What Are They Thinking!?

Any teachers out there?  I’ve never taught school so I lack a first-hand perspective, but word from the front is that not only are reading skills declining, thinking skills are too.  At a writers’ meeting, at least three aspiring children’s writers who are also teachers agreed that more students can’t spell and continually mix up homonyms.  Even simple distinctions like to, two, and too defeat them, and no amount of workbook exercises correct the problem.  They might score 100% in the workbook, but make the same mistakes in composition.

I noticed this problem when homeschooling: what the kids got correct in the workbook they missed in original composition.  Obviously it didn’t click–at first–that what the workbooks were teaching had real-world application.  I think over time they began to see connections between what they read and what they wrote, but in the meantime I ditched the workbooks and just focused on grammar through composition.  (The program Learning Language Arts Through Literature does this, but it wasn’t available back in the pioneer days.  Ruth Beechick’s You Can Teach Your Child at Home and Sam Blumenthal’s How to Tutor take the same approach–end of homeschool commercial.)  

We were able to correct the problem of the grammar-writing connection–but it remains a hurdle for kids of elementary age–one that is not being cleared, apparently.  A fifth-grade teacher in our group said that her district tried a pilot program involving intense focus on spelling for an entire year–spelling notebooks, drills, exercises, etc.–and at year’s end the pilot class’s skills were little or no better than the other fifth-graders who didn’t participate.

Some kids seem to have a natural ability to spell, or at least it comes fairly easily to them.  I think it has to do with the kind of memory you have, an ability to recognize and remember certain letter combinations.  From my homeschooling days I recall many good readers who were terrible spellers and nothing seemed to help much.  Besides, bad spellers can always look to founding fathers who couldn’t spell–Thomas Jefferson comes to mind.

But the inability to distinguish homonyms is something else again–that’s a thinking problem.  The fact that English is notoriously difficult in spelling and idiom is no excuse.  An agile brain should learn fairly early to distinguish between there, their, and they’re and determine the context where each one fits.  It involves several functions: recognizing the letter sequence, knowing the definition, and determining the usage.  Which sounds complicated–and it is!  But any fourth- or fifth-grader should be able to do it.  If they can’t, they are deficient in two vital functions: distinction and connection.

We’re not supposed to say that anyone is “deficient.”  No, Julie and Jayden just think differently, and all ways are good.  Except that if you are lacking in either of these critical functions, you can’t be said to “think” at all.

Here’s what education is: learning to distinguish between one thing and another, and, once the distinction is made, discerning how one thing relates to another.  Our brains are made to learn subtlety and precision, to skip lightly between inferences and stretch comparisons.  What makes apples different from oranges?  And how are they alike?  How is the American Revolution different from the French Revolution, and how are they related?  What’s the connection between waves and particles? 

And how about the connection between reading and thinking?  We don’t fully know, but we’ll probably know a lot more before long.

I WAS A NaNoWriMo DROPOUT

The thing I hated most about elementary school, besides softball (I couldn’t hit and I couldn’t catch) was arithmetic drills.  Our teacher would hand out a page of 100 sums (addition, subtraction, multiplication or division) and we had to complete them in a given time, such as three to five minutes.  She might even have set a timer, a devilish contraption whose relentless tick-tick-tick twisted me like the stem of a watch.  The faster I tried to go, the more my brain hardened into a solid block that isolated facts had to worm through like a maze.  When the timer dinged!, we swapped papers for grading while our teacher read off the answers.  If she was feeling particularly sadistic, she’d have students hold up their hands who’d missed less than ten, less than twenty, less than thirty . . . I would almost always be among the worst scorers, if not the absolute bottom.

So imagine my attempting to write an average of 1666 words a day every day for National Novel Writing Month.  At least nobody set a timer.  Reports of fellow participants in NaNoWriMo finishing their quota and typing “THE END” before Thanksgiving had something of that ding! of doom about them, though.

I suspect those over-achievers are in the minority and my failure to keep up is not too much of a surprise–or a disappointment.  I don’t compose very well at the keyboard and so attempted to write my daily quota in pencil, which can’t be a recommended procedure.  I also find it difficult to construct the story outline before the story: my usual modus operandi is to just start writing the story, and see what happens.  This always involves a few false starts.  NaNoWriMo anticipates that and reassures participants that this first effort will be the roughest of rough drafts.  Maintaining tension, developing characters, even making sense–none of that is the point.  The point is to stop making excuses, stop putting it off, stop waiting for inspiration to strike, and get words on the page.  Lots of words.  At the end, what you’ll have is not likely a novel–at best it’s a pile of source material from which a novel may be constructed.

I’ve never worked that way, and won’t make a habit of it.  My purpose in joining in was to shake loose some bad habits and make myself produce.  Writers often, or usually, write when they don’t feel like it; as I heard someone say years ago, “I don’t like writing but I like having written.”  I don’t imagine building contractors like every part of the actual work, but a finished building is a sight to behold.  So I feel good about the days I managed to reach my (estimated) quota, and not too bad about the days I didn’t.  It was a useful discipline, and I do have something to show for it: about 125 handwritten pages with characters, actions, and lots of words.  Maybe something can come of it. 

And for next November, I’m already thinking about what I’ll do differently.

Don’t Say That! Part Two

The Michael L. Prinz Award is given by the American Library Association to a work intended for teenagers “that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature.”  Granted that “literary” and “excellence” are relative terms, and YA books have been pushing the limits for years, Tales of the Madman Underground pushes all the way over the cliff in one area: language.  I’ve never read worse.  Ever.  In fact, I’ve never read as bad.  It’s not just vulgarity (the f- word everywhere, s- word less frequent).  An occasional use of some of those words can be effective for certain purposes, and it’s naïve to think that our children will be ruined by seeing them on a page every now and then.  But the author’s use strikes me as gratuitous.  There’s no reason for spreading them like heavy-on-the-mayo on a hamburger which almost disappears in an excess of condiment.

But worse is the profanity.  I have seldom read or heard the name of Jesus dragged through such vile slop, and around the middle of the book I had to stop reading.  I might have missed a climax so shattering and affirming it redeemed all, but . . . nah.  The author has no discernable use except as some sort of shock value.  His character is contemptuous of “churchies” throughout, so it may be personal.  More likely, it’s just contemptuous.

Of course I could read worse language–in books for adults.  This is a book for teens (and actually, kids gravitate toward YA at the age of eleven or twelve).  More than that–an honored book for teens.  There’s a silver sticker on it (designating a sort of runner-up to the actual Prinz award), making it more likely to show up in junior high and high school libraries.  Heeeey, kids!

In my opinion, this is irresponsible.  I can guess at the award committee’s logic: kids these days, so much to deal with.  Busy parents, unnecessary wars, evil Republicans, religious nuttery, pressure to conform–how do we help them?  Do we try to refine their tastes a bit, elevate their sight, given them a glimpse of real nobility, something to strive for (which sounds awfully patronizing but used to be the meaning of education)?  Or do we pimp a noble soul in sneakers who talks like Tony Soprano?

The protagonist actually is a noble soul: long-suffering towards his crazy mom, hard-working, loyal, and generous.  It’s just hard to see how he got that way.  Getting that way doesn’t come easy for most of us.  We need help, we need aspirations.  The starred reviews of Madman dismiss the language, as though it were incidental.  But language is not incidental; language is what literature is made of, and literature is the art of shaping words to thoughts and emotions, educating mind and heart.  An overuse of shock words deadens sensitivity to them, and perhaps sensitivity in general.  How many times do you have to be hit in the face until you don’t feel it?

Thinking By Hand

I knew there was a reason I write out my first drafts with a pencil!  All this time I’ve been telling people that I need something to chew on while writing fiction, and pencils work better than keyboards.  But now the Wall Street Journal comes to my aid with proof of “How Handwriting Trains the Brain.” 

Penmanship has been the subject least likely to be taught for at least twenty years; old fuddy-duddies like me have been complaining about the increasing illegibility of the average hand-writer.  Now that we’re teaching kindergartners to keyboard it might be time to ask if we’re losing something.  Not Spencerian penmasters capable of addressing all your wedding invitations, but mental connections.  It makes sense that children learn their letters faster and better if they have to write them, but research indicates that handwriting stimulates brain activity.  Neural scans show that “sequential finger movements activated massive regions involved in thinking, language and working memory–the system for temporarily storing and managing information.”

I’m a little skeptical of “studies” that reinforce what I already believe–in fact I’m skeptical of “studies,” period.  But this one has a lot of anecdotal support, including Shop Class as Soul Craft: an Inquiry Into the Value of Work, by Matthew Crawford.  Crawford is a PhD and former policy wonk who quit wonking in order to start a motorcycle repair shop.  He argues for an integration of mind and hand, claiming that we think better when we make or repair or build.  Practical skills merge with abstract thought to a greater degree than we know.

I have a permanent callous on the middle finger of my left hand from holding a pencil.  When the thoughts are flowing, I love the downward stroke and the upward curl, rhythmic as breathing.  If I were to look at a draft years later (which I never do) I’d be able to tell the good days from the bad ones by the exuberant cross of a ‘t’ or the lariat-swirl sweeping back to dot an ‘i’.  Maybe that’s just me.  But it was heartening, at an autograph session last Friday, so see girls approach my table with journals for me to sign.  “Fill up this book!” I wrote.  With thoughts by hand.

Don’t say that!

“They all say things like that.”

“Kids hear much worse on the playground.”

“They’re going to hear the same language in the movies they watch during a Saturday-night sleepover.”

Yes to all that.  So why not, for the sake of veracity, include an occasional “bad word” in children’s fiction?

It depends, like so much else involving art.  And, like so much else, any lines drawn will be smudged, any prescribed use will be misused.  Here’s the problem:

Fiction is story-telling, and in story-telling, some things have to be left out.  Otherwise it would be life, not art.  Veracity in storytelling is the judicious art of determining what you will show, and how.  Bad language can help to identify a character’s character or signify strong feeling.  But I don’t recall any novels, juvenile or otherwise, that are about bad language.  So it’s not necessary to the plot.  Then what is it necessary for?

Until fairly recently, nothing.  Even The Catcher in the Rye, known for its groundbreaking language, lacks most of the anatomical words we know so well today.  Children’s author have traditionally had three strategies for indicating profanity where the action seems to call for it.  One is by eupemism, where a milder term is substituted for the offensive word.  Norman Mailer, no children’s author, substituted “fug” (if I remember right?) for the other f word when his publisher restricted use of the latter (back in the innocent sixties).  He made it a deliberate provocation.   S. E. Hinton used words like Shoot! and (daringly) Hell! in The Outsiders, but such obvious bait and switch looks silly now. 

Another strategy is straightforward exposition: “He swore.”  Though it seems pale and limp standing by itself, it works very well in an action-packed story where all we need is a little stress on the character’s feeling.  Roland Smith uses it frequently with no loss of effectiveness.

 Then there’s the nudge, a way of leaving an impression of the word without the actual word.  Here’s how I did it in a middle-grade novel: “‘Bug off,’ says Spencer.  Though he doesn’t exactly say bug.”  That formula is used one other time in the same book; any more would be too clever by half.

These days I appreciate such restraint more than not.  Profanity, vulgarity (often together) have stampeded into YA fiction and even seeped into middle-grade, with such abandon I wonder when the dam broke.  But is doesn’t answer ought.  Everybody knows we can use these words in youth literature now, but should we?  More about that soon.

Gross, part two

Almost the whole of Christian theology could perhaps be deduced from two facts: (1) That men make coarse jokes, and (b) That they feel the dead to be uncanny.                                                              C. S. Lewis, Miracles

In commenting on the trend in juvenile literature toward gross-out humor (in order to appeal to boys),I don’t see much speculation as to why so much juvenile humor is obsessed with bodily functions.  In fact, that’s one characteristic that defines “juvenile.” Yes, little kids giggle uncontrollably at the very word “underwear,” but why?  Yes, 5-8 year-old girls (and 5-21 year-old boys) roll on the floor at any mention of poop, boogers, pee, snot–I won’t go on–but what makes these particular emissions funny, when blood is something else?  Lewis’s point is that human beings are a peculiar phenomenon, feet of clay and head of cloud, forever at odds with their own nature.  “I do not perceive that dogs see anything funny about being dogs; I suspect that angels see nothing funny about being angels.” 

Presumably, both dogs and angels feel at fully at home in themselves, whether bounded by skin or spirit.  But humans, who are somewhere in between, laugh at bodily functions and shiver at ghosts.  If this were an inborn characteristic we would expect it to show up very early, and so it does.  Ghost stories are just as popular as gross stories among kids, and what could explain the peculiar popularity of zombies among young adults?

Recent lab tests at Yale University indicate a sense of morality in babies as young as six months.  But a natural tendency, by definition, is not a refined sensibility.  Little children may have a rudimentary understanding of right and wrong but still need to be trained in the nuances, especially regarding their own tendency to make exceptions for themselves.  The humor inherent in the angel/animal dichotomy that translates to potty jokes is no reason to react in horror, but neither does it mean we should forego, or even delay, the training in what’s appropriate.  Isn’t “doing what comes naturally” the antithesis of education?

Ex ducere, the Latin root of education, means “to lead out of.”   Maybe we could start by leading out of the bathroom.

Ewwww, Gross!

Thomas Spence, of Spence Publishing Company (Dallas) has some thoughts on what explains the widening literacy gap between boys and girls.  Since 1992, the disparity has grown, to as much as ten percentage points.  In his article on the subject in the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Spence proposes a simple solution: pull the plug.  In other words, severely restrict your son’s access to video games, or eliminate them altogether.

Anecdotally, I can say this works.  Our son was so fascinated with electronic games he was continually asking to play the primitive version of chess that came with the ancient Toshiba laptop my husband used for his job.  We didn’t own a PC until 1990, and we bought one game to go with it (called Mad Marbles, or something like that).  The world of shareware knock-offs opened up further possibilities, but Tielman was limited to one hour on weekdays and two/day on weekends.  We also homeschooled (Mr. Spence says there is no gender literacy gap among homeschoolers, but cites no stats), making that kind of control possible.  Tielman saved his money to buy SuperMario and Sonic the Hedgehog but still suffered our one-hour limit.  In between times he read a lot, and he read all kinds of stuff: Bobbsey Twins and Hardy Boys, fantasy, historical and realistic fiction, action-adventure. 

Now he can play all the games he has time for, but he still reads.  If he were in public school now and lagging in his literacy, he might have joined the drift toward post-literacy.  As an antidote, he might be subjected to books like The Day My Butt Went Psycho, because gross-out humor is now prescribed as a gateway to more serious works.  That’s what preadolescent boys are interested in, right?  I recently read The Book Whisperer, by Donalyn Miller, a sixth-grade teacher in Keller, Texas (not far from Spence Publishing).  She claims to have converted boys in her class to reading by judicial application of books like The Day My Butt Went Psycho; does that mean that from butts to brains is a natural progression for boys?

Maybe not for boys only.  I remember being amused by gross-out humor (actually rolling on the floor at the thought of certain bodily functions), at the age of eight.  We all know it’s common, though the reason why is an interesting question.  I might get to that later.  More to the point, we all know it’s a base form of humor that we eventually outgrow.  Even though the popularity of movies by Judd Apatow and the Farrelly brothers suggests we might not be outgrowing it soon enough.  I admire Donalyn Miller and appreciated The Book Whisperer very much.  I don’t doubt that she’s sprouted readers in her classroom by the application of some slightly gross, er, fertilizer.  Today Captain Underpants, tomorrow Atlas Shrugged?  Maybe.  But if you can swing it, Thomas Spencer’s recommendation seems more fruitful.  As he writes, “If you keep meeting a boy where he is, he doesn’t go very far.”

I Can’t Keep Up With Them!

Another day, another book challenge.  Wes Scoggins of Republic, MO has claimed that three books should be banned from the school curriculum because they are “soft-pornography” (I think he means “soft-core” pornography?)  The books in question are Speak (Laurie Halse Anderson), Twenty Boy Summer (Sarah Ockler), and Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut).  I’ve only read Speak, which I would not classify as soft-core anything.  Twenty Boy Summer I somehow missed in the continual flood of YA books published every year and Vonnegut is one of those dense literary geniuses encountered in one’s academic career, who flowered after my academic career was over.

I have to wonder if Mr. Scoggins is jumping on the bandwagon after the dust-up in Stockton (see below), but apparently not.  He has other concerns about the district curriculum and isn’t afraid to express himself.  My opinion doesn’t change.  It’s his right to speak up and the school’s right to consider his objections and decide in any way they think best.  Ms. Anderson and Ms. Ockler will enjoy a little bump in books sales and Mr. Vonnegut will keep on doing whatever he does.  (Is he still alive?  Better check on that.)  No bonfires will be lit and no child will be turned off reading who wasn’t already.  It’s a great country–everybody chill.

Here We Go Again

Just in time for Banned Books Week, another censorship case, this time close to home.  The school board of Stockton, MO recently voted 7-0 to uphold the restriction of a single book: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie.  I’ve read the book, which has won numerous awards including the National Book Award for Children’s fiction.  (The NBA really needs to divide the award into children’s and YA divisions.)  Frankly I don’t remember a lot of it, which is my fault, not Mr. Alexie’s–I should have taken a few notes.  The main character is a Native American teenager who escapes the reservation to attend a white school–the narrative concerns his struggles to adjust and reconcile his native culture with the life he wants to live.  Practically everyone in his family dies, mostly from problems related to alcohol.  This closely reflects the author’s own experience and might have been his fate if he’d stayed on the Rez.

I respect Mr. Alexie and the value of his struggle and his right in a free society to write any book he chooses.  At the same time, I timidly suggest that there’s no need to assume we’re on the fast track to Nazi book bonfires every time a volume is booted from a school library.  A few points:

a. Parents have rights, too.  Maybe the ‘rents are hopelessly provincial and square, but that in itself does not prohibit them from exercising some judgment over their children’s input.  Anyone who’s been a parent knows the anxiety, uncertainty, and often heartbreak of raising a child.  And every parent makes mistakes.  Restricting certain media may be a mistake, but it’s one of small consequence, more often than not.  Given the toll taken by parental abdication in our society, I’m a lot more tolerant of parental overreach–if that’s what this is. 

b. Testimonials to the contrary, I don’t think a teen is going to be damaged by not reading Sherman Alexie’s book.  I do not presume to know what inspires everybody, but I do know that if you miss the first bus to Inspiration there’s likely to be another coming along soon.  During the community meeting this week a high school student stood up to say, “This book is my hope.  It’s about not giving up.  It’s about not letting people tell you you’re not worth it.”  I don’t disagree; I only suggest that The Absolutely True Diary is not the only book out there with that theme.  “This book expresses my hope” is a reasonable statement.  “This book is my hope” is an overstatement, unless Mr. Alexie is in the running for the next Messiah.

c. Kids who want to read this book can read it.  Especially high school kids, most of whom have a driver’s license.  Or have a friend with a driver’s license.  I’ll bet they go to Springfield occasionally.  The Greene County library has a few copies of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian; that’s where I got mine.  The Cedar County Library can get it through inter-library loan if it’s not in their collection.  Ask.  Be resourceful.  Use some initiative.  Stockton is not an armed camp.

d. Some YA books can be damaging to some readers.  We writers assert the power of the written word.  But if the written word has so much power, can we not ascribe negative effects as well as positive?  The Absolutely True Diary expresses a generally positive theme in an extremely negative milieu.  While the protagonist’s story will be encouraging to some teens, there are other who feel like they’re stuck on the Rez even though their lives aren’t all that bad; they don’t need to be encouraged to feel sorry for themselves.  And those who are already depressed may not need any more.  For, in spite of some laughs and a “hopeful” ending, the novel is depressing overall.  This is a trend in YA books, so pronounced I’m wondering what kind of view kids are getting of the world they will soon inherit.  Do we notice a lot of optimism out there?  Time will tell, but I’d like to see a little sunshine in the YA world.

e. Book bans generally don’t work, especially if they’re publicized: the book gains more readers than it would otherwise.  Still, I can’t quite blame folks for trying to hold the line against more and more explicit material.  (This book is certainly not the worst YA I’ve ever read, but yes, it has its moments.)  And every time they do, the knives come out–not against the book or its author, but against the line-holders.  They’re yahoos, control freaks, philistines; they’re stupid, backward, narrow.   But maybe they’re just ordinary parents and grandparents trying to protect their kids and maintain some kind of community standard.  I don’t think this is a particularly effective way to do it; at the same time I can’t help sympathizing with the “where will it end?” mentality.

I believe that artists–writers, painters, movie-makers–are mentors to the public.  Children’s authors should never preach to their audience, but they shouldn’t pander either.  “We’re just meeting our readers where they are–kids today hear this kind of language, deal with these kinds of issues all the time.”  If they are–and I don’t disagree–how much does mass media contribute to that?  A lot, I think.  Media, including novels, helps drag the standards down, then points to the standards as evidence that it’s just being realistic.  There’s no easy solution.  For myself, I’m trying to be realistic but not graphic when it comes to writing for kids.  Now back to that manuscript I’m trying to finish up.

So You Think You Can Write A Children’s Book…

Maybe he can; I don’t know.  Don’t have time to read it or fulminate too much either.  This guy is taking it a little too personally, but I can sympathize . . .