence and margins of error; without a healthy helping of skepticism and critical thinking skills, members of the voting public become sitting ducks for confidence tricksters, deceptions, rumors, and expensive mistakes. In the words of Derek Bok, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” That’s what P.T. Barnum meant when he said, “A sucker is born every minute.” With breathtaking and heart-wrenching advertisements, advertisers often pray upon the credulous and the ignorant in ways that betray contempt for their customers. Credulous acceptance of the unproven can be expensive.

Benjamin Franklin wrote that “Democracy is the worst possible form of government, except for all of the others that have been tried.” Science and modern public education are much like democracy in the sense that they are certainly not perfect, but they are best that we have right now and that we can always strive to improve upon them. By thinking critically, and by applying scientific thought processes and criteria for quality of evidence and margins of error, we cannot prescribe courses of human action, but we can identify and assess the possible consequences of alternative courses of action.

Focus on Language
To understand the connection between sustainability, critical thinking, education, and language, we can work backward. Let us accept that nearly everything in our 21st century lives is dependent in one or more ways on science, technology, and communication and that an effective system of education is essential to widespread understanding of science and technology. Whether written, spoken, signed, or otherwise, language is the means by which teach each other. Language serves many functions, one of which is a tool for communicating information and sharing culture. Culture can be defined as anything that is learned and taught, as opposed to instinctive or inherent.

It then stands to reason that a system of education in which those who make policy and standards, those who design curricula, and those who administer and teach all understand the language learning process and can effectively work to include all students in the learning process—including those learning the lingua franca as a second language—is essential for equity of all people and for the sustainability of the planet on which we all live.

“Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other; citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
--Carl Sagan

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being."
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe