HUCK FINN, THE “N” WORD, AND ME

Wow.  During the past three weeks or so, I’ve been following an extremely passionate and thoughtful debate on the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) Discussion Forum.  English teachers and their students are currently discussing Mark Twain’s famous classic, Huckleberry Finn, a book that's included on required reading lists for schools all over tarnation. And it seems that every single teacher has a different way of dealing (or not dealing) with the ever-present “N” word in Huck’s tale. 

What do the teachers have to say?  You name it:

~So should the book be banned? 
~How dare anyone even think the book should be banned!! 
~Should the “N”word be repeated aloud in class? 
~Let’s put a less offensive word in its place!
~No way….that’s verboten. 
~How do I keep from offending my black students?
~We’re a bunch of white men, so maybe we’re unfit to discuss such things.  
~Can the word make for a teachable moment?
~Maybe there’s another equally good book that could replace Huckleberry Finn and still get Mark Twain’s points across without using politically incorrect language.
~Why would you want to do that?  
~Mark Twain just uses the "N" word to satirize the racists' immoral behavior. 
~Should we simply have kids read certain “safe” passages and ignore the rest?
~Why can’t they take a gander at the whole tamale?
~Can we as adult teachers even use the word “nigger” with each other in this forum?
~Yes, of course! 
~NO, most certainly not!

I just looked at Mark Twain’s book as I was typing this blog, and the word is all over the place; on the first page of Chapter XLII alone, it appears 14 times.  But what does all this have to do with yours truly?

Right now, a lot. I’m writing a nonfiction picture book about the Civil War for kids ages 10 and up, and to me, many of the most riveting, memorable, candid, and revealing quotes I have ever seen anywhere come from slave narratives compiled verbatim after these people were freed. 

  

If anyone wants to understand what life was really like for black Americans before and during the Civil War, they should see these unfiltered stories as experienced by the genuine human beings themselves. I’ve read slave narratives by the hundreds by now, and for that reason, I’m including a few of the strongest paragraphs in my (not yet finished) manuscript.  Or at least, that’s my full intent.  This is nonfiction, so the plan is to uncover the truth, not to Bowdlerize history.

  

The problem is that slave narratives are liberally peppered with the ubiquitous “N” word. It was an integral part of the language back then and appears on almost every page.  Of course I’m no Mark Twain—tis to laugh— but I’m already getting the same kind of push-back Huck Finn is getting for including the word (in its proper context).  You can find the warnings I’ve gotten in the list above, and I’m getting five more: 

 

1)  Your book will be banned if you use that word because you ain’t Mark Twain.
2)  Yup, Mark Twain was white like you, but he’s a famous dead guy and can get away with things you can't.
3) Have fun trying to get the word nigger past your publisher.
4) Be practical. If you include the word you won’t sell a single copy. 
5)  Look out for the hate mail. 

People, get in line.  I’ve gotten push-back for writing non-Bowdlerized history plenty of times already, so why stop now?  (Even so, I’d like to know what you think…..)

The Fly in the Common Core Ointment

             Note:   I wrote the following piece and submitted it to the Huffington Post.  It was accepted and now I am a regular blogger for them.  This allows me to be an advocate for children's nonfiction literature on a national platform.  Please support me--this means making comments, tweeting, sharing, following, liking, becoming a fan, etc.  I believe that we nonfiction authors can bring the joy of learning back to the classroom but not without the help of teachers, librarians,  forward-thinking administrators and the readers of this blog.  Huff Post published this entry last week.  Please forgive the repetition.  You can find me at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vicki-cobb/

              The recent release of the NY State assessment scores based on the about-to-be-implemented Common Core State Standards for education has created quite a stir, to put it mildly.  As predicted, the scores were poorer than in previous years because of the new Standards.   Statewide, 31 percent of students passed the exams in reading and math. Last year, 55 percent passed in reading, and 65 percent in math.

                The Common Core State Standards become law in 47 states by 2014.   Dr. John King, Commissioner of Education for the State of New York, has already started to execute them and to sell them to the public.  He explains that the CCSS came out of a governors’ meeting several years ago.  Governors want to attract businesses to their states.  Before relocating, businesses want to know about the quality of each state’s labor pool.  The question for each governor was: What can your state’s workers be trained to do?  This generated a conversation about the skill sets needed by businesses and how well each state was doing in producing capable workers.   The standards and measures for the different states were all over the waterfront.  Rather than compete with each other, the governors agreed to work together to establish common standards for college and career readiness.  And so the Common Core State Standards came to be.  John King said:  “The organization of CEOs for Cities did a study that showed if you added a single percentage rate for college achievement in NY you would add 17.5 billion dollars of economic activity.”  Hmmm…there’s nothing wrong with that. 

                Diane Ravitch, educational historian and activist on behalf of public education, blogs five or six times a day to spotlight how the CCSS are wreaking havoc on already beleaguered public school systems across the country.  It made news when she came out against the Common Core State Standards.  It is not possible to find two more well-intentioned, passionate advocates for effective education than these two.  But they are in opposite camps.

                As a children’s nonfiction author, I welcome the Common Core State Standards.  If you read them, you will see that they are quite benign.  There is nothing in there about curriculum, what books are to be read, just a shift to reading a lot more complex text about the real world.  I see it as an opening for us authors. That’s why I was startled when I heard vitriolic hatred of the CCSS from a veteran teacher of 35 years.  When I asked if he had read them, he allowed that he had not

                Like many teachers, this teacher was unaware of the difference between high quality nonfiction literature and what many educators think of as nonfiction for kids – the flat, boring, uninspiring writing that is in textbooks. They are used to the prepackaged texts, teachers’ guides, study questions and tests that they use to “cover” the curriculum topics. They don’t know how inspiring, engaging nonfiction literature brings a love of learning to content.  And since the CCSS says nothing about curriculum, implementing the standards means that educators are now free to insert wonderful books –of which there is a huge selection—into their science, social studies, history, math, art, music, and physical education classes.  Teachers can continue to teach their favorite fictional literature but now the door is open to using nonfiction literature across the curriculum.  So, to the teacher who told me that she didn’t like the arbitrary quota that 50% of all reading in elementary school must be nonfiction, I say that when you add high-quality reading across all disciplines, even if you keep all the fiction you like in ELA, the quota are more than met.  It just means that kids will have to read a lot more across the board. …Nothing wrong with that either.                                             

                The fly in the ointment is the testing.  More particularly the high-stakes placed on the tests and the absurd notion that a teacher’s value-added comes from the way his/her students perform on the assessment tests. There is nothing new about testing.  We’ve always tested.  When I was a teacher almost 50 years ago my students took tests.  There were three possible outcomes.

1.       The student test performance was about the same as their performance in my class. 

2.       The student performed poorly on the test but well in my class

3.       The student performed well on the test but poorly in my class.

As a teacher, the only result I paid attention to was number 3.  If the student aced the test but was doing sub-standard work in my class, I knew there was something for me to correct.

                When I taught, back in those days, I had autonomy to teach creatively. I didn’t use the textbook but found other more interesting science reading material for my students on curriculum content.  I worked to make sure that they understood the basics and gave them all kinds of fun details to make the basics memorable.  We spent a less than a week practicing test questions just before they took the tests.  They did just fine. The beauty of the CCSS is that they open the door again to this kind of creative teaching.

                I agree with Diane Ravitch’s criticism of the testing.  Test prep, in my opinion, is a form of child abuse.  Schools lose almost two months of instruction between the time spent on test prep and the tests themselves.  The new tests, based on the CCSS, have produced dismal failure.  So what!  Let’s use the CCSS as license to teach the best way we know how.  Give the tests with minimal test prep, use the data internally along with other measures of school effectiveness, and let the chips fall where they may. And, at least for the next few years, sever the connection between test results and real estate values.  The latest news is that the test-makers recognize their failure and the tests results won’t count this year.

                As a scientist, when I didn't get the results from an experiment that I expected or wanted, I figured that the problem lay in my experimental design, not in the natural phenomenon I was exploring. (Nature doesn't lie!) The test makers need to find other ways of measuring student achievement rather than a single yearly snapshot where teachers are given instructions on how to handle test booklets that have vomit on them so that the results can be tabulated.  And the educational community and the public need to stop giving the test outcomes so much power. 

Writing and Teaching Outside our Comfort Zones

I joke at school visits that my speciality is writing about things I know nothing about. There are no jokes, a boss of mine used to say. She said it with a large measure of meanness, usually when someone had just made a joke. In fact, she was the boss who made me decide to become a freelance writer. Anyway...  


I do, often, write about things I know nothing about. Presumably by the time I'm done writing them, I do know some things. And yet....  A few weeks ago in the New York Times puzzle blog, Gary Antonick wrote about Paul Erdos on the occasion of his 100th birthday.  He included some excerpts from The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos.  

THAT was WAY COOL. I was dancing. But.... I couldn't understand a bit of the math in Gary Antonick's puzzle. Or in the comments afterward.  I didn't try that hard, really. Mostly because I went into a white hot panic. I was so far out of my comfort zone. I passed calculus in high school only because Mr. Hunsberger was a supremely nice human being. No math courses since. And yet I wrote a book about a mathematician. 

And I, the author of many science books, took one science course in college--biology for poets. Pass/fail. I passed, thank you very much.

Over the years I have written so many books outside of my comfort zone that I guess those zones have become more comfortable. But that took a long time. Teachers, especially elementary school teachers, tell me they often teach subjects they are not that comfortable with--usually science or math. And yet they find ways to teach outside their own comfort zones all the time. 

Recently on Twitter a professor at Fresno State got in touch with me. She was teaching Charles and Emma to her college class of students who want to be English teachers. She wrote: 
Kathee Godfrey ‏@cakeypal

11 Apr

@DHeiligman We're going to play with the idea of the writer as scientist, figuring out what your hypothesis was and what you observed

I told her I loved that idea! What a great way to teach that book! And then she wrote back: 

Kathee Godfrey ‏@cakeypal11 Apr

@DHeiligman It also might be a how-the-English-teacher-can-infuriate-her-science-colleagues lesson. ;)

I told her I doubted it. Because the trick for her and her students, just as it is for me, is to find the way in. I asked her to tell me how it went. While I waited to hear the results of her experiment I thought more about writing outside my comfort zone--how I do it and why. It's first and foremost about finding a way in. 

For me the way in is almost always with the person and the personal story. I am, above all else, a people person.  How did Paul Erdos manage to live in this world being very much not of this world? Why was he the way he was? Was he happy? How did other people view him? What excited him about math? How did math change his world and how did he change the world with this math? In answering the questions about him and how he lived his life, I learned why mathematicians all over the world loved him, and still do. I understand the spirit of his math, if not the actual numbers. (Though I admit, I do understand more than Mr. Hunsberger would ever believe!) 

Kathee Godfrey reported back that her class was a success. Here's what she wrote:

Here is the photo of several of my wonderful students: Dana Resendez, Amelia Sarkisian, Marcella Camino, and Melinda LaRochelle. We're studying your book in a senior seminar on young adult literature and all these students plan to be English teachers. In class Thursday, they came up with hypotheses about what you wanted to illustrate in your book and then identified the evidence or methods to support their hypotheses. It worked surprisingly well!


Brilliant, right? She and her students found the way in, and you can see by their smiles they were happy and proud with the results because they connected. That's all that it takes, right? As E.M. Forster said: "Only Connect." 

To read more about the class, go to Kathee's own blog about it, which she calls it, by the way, The Writer As Scientist. 

So how do teachers connect when they are out of their comfort zones? Sometimes they bring in experts to help. Or ask friends behind the scenes. But mostly they rely on books--good, well-researched, entertaining, original nonfiction books for kids--to help them teach the subject. This weekend I'll be at IRA, talking with reading teachers and other authors about nonfiction and how to use nonfiction books in their classrooms. (Come say hello--here's my schedule.)  I know I will hear more ideas from teachers about how they teach out of their comfort zones. And I know they will tell me books are key. 

As to why I write, so often, outside my comfort zone... I think it's because I never want to be bored. I hate being bored. And I love to be challenged. I'm sure there's some other darker reasons, but why go there?

In college I took one art history class, also pass/fail. It was early in the morning, in a large auditorium. There were lots of slides, so the room was darkened. You know what I remember? It's where I learned the word UNDULATING. That is all I remember. I did, however, pass that one, too. With a certain amount of relief.  

And now back I go, into the dark, outside of my comfort zone, to my book about--an artist! 

I'm starting to think, folks, that my I.N.K. columns are in place of therapy. Thanks for listening. 

ALERT THE MEDIA – YOU ARE ABOUT TO BECOME A FAMOUS AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR

 Hey teachers!  Kids too!  Are you writing any nonfiction stories in class these days?  Lots of schools are trying out this approach to writing in general, and they’re studying the different ways good nonfiction books are written in particular, especially in light of the CCSS.  So what different kinds of writing might work nonfiction-wise?  There are plenty.

 

Try doing live interviews or writing a journal, for example—they both count as nonfiction. A few ideas:

Maybe your class can interview various folks who were on the scene during a great or terrible historic event, such as the Summer Olympics or even 911. Or try interviewing somebody who has an unusual job; maybe the old Santa Claus at the mall  or a fireman (naturally) or your mayor or a local musician or a TV personality or your own bus driver. 

And maybe you can pen some truly amazing journals during a field trip to a museum or a festival or an historic site. (Of course if you aren’t going on any field trips, you can always write some pretty entertaining journal entries about the food in your cafeteria.)

Or take a stab at uncovering the true story of how your own family came to America. Whether they got here last Wednesday or 300 years ago, doing the research is a hoot…and be sure to ask your parents or grandparents. You'd be surprised what they know and what you don't.

Or you can write research papers about things you’re learning in class—some examples might include compiling all sorts of comments about the frogs (living or dead) in your science lab, or researching and writing about a disterous Civil War battle for your history class, or making like a professional critic who’s writing book reviews for your English class, or examining the statistical issues behind today’s economic crisis in your math classes without putting anyone to sleep.  Now there's a challenge for you.

 

IT IS OK TO HAVE FUN WHILE YOU DO THIS…YOU DON’T NECESSARILY HAVE TO GET ALL SERIOUS (UNLESS YOU WANT TO.)

Yup, your writing has to shine; that’s a given.  But here’s an outstanding tool that lets you spice up everything you write, gets people interested in your stories and papers, helps you learn faster, makes sure readers remember your most complex material in a flash, and entertains your own self at the same time:

 

JUST STIR IN ALL KINDS OF PICTURES AS YOU GO ALONG.

Really?  Most definitely!  After all, just think about it.  Whenever you go online or watch movies or TV or play video games or look inside certain books, they’re all about the pictures.  Lots of you are probably taking pictures yourself today by using a cell phone, or you’re adding pictures to online sites like Facebook.  So while you’re busy writing papers and journals and stories at school, why not think the way you do in the real world…whenever you write, stir plenty of artwork and photos and other visuals of your own into the mix.

Here are a few tiny examples of the gazillion ways to add pictures to your writing:

TAKE THE JOURNALS, FOR EXAMPLE:

 

When you bring your journal along on a school field trip – or even on a regular day – be sure to bring some colored markers or colored pencils or just regular lead pencils. Then draw the coolest things you see.  Try to show the real world and still use your artistic imagination at the same time.  Put pictures next to the words you just wrote or use pictures to make a rebus or spread pictures into the margins or make them into cartoons or make them extremely realistic.  Let some of the pictures fill a whole page or two or three of their own.  They can most certainly be funny. They can most certainly be serious  or scientific. Doodling is just fine.  Cartoons are just fine.  Beautiful pictures are, well, beautiful and wonderful.  And of course you can draw all kinds of fancy lettering in your topic headings along the way. 

 

Trust me, people will want to see what you wrote if it’s illustrated.  When explores like Lewis and Clark or scientists like Charles Darwin wrote journals, they did these exact kinds of things. Their writing was incredibly fun to read and was informative to the max at the same time.  Yours should be too.

 

Another idea is to take photos during the day, print them out, and tape them in later.  Or collect small stuff you find and glue that in too—for example, add brochures or cut them up and tape some of the picture into your journal. Or add small parts of the plants you see on a farm visit. Or leaves you pick up on a hike during the fall.

AND HOW ABOUT ART FOR YOUR INTERVIEWS?

 

One idea is to draw the person you are interviewing yourself! Or take your own photos of them doing something verrry cool and then paste or tape them into your written work. Or if they have any pictures taken when they were kids, make photocopies and add them to the mix. Even if you write your interview (or any other stuff) online, you can scan in your pictures and imbed them. 

GEOGRAPHY CAN BE MEMORABLE IN SPADES:

 

Make colorful illuminated maps of the places you’re studying and add them into the mix.  To see exactly how this works, go here and check out the pictures

 

MORE TIPS:

Think of cool and colorful pictures you can add to your charts and graphs:

 

If they look great, they can offer readers a fast and entertaining way to learn a lot of boring stats in a single glance.

Try putting the quotes inside of talk balloons that point at a picture of the person who's being quoted.  Maybe this person is a new cartoon character of your own creation (kind of like the one Jeff Kinney made up for his Wimpy Kid), or maybe you can research what the people you quoted really looked like and what they really wore, and then draw them accurately.

FAMOUS LAST WORDS:

  

YIKES! Art is in danger of disappearing from our schools, and that would be a DISASTER.  Help bring it back by adding artwork to your written work in school.  

Paint pictures on wood! 

Rough canvas! 

Pebble board!  

Write words on all kinds of unusual paper.  

Try playing around with paint, scraps of cloth, cut paper, or scratch board, and then add them to your written work.  

Experiment with your photographs.   

Make collages using buttons, flowers, seeds, or leaves picked up off the ground....if your essay or journal is lumpy, so what? Your writing will end up being a keeper, and you will learn to think, be creative, do research, and remember what you wrote about for a very long time.