Last Christmas break I read a Charles Dickens' classic. Not a A Christmas Carol, but another book with just as much to say to our modern age: Hard Times. The Common Core crowd and the education deformers may think they are pedaling something new, but their brand of education and thinking about life was alive and well back in Dickens' day. The book begins in a classroom where these words are being spoken: 'NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.'
I almost expect the speaker to talk about reading 80% informational texts.
Teaching these past few years in an educational system that is increasingly about numbers and data, about labeling students as numbers, about favoring informational texts at the expense of story and narrative, about doubting people but believing in scripted curricula and tests, has made me think a lot about dichotomies:
data versus people
information versus stories
facts versus truth
doubt versus belief
As for that first dichotomy, I've become aware that some people do view both teachers and students as mere fodder for data. Teachers become "human capital" and students become test scores. We reduce people to numbers, to stimulus and response. Threaten teachers enough and they will finally produce results.
Out in society, there are many who have discounted free will, and even person-hood at all. We are simply pre-programmed "wet robots," (to borrow a phrase from Dilbert). When I read the book You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Linier a couple of years ago in paperback, something really struck me from his afterward. He conjectured that many people still engaged in religious faith because it afforded them a way to still believe in people.
I think there's a lot of truth there. There are a lot of people out there who don't believe in people any more.
When I look at those dichotomies, which I live with every day in my classroom, I have to come down on the side of people, stories, truth, and belief. I need these things to be tempered by numbers and facts, but numbers and facts don't make life worth living or show me what is good. They may give me (sometimes) practical ways to make life better, but they can't give me any assurance that life itself is worth living.
It is people, story, belief, and truth that make my life worth living. And no story makes the value of these things more clear than the Christmas Story.
The value of being a person, a person, beyond anything that can be measured or explained, is affirmed. God himself became a person. Being a person is transcendent-- or can be. In many ways, the Christmas Story makes God the ultimate humanist. Being human matters. It matters so much that he became one himself.
The Christmas Story affirms the importance of story. There is the story itself, in its various forms in different gospels, which all seem to merge into a single narrative for most of us. There are the stories Jesus grew up to tell--human stories. Madeleine L'Engle quotes someone as saying that "Jesus was God who told stories." And then there is the whole story of Jesus' life. It is a story. Not a set of facts. Jesus was not data driven. He was, it would appear, to be driven by love.
And the Christmas Story is about truth. If you go in looking for facts, you may be disappointed. Many things can be proved as facts. But some truths can only be expressed as story. Truths like love. Love can be explained away as a fact: it is an accidentally produced biological stimulus designed to perpetuate the species. Love in its most mysterious, ineffable sense, does not exist. The Christmas Story affirms Love, affirms that to be human is a transcendent experience, affirms meaning. It affirms the Truth that being human matters.
Read some young adult literature, some fairy tales, some fantasy. The villains never believe in love. The key to Good winning is to believe in it. Stories give us faith in a deeper truth: that love is at the center of everything. Read The Giver. Read A Wrinkle in Time. Read Harry Potter. Read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Heck, even read the faith-denying The Amber Spyglass. What saves the day? Love. Everyone wants to believe in Love.
I look at the people I most admire, people who have changed the world for the better. They were all acting out of Love: Jesus, Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, William Wilberforce (who took down the British slave trade). And the teachers at Sandy Hook who gave their lives trying to protect their students. And millions of people who every day do small, unnoticed, unheralded acts of kindness. I refuse to reduce Love to a fact. It is a Truth-- a mysterious, numinous Truth.
If nothing else, I need to believe in Love. But there are so many things I need to believe in to do what I do.
I need to believe in my students. I need them to believe in themselves. There is data (oh, the irony!) to suggest that belief in your own ability to become smarter enables you to become smarter. Not believing means you may not grow intellectually as much as the believer.
And so I have to come down on the side of people, of stories, of truth, of belief. Whatever you may think of the facts of the Christmas Story, the Truth of it affirms these holy abstractions:
People
Stories
Truth
Belief
These are the abstractions I try to live out every day in concrete ways, using pencils, pens, paper, computer screens, white boards, and even M&M's. The abstract always becomes incarnate in the specific, whether it is dry erase markers, or dry bales of hay in a manger somewhere.
Merry Christmas.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Friday, June 8, 2012
I Believe in Ray Bradbury
When favorite authors die, I feel a physical jolt go through my body for a moment when I read the news, much they way I do if I hear of the death of someone I know personally. Because, of course, I do know authors personally-- even if they don't know me. When I heard Madeleine L'Engle had died, I felt the jolt. Yesterday I felt it again. A colleague sent me the link to an article about Ray Bradbury's death on my email at school, and I read it in disbelief. I knew Bradbury was getting up there and had suffered a stroke, but somehow with writers, who exist for me as personalities embodied by words, not by bodies, I can't quite believe they're really gone. And I feel I know them as well as people I see every day, even if they never know me. Writers long dead are people I know. In Bradbury's case, I'd actually had a very brief contact with him, so it made his loss even more palpable.
Some of my 8th graders had read and discussed and written about Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 this year. We were meeting in our Media Center-- no, in honor of Bradbury, I'll call it a library-- to finish the group novels they've been writing, and when I told them he had died, many of them reacted with dismay. I suppose it sounds cruel, but I've never been happier to hear some 8th graders sound a little sad. He had made in impression on them.
My first impression of Ray Bradbury came, I think, in the 7th grade, where Mrs. Bronson had us read the story "All Summer in a Day." I have always been a sucker for a memorable setting-- probably the influence of the Narnia books-- and this story had one that was memorable in spades: the never-ending rain of Venus, the oppressive earthling classroom of children who'd brought all their viciousness with them across the stars, and the shades-of-gray jungle the students run around in for one magical afternoon. They blazed images onto my brain that stayed for two decades, until I became a 7th grade English teacher myself and opened my Prentice Hall Literature teacher's edition to find the mental pictures were still there, just as I'd remembered them. And of course, the ironic, cruel, twist ending had stayed with me as well. I think it may have been Bradbury who taught me that it's the twist, the irony, that gives a story its real kick.
I remember watching the TV special of "The Electric Grandmother" and enjoying it, and being vaguely aware of The Martian Chronicles when the miniseries aired. In my Language Arts class, we read a script of one of the stories from Scope Magazine. But what solidified my relationship with Bradbury was my 11th grade Literature of Science Fiction class. (I think of the cool English classes I had as a junior and senior in New York, classes like Masterpieces of the Drama, American Musical Theater, Speech and Public Speaking, and I smile; and then I think about the paltry workbook offerings being dolled out today, and I shudder.) It wasn't necessarily a very well taught class in particular, the but books on the syllabus where a smorgasbord of Science Fiction classics. The book that really drew me in, though, was Fahrenheit 451.
I don't know if I could have verbalized it then, though I was pretty verbal even in high school, but while some of the other books predicted things about the future, Fahrenheit predicted how those things would affect people in the future. I had already developed a bent toward theology, philosophy, and psychology, and the characterizations and the philosophical discussions in Fahrenheit fascinated me.
There was also the fact that I had already been in love with books for many years, and to have a society that wanted the burn them was both fascinating and repulsive. The poetic, slightly overripe language fascinated me as well, and the fact that the story fired on all cylinders at once: plot, character development, settings, themes, irony-- everything flowed together. It wasn't just a book about philosophical discussions-- it was a book with action, too. But even the action scenes, like Montag killing his boss with a flame-thrower or running for his life on live television, had satiric and thematic undertones.
It became one of my very favorite books.
Over the years of finishing high school, attending college, and beginning a teaching career, I continued to read more Bradbury: Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Martian Chronicles, collection after collection of short stories. My first year of teaching in 1990, I tried teaching Fahrenheit to a few classes of sophomores, with mixed results. The more I read, the more I came to appreciate one of Bradbury's unique talents: to put us uniquely inside an experience, to give us the inner impression of it, often by being metaphorical. To give us the facts about something you simply describe it; to give us the reality of something, you must immerse us in it, go beyond the facts to the truth.
When I was teaching ninth grade, I got to share the book Dandelion Wine with my students, and Bradbury's deep and enthralling affection with his own youth was one of the things that inspired me to sit down and fictionalize my own youth in my first novel, Making My Escape. It's no Dandelion Wine, but writing it made me realize that my own childhood, with all its flaws, was just as magical in its own way as Bradbury's had been. It isn't what happens to you: it's how you pay attention to it.
Around the time I switched from teaching high school to teaching middle school, I found the Bradbury non-fiction book Zen and the Art of Writing, and began sharing his essay "The Joy of Writing" with my 8th graders. In it, Bradbury talks about writing what you love and what you hate. The ideas from the essay turned into an activity I still open each school year with, and which I later put into my book, Writing Extraordinary Essays: the Enthusiasm Map and the Frustration Map, where I encourage my students to list their loves and hates. They use the maps all year to find real topics that they actually care about (as opposed to standardized prompts, which no one but state test-makers care about). And Bradbury made me more and more aware of the power of words to create images, and of images to convey ideas, a concept that has become more and more powerful to me as my life has progressed.
In 2006 I had the opportunity to direct a youth production of The Martian Chronicles at our local theater. I decided that my funnies page alter ego, Mr. Fitz, should direct his own production that paralleled the real life one, and began drawing comic strips about the experience. While we were in rehearsal, we were contacted by Bradbury's bibliographer, Don Albright, who wanted copies of our programs and posters, and who offered to send us autographed copies of Bradbury classics to raffle off to benefit the Sands Theater Center.
He really liked my poster for the show, thinking it was a woodcut, when it was merely pen and ink.
When I told him about Mr. Fitz directing the show, he gave me an address and suggested I send copies of the strips to Bradbury himself. I took a deep breath, made copies of all the strips, and sent them off in the mail, including this strip, the final one in the series:
A short while later, I received an email from Bradbury's daughter (he didn't use computers) with the following message from him:
"I appreciate your sending on copies of your delightful Mr. Fitz. I especially like the one where you did all the characters and the variations of attitudes in The Martian Chronicles. I deeply appreciate this and send my best wishes to you. God Bless, -- Ray Bradbury"
Brief, but what an impact. Not only did I have an message from Ray Bradbury, but he had read my cartoons and at least pretended to enjoy them! Unparalleled and unbelievable, that email was simply one of the best sets of words I have ever read. To this day, knowing that Bradbury has seen my cartoons paying tribute to his work is one of the best things ever to come out of drawing the strip.
Since those first awkward days of teaching, when Fahrenheit 451 didn't go over so well with 10th graders, I've now reached the point where I can successfully teach it to 8th graders. When I teach it each year, one of my rules is that the students come up with the discussion questions and by and large run the discussion. And every year, the students surprise me by noticing something new, coming up with some new insight about the book I think I know inside and out. Having my students find things I've missed, and thus surprise me is one my greatest joys as a teacher. The test I give for Fahrenheit, to take one scene from the book and analyze how it works on every literary level possible, helps me to show the students that literary analysis doesn't have to be the dissection of a dead story, but the lively, goose-bump inducing appreciation of an author's storytelling firing on all cylinders. It was Bradbury's lesson to me as a writer, and now I try to pass it on to them.
And the most important lesson of all, not just about writing, but about life, that Bradbury modeled was to do what you love. Around the time I was directing The Martian Chronicles, I got into some hot water for some of the satire in my comic strip. I thought about quitting the strip, and possibly of quitting teaching. I thought about censoring myself. But then I remembered Fahrenheit 451, and I thought, "What Would Ray Do?"
I kept drawing. Six years later, I'm still at it.
Bradbury taught me about enthusiasm, about speaking up and speaking out, about the importance of books and stories and how they make us more human.
And then, the stories themselves. Those stories. Stories you can get immersed in, lost in. Stories that make you see the world a little differently. Ray saw the world a little differently, and he shared that view with all of us.
I already miss him.
I remember watching the TV special of "The Electric Grandmother" and enjoying it, and being vaguely aware of The Martian Chronicles when the miniseries aired. In my Language Arts class, we read a script of one of the stories from Scope Magazine. But what solidified my relationship with Bradbury was my 11th grade Literature of Science Fiction class. (I think of the cool English classes I had as a junior and senior in New York, classes like Masterpieces of the Drama, American Musical Theater, Speech and Public Speaking, and I smile; and then I think about the paltry workbook offerings being dolled out today, and I shudder.) It wasn't necessarily a very well taught class in particular, the but books on the syllabus where a smorgasbord of Science Fiction classics. The book that really drew me in, though, was Fahrenheit 451.
I don't know if I could have verbalized it then, though I was pretty verbal even in high school, but while some of the other books predicted things about the future, Fahrenheit predicted how those things would affect people in the future. I had already developed a bent toward theology, philosophy, and psychology, and the characterizations and the philosophical discussions in Fahrenheit fascinated me.
There was also the fact that I had already been in love with books for many years, and to have a society that wanted the burn them was both fascinating and repulsive. The poetic, slightly overripe language fascinated me as well, and the fact that the story fired on all cylinders at once: plot, character development, settings, themes, irony-- everything flowed together. It wasn't just a book about philosophical discussions-- it was a book with action, too. But even the action scenes, like Montag killing his boss with a flame-thrower or running for his life on live television, had satiric and thematic undertones.
It became one of my very favorite books.
Over the years of finishing high school, attending college, and beginning a teaching career, I continued to read more Bradbury: Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Martian Chronicles, collection after collection of short stories. My first year of teaching in 1990, I tried teaching Fahrenheit to a few classes of sophomores, with mixed results. The more I read, the more I came to appreciate one of Bradbury's unique talents: to put us uniquely inside an experience, to give us the inner impression of it, often by being metaphorical. To give us the facts about something you simply describe it; to give us the reality of something, you must immerse us in it, go beyond the facts to the truth.
When I was teaching ninth grade, I got to share the book Dandelion Wine with my students, and Bradbury's deep and enthralling affection with his own youth was one of the things that inspired me to sit down and fictionalize my own youth in my first novel, Making My Escape. It's no Dandelion Wine, but writing it made me realize that my own childhood, with all its flaws, was just as magical in its own way as Bradbury's had been. It isn't what happens to you: it's how you pay attention to it.
Around the time I switched from teaching high school to teaching middle school, I found the Bradbury non-fiction book Zen and the Art of Writing, and began sharing his essay "The Joy of Writing" with my 8th graders. In it, Bradbury talks about writing what you love and what you hate. The ideas from the essay turned into an activity I still open each school year with, and which I later put into my book, Writing Extraordinary Essays: the Enthusiasm Map and the Frustration Map, where I encourage my students to list their loves and hates. They use the maps all year to find real topics that they actually care about (as opposed to standardized prompts, which no one but state test-makers care about). And Bradbury made me more and more aware of the power of words to create images, and of images to convey ideas, a concept that has become more and more powerful to me as my life has progressed.
In 2006 I had the opportunity to direct a youth production of The Martian Chronicles at our local theater. I decided that my funnies page alter ego, Mr. Fitz, should direct his own production that paralleled the real life one, and began drawing comic strips about the experience. While we were in rehearsal, we were contacted by Bradbury's bibliographer, Don Albright, who wanted copies of our programs and posters, and who offered to send us autographed copies of Bradbury classics to raffle off to benefit the Sands Theater Center.
He really liked my poster for the show, thinking it was a woodcut, when it was merely pen and ink.
When I told him about Mr. Fitz directing the show, he gave me an address and suggested I send copies of the strips to Bradbury himself. I took a deep breath, made copies of all the strips, and sent them off in the mail, including this strip, the final one in the series:
A short while later, I received an email from Bradbury's daughter (he didn't use computers) with the following message from him:
"I appreciate your sending on copies of your delightful Mr. Fitz. I especially like the one where you did all the characters and the variations of attitudes in The Martian Chronicles. I deeply appreciate this and send my best wishes to you. God Bless, -- Ray Bradbury"
Brief, but what an impact. Not only did I have an message from Ray Bradbury, but he had read my cartoons and at least pretended to enjoy them! Unparalleled and unbelievable, that email was simply one of the best sets of words I have ever read. To this day, knowing that Bradbury has seen my cartoons paying tribute to his work is one of the best things ever to come out of drawing the strip.
Since those first awkward days of teaching, when Fahrenheit 451 didn't go over so well with 10th graders, I've now reached the point where I can successfully teach it to 8th graders. When I teach it each year, one of my rules is that the students come up with the discussion questions and by and large run the discussion. And every year, the students surprise me by noticing something new, coming up with some new insight about the book I think I know inside and out. Having my students find things I've missed, and thus surprise me is one my greatest joys as a teacher. The test I give for Fahrenheit, to take one scene from the book and analyze how it works on every literary level possible, helps me to show the students that literary analysis doesn't have to be the dissection of a dead story, but the lively, goose-bump inducing appreciation of an author's storytelling firing on all cylinders. It was Bradbury's lesson to me as a writer, and now I try to pass it on to them.
And the most important lesson of all, not just about writing, but about life, that Bradbury modeled was to do what you love. Around the time I was directing The Martian Chronicles, I got into some hot water for some of the satire in my comic strip. I thought about quitting the strip, and possibly of quitting teaching. I thought about censoring myself. But then I remembered Fahrenheit 451, and I thought, "What Would Ray Do?"
I kept drawing. Six years later, I'm still at it.
Bradbury taught me about enthusiasm, about speaking up and speaking out, about the importance of books and stories and how they make us more human.
And then, the stories themselves. Those stories. Stories you can get immersed in, lost in. Stories that make you see the world a little differently. Ray saw the world a little differently, and he shared that view with all of us.
I already miss him.
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