2008 March 27 Archive at The Core Knowledge Blog

Back in the age of Ike, Elvis, and tail fins millions of kids were introduced to great works of literature in a magazine called Classics Illustrated. A new generation of CI books is on the way, and Newsweek writer Malcolm Jones likes what he sees.

Jones waxes rhapsodic about a new version of The Wind in the Willows. In illustrator Michael Plessix, Rat, Mole, Toad and Badger “have met their Michelangelo,” he writes. “Every frame is drawn and colored with meticulous care. Every elegant page is composed with a dual purpose: to enchant the eye and to further the various narratives that make up the loose plot. Plessix knows how to advance and retard the story’s pace. He knows just when to zoom in and when to pull back for a wide shot.”

Teachers have a tortured relationship with “graphic novels,” often dismissing them as mere comic books. Some of us, present company included, reflexively bridle at what we perceive as the dumbing down of challenging classics, or shrug and mumble apologetically about the need to engage students “at their level.” Jones’ perspective is enlightening. Describing the original Classics Illustrated series he notes “that was where I first discovered just how good stories could be.”

“For kids who came of age after World War II, Classics Illustrated was our first encounter with stolen—or, put more mildly, borrowed—goods,” Jones writes. “How many kids, from the ’40s through the ’60s, first encountered Captain Ahab or Jean Valjean or Madame Defarge in the pages of those comics with the unforgettable yellow logo in the top left corner of the cover? Did we know who Charles Dickens was, or Victor Hugo, or Herman Melville? Probably not. We just knew that these were good stories, to be read and reread and passed around. We did not care particularly where they came from, if we thought about that at all. Somebody named Hugo wrote ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame,’ but he didn’t draw the pictures in our comics, any more than he had anything to do with the old black-and-white movie that we sat through every time it came on TV. Which suggests an intriguing esthetic principle: might we say that a truly great novel or movie or play is one that so thoroughly works its way into the culture that we forget who created it in the first place? Are these not ultimately the most potent stories, the ones that belong to everyone, and no one? It’s about as close as we get to myth these days.”

The New York Times the other day visited a New Jersey high school and followed the principal, roaming the halls as a crazed gunman might, looking for victims during a “lockdown drill” — a reaction to Columbine-style school shootings. The Times reports such drills are becoming increasingly common in U.S. schools.

”Gone are the days of the traditional fire drill, where students dutifully line up in hallways and proceed to the playground, then return a few minutes later,” the Times reports. “Now, in a ritual reminiscent of the 1950s, when students ducked under desks and covered their heads in anticipation of nuclear blasts, many schools are preparing for, among other emergencies, bomb threats, hazardous material spills, shelter-in-place preparation (in which students would use schools as shelters if a dirty bomb’s plume were to spread dangerously close) and armed, roaming sociopaths.”

By the way, the days of the traditional fire drill are most assuredly not gone. Just wondering: researchers have catalogued every other aspect of the school day, minute by minute. Has there ever been a study on the amount of instructional time lost to fire drills and other “planned” disruptions? In my school, we had 10 to 15 fire drills a year. Add up the amount of it took to trudge down from the 5th floor, march outside, listen to the principal complain or praise the students’ performance on the PA, settle the class back down after the excitement, and you’re talking about a pretty good chunk of time. It’s not ”just a few minutes.” Is it heresy to suggest that this is a little bit excessive?