Author: Charlie Euchner

Charles Euchner is the creator of The Elements of Writing. A longtime teacher and author, Euchner delivers seminars all across the U.S. and coaches authors. He has taught writing at Yale and Columbia and authored books on civil rights, cities, baseball, activism, writing, and more.

Ten Simple Tricks to Improve Writing Mechanics

Clip and save this post. Any time you write something, use this as a checklist. If you meet these criteria, your piece will read well.

(1) Attack prepositional phrases

Too often, writers get lost in the stream of consciousness. One thing reminds them of another, then another, then … Make sure that of, with, by, under, over, etc., don’t just give you and excuse to go on and on. If you have a number of thoughts, use two or more sentences. Too many prepositional phrases can get you–and your reader–lost.

The profusion of prepositions was the major problem for Judith Butler, the last winner of the Bad Writing Award. It was also a problem in an analysis of the civil rights movement, which we explored in a previous post (see Passage 2).

(2) Avoid making nouns into verbs and verbs into nouns

One of the delights of language is its flexibility. I once heard Don Imus’s radio sidekick tell his boss that he would “effort” a task. He meant: try to do it. I kind of like it. It’s sprightly and, in context, makes fun of officious bureaucratese.

But too often nouning and verbing separates the words from their original meanings. Sometimes, it requires more words. One example: Government “spokespeople” and other officials often talk about “making an announcement,” as in: “The president made an announcement about new unemployment numbers.” Why not just say “The president announced new unemployment numbers”?

Whenever possible, use a single verb instead of a cluster of words.

(3) Root out the repetitions

We repeat ourselves for two primary reasons. First, as is the case with strings of prepositional phrases, we often repeat ourselves because our minds wander down a long stream of consciousness.

Second, because we cannot see our audience, we often repeat ourselves to satisfy ourselves we have made the point. When we speak directly to someone, we can see whether they follow us by their responses and body language. If I explain a math concept to a child doing homework, I know right away if she gets the concept. Not so with writing. Our audience is invisible. So, to clinch a point, we repeat it.

No need. If you explain something adequately, the reader usually will understand. If it’s a difficult concept, the reader can double-back to make sure she gets the concept. Repetitive writing can make things worse by altering the meaning enough to confuse the reader.

(4) Make sure you “start strong, finish strong”

Possibly my favorite rule. It’s simple, open with a strong statement, something that captures the reader’s imagination. Usually, that means a clear and vivid noun and verb. Stuff all the details, including attributions, in the middle. And then close with a memorable idea or image.

To reinforce this approach, I require my students to use a landscape format for their documents. Then I require them to write only one sentence per line. Two happy consequences occur. First, they can run their finger down both sides of the page to see if they start and finish strong. Second, they see sentences as the primary unit of writing. Often, the writing becomes both simpler and more poetic. (More on that in a later post.)

If you start and finish strong with everything you write–sentences, paragraphs, sections, essays, and books–you will almost never lose the reader.

(5) Flip the subjects of confusing sentences

Ultimately, writing works best when it gets the subject right. But often, we are thinking of several actors in the same sentence. And so we can fall into the trap of losing the real focus of the action.

Consider this sentence: “Administration sources said joint congressional committees would need to reconcile competing versions of the bill before President Obama decides whether to sign it.” What’s the subject? Administration sources? Joint congressional committees? President Obama? I think it’s President Obama. He’s challenging the committees to come up with the best bill.

(6) Cut adjectives and adverbs

You cannot write without adjectives and adverbs, of course. Well, you can write without adverbs, as Gabriel Garcia Marquez has shown in his recent work. Too often, adjectives and adverbs only wave at meaning. Better to state exactly what you mean, with specific actions and ideas.

Let’s get specific. If I say that Richard Nixon was a corrupt politician, what does that mean? Was he accepting cash bribes? Using his office to support political allies and punish opponents? Engaging in unlawful policies–like, for example, bombing countries without congressional approval? Withholding evidence from legal authorities? Using government agencies to attack political enemies?

Each of these kinds of offenses carries different ideas about corruption. Some people would argue that using office to reward friends is not necessarily corrupt (see, for example, Charles Peters’s argument for bringing back the spoils system). Others would argue that bombing countries without congressional approval is necessary under the president’s duties as commander in chief.

Here’s a simple rule of thumb: Use adjectives only when their meaning is unmistakable and when you follow up with clear examples of what you mean, so the reader can make her own judgments.

(7) Go after emphatics and hedges

Often we use emphatics like “very” and “really” and hedges like “sort of” and “probably” because we want to push the reader toward a conclusion but we don’t have enough evidence. Avoid that tendency. If you cannot provide specifics, maybe the emphatic or hedge says something false.

Quick quiz: What’s the emphatic I used in the previous paragraph? Often! What do I mean by that? Can I prove it? Or should I find a different way to say that emphatics and hedges pose a danger to clear writing?

(8) Simplify words

Simple rule: Always use the simplest word . . . except when a technical term makes your point more precisely.

Consider the words “facilitation” and “prioritization.” As far as I can tell, facilitation means “help” or “coach” or “assist.” Why would you want to use a gross word like facilitation when help can do all the work in one-fifth the time, with no confusion to the reader? Honestly, I don’t know.

I made this point in a seminar for small business people that included people who do training. One complained that facilitation holds a specific, technical meaning for people in his business. Facilitators, he said, get training in specific skills and processes. As an example, he mentioned facilitators for mediation professes. OK, if you want, use facilitator for such people. But really, don’t teachers and doctors and lawyers and accountants get specific training too? Would you can a lawyer a legal process facilitator? Any why not call that mediation facilitator a mediator?

(9) Make a stronger lead

Barry Gordy, the head of Motown Records, once said that he would not buy a record unless it captured the listener in three seconds. Writers have a little more time to capture the reader, but not much. In this distracted world, you need to show the reader right away why she should bother going beyond the first paragraph.

Amazingly, many opening passages do not clearly state the Five W’s–who, what, when, where, and why. You owe your reader a thorough preview of coming attractions. Teasing is fine in some forms of writing, like fiction. But even teases should offer enough information to orient the reader.

(10) Put the paragraphs in single-idea buckets

Make sure that every paragraph states and develops just one idea. If you try to develop two or three or more ideas, you will stray far off the subject. You will confuse yourself–and your readers–about what’s happening.

Just as you would not put football helmets and pads in your living room, make sure each paragraph keeps only what’s appropriate to do its job. Avoid going off on tangents that confuse both reader and writer.

One caveat: In narrative pieces, you sometimes use dialogue. The words of each speaker, typically, end with paragraph breaks. So, for example, you’d use six paragraph breaks for the following dialogue:

“Roy,” Bayard Rustin told Roy Wilkins, “someone has to announce that W.E.B. DuBois has died.”

“Not me,” Wilkins said.

“You should do it. He was the head of the NAACP, and that’s your organization.”

“I’m going to say anything about that damned Communist.”

“Then we’ll get Mr. Randolph to do it.”

“I’ll do it. Nobody’s speaking for my organization.”

I call the sum of these dialogues “paraclusters.” And so my one-idea-per-paragraph rule applies here to paraclusters.

That’s it. Ten rules that can transform any piece of writing. Learn ’em, use ’em, make ’em automatic. You’ll be glad you did.

Before you go . . .
     • Like this content? For more posts on writing, visit the Elements of Writing Blog. Check out the posts on Storytelling, Writing Mechanics, Analysis, and Writers on Writing.
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Getting College Writing Right

From The Chronicle of Higher Education comes a plea for more writing in college.

A worthy cause, I’d say.

Julie Reynolds, associate director of undergraduate students at Duke, says writing reveals students’ thinking process. “Anywhere we can make their thought process visible is where faculty can have the greatest impact in their teaching,” she says. So writing becomes a diagnostic tool, useful in the sciences and math as well as the arts and social sciences.

My thoughts:

True, writing reveals a person’s thinking process. True, wrestling with words forces you to wrestle with your subject. So writing ought to play a central role in a student’s life.

But how?

Writing for the sake of writing might not be a great idea. To write well, you need to understand how words and ideas work. The old saying that “practice makes perfect” is not quite right. If your practice a poor technique, over and over, you may end up in worse shape. You need to practice, consciously, using the best techniques.

So let’s not just assign more writing. Let’s make sure we teach all the basic skills of writing and give students strategies to apply those skills.

Stanley Fish, while dean at University of Illinois in Chicago, discovered that only four out of 104 “writing” courses actually taught writing technique. Did the students in the other 100 classes learn how to write? Doubtful. They just continued using whatever half-baked approaches they learned in high school.

You can teach anyone to write well, quickly, with the right technique. Of course, a person’s writing will only be as good as their knowledge about the subject and their willingness to apply writing skills. That takes hard work. But you can teach the skills in a matter of days.

Most high school and college courses teach writing — to the extent that they teach technique — focus on ACADEMIC writing.All too often, students learn a simple format (like the five-paragraph essay) and teachers use a protocol (like the six-traits method in high school). This can be abstract — and, for most students, besides the point.

In The Elements of Writing — a program I developed while teaching at Yale and SUNY-Purchase, working on my own books, and developing seminars for professionals — I take a different approach.

I begin with this simple truth: Humans are a storytelling species. Nothing matters more to us than constructing narratives — and we do it well, usually with little or no help. So when you engage learners with storytelling techniques, they come alive.

That simple truth leads to another, more surprising truth: Once you’ve mastered the basic skills of storytelling, the more abstract skills come more easily. Why? Because the basic structure of stories offers a “template” for all the other skills of writing.

The best writers give every level of writing — sentence, paragraph, essay, section, etc. — a narrative thrust. They make everything, at every level, a “journey.” They take the reader from one place to another, different place. When students understand the narrative structure of all writing, they can convey ideas with clarity and verve. Even challenges like grammar, punctuation, and editing come more easily with this approach.

Learning with this approach makes writing more relevant and the skills more transferable to the “real world.” And the reality is that almost all professionals have to write — a lot — in their jobs these days. If they learn a simple, natural approach, they’ll succeed. If not, they’ll struggle.

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Before you go . . .
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The Power of Patterns

Man is a pattern-seeking animal. To understand anything—from brewing coffee in the morning to understanding Trevor Noah’s jokes at night—we need to see patterns. When we “get” the pattern, we can understand complexity within the pattern.

The catchier we can make the pattern, the easier it is for the reader to follow along—and get invested emotionally.

Consider, for example, the most famous piece of music in the western world, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Everyone knows the opening, the foreboding four notes that announce, in Beethoven’s own words, “death knocking upon the door.” The piece has been imitated everywhere, from the Beatles’ song “Because” to the disco classic “A Fifth of Beethoven.” The Allied forces in World War II used the piece as its victory march, since the opening motif spells out V (for victory) in Morse code.

Go anywhere in the world, whistle or hum those four bars, and you will get an instant look of recognition. Why?

It’s not just that Beethoven makes such a bold statement. Think about how he does it. He starts with triangles: DA da da DUM. That three-part structure looks and feels like Aristotle’s narrative arc. We see a clear beginning, middle, and end. The beginning establishes the theme, the middle moves it forward, and the end brings closure.

We could also look at Beethoven’s Fifth as a simple march of notes and themes, one leading to the next. This march of notes could look like a straight chronology—a long line of experiences, with clear movement and direction, going in one direction. Again, a complete experience with closure.

Or we could see the piece as an endlessly repeated cycle, with the same themes different only in the details.

Finally we could experience a movement back and forth, from heaviness to lightness. We experience power, energy, excitement, and dread from the pounding notes; then we experience lightness, sweetness, and hopefulness from the light notes.

All the structures of writing in one thirty-seven-minute symphony! Maybe the best piece moves forward, one moment after another … three steps at a time, like a triangle or an arc … with a recurring cycle, which advances and develops the piece’s themes … yo-yoing, back and forth, from heaviness to lightness, from specificity to generality.

An interesting thought, anyway: Beethoven’s Universal Theory of Composition.

Before you go . . .
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Writing as Construction

An excerpt from the recently updated edition of The Elements of Writing:

Carpentry, said Jack McClintock, a writer who chronicled the construction of his own home in Florida, “is largely a matter if getting the sequences right. If you perform Job C before Job A, you end up … wasting time and materials, getting annoyed, and making mistakes. Oldtimers call it the fool tax.”

Writing is like construction. Like a carpenter—or musician or sculptor or other creator—you create something by gathering raw materials and giving them a shape. You make sure the pieces all fit together. You determine where one piece of the structure ends and another begins.

And when you get something wrong—or get it right, but in the wrong order—you pay a fool tax.

So what’s the right sequence? And how do you design and build a piece to do the work you need it to do?

Start with the mantra of The Writing Code: All writing is a journey. Before all else, know where you want to start and finish. Know your destination and how to you plan to get there. When you know the beginning and end, you can create the best path—a straight line or a path with side trips or twists and turns. As long as you know the journey—where you want to start and end—you will always be able to get back on the track.

Some authors want to take a direct trip from one point to another. Others want to raise tension along the way, with hidden and meandering paths. Others want to give the reader a series of recurring experiences. What shape you choose depends on how direct—or how much of a tease—you want to be with the reader.

As you write, offer the reader signposts along the way. When we drive in the Interstate, we look for signs that show us our progress: “Thank You for Visiting Massachusetts” … “Welcome to Connecticut” … “Hartford: 40 Miles” … “New York 68 Miles” … and so on. To make transitions, readers sometimes need those direct statements.

Most readers, though, they just need to see where they are. So just make sure that all your steps—all your paragraphs—follow a logical sequence. So you don’t have to pay the fool tax.

Before you go . . .
     • Like this content? For more posts on writing, visit the Elements of Writing Blog. Check out the posts on Storytelling, Writing Mechanics, Analysis, and Writers on Writing.
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Writing Well in the Age of the Internet, Technical Writing, and DIY Publishing

This originally appeared at the Technology Communications Center:

Charles Euchner, the author or editor of nine books, is the owner and operator of The Elements of Writing. Euchner’s latest book The Elements of Writing builds on his experience in colleges and universities — at institutions such as Columbia, Yale, Harvard, Holy Cross, and Northeastern — and offers a sure-fire system to improve writing for high school and college students, journalists and academics, and corporate and nonprofit professionals.

(1) What is the top culprit in your judgment that holds people back from writing at their best?

Because of an outdated approach to writing — both in school and at work — too many of us have lost our greatest asset as writers. I am referring to our love of storytelling and our natural ability to engage others with stories. We humans are a storytelling species. It’s what sets us apart from other species. Other species eat, drink, find shelter, reproduce, even use language and tools.

We humans alone tell stories. And we do it our whole lives. But formal educational processes don’t take advantage of this. Kids’ activities in school revolve around storytelling in the early grades. But by middle school, teachers adopt a more “serious” attitude. They demand more abstract thinking, with categories and evidence and five-paragraph essays. Even our social studies books lose sight of the basic fact that history is a series of engagements of people, with all the action and mystery of a great detective novel.

Kids get turned off to reading and writing and seek out stories elsewhere — in movies, TV, video games, music, and gossip and flirting. To write well, you need to engage in storytelling. Of course, it’s also important to develop explanations and arguments, to look for patterns and test theories. But when you tell stories, everything becomes easier.

(2) Do you think creative and technical prose writing require different skill sets?

Yes and no. The core skills of writing are the same in all fields. You need to say who or what acts, and how, and to what effect. That basic template applies for all writing. It applies in a Hemingway story or a great movie like “Casablanca” or an opera like “Don Giovanni.” It also applies to an analysis of sales and marketing strategies, a study of safety systems at a nuclear plant, or an argument about what causes economic cycles.

The biggest difference is that the characters in creative works tend to be people and the characters in scientific works tend to be categories, and stories are about one-and-only events while technical writing is about patterns of behavior involving many samples. But the basic core is the same. We need to understand what causes what. What caused Michael Corleone to embrace the family’s business in organized crime? What caused the increase in cases of autism over the last couple of decades? What causes a computer to be buggy? What causes the booms and busts of an economy.

Lots of times, people mistake the surface appearance of a thing for its essence. That happens with writing. We see scientists used technical vocabulary and we assume that the core skills differ for technical and creative writing. But really, the technical terminology is just that — terminology. Understanding the lightening-speed transmission of chemical signals in the brain is no different, really, than understanding how a character’s behavior in a story. It’s just that the terms we use are different.

(3) What is the “The Elements of Writing”? Is it a formula to write well or something else?

The Elements of Writing is a systematic way of thinking about how people write and read — really, how people communicate. And it begins with our brain, which is the software system for everything we do.

When we understand how the brain works — what the brain “wants” and what it doesn’t “want” — we can understand the challenges of writing. We understand how to manage the process of writing — how to gather information, sort it, organize it, and express it, line by line. We understand what words get a rise out of people and what lines bore people. We understand when people get bored and when they get engaged and when they get confused. We also understand our own frailties. For example, brain research shows that we can only do one thing at a time. But all too often, writers try to do five or ten things at a time. Naturally, they crash, like an overloaded computer.

So we show how to break down tasks, one by one, and do things in a good sequence. It’s all very natural. But you have to be shown first.

(4) Writing for an increasingly international audience means writing in a simpler style with simpler words. Wouldn’t that hamper artistic creativity? What’s your advice?

Absolutely not. Simple is good. I like to quote Einstein: “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Even some of the most creative and emotional pieces of writing, when you break them down, are quite simple. I sometimes show a video of Martin Luther King‘s famous “Mountaintop” speech, which is as soaring and emotional and complex as most writing. Then we look at the text line by line and discover that King uses nothing but simple words and short sentences. The power comes from the ideas and images he conjures up, his audience’s engagement in the speech, how the simple words evoke larger ideas and experiences, and so on.

We also look at a passage from John McPhee‘s work The Curve of Binding Energy, about nuclear proliferation. McPhee is describing a highly technical process, with all manner of technical terms. But he does it by using simple ideas, not overwhelming the reader with an avalanche of insider’s jargon. When he uses technical terms, he doesn’t throw too much at you too soon. And he defines the terms in simple ways, with reference to things you can understand. To describe the density of uranium, he tells us that 132 pounds would be the size of a football.

(5) What do you offer in your in-class writing seminars that a student cannot get from another source?

The most important thing we do is start with storytelling. Even if you’re a hard-nosed business person or a technical writer for a pharmaceutical company, we need to understand storytelling before we do anything else. I started doing this for pragmatic reasons. I was working with a room of more than 100 corporate people and the computer projector would;t work and people were getting antsy. I had to get their attention right away or I would lose them for good. So I started talking about stories. Instantly, I had everyone with me. I thought, “Wow, talk about a party trick.”

Only later did I discover that the basic structure of a story is the same as the basic structure of even the most abstract idea. So storytelling packs a powerful 1-2 punch. First you get people’s attention and enthusiasm. Then you show them the structure of all communication. And so learning everything — even the most dry, abstract concepts of grammar and punctuation and analysis — becomes easier.

(6) What is the best book you’ve ever read on writing well?

Hard to say. No book offers a complete guide to writing in all fields. That’s what I try to do in The Elements of Writing (available on Amazon). I used to worship at the altar of Strunk and White and The Elements of Style, but it’s not a really guide to writing. It’s a checklist of potential problems. It’s also outdated, written for a time when writers were a breed apart.

These days, we’re all writers. When I was in college I wrote an awful paper and my professor had me read William Zinsser’s On Writing Well, and the first half of that is quite good. Roy Peter Clark’s Writing Tools is good, but doesn’t offer a complete strategy, and many of his tools are about the writer’s like rather than practical techniques. I once read a collection of passages from Hemingway. And I love reading the Paris Review interviews with the master writers of the last several generations, which are all now available online.

(7) What are the three authors that shaped you as a writer and why?

Truman Capote‘s In Cold Blood is a virtual clinic in storytelling, analysis, sentence and paragraph construction, if you break it apart and ask a lot of questions about what he does. Most people love that book because it shows Capote’s mastery as a researcher. He reconstructed this awful murder of a Kansas family by a couple of drifters and makes it read like a novel. How he got all that information, how he built the story, is a marvel. But to me In Cold Blood is a true work of art not just because of the content but also because of Capote’s near-perfect technical mastery. So as far as understanding the architecture of writing, it’s hard to top that.

I also really like the narrative nonfiction of John McPhee. Because he writes for The New Yorker, McPhee has the opportunity to take one thing at a time. You never get the sense that he’s in a rush. Too many writers try to pack too much information into small spaces. But McPhee just takes one thing at a time. And that’s the only way to write.

The world is really just a collection of different things — people, events, processes of nature, ideas — and you can’t understand any complex concept unless you get a handle on the smaller ideas that are part of the complex concept. He understands also that readers need vivid scenes, but they also need a break from action. So he is a master of what I call yo-yoing — moving back and forth from scene to summary.

Let’s keep this list contemporary. I also like Elizabeth Gilbert. She understands sentences and paragraphs and scenes and summaries as well as anyone. I love using her story “Lucky Jim” to teach the structure of storytelling. Her book The Last American Man is also very good. She won her fame and fortune with Eat Pray Love, which is good, but she honed her craft long before that came out. Some day I’d like to talk shop with her. She clearly relishes the careful construction of a story, sentence by sentence, paragraphs by paragraph, section by section.

(8) What’s the most important thing happening in the world of letters these days?

Technology has completely transformed the literary landscape. Never before in history have so many people written. Partly it’s because we have to write. Bureaucracy in government and corporations means that we’re always writing memos and reports and emails. But something bigger is happening. With social media, ebooks, and DIY publishing, anyone who wants can write, get published, and find and audience. And that’s very powerful.

At the end of the day, people want other people to notice them. Until now, only a small elite could hope to find an audience. Editors and publishers were strict gatekeepers. They decided who could get their ideas published. Now anyone can do it. It makes writing exciting again. I am amazed at how much people write on Facebook and in emails. I have friends who see a movie and then send out an email and then all their friends and family are debating that movie all kinds of related ideas. The same thing happens with posts on Facebook and comments on web sites from nytimes.com to scientificamerican.com.

Lots of people who would have never have considered writing a book are doing so now. I’m coaching a technical guy at Microsoft who wants to write a family story. A generation ago, he might have collected family papers and scrapbooks but not have considered writing a book. But he knows he can write a book and sell it as an ebook and then, who knows, it might make it big. But he knows he can share it, so it’s worth making the effort. Multiply that case by millions and you have a writing revolution that is changing everything. It’s very exciting — scary for old-timers, but exciting for most of us.

Before you go . . .
     • Like this content? For more posts on writing, visit the Elements of Writing Blog. Check out the posts on Storytelling, Writing Mechanics, Analysis, and Writers on Writing.
     • For a monthly newsletter, chock full of hacks, interviews, and writing opportunities, sign up here.
     • To transform writing in your organization, with in-person or online seminars, email us here for a free consultation.

How to Make Everything You Write ‘Sticky’

Remember the old Steve Martin routine about getting small? It’s a great bit spoofing the way druggies giggle and cackle about getting high.

I like to get small. It’s very dangerous for kids, because they get realllly small. I know I shouldn’t get small when I’m driving, but I was drivin’ around the other day and a cop pulls me over … says, ‘Hey, are you small?’ I say, ‘No, I’m tall.’ He says, ‘I’m gonna have to measure you.’ They give you a little test with a balloon. If you can get inside it, they know you’re small … and they can’t put you in a regular cell either, because you walk right out.

In the media world these days — in advertising, the Internet, marketing, promotion, publishing, you name it — people are carrying on about getting “sticky.” Stickiness is the quality that products have when readers or consumers feel the need to linger a while. Rather than surfing to a new site, readers “stick” to a site that offers something intriguing and engaging.

Chip Heath and Dan Heath, a brotherly duo of biz-school professor and entrepreneur, have written the ultimate manual for getting sticky. Made to Stick outlines six qualities needed to make anything — idea or image, web site or ad jingle, catch-phrase or product design — stick.

1. Simplicity

If you argue ten points, nobody will remember even one. People easily remember two things (which set up a yin-and-yang kind of contrast) or three (which set up a triangle in which each corner affects the other two). And if you give them a mnemonic device, they can remember a string of ideas.

But to get people to remember, you have to work hard at simplifying your message. The Dale Carnegie Training offers a simple formula for giving memorable talks. It’s called the Action/Benefit speech. Talk about an incident, describing a specific action and the benefit it produced. Done well, these talks impart memorable wisdom. And advertisers love the format. Think of all the slogans that take this form: “Get Met. It Pays.”

2. Unexpectedness

As Aristotle noted 2,500 years ago, the reversal produces a powerful impact on the audience. When you’re expecting one thing, and something dramatic and different happens, you remember. In Story, his masterful guide for screenwriting, Robert McKee talks about opening and closing “gaps” throughout the picture. Give a character something he has to reach for–and then, just as he’s about to reach it, pull it away. And when you make the hero’s job harder, do it by surprising him with some demon or challenge that he had no idea was waiting for him.

3. Concreteness

Don’t use adjectives and adverbs. Ever have a friend who recommended a book or movie that was “interesting”? That word means nothing. Think of some memorable moments of popular culture. We remember the horse head in the film mogul’s bed in “The Godfather.” We remember Jake Gittes slapping Mrs. Mulwray in “Chinatown.” We remember Carlton Fisk waving his home run fair in the 1975 World Series and Bill Buckner coming up empty in 1986. We remember JFK and Reagan at the Berlin Wall, the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team surrounded by American flags, the screaming girls at Beatles concerts.

We know what a freshly mown lawn smells like. We know how good a beer tastes on a blazing summer day. Political and business people often don’t even know what concreteness is. They use vague general slogans, thinking they’re speaking to the most immediate concerns of their constituents.

When I worked as a planner for the City of Boston, I thought terms like “transit-oriented development” and “Emerald Necklace” were specific and concrete to the ordinary folks. I was puzzled when people complained how abstract our conversations could be. These wlords did not seem technical to me, but they did to neighborhood volunteers and activists. Words go only so far. Our most successful discussions of planning used maps and images of the streets, houses, business districts, parks, etc. The more concrete, the more people responded to our planning efforts.To be concrete, think of the senses — sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell.

4. Credibility

People want to believe, but you have to tell them why they should believe. Everyone has a different tool. Academics love footnotes and statistical analysis. Sports fans also love stats, the more exotic the better. Lawyers like expert witnesses. Marketers pull a reversal and put the expertise in the hands of the consumer with guarantees and trials: “We know you’ll like it, but YOU decide.” Politicians often try to do the same thing, as when Ronald Reagan asked, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago.”

Demonstrations can also increase credibility. Beyond War, a peace activist group, uses the image of a bucket of bee-bees to demonstrate just how we have overarmed ourselves with nukes. Each bee-bee represents a nuclear warhead with the firepower of the bombs that demolished Hiroshima.Which raises another point about credibility. The more visual and specific, the stickier your claim. Celebrities often strengthen a campaign’s credibility. Now, celebs are often the least credible spokespeople for a complex issue. But celebrities who have established a strong emotional connection with audiences have also established trust, which is another word for credibility.

And so we listen to Richard Gere on Tibet, Meryl Streep on environmental health, Sting on global warming, and Mia Farrow on Darfur. Credibility can be manipulated as must as anything. Professionals use technical-sounding language to take the upper hand in debates. Lawyers, doctors, researchers, professors, even web-designers take refuge in gobbledygook language to bewilder their audience. When people cannot explain things in simple terms, you should be suspicious of their knowledge or motives.

5. Emotions

Make people feel something. People remember fear best of all. They also remember hope, when it’s connected to their fondest childhood hopes and dreams. Least of all, they remember the elements of a logical and systematic argument.

Think of how powerful emotions have been in American politics. Lyndon Johnson conjured the image of nuclear war in his mushroom cloud ads against Barry Goldwater. George Bush conjured a world of menacing rapists like Willie Horton carousing the streets if Michael Dukakis were elected president. Barack Obama warned about Republicans throwing granny off a cliff if anyone dared to reform Social Security. When people fear losing something, and a demon is connected to that fear, that’s what they remember before all else.

6. Story

More than anything else besides physical needs, humans need to tell and listen to stories. Stories provide meaning to everything from the most mundane to the most unknowable aspects of life. Stories give order to things that would otherwise feel chaotic and meaningless. Stories create a sense of wholeness. Stories also stretch the imagination, spurring people to think of achieving something beyond themselves.

Stories have, essentially, three plots: Challenge (David and Goliath conflicts, underdogs rising up, rags-to-riches tales, and triumph of will dramas), Connection (Good Samaritan, relationship that bridges a gap), and Creativity (Ingersoll Rand testing of materials, Shackleton’s dealing with rebellious crew members).

The Stickiness of Made to Stick

The Heath brothers, true to their message, make sure that their stickiness message is also sticky. Look over these six attributes of stickiness. They’re listed in an easy-to-remember mnemonic. The first letter of the six terms spells out the word “success”—almost, anyway.Let’s review (another critical tool to make an idea sticky):

S—Simple
U—Unexpected
C—Concrete
C—Credible
E—Emotional
S—Story

Got it?

Hubris

The tragedy of Joe Paterno is as old as the human experience. The great literary works — from Sophocles and Milton, Shakespeare to Tolstoy, Fitzgerald to Hemingway, O’Neill to Miller — warn us about the dangers of greatness.

We need heroism, for heroism is the opposite of cowardice. But heroism contains the seeds of its own corruption. And so when we see great men fall — and, in the world of sports, Joe Paterno was a great man — we need to reflect on the vices inherent in all of us that lead to that fall.

The Greek concept of hubris applies here. Hubris refers to excessive pride, the belief that some people are better than others, and the arrogance that comes, almost inevitably, with power and prestige.

The Greeks understood that people possess a powerful capacity to do great deeds. Those people could be rulers, generals, teachers, sailors, mothers and sisters, athletes, and even children. This capacity for greatness gives life energy. It makes advances in civilization possible. So when we see these people rising above the ordinary, we want to applaud. Somehow, it’s not enough for us to show appreciation for good deeds. Somehow, we must exalt and deify heroes.

That’s when the trouble begins.

Heroes are, after all, fallible. Given a taste of adulation, heroes get addicted to their own beliefs about their superiority. They might guffaw and aw-shucks the praise that comes their way. But they love it and want more. And so they begin to construct a mythology and build a team to spread the word of their heroism. When they make mistakes, they deny them or ignore them. They make excuses. They rough up the truth-teller. They turn their attention away from the work that brought them accolades and toward the business of amplifying those accolades.

You can often tell when this transformation occurs — the switch from heroism to its perversion — when the hero and his coterie make bold claims about their superiority. When the Paterno Empire boasted about “Success With Honor,” they slowly separated themselves from the unglamorous need to do the right thing. Life at Penn State became about the image. Followers wore their adulation like a coat of superiority. And so we all lost sight of how fallible even the great Paterno could be.

Even with real evidence of flaws, people look the other way. It’s too hard to explore investigate unpleasant reports or to speak unpleasant truths.

People in Happy Valley, the isolated kingdom of Joe Paterno, had heard rumblings of scandal and depravation in the Penn State football program for years. But who dares to speak up? When the university’s president and athletic director visited JoePa and dared to suggest that he retire after a dismal season in 2003, Paterno showed them the door. He had that kind of power. (For a superb treatment of the scandal, see this piece by L. Jon Wertheim and David Epstein in Sports Illustrated.)

And that is what is so ugly about Paterno’s role in the coverup of child molestation. When Paterno learned that sick things were happening, as WFAN’s Mike Francessa notes, he alone had the power to pick up the phone and demand justice. But he did no such thing. Instead, he focused on protecting the image of his Penn State football program.

So what does this have to do with writing or journalism? Everything.

All too often, writers get carried away by glory. Who doesn’t want to chronicle the exploits of a great person? Who doesn’t want to bask in the glow? Who doesn’t want to take in the electricity of great moments — a parade for Wilson, a fireside chat of Roosevelt, Kennedy’s Berlin speech, Reagan’s toughness after getting shot, Obama’s celebration at Grant Park? Or, in sports, Ali’s Thrilla in Manila, Brady’s “tuck” victory, the Yankees’ heroism after 9/11, the Red Sox’ triumph over the Curse? It’s a thrill. And so when the hero makes claims to be morally better and the throngs stand and cheer, it’s hard for reporters to stick to the facts. It’s hard not to get sucked into the glory and the glee.

And it’s easy to ignore the whispered rumors of wrongdoing that fill every community.

To understand the failures of the Penn State tragedy, consider the story of Martin Baron, the editor of The Boston Globe. Baron was brought in from the Miami Herald in 2001. When he arrived in town, he heard a rumbling of rumors about the Catholic Church and a generations-old practice of priests molesting children. Baron wondered why The Globe had not investigated. The response was like this: Well, er, um, everyone knows it already.

Because he was an outsider — and a good editor and journalist — Baron did not accept that answer. It’s a story, dammit. Cover it. And so The Globe unmasked the unholy deeds of a long series of priests. This reporting began a global uncovering of this awful scandal.

A couple of years before the Catholic priest scandal broke, I went to a press event at the gilded mansion of Cardinal Bernard Law, the man most responsible for allowing priests to prey on young boys. As a researcher at Northeastern University, I was the coauthor of a report on affordable housing sponsored by the Catholic archdiocese. I was amazed at the royal way Law was treated by academics and politicians and corporate and civic bigwigs and other dignitaries. It was strangely sickening and thrilling at the same time, the sights of this inside world of privilege and power.

After the Catholic pedophilia scandal broke, I thought back to that day at the Cardinal’s Xanadu. Suppose a victim of that abuse had gotten in and confronted the Cardinal? What would have happened? I think I know. I think he would have been quietly but forcably removed from the premises: This is not the time. We are holding an event. Please state your concerns in a letter.

So who’s going to demand that Law investigate and punish and report the predators in his church? No one, of course, except an out-of-town newspaper editor.

Joe Paterno, sadly, gained that same holy status in Happy Valley as the Cardinal did in Boston. And so when people knew about strange and dangerous goings-on, few had the nerve to demand that the football program and its great leader be held accountable. The few lame attempts — like the request from superiors that he resign in 2003 — fed the aura of the great leader’s invincibility.

Happy Valley had no Martin Baron.

Now that the scandal has broken, reports are surfacing of the suspicions and concerns about the “darker side” of Joe Paterno. And of suspicions about the departure of Paterno’s assistant coach who had abused and terrorized innocent boys. But suspicion gets stifled, not explored, in the kingdom of all-powerful leaders.

When JoePa finally got fired for his role in the greatest scandal in college sports history, hundreds of students gathered outside his home. They chanted: “We are … Penn State! We are … Penn State!”

They were right.

In this scandal, as in all others, we are all Penn State. Everyone who bought into the mythology, everyone who contributed to a climate where reporting a child rapist is hard because it might upset “the program,” everyone who reported this big-time football program as if it were an episode of “Father Knows Best” and not a big, sprawling business involving hundreds of millions of dollars, is part of this scandal.

We are … Penn State. We are … Penn State.

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Fact and Opinion

The real pros do their jobs and then walk away. They don’t talk about how hard it is to do it. They don’t take shortcuts when it gets tough. They set standards and follow them.

Can you imagine Willie Mays talking about how hard it is to hit a 97-mile-an-hour pitch? Or Winston Churchill moaning about how hard it is to lead a nation when the Nazis are bombing it to hell? Or Einstein grumbling about how hard that whole relativity thing is because, after all, it’s not in any of the textbooks?

No. The pros do their job, period.

So it is with Ken Auletta, the veteran media reporter for The New Yorker. In his latest effort, Aulatta profiles Jill Abramson, the first woman to be named editor of The New York Times. He shows Abramson for what she is: A talented reporter and editor, a sponge for facts, relentlessly curious, demanding to the point of insulting, and determined to strengthen the core competencies of The Times while leading it into the scary new Age of the Internet.

Auletta reports, you decide. He interviews people from every stage of Abramson’s life and presents all sides of her character. He’s fair, sympathetic but open to others’ critiques of her depth, breadth, and temperament.

Toward the end of the piece, Auletta bring up the ages-old debate about the liberal bias of The Times. In particular he discusses the way that opinion pieces now mingle with straight news throughout the paper. Most of the opinion pieces get labeled “analysis,” which offers the reporter a free pass to say whatever he or she wants to say. But a number of opinion pieces slip into the news pages without such a label, such as Ginia Bellafante’s article about the Occupy Wall Street movement:

The group’s lack of cohesion and its apparent wish to pantomime progressivism rather than practice it knowledgably is unsettling in the face of the challenges so many of its generation face — finding work, repaying student loans, figuring out ways to finish college when money has run out. But what were the chances that its members were going to receive the attention they so richly deserve carrying signs like “Even if the World Were to End Tomorrow I’d Still Plant a Tree Today”?

Now, maybe Bellafante understands the strengths and weaknesses of the movement. But she not only cops a lot of attitude, but also presumes to play the role of strategist for the protesters. And she endorses the OWS gang when she talks about “the attention they so richly deserve.”

Abramson acknowledges that she needs to guard against her own urban bias. She’s a lifelong New Yorker who grew up in its privileged, liberal precincts. She understands that The Times can look down its noses at Flyover Country and the many groups who struggle to make sense of a world that seems to be flying apart.

But when the out-and-out bias of passages like the OWS piece come under debate, Abramson and the other Timespeople talk about how hard it is to keep news straight when so many other publications cop an edgy attitude. As Bill Keller, Abramson’s predecessor as editor, puts it:

Part of the great competition for audience in the twenty-first century is the competition to get beyond commodity news. To add meaning to it. To help readers organize the information into understanding. … The tenor of a front-page news story has changed in the last five or ten years from who, where, when, what, why to more emphasis on how and why.

Yes, readers can be demanding. All day long, we readers hear the headlines on NPR and cable TV and click for updates online. We know the basics — who, what, when, where, and why — by the time we get The Times plopped onto our porches or zapped into our iPad. Readers surely want more than a rehash of what they already know.

But ultimately, it’s a false argument to say that reporters should strut their opinionated stuff because we have so many sources of news.

Take that Occupy Wall Street story. Yes, we hear about it all day. Yes, we want something new when we get our Times. But that doesn’t mean we care what Ginia Bellafante thinks about the struggle. It means we want a deeper, more compelling arrangements of hard-news reporting. Just because Bellafante shouldn’t just repeat what we already know doesn’t mean she should opinionate rather than report.

I would like to see Bellafante and other reporters do twice as many interviews, track down twice as many documents, get twice as much background on the maneuvering of City Hall and unions and liberal funders and police and neighbors and Wall Street workers. No, don’t give us what we already know. Give us deeper, fresher reporting.

Opionators pose the false choice — repeat what you heard yesterday or add the sizzle of opinion — because they still follow the rules of pack journalism. If someone calls a press conference — especially a pol or a celebrity — the Knights of the Keyboard flock to see it. If candidates stage events in Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina, they flock to these extravaganzas. If a royal son gets married, they flock to it. If a pol gets caught tweeting naughty stuff, they stake out his house. And so on.

Not that these stories don’t deserve attention. But they don’t deserve hundreds of reporters saying the same thing, as happens all too often.

When you write the same basic stuff that as the rest of the pack, yes, opinionating might seem the best or even only way to stand out. But there is another way. Call it the Wee Willie Keeler Way.

Keeler, of course, was the old-time baseball star who coined the phrase “Hit ’em where they ain’t.” He was talking about hitting a ball beyond the reach of the fielders.

The journalistic equivalent would be to report where they — the rest of the pack — ain’t. Then you get fresh news and don’t have any excuse to fall back on “analysis” and speculation and opinion.

A good model for this principle? None other than Ken Auletta. All he did was report the hell out of his story, make sense of The Times‘s recent years of woe, with a well-organized feast of facts and balanced perspectives.

Without opining or showing off.

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Use the Character Dossier To Create a Memorable Character

To set your hero and other characters on their journeys, know who they are and what they’re trying to do.

Know their physical, mental, and spiritual qualities. Learn everything possible about their lives. Then give the reader the most relevant and, yes, the juiciest tales and details.

Don’t just discover the surface facts of your characters’ lives. Find the backstories. Don’t just get your characters’ names. Find out how they got their names and what they mean. Don’t just talk about their jobs. Find out what it means to them emotionally.

Find the odd moments in characters’ lives, their lost loves, and moments of shame and glory. When you size up their bodies, look beyond the obvious—size, build, hair and eye color. See how they walk and react physically to events.

Most important: Be complete. Just as a P.I. gets his best stuff while tracking down unlikely leads, you will discover telling details when you fill in the details for each of these four categories:

Personal and Family Background
Name
Age and birthday
Birthplace
Parents’ ethnic background, upbringing, hopes and fears, and careers
Place in the family’s birth order
Relations with siblings and other relatives

Physical Characteristics
Body
Build
Hair and eye color
Sound of voice
Conversational tics
Physical peculiarities
Mannerisms while walking, talking, working, and playing

Biography
Pastimes as a child … and as an adult
Sidekicks and mentors
Intellectual and emotional influences
Rivals and foes at different stages of life
Not-so-good influences—skeptics, and tempters
Political leanings—and major political influences
What others notice first
How the character changes over the course of life
Turning points in life

Psychology
All-consuming desires
Pathological maneuver
Most admirable qualities
Least admirable qualities
Sexual identity
Philosophy of life
Optimism or pessimism
Energy level
What the character does when alone
What the character thinks about when alone
Greatest fears at different stages of life

Gathering so much information might seem like overkill. But you need to know everything about your characters before you decide what’s important.

In my Elements of Writing seminars, students join together to create a dossier for both real and imagined characters. Here’s a character created by students at Hillhouse High School in New Haven:

Jodie is a sixteen-year-old orphan being raised by her grandparents. Slender and athletic, with brown hair and hazel eyes, Jodie still struggles with the trauma of her parents’ deaths in a plane crash. She lights candles in her room and holds seances to connect with her lost parents; in a bit of “magical thinking,” she thinks she can somehow bring them back. She can be mean at times, as her two older brothers will attest. She’s energetic but deeply pessimistic. She has a crush on a boy named Cody, but a cheerleader named Heather already has won his affections.

Now Jodie is on an airplane to Egypt, as part of a school field trip. She saved money for the trip because she thinks she can somehow connect with her parents’ spirit in this ancient land. She sits next to a middle-aged woman who reminds her of her mother. And they talk . . . and talk . . . and talk. In a way Jodie has never experienced, this woman is calming her down.
On this day, her sixteenth birthday and the eighth anniversary of her parents’ death, Jodie just might have a chance to overcome her fear of losing someone close.

Then the pilot’s voice crackles on the PA system. There’s some trouble with the fuel tank or one of the engines . . . or something. Whatever the pilot says, people respond with panic. Now, just as Jodie has found a soulmate for the first time since her parents’ death, the trip could end in tragedy.

What’s Jodie going to do?

This exercise does more that helping you to know a character well. It also helps to tell the story. In fact, it’s almost impossible to create a dossier without also beginning to tell the story.

Create a dossier for your own life. Fill in the blanks, as if you were writing a memoir. Be honest. Use as many details as possible. Include the material that you hope no one ever discovers. You might be surprised by the power of your memories and emotions—and by the insights that come with those memories and emotions.

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Before you go . . .
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Halberstamitis

David Halberstam wrote sprawling books about politics, war, sports, firefighters, mass media, show business, and everything in between.

Halberstam looked for the universal in the particular and the particular. His prose sometimes reached. Sometimes he wanted to get dramatic while describing ordinary people and moments. And as he connected one observation to another — and another and another and another — his prose often turned purple.

But Halberstam was one great a reporter and he helped you to understand how big and little things related to each other.

His two best books, in my mind, were The Best and the Brightest (about the Kennedy and Johnson administrations’ bumbling into Vietnam) and The Breaks of the Game (a season with the Portland Trail Blazers).

Here’s what he said about Maurice Lucas, the power forward of the Blazers:

It was, [coach Jack] Ramsay knew, always going to be a test of wills with Luke. Of the blacks on the team, he was by far the most political and also the most willing to test authority, any authority. Some of the other blacks, Ron Brewer and T.R. Dunn, for example, had grown up in the South and had gone to southern schools; there was, some coaches thought, a lack of assertiveness to their play, something the coaches suspected could be traced back to their childhoods, to that region where, despite significant social change, authority still belonged to whites and blacks remained tentative about expressing their feelings openly, whether in politics or sports. But there was no problem like that with Maurice Lucas, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, late of the Hill district of the ghetto. Sometimes the Portland front office, talking about a particular player in college or on another team, used the phrase, and to them it was a positive: obedient kid. Obedient kid. Maurice Lucas was most demonstrably not an obedient kid. He was very black, very articulate, very political, a strong and independent man sprung from circumstances that could also create great insecurity. There was about him a constant sense of challenge; everything was a struggle, and everything was a potential confrontation, a struggle for turf and position. It was in part what had made him at his best so exceptional an athlete. He liked the clash of will. He was at once an intensely proud black man, justifiably angry about the injustice around him, and a superb and subtle con artist, a man who had in effect invented himself and his persona — Luke the Intimidator. When he was making demands, when he talked about race being an issue at point, it was sometimes hard to tell which Maurice Lucas was talking — the Lucas who genuinely believed he was a victim of such obvious American racism, or the Lucas who knew that his cause was more dramatic if he deliberately cloaked it in himself. Indeed, it was not possible at certain times to tell if he himself knew. (He was capable of complaining that Portland would never pay a black superstar what it would pay a white superstar, which was possibly correct, and, in the next breath, of complaining about the fact that Mychal Thompson, a rookie, who was also, it happened, black, had made twice as much in his rookie year as Luke made, then in his third year in Portland.)

Vintage Halberstam. In one sprawling paragraph, he plays the role of sociologist and psychologist. He generalizes about blacks in the South and blacks in the North. He makes knowing comments about the attitudes of coaches and sports executives. He teases out puzzles about the subject: Does he mean it when he complains about racism … or is he self-righteous … or is he trying to use his outsized persona to dramatize the concerns of lesser beings.

You can see how this kind of writing can stretch the limits of storytelling. Specifics and generalities blend together. You don’t get much of an image of the subject, but you do get a sense of the man and his time. No bad.

But try doing this too often, or without the insight of Halberstam, and you’ve got a disaster on your hands. You got long-winded prose, dramatic words and generalizations that can’t be proved or disproved, an air of insight but none of the modesty that should accompany efforts to understand.

In the end, the problem with this stream-of-consciousness writing is that it tries to do too much at a time. Rather than focus on one aspect of the subject, carefully, before moving to the next, it pulls all kinds of observations and judgments together, about different topics.

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Before you go . . .
     • Like this content? For more posts on writing, visit the Elements of Writing Blog. Check out the posts on Storytelling, Writing Mechanics, Analysis, and Writers on Writing.
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     • To transform writing in your organization, with in-person or online seminars, email us here for a free consultation.

Presidents and Metaphors

President Barack Obama and the Republicans continue to wrestle over the nation’s debt and everything else under the sun — tax rates, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (and, by extension, Obamacare), education and R&D funding, the national parks and the space program, and in fact everything packed into the monstrosity known as the federal budget.

And as they do so, the two sides dig deep into their bag of metaphors. Desperate for the eyeblink’s worth of the attention of the American public, they are looking for the image that elevates their own standing and discredits the other side.

Of course, this is how life works. We think in metaphors. In fact, human cognition would be unthinkable without metaphors, those dandy little tropes that say X equals Y. Everything we do gets tied up in metaphors.

The more desperate we are for understanding — or rhetorical advantage — the more we reach for metaphors.

Which is what makes Barack Obama such an interesting president. We’ve never had one like him before: A black man (actually, mixed race, but O says he black), born in the nation’s most exotic state (actually, if you listen to the birthers, in Indonesia or Kenya or Transylvania or some other place that sounds freaky), a product of the nation’s most corrupt city and state (actually, a lot of us claim that mantle), a reformer (actually, he’s just an ordinary post-1960s liberal) and a spellbinding speaker (actually, he stammers without a teleprompter) …

You get the idea.

Which gave me this idea: The way most of us judge people and events is to compare them to people and events in the same category. So we ask how much Derek Jeter is like the Iron Horse or Joe D or the Mick. Or we wonder whether 9/11 belongs in the same class as Pearl Harbor or JFK’s assassination or the Challenger disaster.

So we endlessly compare presidents to other presidents. By my reckoning, politicos and pundits have compared Barack Obama, who we might understand as sui generis, to more than a dozen other presidents. Interesting, eh? The more singular a person is, the more we compare him to others.

In the first couple years of the Age of O, we have compared him to James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and even George W. Bush.

Which led me to wonder: Are we leaving anyone out?

And so I reached out to some presidential scholars to see if we could compare Barack Obama to every other single president. Now, if O is like everyone, he’s really like no one. That make sense?

Anyway, ask yourself: Which president does Barack Obama most resemble? Finish this sentence: Obama is ______.

Ready? Let’s play.

George Washington: Aloof. That all you got for a parallel?

The Adamses: Stubborn and proud, to a fault. Late in life, J.Q. achieved nobility with his role in the Amistad case. So can O find redemption after the White House?

Thomas Jefferson: Oh, he talks a good game about grassroots politics, but he’ll expand government power without hesitating. If only someone would sell O a massive territory.

James Madison: Gets involved in messy and unnecessary wars. Yeah, W started war in Iraq and Afghanistan. But look who has kept us there  … and brought us to Libya.

James Monroe: Era of Good Feelings? Hah! Modesty in foreign affairs? Hardly. Ever hear of the Monroe Doctrine? Talk about overreaching. Hello, Libya … Hello, health care … Hello, GM …

Andrew Jackson: Man of the people? Try man of the mobs … and the machine. O drew masses to his speeches, from Berlin to Denver to Grant Park. Does that make him a populist?

Martin Van Buren: A machine pol, more concerned about payola and patronage than the people. And where did O come from? Daley’s Chicago! Case closed.

William Henry Harrison: Full of ideas about unifying the country and following the lead of Congress, he died of pneumonia before he had a chance to do much. O’s still with us of course, but how’s that we’re-not-red-or-blue-we’re-American thing going?

John Tyler: Despite long struggles with Congress, he still managed to compile an impressive legislative record (e.g., the Log Cabin bill, tariff, treaty with canada, annexation of Texas). Hey, you check O’s actual record lately? Like it or not, he’s done a lot.

James Knox Polk: One termer who wanted to avoid war but got drawn into a historic conflict with Mexico. Hmm … One-termer … controversial conflict …

Zachary Taylor: A media creation, soon undone by his own incompetence. From O the Omnipotent to ah, uh, er, um, ah …

Millard Fillmore: Buffeted by regional conflicts, he oversaw conflicts that only delayed the inevitable. Shades of today’s economic apocalypse?

Franklin Pierce: A conciliator, he also couldn’t bring warring factions from the North, South, and territories together. Who can O bring together these days? He’s even got MoveOn griping.

James Buchanan: Ineffectual because he could not make hard decisions about fundamental matters of national security. He’d rather coddle the law-breakers than confront them. And just what is our rationale in Libya?

Abraham Lincoln: Who better than a black intellectual to finish the work of the Great Emancipator? Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose book Team of Rivals celebrates Lincoln’s willingness to bring political adversaries into his Cabinet, hoped that Obama would do the same to heal a fractured nation. O got a total of one Republican in his cabinet (quick, can you name him?). So much for postpartisanship.

Andrew Johnson: Sanctimonious and stubborn, he got into trouble because he was unwilling to do the bidding of radical Republicans in Congress. Key question: Will O be willing to do the bidding of radical Republicans in Congress?

Ulysses Grant: Corrupt, but a damn good writer in the end. The Personal Memoirsof Ulysses S. Grant = Dreams From My Father?

Rutherford Hayes: Fatally compromised when he became president, he was unable to bring North and South together. Heck, Hayes reinforced the divisions of the blue and gray states. Now, how’s O doing on his whole we-are-one-nation pitch?

James Garfield: Not in office long enough to make a difference. I’m thinking, I’m thinking …

Chester Arthur: The ultimate technocrat, he instituted the civil service system after Garfield’s assassination. Is there a greater embodiment of civil service values than O?

Grover Cleveland: A DINO — Democrat in name only — who fell under the sway of financiers and left ordinary people to struggle for themselves. And just who followed George W. Bush’s policies of bailing out corporate criminals? And who re-upped W’s tax breaks?

Benjamin Harrison: Activist in world affairs and legalistic to a T, he also wanted to make Hawaii part of the union. Besides that Hawaii connection, think about Professor O’s wanton globalism.

William McKinley: A creature of the political strategist Mark Hanna and his ability to rake in massive bucks to overwhelm the opposition. So how will Axelrod, Plouffe & Co. move O’s story forward?

Theodore Roosevelt: He said “speak softly but carry a big stick,” but you could not shut the guy up. Even on his endless vacations, O won’t keep quiet either.

William Howard Taft: Better suited to the Supreme Court than the White House. The ultimate journey from failure to success at the top. Justice O?

Woodrow Wilson:  With limited political experience — two years as governor of New Jersey — Wilson spoke in lofty terms about remaking the world. Like Obama, Wilson believed in guiding human progress. Despite his aloof and elitist ways, Wilson compiled an impressive legislative record. But at the end, the love dissolved into contempt and dismissal. Sound familiar?

Warren Harding: Corrupt, detached from ordinary people, lucky to die before people discovered the extent of his corruption.  The GOP can’t make the corruption tag stick to O, but not for lack of effort. 

Calvin Coolidge: Thin and humorless. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Herbert Hoover: A technocrat’s view of the world, unsuited to dealing with the flesh-and-blood realities of his people. O also seems to have a technocrat’s mindset, detached from the flesh-and-blood realities of his people.

Franklin Roosevelt: Soon after his election, people called Obama a new Franklin Roosevelt. After all, he was a charismatic man taking office in the midst of the Great Recession. People wanted him to rescue the nation the way we sometimes imagine that FDR did. Obama stoked the comparisons by carrying around Jon Alter’s book The Defining Moment, about FDR’s first 100 days. For good or ill, O did get a lot of what he wanted from the Democratic Congress.

Harry Truman: Everyone down in the polls wants to be Harry. Reviled in his own time but celebrated by revisionist historians, Truman is the ultimate Comeback Kid. To make a phrase: Give ’em hell, Barry!

Dwight Eisenhower: Where’s the president? Off playing golf. Hey, Bam! Fore!

John Kennedy: This comparison is inevitable with a Democrat. Kennedy was, of course, a dashing young senator who gave great speeches but accomplished little in his time on Capitol Hill. Americans voted for Kennedy to overcome the supposed malaise of the Eisenhower years, to “get this country moving again.” And then: fumbling the Cold War and civil rights (at first, anyway). Hello, Libya! Oh, yeah, and you say you’re “evolving” on gay rights?

Lyndon Johnson: If we’re talking about pushing aggressive agendas too hard, the comparison shifted to Lyndon Johnson. LBJ used a brief mandate to push the biggest domestic program since Franklin Roosevelt. But he was, alas, crippled by a war in a far-off land started by his predecessor. Sound familiar? Too rich.

Richard Nixon: A cunning chameleon, Nixon ran on peace and bring-us-together platform. In office, he kept us in Vietnam, expanded government, ditched the gold standard, and made all kinds of hollow claims about drug wars and energy independence. He invented the whole -gate thing too.  Is Obama this kind of power-hungry megalomaniac who will stop at nothing to impose his will on the nation? Depends? Do you listen to AM or FM radio?

Gerald R. Ford: The accidental president who gained his real power from the veto. That’s what happens when you don’t enjoy a real mandate. So when will O realize that he’s lost his mandate and needs to use the veto pen?

Jimmy Carter: Poor Jimmy has become the Gold Standard for inexperienced, sanctimonious, inflexible but vacillating, and smiling but mean-spirited. Oh, let’s add: hopeless in an economy crippled by oil prices and a world held hostage by fanatics in the Middle East. Now, what doesn’t apply to O?

Ronald Reagan: During the campaign, Obama discoursed about the need for a transformational figure, someone capable of changing people’s ideas about what’s possible. O channeled the Gipper’s magic worked for a while, but …

George H.W. Bush: Saddled with the greatest financial scandal in history (the S&L fiasco), the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression, and limited by crises like the Exxon Valdez and Tiananmen Square, Bush could only manage a mess. So how much of the following applies to O: He caught hell for making tough decisions, like raising taxes and rejecting an all-out war with Iraq.

Bill Clinton: The great triangulator, he survived by pitting his Democratic allies against his Republican enemies. Is this O’s end game?

George W. Bush: Arrogant and aloof. Cocksure and diffident when critiqued. O? Is that you too?

Philosophers since Hegel have argued that history, some day, will come to an end. Has it happened with the emergence of a man who is … everyone else?

Before you go . . .
     • Like this content? For more posts on writing, visit the Elements of Writing Blog. Check out the posts on Storytelling, Writing Mechanics, Analysis, and Writers on Writing.
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Arianna’s Revolution

Change is scary.

You grow up wanting to “be” something—a ballplayer, business person, artist, public servant, union worker, builder, programmer, teacher, or writer. You get a fixed idea of what that means. You imagine the daily routines, the friendships, the rewards, the prestige. And if you get a taste of success, you decide, consciously and subconsciously, that the system rewarding you is the way things ought to be,

Then things change. New technologies change the way people do business. New markets emerge, undermining old markets and relationships. Jobs that used to reward people disappear. In their place, new jobs defy the old hopes and dreams. You lose your sense of self, your confidence, your faith in the system. You start to believe that the world does not honor you anymore. And maybe you’re right.

Joseph Schumpeter called this process “creative destruction.” As the market churns away, new technologies and processes render old ones obsolete. You get all kinds of exciting new industries and careers, products and services. But the old ones disappear, pitilessly. It’s hard. Just ask an old autoworker in Detroit, a steelworker in Pittsburgh, or a textile worker in North Carolina.

Or just ask a newspaper reporter or author.

We are in the midst of the greatest literary revolution since Gutenberg. A. J. Liebling once remarked that “freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.” Until the PC and Internet, the ability to speak to an audience was limited to the people in control of the presses and studios. If you wanted to write an article about, say, the city council’s zoning policy or the president’s wars, you needed to buy or rent the means of production (presses) or get the approval of one of their gatekeepers (publishers and editors). If you wanted to write a book, you needed to get the nod from the mandarins on Publisher’s Row.

To become a writer, you needed to be part of the guild. And that was not always easy.

It’s all different now. Anyone can put up a blog, for free. Anyone can post comments on an Internet site, for free. Anyone can post a book on Amazon, for free. Anyone can post a video on YouTube, for free. Anyone can start a movement and build a community, for free.

If you want to say something, you can do so. There’s no guarantee that anyone will read it, but you can put out your ideas and arguments, stories and plans, for all the world to see.

These days, everyone’s a writer. We are on the crest of a literary revolution. Roll over, Gutenberg.

The flip side of this openness is that the group troops of the old order – reporters, editors, researchers, authors – have lost their special place. Newspapers and magazines are dying or cutting back, laying off staff. Advertisers have found other media to sell their wares. Journalism and publishing have not figured out how to survive in this brave new world. It’s scary.

You talk with journalists and authors and editors these days, and there’s a brittleness. It’s doom-and-gloom time. They don’t know what the future holds, so they cling to their old ideas. They recognize that change is coming—hell, it’s arrived—but they want to play familiar roles in the new world.

A New Vision of Journalism

Revolutionary change requires visionaries. The best leaders not only embrace new technologies, but also hold on to the best values of the ancien regime. They understand that human needs and values are eternal, that new technologies offer new opportunities to pursue those values. They have empathy for the people who lose everything in the revolution. But they focus on opportunities rather than lamenting loss.

One of the leading figures in the Literary Revolution—Arianna Huffington, the founder of the online magazine The Huffington Post—is The Elements of Writing’s 2010 Person of the Year.

If Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington did not exist, someone would have to invent her. She is the perfect symbol of the media in the age of the internet, globalism, and amateur-specialists.

Born in Greece in 1950, Arianna Stassinopoulos convinced her mother Elli to leave her father because of his philandering. Elli had no money, education, or connections, but she left anyway anyway to claim her own identity and independence. And that’s what she encouraged Arianna to do as well, when she urged her to apply to Cambridge University. Arianna got in and excelled at debating and writing.

Arianna Huffington’s first book, The Female Woman, was a post-feminist manifesto. Since then she has written books about artists (Picasso and Maria Callas), mythology (The Gods of Greece), the modern spiritual malaise (After Reason and The Fourth Instinct), a satire on the Clinton-Gingrich years (Greetings from the Lincoln Bedroom), and the culture of corruption in Washington (Pigs at the Trough). Her latest, Fanatics and Fools, offers a new left vision for America.

At one point, everyone thought Arianna was angling to become America’s first lady. She married a Houston oil heir named Michael Huffington, who served in the State Department  in the Reagan years, in 1986. Michael spent an unprecedented sum of $5.4 million to win election to Congress as a Republican from California in 1992. Two years later he spent $28 million in an unsuccessful bid for the Senate. In 1998 he announced that he was bisexual. The couple divorced.

At this point Arianna was the glamour lady of conservatism. She was caught up in the Gingrich Revolution. Always a social butterfly, she alighted on Comedy Central with Al Franken and continued to articulate a new blend of independence and mutuality, feminism and traditionalism, glamour and combativeness. She extended her reach and vision beyond the right and the GOP. She gathered movie stars, academics, politicians, artists, authors, athletes in salons.

Rather than fearing change, she seemed to delight in it. Maybe it was her own personal odyssey of change that made its inevitability so obvious to her. But more than any other figure in the politico-media-art axis, she seemed to relish the coming of the new—while, in her own way, holding on to Old World values.

In 2005—five short years ago, around the same time YouTube launched—she founded The Huffington Post. It was a natural extension of her personality, an online version of her ongoing salons. HuffPo provided … what?

The Power of the Post

On one level, HuffPo is just another aggregator—that is, a site that grabs other people’s work from the web and puts it all in a dynamic package. The site consists of hundreds of new links every day, arranged into traditional “sections” but also according to hot topics. HuffPo is, in fact, exactly what Old Media titans harrumph about. The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg, the TV networks and cable outlets, and countless other media invest millions in research and reporting. And HuffPo and other aggregators and bloggers grab it, format it for their own purposes.

Traditional media lack a viable business plan for the age of the Internet and mobile media — their fault — but the complaint has merit. The traditional media do all the heavy lifting and Arianna’s elves and their ilk go out and take it and give it their own sizzle.

But, as Richard Nixon used to say, let me say this about that:

First, the old media need to figure out their own plan. If they want to sell ideas, they need to figure out how to make it work. It looks like they are finally doing that, more than a decade after web surfing became a national obsession. Most of the major newspapers and many smaller papers are starting to charge for online content. The Wall Street Journal has for years. The New York Times and Washington Post have announced plans to charge. The emergence of ereaders like the iPad—combined with the new national habit of clicking, which Steve Jobs popularized on iTunes—make it possible for old media to start selling subscriptions and stories.

But the fact that it took so long is not the fault of bloggers and aggregators.

Second, even though you could say they have been somewhat parasitic, The Huffington Post and bloggers have also created new conduits to newspapers and other old media. You post something interesting on the web and Arianna’s elves post it. Those posts direct traffic to the original site.

But there’s more. HuffPo is generating mountains of its own content. Whenever a big story breaks, a new flock of experts and commentators emerges to talk about it. Hundreds of bloggers post on HuffPo. The list includes old-style pol pundits (Howard Fineman), academic wonks (Graham Allison), New Age gurus (Naomi Wolf, Judith Orlaff), health gurus and foodies (David Katz, Jeanne Ponessa Fratello), TV and movie executives (Aaron Sorkin), lapsed pols (Al Gore, Art Agnos), musicians (Neil Young, Madonna), humorists (Andy Borowitz), management gurus (Steve Covey), and more.

HuffPo has also been hiring a flock of new old media hands and developing video blog pages.

Everything seems to come HuffPo’s way, like marbles rolling down a slanted table. In fact, you could say that The Huffington Post is one of the prime centers of media reinvention.

Despite Arianna’s conservative past, HuffPo has a lib-prog-lefty slant. It does not represent right-wing thinking much. Oh, you’ll find Log Cabin Republicans and relatives of conservative politicians like Candace Gingrich. But you won’t find an all-out case for limited government or contracting out. Maybe that’s a flaw. Or maybe it’s a gap waiting to be filled. No reason why HuffPo couldn’t offer a home to Andrew Sullivan, Virginia Postrel, City Journal folks, flat taxers, foreign policy experts concerned about human rights and proliferation. In fact, I would expect HuffPo to become a much richer ideological stew over the years.

Arianna’s Way

If Arianna Huffington did not come along, someone else might have invented a similar aggregator site, right? Well, maybe. But would it be the same? Would it combine the smarts, the breadth of vision, the diversity of viewpoints, the verve?

You could say that someone might have invented a people-friendly computer, a people-friendly MP3 player, a people-friendly smartphone, and a people-friendly e-tablet had Steve Jobs and Apple not come along. But we don’t know. Sometimes, history bends to the vision of once-in-a-blue-moon entrepreneurs. I think you can say that about both Arianna Huffington and Steve Jobs.

The ultimate fuel for the Huffington Post comes from Arianna Huffington’s personality. She’s a case study of the Lois Weisman principle. Weissman, remember, is the woman who connects people in Chicago’s intersecting worlds of politics, policy, parks, media, the arts, and neighborhoods. Malcolm Gladwell made her famous with his 1999 New Yorker profile. Arianna plays the same role with writers, thinkers, performers, activists, builders, producers, futurists, and curiosity-seekers. She connects them — both in person and on her site.

The Internet is the ultimate free-for-all. Anyone who can say the words “dot” and “com” has a website. The quality is wildly uneven. There are no real standards.

But it’s one thing to post blogs, and quite another to give the blogosphere some coherence. Somehow, the centrifugal forces of the Internet needs something to relate them to each other.

HuffPo is, above all, a place of journalistic and civic experimentation. Arianna and her team play around with any story—or information, videos, pictures, whatever can be shared—to figure out what works. It’s still an open format, and it’s bound to face resistance from old-media producers. They make plenty of mistakes. But that’s the point.

Someone has to try new approaches to gathering and distributing the news. To be sure, HuffPo is far from the only kid on the block. But it’s the kid that seems to draw a crowd and delight in doing whatever possible to get them talking about the issues that people care about.

No one knows how the old media will emerge from this revolution. Will The Times get its sea legs again? Will old newspapers, magazines, and pubishers adapt to the electronic readers with an iTunes-style instant-click format? Will WikiLeaks transform investigative reporting into a game of document dumps, with blogs and reports by amateurs and pros? Will writers and artists create new combinations of words and images? Will any new media formula be able to recreate the voice of authority once held by The New York Times and Walter Cronkite?

No one knows. But it’s a fair bet that at the center of media reinvention will a woman who has spent a lifetime finding new roles and exploring new ideas.

Recipe Writing

Years ago, I made a stray comment to my students at Yale: “You know, the best model for explaining and process is the recipe.”

It makes sense. A recipe has to break the process down into simple steps. A recipe also has to get the sequence right. You can’t mix the eggs for an omelet until you break the crack the shell.

As the semester drew to a close, one student challenged me. “If recipes are such great models for writing,” she said, “let’s cook something together.”

So we reserved a kitchen in a dorm and someone found a recipe for an apple pie. I brought a recorder and made a foolish promise.

“If we talk about what we’re doing, and why, at every step of the process, we’ll end up with a first good draft,” I said. “You can actually talk out the first draft of almost anything you write, as long as you break it into steps.”

When we gathered, the instigator talked about her grandmother’s love of cooking and how she passed it on to her family. Other students piped in with stories about family cooking memories. Not a bad start.

Then we started mixing ingredients, preheating the oven, preparing the pie tin. We made a crust, then put the apples, raising, cinnamon, sugar, and other ingredients together.

Someone talked about the oven’s heat.

Someone took my recorder and interviewed other students about their attitudes about food and cooking. People talked about diets. Some people waxed poetic about the emotional response to entering a house while food bakes.

And the room filled with the aroma of homemade pie. These sophisticated college students, from all over the world, who had talked about all kinds of tough issues in their papers all semester softened.

If Michael Pollan had entered the room, he would have been proud. The students turned an ordinary event—cooking a pie—into an intelligent essay on the culture of food.

Then we talked about the end-of-semester blues, and how different moods affect attitude toward food. A few people confessed that they lost their discipline at the end of the semester and ate rank junk food that they would never consider at the beginning of the semester.

Finally, the pie came out of the oven. It was getting late. People had other places to be—classes, meetings, clubs, sports. We each took a slice. As we cleaned up, we continued talking into the recorder. Something about how the job is never done till the place is put back into order.

When I got home, I listened to the recording. Turned out I was right. A transcript of that event could have been a strong first draft. The piece would need some work. We’d have to figure out what point we were trying to make. We’d have to develop some ideas more fully and drop some meaningless asides.

But the recipe recipe works. Here’s why.

Too often, writers work to cram too many ideas, too soon, into their writing. They feel like they don’t have time to say everything they want to say.

The origin of this problem, I think, is school assignments. The introductory paragraph has to state the thesis, the supporting arguments for the thesis, and maybe even the significance of the topic.

Even when they know about a topic, readers have a limited capacity to take in new thoughts. In a series of psychology experiments in the 1950s, George Miller found that humans can only remember seven items at a time. The “scratchpad” that is our shortterm memory simply can’t hold any more. That’s why, legend has it, telephone numbers were seven digits long.

But experts on the brain say that our shortterm memory is actually a lot less. Some say we can only hold three ideas in our head at the same time. Others say that, actually, it’s . . . one. We can jump back and forth along , say, three ideas. But we can only focus on one at a time. And the parade of ideas makes sense only when they come in some logical sequence.

The genius of the recipe approach to writing is twofold. As a chef, you can only do one thing at a time: measure ingredients, sift flour, butter pan, chop apples, and so on. And you have to do them in the right order. You can’t scramble an egg until you break it, right?

Next time you have something complex to explain—how nuclear licensing works, how to code a website, how to close a sale, how to get to Aunt Tillie’s house in North Carolina—make it a recipe.

Great Story, Wrong Angle

Brockton High School, the biggest in Massachusetts and one of the biggest in the U.S., transforms performance in its schools. Not long ago, students failed standardized tests at the highest rate in the state; now, the school outperforms 90 percent of all schools. Teachers, who once told each other that students can fail if they want, now celebrate awards with banners.

So what’s responsible for the turn-around? According to The New York Times, it’s the school size. More than 4,000 students attend the urban school. Most are minorities and immigrants. The school’s vastness creates a world that never gets boring.

“You meet a new person every day,” The Times quotes a student named Johanne Alexandre, the child of a Haitian. “Somebody with a new story, a new culture. I have Pakistani friends, Brazilians, Haitians, Asians, Cape Verdeans. There are Africans, Guatemalans.”

The headline reinforces the message: “4,100 Students Prove ‘Small is Better’ Rule Wrong.”

Actually, the success in Brockton proves no such thing. The vast trove of research proving the power of small learning communities is still right. At most, the Brockton story offers an exception that proves the rule that small is better.

The Times offers no evidence that big is better. A couple of quotes about diversity do not account for an education success story. If big were better, Brockton would not have needed a turnaround.

So what accounts for Brockton’s success? Simple: Writing.

Students at BHS write in every class. They write in English, naturally, but also in social studies and health and even in math and gym.

When you write, you think. When you think, you learn.

The writing assignments also focus on concrete rather than abstract subjects. A science teacher asked students to describe how to make a sandwich. Great assignment! Students needed to break the process down, step by step. They needed to pay attention to details that they usually take for granted.

In a math class, students solve the problem 3 + 72 – 6 x 3 – 11 — and then explain, in prose, how they did it.

The Times got its Brockton story from “How High School Become Exemplary,” a new report by Ron Ferguson of Harvard University’s Achievement Gap Intitiative.

Ferguson’s report notes that teachers get regular reminders of the primacy of writing. Posters in every classroom list the four major learning skills –reading, writing, speaking, and reasoning — along with the key elements for mastering each skill.

Here’s how Ferguson describes the charts’ value:

The writing chart stipulates that students should be able to compare and contrast, and to know how to take notes, among other elements. According to Ms. Copp, teachers might say: “Oh, yeah, my students know how to take notes.” But the chart reminds them to consider: Do the students really know how to take notes? Can they demonstrate to the teacher that they know how to take notes? Effective notes? The speaking chart might ask students in an art class to be able to explain why they like a piece of art, she explained.

Which, of course, is the best way to teach anything. Remind everyone, relentlessly, of the important of all the skills.

You can teach anything by teaching writing — even reading. Eons ago, I wrote an article for Education Week about a program designed to teach kids to write as early as kindergarten. Kids come to school full of stories and a burning desire to tell those stories. When you let them, they develop a host of other skills.

The real triumph of Brockton is really a triumph of writing to learn.

Before you go . . .
     • Like this content? For more posts on writing, visit the Elements of Writing Blog. Check out the posts on Storytelling, Writing Mechanics, Analysis, and Writers on Writing.
     • For a monthly newsletter, chock full of hacks, interviews, and writing opportunities, sign up here.
     • To transform writing in your organization, with in-person or online seminars, email us here for a free consultation.

Righteous and Open For All To See: The Civil Rights Movement and FBI Informants

The hearts of veterans of the civil rights community broke this week when the Memphis Commercial Appeal reported that Ernest Withers, the photographer who created some of the lasting images of the movement, was a paid informant for the FBI.

Withers took some of the pictures that we remember most about that long-ago but still-present era when blacks struggled to break the back of a terrorist state and win their full rights as citizens. They marched and got beaten by mobs and cops. They signed up to vote and they lost their jobs and homes. They sang and they got thrown into jail. They spoke up and their churches and homes got shot at and burned.

Withers documented the trial in the Emmett Till case in 1955 and the planning for the Poor People’s March in 1968. He took pictures of Martin Luther King marching, riding a bus in Montgomery after the boycott, relaxing behind closed doors before his death. He took the iconic picture of sanitation workers marching in Memphis, bearing the signs “I Am A Man,” in the days before King’s assassination. He recorded demonstrations all over. He took pictures of those quintessential American institutions, jazz and baseball, which gave expression to black aspirations even while holding blacks down.

And now, after combing documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and matching reports of an informant named in FBI files as ME 338-R with a memo matching Withers to that tag, the Commercial Appeal reveals that Withers gave the FBI hounds information that J. Edgar Hoover and his henchmen could use to disrupt the civil rights and peace movements. The period of Withers’s activity is not clear; so far it looks like Withers worked for the FBI from 1968 to 1970.

The icons of the civil rights movement deserve to feel betrayed. They were battling a deadly enemy with little more than their bodies, minds, and souls. The FBI and its allies drew from the deep pockets of the federal government and private hatepreneurs. Withers’s information could have resulted in dire consequences for the friends he named. Some might have lost jobs and homes, got hit with audits and smear campaigns, the whole COINTELPRO bag of tricks.

So what Ernest Withers did was wrong, a terrible betrayal of the people who loved him and brought them into the most intimate places and moments.

But in researching my book Nobody Turn Me Around: A People’s History of the 1963 March on Washington, I heard stories that might lend a broader perspective on this betrayal.

I got lots of files from the FBI, many recycled from previous FOIA requests. It was obvious that the FBI was getting its agents into all kinds of church meetings and activist groups. And of course the FBI was tapping the phones of major figures not just in civl rights but all over politics and the arts. Someone had to be sitting in those meetings and taking notes. Some of them had to blend in with the crowd.

And the people in the movement knew it. The civil rights activists of the day sometimes laughed about who was in the meeting to snitch. Sometimes they knew, sometimes they didn’t. But as many told me, they didn’t care. What they were doing was righteous and open for all to see. The element of surprise sometimes played a role, but careful planning and discipline were more important. When surprises happened, the leaders were often the most surprised of all. The “dash for freedom” in the Birmingham campaign is just one example.

A man named Julius Hobson, who was active in Washington politics, sat in all the meetings to arrange for security at the March on Washington. The minutes of these meetings show that Hobson was excited about the toys of the security detail. He talked constantly about walkie-talkies and command hierarchies. He wanted to be in the middle of it all, even though Bayard Rustin, the brilliant march organizer, had recruited and trained black cops from New York to keep the peace using nonviolent means. And the Washington police and federal security officers were involved too. Years later, after Hobson died, FBI documents showed that he too was an informant.

Friends defended Hobson, saying he was undoubtedly feeding false information to Hoover & Co. Maybe yes, maybe no. We’ll never know.

We won’t ever know the full story of Ernest Withers either. Did he just need the money? Did he get framed? Did he want to rat on the Invaders, a Black Panther-style group on the rise in Memphis? Was he trying to deke the feds? Was he confused? Was he targeting enemies and promoting friends? Some of the above? All of the above?

The civil rights movement was the transcendent moment of our time. A vast community of people from all over — ministers and housewives and students, factory workers and sharecroppers and garbage men, teachers and artists and the unemployed — embraced a strategy of nonviolence and love to confront a vicious and corrupt system of racism. They won, not just for themselves but for all of us and all the world.

Part of what’s so amazing — and so profoundly moving — is that they were just ordinary people. They were not superhuman. They were courageous but also scared. They made mistakes, lots of them. They got sloppy and sometimes selfish and even ornery. But they rose above their flaws and transformed a nation, and that’s one of most beautiful things you can say. And no FBI file will ever change that.

Excerpt: Roy Wilkins’s Reluctant Tribute to W.E.B. Du Bois

The following is an excerpt from Nobody Turn Me Around: A People’s History of the 1963 March on Washington by Charles Euchner.

Western Union had delivered hundreds of telegrams of congratulations to the March on Washington tent. One came from W. E. B. Du Bois.

“One thing alone I charge you, as you live, believe in Life!” Du Bois said in a final message composed two months before, during his final illness. “Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life. The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth simply because the Great End comes slowly, because time is long.”

Then came the news that Du Bois had died the day before in Accra, Ghana, at the age of ninety-five. Maya Angelou led a group of Americans and Ghanaians to the U.S. embassy in Accra, carrying torches and placards reading “Down with American Apartheid“ and “America, a White Man’s Heaven and a Black Man’s Hell.”

In Washington, the news fluttered through the audience and onto the platform.

Over a seventy-year career, Du Bois took every conceivable approach to the race problem. He was a provocative propagandist and measured scholar. He was for integration and then for separation. He believed in the American dream and disdained it. He believed in the power of politics and the ambiguity of culture. He brawled and he stood aloof. He embraced indigenous liberation and global communism.

Du Bois wrote thirty-eight books on the experience of race—on slavery and reconstruction, rebellion and war, psychology and economics, America and Africa, war and democracy, ideology and crime. He wrote thousands of articles and reports. He debated Booker T. Washington and coined the expression “the talented tenth,” to describe the vanguard that could lead the black race out of bondage. As an American facing the cruelty and degradation of Jim Crow, Du Bois embraced the pan-African ideal of a global race.

Lifetimes ago, in 1909, Du Bois helped create the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He left the NAACP in 1948 when he was rebuked for holding a civil rights march in Washington. In 1961 he became a Communist Party member, renounced his American citizenship, and became a citizen of Ghana.

When Bayard Rustin got news of Du Bois’s death, he worked his way across the crowded stage to deliver the news to Roy Wilkins. As the head of the NAACP, surely Wilkins would want to say a few words about this historic figure.

“I’m not going to get involved with that Communist at this meeting,” Wilkins told Rustin. “I’m not going to announce that Communist’s death.”

So Rustin crossed back to confer with Phil Randolph. How to announce Du Bois’s death?

“Tell Roy that if he doesn’t announce it, I will.”

Rustin crossed the stage again. He told Wilkins that Randolph was ready to speak.

“I don’t want Phil Randolph doing it,” Wilkins said.

But someone had to announce the death of the century’s most enduring civil rights leader at the nation’s greatest demonstration.

“Well, you tell Phil I’ll do it,” Wilkins said.

That was the ornery Roy Wilkins—the same Wilkins who had attempted to block Rustin’s appointment as the organizer of the March on Washington…who insulted Martin Luther King at Medgar Evers’s funeral…who complained bitterly about the attention given the younger activists in the Deep South…who poked John Lewis…who dismissed the possibility of change resulting from demonstrations.

But a sweeter Roy Wilkins also showed up that day. For a man who did not believe in the power of mass demonstrations—who believed that real progress happened when elites lobbied presidents and congressmen and filed lawsuits against carefully selected targets—Roy Wilkins was positively buoyant on the day of the march.

His whole life, Roy Wilkins had been determined to live within the system. The grandson of former slaves, Wilkins was raised by an aunt in Duluth after his mother died of tuberculosis and his father abandoned him. After studying sociology at the University of Minnesota, he took a job in Kansas City with the black newspaper the Call. “Kansas City ate my heart out,” he said. “It was a Jim Crow town through and through. There were two school systems, bad housing, police brutality, bombings in Negro neighborhoods. Police were arresting white and Negro high school kids just for being together.”

Early political victories forge political character. Wilkins’s first victory came in 1930, when he joined the successful effort to defeat President Herbert Hoover’s nomination of John J. Parker to the Supreme Court. A coalition of labor and civil rights organizations targeted Parker for his yellow-dog contracts and his opposition to black suffrage. Later that year, blacks cast the decisive votes to defeat Senator Henry Allen of Kansas, who supported Parker. “I was ecstatic,” Wilkins said.

“Here at last was a fighting organization, not a tame band of status-quo Negroes.” Fighting, though, was confined to the formal arenas of politics. Like intellectuals of the period, including William Kornhauser and Jose Ortega y Gasset, Wilkins believed that Hitler had forever discredited mass politics.

Besides, he said, protest didn’t work. Even the protests in Birmingham and other cities, he said, “didn’t influence a single vote by a congressman or senator…not a single one.”

Wilkins moved to New York to write for the NAACP’s magazine the Crisis before getting promoted to assistant to Walter White, the NAACP’s executive secretary. Wilkins’s efforts followed the contours of the movement—first he took on lynching, then school segregation, then public accommodations and voting rights. Brown v. Board of Education illustrated the NAACP’s model of racial progress. The NAACP chipped away at the edifice of segregation—first gaining blacks admission to professional and graduate schools, where the idea of “separate but equal” was impossible to implement because of the complete absence of programs for blacks, and then moving on to universities. Only when the courts had embraced the idea of blacks and whites going to universities together did the Brown case move forward.

Tenacious, pragmatic, distrustful of radical approaches, Wilkins became the head of the NAACP in 1955. Wilkins helped create a black-owned bank to assist blacks in starting their own businesses and avoid reprisals for civil rights activism. He embraced the NAACP’s emphasis on judicial and legislative strategies. But by the summer of 1963, he embraced direct action. On June 1st, he was arrested for picketing a variety store in Jackson.

However mainstream in his approach, Wilkins maintained a hard line against segregation. “It’s just poison and no matter whether you have a teaspoonful or you have a barrelful of it, it ain’t no good,” he said. “Self-segregation is worse than another kind because your own eyes ought to be wide open. Segregation ought to be seen for what it is. It is not, necessarily, the division of people according to color. It can…and it does take that [form] in America; it is a device for control, for isolation and control…A segregated group can always be cut off, be deprived, be denied equality.”

Now, standing before this integrated throng—tan and relaxed, wearing a royal blue overseas hat with the letters NAACP stitched in gold—he began to talk with “my people.” He paused, smiled, looked out on the throng that extended down the Mall, out back under the trees by the snow fence, even up in the tree branches. He was in the mood to play.

“I want to thank you for coming here today,” he said, like a friendly uncle, “because you have saved me from being a liar. I told them that you would be here. They didn’t believe me…because you always make up your mind at the last minute. And you had me scared! But isn’t it a great day?”

Laughter rippled across the Mall. Then Wilkins called for silence down the middle of the Mall. “I want everybody out here in the open to keep quiet, and then I want to hear a yell and a thunder from all those people who are out there under the trees.”

Suddenly, like magic, the crowd quieted.

And then he commanded the people on the edges of the Mall, sitting under the trees, to shout out. The Mall filled with cheers. And Wilkins laughed.

“There’s one of them in the tree!” [Note: You can watch this part of the speech here, preceded by the Eva Jessye Choir]

Wilkins suddenly reveled in mass politics. And humor leavened even his dead-serious points.

“We want freedom now!”

“We come here to petition our lawmakers to be as brave as our sit-ins, and our marchers, as daring as James Meredith, to be as unafraid as the nine children of Little Rock, and to be as forthright as the governor of North Carolina, and to be as dedicated as the archbishop of St. Louis.

“All over the land, especially in parts of the Deep South, we are beaten, jailed, pushed, and killed by law enforcement officers. The United States government can regulate the contents of a pill, but apparently has no power to prevent these abuses of citizens within its own borders.”

He endorsed President Kennedy’s civil rights legislation but insisted on strengthening it. “The president’s proposals,” he said, “represent so moderate an approach that if any part is weakened or eliminated, the remainder will be little more than sugar water. Indeed, the package needs strengthening. The president should join us in fighting for something more than pap.”

After a day of somber and contentious rhetoric, Wilkins chose to be light. He turned toward Congress: “We commend Republicans, north and south, who have been working for this bill. We even salute those Democrats from the South who want to vote for it and don’t dare. We say to these people, ’Give us a little time, and we’ll emancipate you—get to the place where they can come to a civil rights rally too!”

Then he spoke about W. E. B. Du Bois: “Regardless of the fact that in his later years Dr. Du Bois chose another path, it is incontrovertible that at the dawn of the twentieth century his was the voice that was calling to you to gather here today in this cause. If you want to read something that applies to 1963 go back and get a volume of The Souls of Black Folk by Du Bois, published in 1903.”

Half a world away, Shirley Graham Du Bois, his widow, wept in appreciation.

“Now, my friends, you got religion today. Don’t backslide tomorrow. Remember Luke’s account of the warning that was given to us all. ’No man,’ he wrote, ’having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.’”

Dennis Littky Writes the Story of School Reform

What if schools built storytelling and writing into every aspect of learning? What if students saw their schooling as a journey, as challenging and demanding as the adventures found in The Odyssey or Moby Dick or Mountains On Mountains? What if students explored their subjects like great mysteries, using all their gifts as investigators and analysts to understand the inner logic of their subjects and their selves?

What if going to school offered a narrative experience—in which the students/heroes took responsibility for their destinies?

Nobody grasps anything as quickly or well as a good story. Our lives are stories. Evolution hardwired us to love and understand stories. Even if we don’t know a particular story, we recognize the basic form of all stories. Robert Graves famously remarked that there is only one basic plot—the desire to return home, to a state of innocence, found in the story of the Garden of Eden. So we eagerly gobble up the details of any decent tale. Once you put something into narrative form, you can hang a lot of other stuff on it.

Even the simplest stories, like fairy tales, inspire us think expansively about matters of life and death, relationships, longing, failure, and all the other dimensions of life. “There is no psychology in a fairy tale,” notes Philip Pullman, the British author of fantasy novels. “The characters have no interior life. . . . One might almost say that the characters in a fairy tale are not actually conscious.” With the characters lacking depth, the readers project their own lives — and fears and fantasies — onto them.

Remember the scrawny Christmas tree that the round-headed kid brought home in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”?

Remember how the gang decorated it so well that it shimmered?

That’s how stories work. Even a scrawny story (like a fairy tale) can help us to explore a wide range of ideas.

You would think, then, that all schools would want to inspire their students to create their own narratives–something they care about passionately–and then hang more and more ideas onto that narrative.

The Founder

Meet Dennis Littky.

Littky is the founder of the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center, a school started in 1996 in Providence, R.I., to provide education “one student at a time.” The Met is now part of a nationwide network of schools run by Big Picture Learning, which includes 69 schools in 17 states and the District of Columbia—and 59 schools in Israel, Australia, the Netherlands, and Canada—educating more than 10,000 students worldwide.

Those schools don’t advertise themselves as places of “narrative learning.” But at the heart of their enterprise, everyone understands that learning is a unique journey for each student. It’s a story, as compelling as the old Greek dramas and anything now playing at the Cineplex.

In Big Picture schools, students take no classes, have no teachers, and sit for no tests. Instead, they spend all four years of high school with an “advisory,” a group of 12 to 15 students that meets weekly with a teacher/advisor. Before they graduate, they get to know this group better than any other group anywhere.

Start by Finding Passion

Met students start their high school career by finding their “passion”–some subject that they want to explore for four years in their school activities and internships.

Many students struggle with this challenge — and the opportunity and responsibility it represents — for months. Sometimes they get angry and surly. Or they feel stupid and empty. They act out, look for easy answers. Many consider dropping out to return to the regimented programs of other public schools.

But at some point — usually in December or January of their freshman year, sometimes earlier and sometimes later — students figure out what they want to study. They begin to develop good work habits. They begin to commit to the full responsibilities of their school community.

The Weekly Routine

The Met does not offer a standard curriculum. Students are not required to master survey material for history, literature, math, science. They are not required to take classes. They have to figure out what activities will help them to learn about their passion. The read, interview, take part in existing groups, and start their own groups. Some take a class, here and there, online or at a local college. They also develop projects–organizing plays, trips, gallery shows, and even businesses. They learn by doing.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, students go to school, where they read and write, conduct experiments, gather and organize information, and explore their passions. They also take part in schoolwide activities like assemblies and reading groups. Some take classes at nearby schools or organize their own study or work groups.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, students work as interns with local professionals—business people and farmers, botanists and carpenters, artists and musicians, scientists and computer programmers, judges and doctors.

Even though the Met does not have classes, tests, or grades, it sets parameters for learning along five dimensions—empirical reasoning, symbolic or quantitative reasoning, communications, and social reasoning, and personal qualities. Students build these academic and life skills into all of their activities. Every quarter, students make presentations to the whole school. They must write a 75-page autobiography in their senior year.

The Standard American School

The Big Picture Learning represents a tiny part of the educational system. And most educators resist its approach. But the Big Picture offers a powerful model for overcoming the limits of traditional schools.

For more than a century, American schools have operated on a common idea: That education is a mass good to be delivered from the top down. Schools work like a company or government agency, delivering basic goods to customers in exchange for the dollars that their attendance brings the school. Using a set curriculum, with a standard set of subjects, teachers provide instruction to groups of students ranging from 15 to 30 or more. The students show mastery by performing well on tests, papers, and presentations.

Schools do vary the curriculum—offering different tracks for students, providing a mix of core and optional courses, and even allowing students to take part in some out-of-school programs—but the whole student body is expected to master the same kind of mix of materials.

I understand that lots of schools do a good job educating and guiding lots of their students. Inspired teachers, exciting books, high standards, great clubs and sports programs launch, and deep friendships launch countless productive and happy lives. If the system is broken, it’s not completely broken. Lots of parts still work well.

But all too often, vast swaths of students get lost in school. For this group—and even many of the more successful students—the Big Picture schools offer a powerful alternative.

Littky’s Model

Rather than thinking of the school as a delivery system, Littky sees the school as a place where students come to design their own education. Littky’s schools give students the same kind of individualized attention that a personal tutor would offer.

The results have been positive. Met schools have a graduation rate of 92 percent—for a demographic that usually graduates just more than half of its students—and most graduating seniors have been accepted into colleges. Met graduates have gone on to attend Brown, Penn, Holy Cross, Providence College, and other first-rate schools. Of the Met graduates in college, more than 70 percent are the first in their family to ever attend college.

Dennis Littky, of course, is not the only person involved in this success. Littky’s business partner is a thoughtful and creative man named Elliott Warshaw. He spends the better part of his time on the road, helping to set up and oversee schools and negotiating with school systems for the opportunity to set up a Big Picture school. He’s dreaming big—taking over a whole school system. Besides Littky and Warshaw, there are hundreds of smart and dedicated advisors who guide the students.

Ironically, the greatest challenge of school reform is scaling up. At charter schools and elite private schools, teachers work long, hard hours to track their students and oversee their demanding work loads. Students shuffle in and out of classes, making it hard for teachers to know students well. Many teachers have to get to know more than 100 students a year.

The whole process revolves around advisories of 12 to 15 students. Advisors know their students better than anyone in the world. They know their backgrounds, interests, and abilities; they know their neighborhoods, families, and everyday struggles. This intimate knowledge gives them the insights–and the caring–to help guide them to explore their passions.

If any model can be replicated, it’s this one. The advisors are extraordinary people, but so are countless other teachers. The difference is that they get manageable workloads and exciting, nonrepetitive work. However intensive the work, it does not involve as many “moving parts” as other reform models.

Some Big Picture schools struggle to meet the demands of standardized tests, the lingua franca of college admissions processes and school assessment. Reluctantly, Littky gives the OK for some Big Picture schools to bend the learning model to make sure students are prepared for the “real world” challenges of tests and admissions.

‘But what about…’

When learning about the Big Picture schools, most open-minded people are intrigued but concerned. Don’t we need a standard curriculum? Shouldn’t all students read Shakespeare, study American history, get a strong grounding in algebra and the basic sciences? I myself embrace the idea of a strong core curriculum. E.D. Hirsch’s idea of “cultural literacy” is essential to any possibility for a humane community. We need something to ground ourselves, right?

But Littky points out that most high school graduates — not just in the Facebook Generation, but in all previous generations — never really attained this ideal. And only a portion of students — a third? a quarter? a tenth? — ever develop the broad liberal-arts mastery evoked in policy debates. For the rest, school too often seems irrelevant. They get turned off to learning by the fill-’em-up mentality of most schools.

For the majority that doesn’t thrive under the back-to-basics, liberal-arts ideal, doesn’t it make sense to challenge students to find and pursue their passions? If done well, these students will explore a wide range of subjects just to understand their passion. A student interested in studying the Iraq War — and many other topics — will learn geography, history, economics, warfare, literature, the environment, statistics, music, art, and more. Guided well, most passions could lead to a broad education.

And, most important, students will develop a love of learning — and an ability to teach themselves how to learn over a lifetime.

School as Narrative

Since first learning about the Met and Big Picture Schools, I have tried to understand how it works. I have visited three or four times, spent hours talking with Littky, advisors, and students. I recently conducted a writing workshop at the Met.

I have always been impressed at how the students’ manners, energy, organization, and articulate speech. And the work ethic! They work hard, often long past the usual hours of 9 to 5. Of course, you could also find polite and energetic students at lots of schools. I just visited three terrific classes at Briarcliff High School, in Westchester County, New York, that fit that description.

So what sets Dennis Littky’s schools apart—I mean, besides giving kids both opportunity and responsibility?

I think it’s that the Met and other Big Picture schools make every students time at school part of a great narrative.

Evolutionary biologists tell us that, more than anything else, storytelling sets humans apart from other animals. Other animals need food and shelter to survive. All need to reproduce. Many use some form of language to communicate. But only humans tell stories. As the human species grew beyond small settlements, as we developed bigger brains and had to keep track of far-flung activities, we started telling stories.

Stories gave us a way to make sense of the world—to understand the dangers of nature, to set rules for families and tribes, to create new systems of hunting and cooking and building, to create stores of memory and knowledge. Over the ages, storytelling gave us ways to engage each other.

As I ruminated on these matters, I started to wonder why schools do not incorporate more narrative into their curricula. Wouldn’t biology be more interesting if told as a story? Physics and chemistry? Math? Health? Economics? Social studies?

Sure, students need to learn raw knowledge. Students need to learn anatomy and periodic tables, expository writing and grammar, geography and timelines, statistics and the scientific method. I understand that. But can’t school help students accumulate this knowledge as part of a larger quest that make them whole people—that make them part of a larger drama that excites and amazes them?

The Hero’s Journey

Then I realized that that’s just what Dennis Littky’s schools do. Students need to find something that sparks their interest and then become the hero in the greatest adventure of all. They must figure out how to give form to information.

Every year, every student at The Big Picture schools enacts powerful dramas. The hero of each drama is a student trying to find her purpose and capacities. The drama involves advisors and peers. It involves employers. It involves parents and siblings and old friends, not all benign influences.

The hero needs to figure it out. Like the heroes of other dramas, the journey not only reveals countless “practical” truths along the way, but also a larger meaning and purpose. And to make sure the experience becomes a permanent part of history, the student documents the drama with a memoir at the end of the whole process.

Be skeptical. You should be. But also be open to the idea that real education requires a journey of discovery. Any curious, reasonably intelligent person can master facts and skills. But all of us really need—and what we owe young people—a chance to play the lead role in our own dramas.

Before you go . . .
     • Like this content? For more posts on writing, visit the Elements of Writing Blog. Check out the posts on Storytelling, Writing Mechanics, Analysis, and Writers on Writing.
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Fish’s Lament

Why don’t students learn how to write?

If you ever spend any time with college professors, you hear endless complaints about poor writing. At the end of the week, you can tell the ones who have papers to grade. They grimace, anticipating countless lost hours trying to decipher errant sentences in jargon-filled nonarguments.

(If you think the problem is unique to the U.S., think again. The situation is not any better in Britain and other English-speaking countries.)

What’s the source of the problem? College teachers, naturally, say the problem lies with high school. If only high school English classes did a better job, profs say, we wouldn’t have to do all this remedial work. Studies show that only about one-quarter of high school seniors write well. High school teachers, in turn, blame families for not setting limits on TV, computer time, texting, and other diversions.

But this all begs the question.

According to Stanley Fish, one of the innovative legal and literary thinkers of our time, students cannot write because no one ever teaches them.

In a series of columns for The New York Times, Fish reports his alarm at reading the poor writing of his graduate students. When he realized that the grad students were teaching writing to the undergrads, he was even more alarmed. Let Fish pick up the story:

I decided to find out, and asked to see the lesson plans of the 104 sections. I read them and found that only four emphasized training in the craft of writing. Although the other 100 sections fulfilled the composition requirement, instruction in composition was not their focus. Instead, the students spent much of their time discussing novels, movies, TV shows and essays on a variety of hot-button issues — racism, sexism, immigration, globalization. These artifacts and topics are surely worthy of serious study, but they should have received it in courses that bore their name, if only as a matter of truth-in-advertising.As I learned more about the world of composition studies, I came to the conclusion that unless writing courses focus exclusively on writing they are a sham.

Fish proposes ditching all those po-mo classes in favor of classes that teach the basic. He proposes to start with writing strong sentences. In fact, even while serving as dean, he has taught basic composition classes using this method. Again, let Fish explain:

You have to start with a simple but deep understanding of the game, which for my purposes is the game of writing sentences. So it makes sense to begin with the question, What is a sentence anyway? My answer has two parts: (1) A sentence is an organization of items in the world. (2) A sentence is a structure of logical relationships.The second part tells you what kind of organization a sentence is, a logical one, and in order to pinpoint what the components of that logic are, I put a simple sentence on the table, something like “John hit the ball” or “Jane likes cake.” I spend an entire week on sentences like these (which are easily comprehended by students of any background), asking students to generate them, getting them to see the structure of relationships that makes them all the same on a formal level, getting them to see that the motor of meaning production is form, not content.

If that sounds like a grind, think again. Once students write strong sentences, they can do anything. In my writing classes at Yale, we spent hours working on sentences and paragraphs. I insist that my students give every sentence a strong “SVO core.” Every sentence needs to state, clearly, who’s doing what to whom. In fact, I ban the use of the verbs “to be” and “to have.” This artificial constraint turns off the auto-pilot and forces students to think through what they mean to say.

We also spent lots of time on paragraphs. As a basic goal, every paragraph should state and develop a single idea. Writing goes awry when paragraphs lurch in different directions. When you say whatever pops into your head, you lose sight on your point. So I have students mark their paragraphs with two- or three-word labels. If they have two or three labels, they need to recast the paragraph into two or three paragraphs — or, better yet, delete some of the material.

Stanley Fish has taken a lot of grief for his deconstructionist approaches to the law and literature. But even his conservative critics must agree that on the question of basic writing skills, he speaks the truth.

Before you go . . .
     • Like this content? For more posts on writing, visit the Elements of Writing Blog. Check out the posts on Storytelling, Writing Mechanics, Analysis, and Writers on Writing.
     • For a monthly newsletter, chock full of hacks, interviews, and writing opportunities, sign up here.
     • To transform writing in your organization, with in-person or online seminars, email us here for a free consultation.

The Power of a Positive No: Beats, Storytelling, and Analysis

One of the most important techniques of storytelling is the beat. A beat is a unit of action that advances the story, in some way. A beat could be anything from a nod (like Rick’s OK for the band to play La Marseillaise in Casablanca) to a major collision (like the ship hitting an iceberg in Titanic). Whatever its scale, the beat advances the story. If the beat doesn’t happen, the rest of the story does not unfold in quite the same way.

Beats create tension and intrigue by alternating from positive to negative values. Something good happens, then something bad happens. The hero is lost and then found. The team scores a touchdown and then its star quarterback gets injured. The young man saves a buddy in a battle and then gets shot just as he returns to the bunker. Good, bad; bad, good. The more you can drive beats forward, the more you will advance the story and engage your reader.

I was thinking of beats when I reviewed Bill Ury’s book The Power of a Positive No. Ury is half of the famous duo, with Roger Fisher, that changed the way we think of negotiation with their classic book Getting to Yes. That book describes a straight path from conflict to agreement. But as Ury says, sometimes the best path to Yes moves through doubt and conflict.

In a review for The Boston Globe, I described this process. As a writer, I want you to consider how you can give your writing this yes-no-yes-no rhythm. By shifting back and forth from positive to negative and back again, you will improve your ability to explain complex issues and processes. You will also engage your reader like a master storyteller.

By Charles Euchner

Boston has the reputation of a civic naysayer, with a culture so cranky that good ideas get rejected as a perverse ritual. The political graveyard is filled with ideas that seemed so good when announced, but then suffered nasty deaths. Remember the grand plans for reviving City Hall Plaza? The new Back Bay-style neighborhood on the South Boston waterfront? The Cape Cod wind farm? One 2004 report by the CitiStates Group called the region “fractious, exclusionary, and lacking the collaborative gene.”

But in a new book, Harvard Law professor William Ury shows that Boston needs to learn, of all things, to say “no.” In The Power of a Positive No, which Ury calls a “prequel” to his classic Getting to Yes, he says that rejecting ideas is not such a bad thing. The problem is that Bostonians, and many people, do not always say “no” in a constructive way.

He calls for a new kind of “no” that is not a shrill message of rejection. Instead, “no” should be built on the foundation of strong and positive values, and be the beginning of a conversation, not its end. This “positive no” holds the possibility of changing politics, opening new possibilities. But, he argues, it could also transform the lives of individuals, businesses, teams, and communities.

“No may be the most important word in our vocabulary, but it is the most difficult to say well,” Ury writes. “At the heart of the difficulty in saying No is the tension between exercising your power and tending to your relationship.”

Ury argues that people avoid uttering the two-letter word because they confuse it with total rejection. We have to deal with people even when we disagree, and we don’t want to say something that might hurt future interactions. We also live in a manic age, full of distractions and demands that make it easier to just say “yes.” As a result, we have become a nation of accommodators and avoiders.

Ury outlines a three-stage process of constructive dialogue. In the first stage, we reach inside to find our deepest values — what Ury calls the “Yes!” statement. Being clear on those values makes it easier to move to the next step: saying “no” to things that betray those values. Finally, both sides can suggest common ground, a stage Ury calls “Yes?”

The Yes!/No/Yes? process mirrors the structure of storytelling, from Athens to Hollywood. In Act 1, the hero develops and affirms his deepest values. In Act 2, he confronts a great foe that requires him to fight back. In Act 3, the great struggle opens new possibilities for all concerned.

Massachusetts has become the capital of negotiation studies. Ury’s Global Negotiation Project is based at Harvard. Two Red Line stops away, at MIT, Lawrence Susskind’s Consensus Building Institute has trained hundreds of people. And don’t forget the Albert Einstein Institution, the leading source of information about nonviolence as a form of political action, which Gene Sharp now runs in his East Boston rowhouse.

But smart negotiation has not played enough of a role in Massachusetts politics. According to Ury, the problem might not be that we have a hard time getting to “yes,” but that we don’t know how to get to “no” first. So we go along with undesirable ideas, like the Big Dig (along with its multibillion-dollar “mitigation” projects) and the convention center in South Boston. Or we avoid taking up good ideas, like the expansion of charter schools or the creation of business improvement districts, because of the shrillness of opponents. The result is an undercurrent of frustration, which occasionally explodes in anger.

Neighborhoods regularly say “no” to even benign projects — housing, parks, schools, new commercial development — that would alter their neighborhood in any way. The “no” of NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) can poison community life for years.

I know a nonprofit developer who struggled for years to build affordable housing on an open lot in the Roslindale section of Boston. Neighbors repeatedly rejected the idea in community meetings and zoning board hearings. The developer’s response was to call the neighbors racist and to vow to fight for the housing until he won.

Ury would instead get the developers and neighbors in a room for a long conversation about what the community needed and what it feared. Ury would try to learn everyone’s deepest desires and fears (their “Yes!”) and then tell them how they can say “no” in such a way as to open the discussion to new possibilities.

“A positive ‘no’ respects rather than rejects, even when you’re saying ‘no’ to someone you don’t like,” Ury told me. “The first time I taught this course at Harvard Law School, we were in the midst of the war, and the students said, ‘What about Saddam Hussein? Does he deserve respect?’ and I said ‘yes.”‘

The most important part of a good “no” might be having a Plan B: An alternate plan to use when the other side won’t accept your answer. More than any other part of a negotiation, having a Plan B can force a stubborn opponent to respond.

Suppose then-Governor Mitt Romney had listened to his budget advisers on the plan to rebuild the Greenbush commuter line to the South Shore. The administration had lots of good reasons to kill the $500 million project, adopted as part of the “mitigation” agreement to get the backing of the Conservation Law Foundation for the Big Dig in the waning days of the Dukakis administration.

But he didn’t have a Plan B. Different transit investments, perhaps? Greater attention to strengthening old urban centers? Modern highway management systems? Hard to say. The state, in fact, has not had a comprehensive transportation strategy for more than a generation.

Contrast that situation with the politics of “no” on highway construction back in the early 1970s.

At the time, residents of Boston, Brookline, and Cambridge were agreed on a powerful “Yes!” — the devotion to maintaining the character of their neighborhoods. So they shouted “no” to Governor Frank Sargent’s plans to build an extension of Interstate 95 and an inner-belt highway, which cut through densely populated areas. Sargent then hired an MIT political scientist named Alan Altshuler to develop a comprehensive transportation plan for the Boston area. The resulting blueprint became the “Yes?” that shaped transportation and planning for a generation, leading to improvements in transit (like the new Orange Line) and urban design (the Southwest Corridor park).

One could argue that Altshuler’s 18-month planning process did more to revive Boston than any other single event. But it all started with a resounding “no.”

This piece appeared in the April 22, 2007 “Ideas” section of The Boston Globe.

Languages, Law, and San Francisco

This article originally appeared in Education Week on January 25, 1984.

By Charles Euchner

A young graduate of the public-school system here, now a sophomore at the City College of San Francisco, has few memories of his first years of formal education. About all the student, who immigrated to this city from Hong Kong, recalls is that he felt isolated from other students because he could not speak English.

As the years passed, the student gradually learned English. He took Chinese lessons after school for several years, but quit in order to make his English classes a top priority. When he was not in school trying to understand what his English-speaking peers were saying, he watched television for hours on end, imitating the speech of the actors to eliminate his Chinese accent. “The shows on TV are more or less how the society speaks,” he now says.

School officials offered to enroll him in classes for non-English-speaking students, the student recalls, but he told his mother that he would rather learn English without any bilingual instruction. “I said no, because [classmates] said, ‘You’re an ESL [student]’ and laughed at you.”

The student, who plans to major in computer electronics at City College, now speaks in a clear voice with hardly a trace of an accent. His name is Kinney Kinmon Lau. He was the plaintiff named in Lau v. Nichols, the case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court 10 years ago this month that led to an explosive growth in bilingual-education programs here and across the country.

The class action against the San Francisco Unified School District originated in the U.S. District Court here in 1970. The suit charged that the district was denying non-English-speaking pupils their civil rights as Americans because it did not offer them a program for learning English.

Chinese and Hispanic community groups had unsucessfully pressed the district for years to develop a comprehensive bilingual-education program when in 1970 a public-interest lawyer recruited some non-English-speaking families to challenge the district. The first of 13 plaintiffs listed in the suit was Kinney Lau.

The district court ruled in 1971 against the Laus, stating that the city must provide students with equal access to educational programs but not the opportunity to derive equal benefits from the programs. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the decision in 1973.

The Supreme Court in January 1974 unanimously reversed the rulings of the lower courts, holding that the district violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by not offering the students any special programs to overcome their academic handicaps. It rejected the students’ constitutional claim that they were denied their 14th Amendment rights to equal protection under the law, however. The Court ordered the district to develop a program to address the problems of the 1,800 Chinese-speaking students represented in the suit.

Those who spent years lobbying for bilingual education both before and after the decision say the programs the city developed are often inadequate and even narrow-minded. But they also say the Court’s decision has done more to change the district than any other development in recent years.

The school that Kinney Lau attended at the time of the Supreme Court decision, Jean Parker Elementary School, has undergone demographic and program changes that officials say is fairly typical of the district’s experience with special-language initiatives.

The demographic makeup of the school, which sits a block from Chinatown’s business district, has changed dramatically. As much as 98 percent of the school’s students at the time of the suit were of Chinese descent. The school is now about 45 percent Chinese and 15 percent Hispanic; the rest of the students are white, black, Filipino, Cambodian, Indian, Burmese, and Arabic.

The school now offers a variety of language programs that officials say mirror the district’s mix of bilingual-bicultural and “English-as-a-second-language” programs. The programs involve six or seven times as many pupils as they did at the time of the decision.

Students in the bilingual classes learn demanding subjects such as mathematics and social studies in their native language while also attending English classes. ESL students receive instruction in English and are pulled out of the classroom for separate English instruction. School officials stress that there is a considerable mix of bilingual and esl approaches in all classes.

In addition to those two basic approaches, the school also teaches Chinese and Spanish to students whose first language is English, and writing to students who can speak but not write their native languages. All students in the language programs learn about the countries associated with the foreign languages, teachers say.

Virginia Wales, the principal of the school, says she favors giving all students access to bilingual programs. But ESL predominates, she says, because the district has had problems finding and paying qualified bilingual teachers. Right now, the school has 21 special language teachers and aides for the school’s approximately 300 “other-language” students.

In the district of 62,000 students, about 550 teachers offer special language instruction to some 17,000 non- or limited-English-speaking students, officials say. The students are divided into two roughly equal groups–those in bilingual programs and those in “personalized” programs. About 600 students choose not to take part in any special program.

District officials say they have no cost figures for the program because it has been incorporated into the regular school budget. But the cost for bilingual teacher salaries is about $15 million annually, and the district spends another $1 million for special programs, the officials estimated.

The approaches that schools use in bilingual programs vary, the officials say; some resemble ESL programs in many ways and others offer students instruction in two languages throughout. The individual programs are tailor-made for each student, with almost all resembling ESL.

“All bilingual programs contain an ESL component, so it’s not an either-or kind of thing,” said Roger Tom, the program manager for bilingual education in the district. “What’s in the programs–bilingual or ESL–is a matter of degree.”

Edward H. Steinman was working in the Chinatown office of the San Francisco Neighborhood Legal Assistance Foundation in the late 1960’s when he started to investigate the problems of limited- and non-English-speaking students in the area.

Now a professor of law at the University of Santa Clara, Mr. Steinman says he needed an interpreter to understand most of his Chinese clients. He started to attend meetings of community groups, where he said he learned about the problems of Chinese-speaking students in English-language classes.

After formally asking the board of education to develop a bilingual program–“their response was, yes, there’s a problem but there’s not anything we can do about it,” he said–Mr. Steinman started to look for people willing to get involved in a court battle.

“President Reagan’s right when he says that [public-interest lawyers] manufacture cases,” Mr. Steinman said. “But they don’t manufacture problems. Something needed to be done.”

Mr. Steinman was representing Kam Wai Lau in a landlord-tenant dispute when he asked her to get involved with her son in the class-action suit. Ms. Lau agreed, she said recently with her son acting as interpreter, because teachers at the school “told her she had to do something for herself” when she complained that she “saw other children crying and unhappy.”

Because Ms. Lau and her son spoke no English and had access to no special-language programs, Mr. Steinman decided to place Kinney Lau’s name first in a list of 13 plaintiffs involved in the suit.

The Laus and the other Chinese families sued the San Francisco Unified School District in 1970, charging that the district’s language policy violated both the students’ constitutional rights to equal protection and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Under growing pressure from Chinese and Hispanic groups in the late 1960’s–a time of youth-gang warfare in Chinatown and unrest in the city’s other minority neighborhoods–the system started to develop special language programs.

By the time the Court handed down its unanimous decision in 1974, the $1.5-million program involved less than half of the 10,000 “other language” students in the district. Most of the students were enrolled in ESL classes, which generally provided students less than one hour of instruction daily. Many educators criticized ESL for ignoring the students’ need to advance in all subjects while learning English. Most of the programs were experimental projects started with federal money under the 1967 Bilingual Education Act aimed at disadvantaged children.

Even district officials said the city’s bilingual program was inadequate, the courses were poorly designed, the teachers were not well trained and had few classroom resources, and the screening and evaluation of students was poor.

“We were doing some things, but there were a lot of things that just weren’t in place,” said Raymond del Portillo, then the director of bilingual education. “There was a great lack of teachers that were bilingual and biliterate. They’d say, ‘Hey, del Portillo, don’t you speak Spanish?’ And then I was a bilingual educator.”

Despite the claims of Thomas O’Connor, the district’s lawyer, that San Francisco “pioneered bilingual instruction” before Lau, the critics said the district’s program was purely political. Mr. Steinman said the district tried to “moot the case” by starting new programs for Kinney Lau and other people named in the case.

The controversy over how to deal with non- and limited-English-speaking pupils was just one of many problems facing the district in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.

In early 1975, when a task force created to develop a bilingual-education program was preparing its final report, the district had seen three superintendents quit in six years. Enrollment was declining in the city, which was already noted for its low proportion of students to overall population. The district’s budget was out of balance by 10 percent. The district consistently had some of the lowest achievement-test scores in the state despite showing the highest per-pupil expenditures of any large city. Officials faced an unprecedented array of lawsuits from disaffected parents, students, teachers, and administrators.

On top of all these problems was desegregation. The federal district court in July 1971 ruled in Johnson v. San Francisco Unified School District that the district must develop a comprehensive desegregation plan–the first such court order in a northern city. The order followed more 10 years of political controversy that bitterly divided the city’s whites, blacks, Chinese, and Hispanics.

Wilson Riles, then state superintendent of public instruction, told a Congressional committee investigating the impact of Lau that San Francisco was an “embarassment” to the state.

The debate over how the district should comply with the Court’s decision started the day the decision was handed down.

Wellington Clew, the superintendent of the city’s bilingual program, said the district should offer a variety of programs rather than endorsing one approach. “We should provide an option for the parents and children,” he said. “Some prefer ESL only, and others think bilingual is the [correct] program.”

Victor Low, the director of a pilot project in Chinese bilingual education at Commodore Stockton Elementary School, endorsed the bilingual approach as a way of allowing students to maintain cultural pride while learning English. He suggested that tensions in Chinatown were caused by the emergence of two major groups–the ABC’s, or American-born Chinese, and the FOB’s, or those who were “fresh off the boat”–half of whom spoke Chinese and half of whom spoke English.

Mr. Low and others also said the student with “other-language” students could be psychologically damaged without attention to their culture, and that use of their native language would be a valuable tool for learning English.

Some of the people most involved with the suit favored a “maintenance” program, in which students would receive instruction in their native language and English throughout their public education–regardless of how quickly they learned English.

L. Ling-Chi Wang, a leading community organizer, and Mr. Steinman argued that programs to teach children English should be taught alongside programs to teach children their native languages and the histories of their native countries.

“This country does not know any other languages and cultures. It was unprepared to establish relations with China,” said Mr. Wang, who attended a recent dinner here for China’s Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang. “Each year, we spend millions of dollars to teach foreign languages to diplomats, and then we spend so much of our time trying to wipe out other languages.”

Ligaya Avenida, the district’s current bilingual coordinator, added: “Our district should capitalize on the multiplicity … of ethnic groups. The delivery of subject areas can be done in a second language. We have to expand our concept of bilingual education into second languages. English will always be there–it’s the status language of this country.”

The Supreme Court remanded the case to the federal court in which it was originally filed. Mr. Steinman said he and other bilingual advocates were determined to limit the role of U.S. District Judge Lloyd Burke in developing a remedy. “He was anti-bilingual,” said Mr. Steinman. “He said the Supreme Court was wrong and bilingual education is a sham–a year after the Supreme Court acted.”

The leaders of the bilingual movement lobbied the board of education to create an independent committee to devise the plan. When the board created the Citizens’ Bilingual Task Force, those leaders lobbied the board to appoint members who were committed to devising a comprehensive bilingual plan. And when the task force completed a comprehensive report, the leaders lobbied the board to approve the plan.

Mr. Wang, now chairman of the department of ethnic studies at the University of California at Berkeley, said bilingual proponents originally had only one ally on the seven-member board. Mr. Wang said he helped neighborhoods organize to press the board for a comprehensive bilingual effort.

“The task force took one year to form,” said Mr. Wang. “The district wanted to do it on their own, but we used to have 600 or 700 or 800 people [at meetings] demanding to create the task force. The board finally realized that it had to create the task force. We in fact took away the formulation of the plan from the school district.”

To increase the credibility of the task force–which needed interpreters to function–its members also persuaded the board to hire a private consulting firm. The task force and the Center for Applied Linguistics, a Washington-based firm, worked on the plan for nine months before submitting it to the board in February 1975. The board approved the plan on March 25, 1975.

The task force’s “master plan” was more than 600 pages long. The four-volume study included 124 specific proposals that, if enacted, would have reshaped the district’s approach to teaching almost all subjects. The district signed the Lau consent decree, a plan based on the report, in October 1976.

The master plan includes specific provisions for improving the early evaluation and placement of students, a counseling program, the training of teachers and other staff members, the development of curriculum and class materials, student evaluation, and community participation.

Officials say the district’s greatest innovations are “intake” centers, which were started in 1972. Children of all major language backgrounds are evaluated at the centers, and some 600 students spend a full year in intensive English instruction. Elementary-school children with no English background attend Chinese, Spanish, and Filipino centers.

Almost all high-school students with no English background attend the Newcomer High School, started in 1981. The school’s 500 students are given instruction in their own language in mathematics and social studies and three intensive English classes.

According to A. Richard Cerbatos, the chairman of the task force and now a member of the board of education, the master plan’s ultimate goal was a comprehensive language-maintenance program, in which all students would be taught subjects in two languages throughout their elementary- and secondary-school education.

That vision has not yet materialized. According to Ms. Avenida of the district, Clarendon Elementary School’s Japanese program involving 150 students is the only maintenance program in the city.

The frustrations that such bilingual advocates express is matched by the frustration of people who say students are kept in bilingual programs too long. According to Beatrice Cardenas-Duncan, the bilingual-education expert for the city’s Human Rights Commission, and Mr. del Portillo, anecdotal evidence suggests that school administrators and teachers keep pupils in special-language programs long after they have mastered English.

Ms. Avenida says students stay in bilingual programs for an average of about five years, and that 200 students are “reclassified” as English speakers annually. Students are reclassified on the basis of their grades, teacher recommendations, oral-proficiency tests, and the California Test of Basic Skills. A student’s scores on the latter test must rank in the 36th percentile of all students statewide.

“Sometimes [school officials] perpetuate the idea that certain students cannot move on in order to get more funding,” said Ms. Cardenas-Duncan. “This is information we get from parents.”

Ms. Cardenas-Duncan called for an independent commission to study the effectiveness of the city’s bilingual program “so that when issues like Proposition O come up we will have documentation.” She was referring to the nonbinding citizens’ referendum that discourages multilingual ballots, which passed overwhelmingly last fall.

At about the same time that Mr. Wang and his allies convinced the citizens’ task force and then the board of education to embrace bilingual education, Mr. Wang served on the groups advising the state and federal government about the impact of Lau.

Mr. Wang was a member of a task force created to help the Office for Civil Rights of the former Department of Health, Education and Welfare devise guidelines for enforcing the Supreme Court’s decison. The resulting guidelines–the so-called “Lau remedies”–have been a central part of the planning of districts across the U.S.

Mr. Wang and his allies also lobbied state legislators, and, partly as a result, they say, the state bilingual laws are similar to those of the district. Under state laws passed in 1976 and 1980, all students who are in a grade with 10 or more children who speak the same foreign language must be enrolled in a bilingual program. The school must develop “individualized learning plans” for the other pupils who require bilingual instruction.

“The master plan became viable with the state laws,” said Mr. del Portillo, the district’s former bilingual coordinator. “Through a process of osmosis, the district’s plan became the state law, also.”

Bilingual advocates in San Francisco say the city’s language program does not meet all of the task force’s ambitious goals, but they say the program has become institutionalized and will be able to survive political threats.

Some expressed concern about the overwhelming success last fall of Proposition O. “We can’t just sit back,” said Ms. Cardenas-Duncan. “Bilingual education and bilingual ballots are related.”

But most bilingual advocates say that and other developments–such as the Reagan Administration’s funding cuts and withdrawal of regulations mandating bilingual education–have not significantly affected the city’s program. The district’s growing minority population is likely to give bilingualism a broader base, they add.

“We haven’t been at all affected by what has happened in Washington, D.C. The city is almost immune to what happens there,” said Mr. Steinman. “San Francisco has gone beyond the stage where they’d go back. The number of Lau children has been growing–it’s almost tripled. Institutionally, it’s always going to be there.”

Adds Mr. Cerbatos: “As more and more people in this community experience the program–and the district is 83 percent minority–they’re going to think more and more in terms of what’s good for the minorities, including bilingual and bicultural programs.”

One person who says he is uneasy about “maintenance” bilingual-education and bicultural policies is Kinney Lau. “If they teach you [basic subjects] in Chinese, you’ll never learn any English,” he says. “You can’t have a [native language-speaking] teacher all the way.”

“If there’s enough money to supply the schools, I guess it can be good. If the teacher would teach the class in English and be able to answer questions in [students’ native languages], I would say that’s good.”

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Carnegie-Mellon, I.B.M. Designing Futuristic ‘Wired’ University

By Charlie Euchner
Education Week, April 13, 1983

Pittsburgh–In collaboration with one of the computer industry’s most influential corporations, Carnegie-Mellon University is attempting to create in two years the “wired city” that so far has been only the dream of futurists.

Students who enroll at the university in the fall of 1985 will not only own their own personal computers, but they will also be part of a computer network and will have access to a large stock of programs and an “electronic mail” system.

That network will also spread throughout the city and perhaps move across the country, with instructional programs offered to graduates of the university and probably others, officials said.

Carnegie-Mellon’s president, Richard Cyert, last fall announced a joint initiative with the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) to create on campus what officials said will be the most extensive everyday computer network in the world. Most undergraduates will be required to buy their own computers for about $3,000.

IBM will spend up to $50 million over the next three to five years to develop a new line of microcomputers and a system that can link thousands of them together in one network. The new machine will be 20 to 100 times as powerful as most personal computers now on the market, spokesmen said.

Under the terms of the Carnegie-Mellon agreement with IBM, both sides will assign employees to work full-time to develop the technology. Both sides also pledged not to divulge any trade secrets they discover in the course of the project.

IBM would develop the new line of computers even without such a cooperative venture, university officials said. But they said it is worthwhile for the university to help with that development in order to be at the forefront of the technology.

The IBM initiative will expand Carnegie-Mellon’s already extensive on-campus use of computers in subjects ranging from English literature to physics to political science–by so improving access to computer hardware and software that they become everyday tools.

But the networking idea is the most revolutionary aspect of the pro-ject, university officials said.

The officials have already moved beyond creating a network of students and alumni. They have held discussions with Warner Communications and the Bell Telephone Company to expand the network throughout the city of Pittsburgh–either with Warner’s already extensive cable-television system or with a Bell light-wave system now under construction.

Douglas E. Van Houweling, the vice provost for computing and planning, said he expects campus routines to survive. But by expanding the computer network to graduates and local businesses, he added, education probably will become more decentralized and accessible.

Said Karolyn Eisenstein, the assistant dean of the science college: ”The effect of computers on organizations is the real frontier.”

John Crecine, the dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, said the network might shift the focus of education from the classroom to course goals and instruction displayed on a computer.

“Whether we like to admit it, most learning does not take place in the classroom,” Mr. Crecine said. “We all know that the assignments … and peer interaction are the key things that determine what students do.” Both of those, he suggested, will be directed increasingly by computer programs.

Since the announcement of the initiative, Mr. Van Houweling said, many companies that turned down previous Carnegie-Mellon overtures have expressed an interest in hook-ing up to the network.

“The technology will be in a huge number of homes and schools at the end of this decade,” he said. “Organizations like Westinghouse or [Pittsburgh’s] Mellon Bank might adopt this. It will be an interesting question about at what point you’ll start to get a wired city.”

Such businesses might be interested in hooking up with the network to buy educational programs, access to data bases, and management programs, officials said.

‘Lifetime’ Education Foreseen

At the very least, Mr. Van Houweling said, the network will create “lifetime learning opportunities” for graduates and will allow students and faculty members to use time more efficiently. Graduates will be offered a chance to continue their studies for the rest of their lives with instructional computer programs that will be transmitted in an as-yet-undetermined way.

“It is assumed that the computers will be their [the students’] machines and that they will have a lifetime access to learning,” said John Stucky, director of computing for the humanities and social sciences.

“You need to teach more these days,” he said. “A lot of us behave as if education is an inoculation process that lasts four years. We don’t have good delivery [of formal education] after they leave the campus.”

That, Mr. Van Houweling said, will change when Carnegie-Mellon implements its computer initiative. As more sophisticated programs for computer-based instruction are de-veloped, the university will transmit them to graduates and possibly others.

The continuing-education program is in its earliest planning stages, Mr. Van Houweling said, so there is no way to estimate what fees Carnegie-Mellon will charge for access to the programs.

Officials said they had heard criticism of instructional programs, or “software,” now available, but noted that computer technology is changing so rapidly that the quality of software is bound to improve markedly in the next few years.

Microcomputers will not only have greater power in themselves, Mr. Crecine said, but the developing methods for transmitting computer programs will allow more information to be transmitted than is possible through current techniques of transmitting them by telephone.

“The network of personal computers will open new vistas for computer-assisted instruction,” said Mr. Van Houweling. “The key is being able to devote substantial computing power to each student … so the system can capture the expertise of the teacher and not just be an automated page-turner.”

Added Mr. Stucky: “The notion of having a tutor any time a student wants to throw a switch is very exciting.”

Computer Use Is Extensive

The university is already well known for its use of computers. Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, the French futurist and politician, came to the campus this semester with Steven Jobs, the chairman of the board of Apple Computers, to learn about the institution’s computer strategies.

Mr. Servan-Schreiber later arranged a lunch date for Mr. Cyert with French President Francois Mitterand, who is also greatly interested in the uses of high technology.

What has attracted such attention is Carnegie-Mellon’s enthusiastic development of one of the most technologically advanced computer networks in the country. Already, officials said, 75 percent of the Carnegie-Mellon’s 5,500 students use the university’s 1,000 computer terminals regularly. About 60 percent of the faculty members have terminals in their offices and homes.

A task force on the future of computing at Carnegie-Mellon, established by Mr. Cyert, last year reported that the university spends more than $6 million annually to support its computer activities.

Members of the university regularly use an extensive “electronic mail” system to send notes, assignments, tests, and bulletins of campus events. It is a system that allows faster responses and encourages greater cooperation on research and other projects, said Mr. Stucky.

Students are required to take at least one semester of computer science using the computer language fortran, and computers are widely used in liberal-arts courses. Starting this fall, computer use will be required for graphic-arts majors.

Until an entire generation grows up with computers, Mr. Stucky said, teachers should be introduced to them gradually so that the knowledge of the technology and the subject area are well balanced.

Even Carnegie-Mellon faculty members and students express misgivings about the rapidity of change on their campus and say they are worried about how the new initiative with ibm will affect the academic atmosphere.

Faculty members say they are concerned that students’ fascination with their own machines might distract them from the necessary dedication to study.

“Some of that seduction is going on right now,” said Ms. Eisenstein. “We shouldn’t be pushing students to deliver the same output in slicker form.”

For example, Ms. Eisenstein said, computers would be useful for calculating the movement of molecules in biology studies.

But students need “semester on semester of study” to understand the field well enough for the computer to be useful, she said.

Teachers and students also say they worry that computers will discourage social intercourse. But university officials downplay that possibility.

Working Together Encouraged

If anything, said Joseph Ballay, the associate dean of the College of Fine Arts, computers encourage people to work more closely together. “This is more interdepartmental than anything else I’ve been involved with,” he said.

In addition, some students have expressed concern about assuming a heavier financial burden at a college that will charge $7,500 for tuition next year. Administrators say they might improve the university’s financial-aid package to take into account the additional expense of students’ computer purchase.

Last year’s task-force report acknowledged that many students might not need computers and that “greater availability of computers should not create expectations that everyone will use them.”

The student newspaper, The Tartan, has also criticized what it says is inadequate student involvement in the project.

In an annual April Fools’ Day issue, the newspaper identified the university as “a subsidiary of IBM” and reported that Mr. Cyert had signed an agreement with the Defense Department that would put a nuclear-attack warning system “in every dorm room.”

Richer Problem Environment

Whatever the shortcomings of the project, Mr. Crecine said: “The computer makes it possible … to operate in a far richer problem environment–and more efficiently. You can operate on a higher philosophical plane.”

Mr. Van Houweling said the university will not change admissions standards because of the computer. He said he would tell high-school teachers “just do what they’re doing. We’re not looking for any previous computer knowledge.”

In fact, he added, background in computers might even be a liability. Mr. Van Houweling said that if the applicant pool appeared to attract students with unusual backgrounds in computing, “probably we would look for those who have less experience.”

The idea, Mr. Crecine said, is not to produce “computer nerds with narrow interests and no social or interaction skills,” but to pull together the parts of the university with the computer network.

Just How Clever is ‘Solid-State Socrates’?

By Charlie Euchner
Education Week
July 27, 1983

Concern about mathematics and science education stems at least partly from the perception that today’s students need to be more “technologically literate” than the students of any previous generation. And the challenge posed by computers can, in turn, be met by using computers in the school.

On that much, most educators agree. But just how educational technology can be used–and, in fact, whether it ever will–is a constant source of dispute.

Technology is likely to be used increasingly in all subjects, but experts believe that it holds special promise for math and science. The computer’s potential for “mass delivery” of instruction might help address the shortage of teachers, some educators say. Furthermore, computer use could make math problems less abstract, reduce tedious operations, and teach logic. And computer simulations could demonstrate complex physical phenomena that are impossible to show in standard science laboratories.

Some experts say “mass delivery” of instruction is where the computer’s greatest potential lies. Computers can illustrate the abstract concepts of mathematics and science better than traditional methods, they say, and will be able to help alleviate the shortage of teachers in those areas.

Others hold that to use the computer as a “solid-state Socrates,” or a means of delivering instruction, would be a waste. They say the computer is best used as a tool for doing tedious computation, working with complex mathematics problems, and aiding with some laboratory work.

Educators appear to agree that the computer is useful to introduce students to the basics of information technology, such as programming–which, according to a recent survey, is now one of the most common uses of the machines.

That study, conducted by the Center for Social Organization of Schools at the Johns Hopkins University, found that the computer so far has simply been “grafted” onto the traditional mathematics curriculum. The nationwide survey of 2,209 schools found that most teachers put greater emphasis on programming and less on computer-assisted instruction as they gain experience with the technology.

Such a practice has both positive and negative effects, says Arthur G. Powell, executive director of an independent national study of high schools. On one hand, such courses can attract students who normally would not take part in any program with a mathematical component. Computer science could teach many of the reasoning skills that are considered central to other math subjects, he says.

But such courses also serve as a way for schools to “get around” state mandates for stiffer graduation requirements. “It’s one way the school can respond without making the teaching of math more strenuous … and you don’t have to deal with problems of sequence,” Mr. Powell says.

THE COMPUTER AS TUTOR

Educators say the professional arguments about computers will intensify in the next several years as the number of computers in the schools and the range of educational software increase.

Few experts expect computer-assisted instruction to make the teacher obsolete, but many believe that the computer can at least free the teacher from many tedious tasks and do a better job teaching students basic skills–especially in areas such as mathematics and science.

According to a report by Technical Education Research Centers (terc), commissioned by the National Science Foundation, there are now 1,000 science and 650 mathematics software packages on the market, and 100 new mathematics and science packages appear every month. Those programs represent almost half of all of the educational software available. More than 90 percent of all the math software programs are for drill and practice.

There is almost no software for elementary-school science classes and for many high-school topics, terc found. Many software topics overlap, the survey found, and teachers reported that they are not aware of what software is available.

Robert Kansky, professor of mathematics education at the University of Wyoming, says many schools in his state “can’t afford to hire math and science teachers.” The only way students will be able to take advanced courses in these ares, he says, is through computer hookups.

Mr. Kansky, who in 1981 and 1982 served as a consultant for a computer-assisted-instruction experiment in South Africa, says a three-tiered computer systems–with mainframe computers on the top, minicomputers in the middle, and microcomputers on the bottom–eventually will make delivery of sophisticated programs cost-effective. In such an arrangement, desktop computers would be able to use more sophisticated programs now available only on the larger machines.

In addition to increasing access to math and science education, Mr. Kansky and others say, computer-based education can also actually improve student performance.

A recent analysis of data from 52 independent studies found that students who receive computer-based instruction in all subjects perform better academically than those who do not. The study, conducted by three researchers at the University of Michigan, found that students using computers earn better scores on tests in less time than other students.

Despite such findings, many experts contend that using the computer as a means of instruction will not be worthwhile for many years. Other methods of expanding schools’ teaching capacity, such as cross-peer tutoring, are more effective, these people say. For now, they conclude, the computer should be used only as a tool–to perform time-consuming computations, gather laboratory data, and analyze data–and for the practical skill-training that programming offers.

For tutorial software to keep the interest of the student, says Robert B. Davis, associate director of the research laboratory on computer-based education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, it needs to be much more sophisticated–and for the software to be more sophisticated, the hardware needs to be more sophisticated. Mr. Davis said that almost all of the hardware available to schools is not powerful enough to handle worthwhile software. Because “the great pressure in education is to get something cheaply,” many schools buy the least sophisticated machines.

“Sitting in front of a computer for seven hours” will not keep students engaged, adds one science educator. “They need to talk to people, work on real-world activities.”

THE COMPUTER AS SIMULATOR

The value of simulation programs for the sciences is almost as much a matter of controversy as the tutorial programs. Simulations show simplified models of physical phenomena, such as biological functions.

At the recent National Educational Computing Conference in Baltimore, a panel of computer scientists and educators extolled the virtues of simulation programs that allow students to learn about science “intuitively.” But the participants also agreed with Tom Snyder, the president of a software firm, who said, “Right now, there is just a handful of good programs. It will take time and money to develop good programs.”

The participants never questioned whether simulation programs were worth developing. They agreed that some programs already available showed that simulations give students a better “intuitive” and “hands-on” understanding of mathematics and science than they had been able to offer.

Alfred Bork, professor of physics at the University of California at Irvine, says that his colleagues sometimes do not have a complete understanding of some physical concepts because they have not worked with variables in a dynamic setting such as a computer simulation.

“As soon as they saw a plot that didn’t appear in the books they had problems,” Mr. Bork says, referring to problems dealing with electrical phenomena.

Robert F. Tinker, director of the technology center at terc, says he has seen students develop a “working vocabulary” in complicated subjects such as nuclear power and the ecology with computer simulations. “There’s a lot of good science in it,” he says, referring to a simulation entitled “Three Mile Island,” in which students are required to operate a nuclear-power plant both safely and profitably.

But some science educators say they doubt that either computer-based tutorials or computer simulations will improve enough to make them worthwhile. One educator explains that simulations he has seen are not only inadequate, but harmful in some cases. The computer models, he says, oversimplify scientific phenomena to the point of teaching invalid concepts.

He cites two simulations–one which demonstrates the ideal gas law, and a second which demonstrates the law of universal gravitation–that “teach something that’s wrong.” Gases hold dozens of properties that cannot be expressed accurately in a simple model, the educator says.

The “intelligent videodisk” machine, a device that connects a videocassette player with a microcomputer, holds more promise, some educators believe. Using a computer program, the teacher can move to any single frame of a video tape in seconds.

The most useful tapes, these educators say, would demonstrate laboratory experiments with many variations. The teacher would be able to show students in seconds how hundreds of changes would affect an experiment’s outcome.

Educators also agree that the computer could be an important laboratory instrument–as long as it is used merely to manipulate data and not to replace most experiments.

An official with a leading manufacturer of laboratory equipment says that computer-based laboratory programs are so expensive that only about 300 have been sold nationwide. But, he adds, less expensive equipment that measures and analyzes data digitally is selling well.

The company has sold “thousands”of MPUTE “photogate” instruments, which measure the acceleration of objects at several points on an “air track,” and similar instruments that measure the movement of objects too small for the human eye, the official says.

Because mathematics and science require that students build on their knowledge, educators say, the computer can be valuable as a “manager” of educational programs. By entering data on student performance, teachers can track students’ progress in specific curricular goals–and give special attention to their weaker skills.

The computer can receive such information in several ways. Some testing programs evaluate the data and indicate which areas should receive special attention. Other programs require special “inputting” of information.

“These [computer programs] can analyze patterns of errors. Worksheets can’t do that,” says Mr. Powell.

THE COMPUTER AS SUBSTITUTE

The computer eventually could lead to fundamental changes in the mathematics and science curricula, the experts note. The computer not only requires greater familiarity with some complex mathematical concepts, they say, but it can also reduce the need for much of the arithmetic that is usually taught throughout elementary school.

Mr. Powell says students will need to have more advanced mathematics and science backgrounds than their parents. “In Japan, virtually every kid has some kind of calculus,” he says.

Jonathan Choate, chairman of the mathematics department at the Groton School, has developed a two-year mathematics curriculum for the computer that teaches high-school students systems dynamics–a subject that he says normally is not taught until college.

Mr. Tinker of TERC and others say educators should at least partly “prune” several areas from the math and science curricula because of the computer.

Among the topics that Mr. Tinker says he would give less emphasis are: rote algorithms; fractions; axiomatic geometry; several operations typical in algebra classes, such as root extraction, simultaneous equations, and trigonometric functions; many calculus proofs; and much of the specialized science vocabulary, which he says means little to most students.

“Much of what we now teach in elementary school can now be done with a $5 calculator,” says Mr. Kansky. “You could release students for at least half of their time … and move on to more problem solving.”

Is This The Race to … the Most Educated?

Decades ago, as a reporter for Education Week, I was assigned to explore why Europeans outperform American students on math and science. I interviewed experts from all over. The findings say something about the the teaching of writing as well. American schools tend to isolate learning by grade and subject; European schools blend learning in various subjects, spiraling from simple to complex subjects. 

By Charlie Euchner
Education Week
July 27, 1983

Late last month, the Nissan Motor Corporation’s new plant in Smyrna, Tenn., produced its first 160 light trucks. The $300-million plant, which employs 2,200 American workers, is one of two in the United States owned by Japanese firms.

Officials at Nissan and other Japanese companies for years resisted pressure from the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry to build a plant in the U.S., according to industry analysts. The ministry wanted the U.S. plants to counter a growing protectionist movement here.

That Japan felt a need to placate the American public is indicative that the U.S. might be losing the economic and strategic edge that it has held since World War II, experts say. And one major reason for the danger, they say, is that American mathematics and science education poorly prepares students for a technological society.

Isaak Wirszup, professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago, goes so far as to claim that “the education crisis is a threat to our national security.” The National Commission on Excellence in Education apparently concurred in that view, declaring in its report: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might have viewed it as an act of war.”

Since 1966, when the Soviet Union enacted reforms to provide a strong, comprehensive program of math and science education, it has moved “far ahead” of any other nation in such training, Mr. Wirszup contends. “The Russians wouldn’t waste all that money unless it was for military power and political power,” he says.

According to a National Science Foundation report, the Soviet Union, Japan, and West Germany have been able to parlay improvements in mathematics and science instruction into significant military and economic gains.

Those countries’ education systems have developed a workforce, the report states, “which, at all levels, has a relatively high degree of science and mathematics skill, and this has been a factor in the very rapid expansion of technical industries.”

Herbert J. Walberg, research professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, agrees. “The Japanese are very fastidious about the product,” says Mr. Walberg. “Henry Ford says genius is attention to details. That’s the result of hard work in schools, six days a week.”

Between 1963 and 1977 Japanese industrial productivity grew 197 percent; the U.S. growth rate for the same period was 39 percent. Education was by no means the only or most significant factor involved in that difference, economists point out, but it was an important one.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist Theodore W. Schultz notes that studies of education and entrepreneurial activity clearly show “the pervasiveness of the favorable effects of schooling on the ability to deal with … economic modernization.”

Typical of society’s increasing need for knowledge of math and science is the military. About three-fourths of all Army and Navy jobs now require some technical expertise, according to Leopold E. Klopfer and Audrey B. Champagne of the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research and Development Center.

U.S. STUDENTS RANK LOW

The limited data available comparing mathematics and science achievement among students of different countries show U.S. students faring poorly, except among the top 5 to 10 percent of the students. At this level, U.S. students perform as well as or better than those of any country.

The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), an organization funded by the governments of several countries, is the only group that has tested students in several nations on the same subject matter.

A 1970-71 IEA survey of science achievement in 19 countries found that students in the U.S. and other countries learned similar things with similar success in the early grades, but that disparities in achievement grew in the later grades. The tests included 10-, 14-, and 18-year-olds. The American 18-year-olds finished last in the rankings.

Educators point out that the U.S. scores are affected by a policy of compulsory school attendance for all. The sample group of American students who took the test, for example, represented the 75 percent of American youths who attend high school at age 18; the sample represented only the 9 percent of West German youths of the same age who attend the Gymnasium, the upper-level high school.

But even by comparision with students in countries that also have mass-attendance policies, U.S. students performed poorly. Japanese 18-year-olds were not included in the test, but at the 14-year-old level, which had an enrollment rate of 99 percent, Japanese students scored better than those of any other country. Five other countries with similarly high rates of enrollment performed better than U.S. students at that level. (The survey did not include the Soviet Union or East Germany.)

An earlier IEA survey of mathematical achievement found the same pattern.

“Elite” American students perform as well as those of other countries, but Mr. Wirszup and other experts argue that those U.S. advantages are overshadowed by the fact that the great majority of the population is “illiterate” in basic mathematical and scientific concepts.

“It’s absolutely a mistake,” Mr. Wirszup says, to believe that only a strong “elite” is required for a strong economy. “The industrial countries until recently looked to the elite. But the educational mobilization in the Soviet Union for high-technology … means that that isn’t enough anymore.”

Twenty-four countries are now taking part in a new IEA survey for mathematics, and 30 countries are participating in an IEA science survey. Analyses of the testing probably will not be completed for three or four years, according to the organization.

Experts do not expect the U.S. to look much better on the new surveys. They point to an April report by the National Assessment of Educational Progress and to recent trends in educational policy in the U.S. and other countries.

The naep report found slight gains in “routine” mathematics skills such as computation, but a decline in problem-solving skills. For example, 48 percent of a representative sample of 17-year-old students incorrectly answered this problem: “A hockey team won five of the 20 games it played. What percent of the games did it win?” A higher percentage of students failed to solve complex word problems.

OTHER SYSTEMS REDUCE CHOICE

But even the most ardent critics of U.S. education acknowledge that the foreign systems have their own disadvantages.

Japanese schools may have more rigorous precollegiate programs, but American higher education is considered vastly superior. While the Soviet Union requires its students to take more advanced classes than the U.S., intense specialization reduces opportunity for career mobility. And West German families must decide their children’s course of formal education when the students are in the fourth grade.

None of the foreign education systems, the experts add, offer students as much choice as the American system. That freedom often is criticized for allowing students to avoid courses in the sciences. But Willard Jacobson, professor of mathematics and science education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, asserts that it is also the most decisive factor in the nation’s economic creativity.

“We should not try to imitate other countries,” says Mr. Jacobson, who is also a member of the IEA committee studying science education. “We ought to build on our own strength–the freedom to try different things. We can release a great deal more energy” in academic pursuits than other countries.

KEY FACTORS

But some experts have identified areas in which other nations excel that they believe deserve serious consideration here. Chief among these are teacher training, time on task, national academic standards, and the use of a “spiral” curriculum.

• Teacher training. In nations with higher levels of student achievement in mathematics and science, special care is taken to nurture able students for teaching roles, researchers point out.

Margrete Siebert Klein, a program officer at the National Science Foundation, notes that prospective teachers in both East and West Germany are among the most academically inclined students in those countries. Only university students, who have been extensively screened before being admitted, are eligible to become teachers.

“In West Germany, only the students who go to the Gymnasium [the upper-level high school] and pass [a special examination] go on to college, and you have to go to college to be a teacher,” Ms. Klein says. She added that only university-educated students in East Germany, or the top 12 percent of students, are eligible to be teachers in East Germany.

Japanese and Soviet teachers also must survive a rigorous screening process to attend college, and therefore are considered to be among the best students in the country. The Soviet Union produces in one year the total number of physics teachers that are now teaching in the U.S., Mr. Wirszup says, and their training is superior. Soviet secondary teachers must receive training in their fields that is comparable to the level of a U.S. master’s program, he says.

• Time on Task. Most other nations require their students to take courses in mathematics and science throughout their years in high school. U.S. standards vary from state to state, but probably less than 10 percent of the course time in American high schools is devoted to math and science, according to Ms. Klein.

A national guideline in Japan requires 25 percent of classroom time in grades 7 through 9 to be devoted to math and science. In the 9th through the 12th grades, nearly all Japanese students take four math and three science courses; only 34 percent of all American high-school students complete three math courses, according to Paul deHart Hurd, a highly regarded expert in science education who is now retired from the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University.

Japanese students attend school five days a week from 8:30 A.M. to 3:15 P.M. and on Saturdays until noon. Schools are in session for 240 to 250 days a year compared with an average of 180 days in the U.S.

The Soviet schedule is similar to the Japanese, and the emphasis on math and science is greater. Students study mathematics during all 10 years of their formal schooling, including calculus courses in both the 9th and 10th grades. In recent years, about 5 million Russian high-school graduates have studied calculus, compared with about 100,000 Americans, Mr. Wirszup says. All Soviet students also study mechanical drawing and astronomy, subjects that receive little attention in most American schools.

Rustin Roy, a science fellow at the Brookings Institution and a key figure in the development of “science appreciation” courses, asserts that the U.S. is so far behind the Soviet Union and Japan in math and science education that it has no hope of catching up any time soon. “Appreciation” courses offer the only cost-effective means of introducing students to the importance of science and technology in society, he says.

• “Spiral” curriculum. Most countries with advanced systems use a “spiral” curriculum, in which algebra, geometry, trigonometry, biology, chemistry, and physics are taught in a sequence over several years. In the U.S., such subjects are usually taught as one-year courses.

The strongest asset of the spiral approach, Ms. Klein and others say, is that it blends the course material of subjects so that students can understand how they are related. For example, principles in mathematics and physics that reinforce each other are taught at the same time.

The spiral curriculum also allows schools to introduce the subject in “concrete” ways before engaging students in abstract principles.

The experts disagree on whether U.S. schools do an adequate job of familiarizing students with the concrete before teaching them abstract principles.

Mr. Jacobson of Columbia University and the IEA science committee says that early analyses of the international study indicate that U.S. schools do a “very, very good” job familiarizing elementary-school students with plants and animals, magnetism and electronics, and other basic topics.

“We have kids working with materials, doing ‘hands-on’ work,” Mr. Jacobson says. “I think the U.S. does a very good job.”

Still, American elementary schools often lack the basic equipment necessary to run a sophisticated program, he notes. And American elementary-school teachers do not specialize in subject areas as they do in other countries.

Others say that the American school system should give students basic work in subjects such as chemistry and physics before high school.

Those subjects now are taught in one-year courses.

In Japanese schools, field trips and experiments closely tied to textbook material are stressed for the primary-school students. In their first six years, students spend one-third of their time working on “hands-on” activities. Middle-school students spend one-seventh of their time on such work, and high-school students spend one-ninth of their time on such work.

Japanese schools also use “semiconcrete” representation of numbers to teach children mathematics, as opposed to the counting-up or counting-down strategy. Students work with numbers in fives, with each number having a pattern that a student can visualize. Japanese officials say the American stress on counting leads children to see numbers as abstractions.

J.A. Easley Jr., professor of teacher education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says Japanese students are able to write simple equations in the 1st grade and to understand word problems and everyday uses of math at an early age. According to a National Science Foundation report, 75 percent of American students are taught arithmetic for nine years or more. The result, the experts agree, is that students do not learn the “higher order” skills until they reach junior high school.

Some educators believe the spiral approach would not work in the U.S. because of the many levels of responsibility for education. A spiral curriculum would need to be coordinated at a national level so that a student would not repeat some course material and miss other material when he or she moves to a new school.

• National standards. According to Benjamin Bloom, professor of education at the University of Chicago, the biggest difference between the American education system and others is its decentralization. All other developed countries have a national curriculum.

Leadership in the United States is “absent,” F. James Rutherford, the education director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, charges in a book to be published this fall. The curriculum, he writes, is a “model of inefficiency,” with “no planned sequence.”

Efforts to upgrade the curriculum, says Mr. Bloom, have consistently fallen short because of the lack of central control. With no national curriculum, Mr. Bloom and others say, mobile American families often see their children take some courses twice and others not at all, and the level of course content varies.

Many educators point out that the absence of a formal national curriculum has resulted in less rigorous textbooks. “Things tend to be reduced to the lowest common denominator” because publishers are competing for several different school markets, says Mr. Walberg.

Just How Clever Is ‘Solid-State Socrates’?

By Charlie Euchner
Education Week, July 27, 1983

Concern about mathematics and science education stems at least partly from the perception that today’s students need to be more “technologically literate” than the students of any previous generation. And the challenge posed by computers can, in turn, be met by using computers in the school.

On that much, most educators agree. But just how educational technology can be used–and, in fact, whether it ever will–is a constant source of dispute.

Technology is likely to be used increasingly in all subjects, but experts believe that it holds special promise for math and science. The computer’s potential for “mass delivery” of instruction might help address the shortage of teachers, some educators say. Furthermore, computer use could make math problems less abstract, reduce tedious operations, and teach logic. And computer simulations could demonstrate complex physical phenomena that are impossible to show in standard science laboratories.

Some experts say “mass delivery” of instruction is where the computer’s greatest potential lies. Computers can illustrate the abstract concepts of mathematics and science better than traditional methods, they say, and will be able to help alleviate the shortage of teachers in those areas.

Others hold that to use the computer as a “solid-state Socrates,” or a means of delivering instruction, would be a waste. They say the computer is best used as a tool for doing tedious computation, working with complex mathematics problems, and aiding with some laboratory work.

Educators appear to agree that the computer is useful to introduce students to the basics of information technology, such as programming–which, according to a recent survey, is now one of the most common uses of the machines.

That study, conducted by the Center for Social Organization of Schools at the Johns Hopkins University, found that the computer so far has simply been “grafted” onto the traditional mathematics curriculum. The nationwide survey of 2,209 schools found that most teachers put greater emphasis on programming and less on computer-assisted instruction as they gain experience with the technology.

Such a practice has both positive and negative effects, says Arthur G. Powell, executive director of an independent national study of high schools. On one hand, such courses can attract students who normally would not take part in any program with a mathematical component. Computer science could teach many of the reasoning skills that are considered central to other math subjects, he says.

But such courses also serve as a way for schools to “get around” state mandates for stiffer graduation requirements. “It’s one way the school can respond without making the teaching of math more strenuous … and you don’t have to deal with problems of sequence,” Mr. Powell says.

THE COMPUTER AS TUTOR

Educators say the professional arguments about computers will intensify in the next several years as the number of computers in the schools and the range of educational software increase.

Few experts expect computer-assisted instruction to make the teacher obsolete, but many believe that the computer can at least free the teacher from many tedious tasks and do a better job teaching students basic skills–especially in areas such as mathematics and science.

According to a report by Technical Education Research Centers (terc), commissioned by the National Science Foundation, there are now 1,000 science and 650 mathematics software packages on the market, and 100 new mathematics and science packages appear every month. Those programs represent almost half of all of the educational software available. More than 90 percent of all the math software programs are for drill and practice.

There is almost no software for elementary-school science classes and for many high-school topics, terc found. Many software topics overlap, the survey found, and teachers reported that they are not aware of what software is available.

Robert Kansky, professor of mathematics education at the University of Wyoming, says many schools in his state “can’t afford to hire math and science teachers.” The only way students will be able to take advanced courses in these ares, he says, is through computer hookups.

Mr. Kansky, who in 1981 and 1982 served as a consultant for a computer-assisted-instruction experiment in South Africa, says a three-tiered computer systems–with mainframe computers on the top, minicomputers in the middle, and microcomputers on the bottom–eventually will make delivery of sophisticated programs cost-effective. In such an arrangement, desktop computers would be able to use more sophisticated programs now available only on the larger machines.

In addition to increasing access to math and science education, Mr. Kansky and others say, computer-based education can also actually improve student performance.

A recent analysis of data from 52 independent studies found that students who receive computer-based instruction in all subjects perform better academically than those who do not. The study, conducted by three researchers at the University of Michigan, found that students using computers earn better scores on tests in less time than other students.

Despite such findings, many experts contend that using the computer as a means of instruction will not be worthwhile for many years. Other methods of expanding schools’ teaching capacity, such as cross-peer tutoring, are more effective, these people say. For now, they conclude, the computer should be used only as a tool–to perform time-consuming computations, gather laboratory data, and analyze data–and for the practical skill-training that programming offers.

For tutorial software to keep the interest of the student, says Robert B. Davis, associate director of the research laboratory on computer-based education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, it needs to be much more sophisticated–and for the software to be more sophisticated, the hardware needs to be more sophisticated. Mr. Davis said that almost all of the hardware available to schools is not powerful enough to handle worthwhile software. Because “the great pressure in education is to get something cheaply,” many schools buy the least sophisticated machines.

“Sitting in front of a computer for seven hours” will not keep students engaged, adds one science educator. “They need to talk to people, work on real-world activities.”

THE COMPUTER AS SIMULATOR

The value of simulation programs for the sciences is almost as much a matter of controversy as the tutorial programs. Simulations show simplified models of physical phenomena, such as biological functions.

At the recent National Educational Computing Conference in Baltimore, a panel of computer scientists and educators extolled the virtues of simulation programs that allow students to learn about science “intuitively.” But the participants also agreed with Tom Snyder, the president of a software firm, who said, “Right now, there is just a handful of good programs. It will take time and money to develop good programs.”

The participants never questioned whether simulation programs were worth developing. They agreed that some programs already available showed that simulations give students a better “intuitive” and “hands-on” understanding of mathematics and science than they had been able to offer.

Alfred Bork, professor of physics at the University of California at Irvine, says that his colleagues sometimes do not have a complete understanding of some physical concepts because they have not worked with variables in a dynamic setting such as a computer simulation.

“As soon as they saw a plot that didn’t appear in the books they had problems,” Mr. Bork says, referring to problems dealing with electrical phenomena.

Robert F. Tinker, director of the technology center at terc, says he has seen students develop a “working vocabulary” in complicated subjects such as nuclear power and the ecology with computer simulations. “There’s a lot of good science in it,” he says, referring to a simulation entitled “Three Mile Island,” in which students are required to operate a nuclear-power plant both safely and profitably.

But some science educators say they doubt that either computer-based tutorials or computer simulations will improve enough to make them worthwhile. One educator explains that simulations he has seen are not only inadequate, but harmful in some cases. The computer models, he says, oversimplify scientific phenomena to the point of teaching invalid concepts.

He cites two simulations–one which demonstrates the ideal gas law, and a second which demonstrates the law of universal gravitation–that “teach something that’s wrong.” Gases hold dozens of properties that cannot be expressed accurately in a simple model, the educator says.

The “intelligent videodisk” machine, a device that connects a videocassette player with a microcomputer, holds more promise, some educators believe. Using a computer program, the teacher can move to any single frame of a video tape in seconds.

The most useful tapes, these educators say, would demonstrate laboratory experiments with many variations. The teacher would be able to show students in seconds how hundreds of changes would affect an experiment’s outcome.

Educators also agree that the computer could be an important laboratory instrument–as long as it is used merely to manipulate data and not to replace most experiments.

An official with a leading manufacturer of laboratory equipment says that computer-based laboratory programs are so expensive that only about 300 have been sold nationwide. But, he adds, less expensive equipment that measures and analyzes data digitally is selling well.

The company has sold “thousands”of MPUTE “photogate” instruments, which measure the acceleration of objects at several points on an “air track,” and similar instruments that measure the movement of objects too small for the human eye, the official says.

Because mathematics and science require that students build on their knowledge, educators say, the computer can be valuable as a “manager” of educational programs. By entering data on student performance, teachers can track students’ progress in specific curricular goals–and give special attention to their weaker skills.

The computer can receive such information in several ways. Some testing programs evaluate the data and indicate which areas should receive special attention. Other programs require special “inputting” of information.

“These [computer programs] can analyze patterns of errors. Worksheets can’t do that,” says Mr. Powell.

THE COMPUTER AS SUBSTITUTE

The computer eventually could lead to fundamental changes in the mathematics and science curricula, the experts note. The computer not only requires greater familiarity with some complex mathematical concepts, they say, but it can also reduce the need for much of the arithmetic that is usually taught throughout elementary school.

Mr. Powell says students will need to have more advanced mathematics and science backgrounds than their parents. “In Japan, virtually every kid has some kind of calculus,” he says.

Jonathan Choate, chairman of the mathematics department at the Groton School, has developed a two-year mathematics curriculum for the computer that teaches high-school students systems dynamics–a subject that he says normally is not taught until college.

Mr. Tinker of terc and others say educators should at least partly “prune” several areas from the math and science curricula because of the computer.

Among the topics that Mr. Tinker says he would give less emphasis are: rote algorithms; fractions; axiomatic geometry; several operations typical in algebra classes, such as root extraction, simultaneous equations, and trigonometric functions; many calculus proofs; and much of the specialized science vocabulary, which he says means little to most students.

“Much of what we now teach in elementary school can now be done with a $5 calculator,” says Mr. Kansky. “You could release students for at least half of their time … and move on to more problem solving.”

Seymour Papert’s ‘Microworld’: An Educational Utopia

By Charlie Euchner
Education Week, May 18, 1983

New York–At a meeting of the New York Academy of Sciences here this spring, Seymour Papert managed to take issue with just about every teaching method that schools use in education–particularly the way most of them are now using computers.

Mr. Papert, professor of education and mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is considered one of the most revolutionary thinkers in educational technology.

He first became widely known when he and colleagues at MIT developed LOGO–a computer language specifically designed for elementary schools. Mr. Papert and his followers say that LOGO eventually could be the centerpiece of a movement to restructure education.

More recently, Mr. Papert has attracted attention because of his association with the Paris-based World Center for Microprocessors and Human Resources, an organization with the goal of using the computer to enable developing countries to “leapfrog” whole stages of development.

In his remarks at the New York meeting, Mr. Papert offered his scientific colleagues the kind of visionary perspective on computers and education for which he is noted. He began with a general critique of schools, saying the traditional K-12 system is arbitrary and should give way to a program of studies directed almost entirely by students–with few of the formal lecture situations that now typify schools.

Mr. Papert disputed the contention of many educators that extensive use of computers in schools is expensive and threatens to widen the gap between students in wealthy and poor districts.

By making a modest financial commitment over several years, he said, districts could provide every student with a terminal. But Mr. Papert does not want his remarks about computers and student-directed education to be considered an endorsement of computer-assisted instruction. Structured computer lessons, he said, are “a bad thing.”

Educational Development

In his address and in an interview, Mr. Papert outlined a philosophy not only of how education in industrialized countries should work, but also of the role it can play in the development of third-world nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and with people who have not succeeded in traditional schools.

At the World Center, founded by the French journalist and futurist Jeans Servan-Schreiber to test Mr. Papert’s ideas, researchers hope that the microcomputer will give developing countries the means to move into the modern era without the traditional stages of development.

The idea, described by one critic as putting “a computer in every hut,” is that the microcomputer will soon be as inexpensive as a portable television set and will respond to spoken commands–and therefore will offer third-world countries access to the information they need to increase literacy and become economically self-sufficient.

But with the center embroiled in political controversy, Mr. Papert quit as chief scientist last November and returned to his projects in the United States. If he can’t pursue his ideas for an “educational utopia” in Paris, he said, he will pursue them in the U.S.

LOGO Is Key

At the center of Mr. Papert’s educational utopia is LOGO, the language that grew out of his five years of study with the Swiss child psychologist Jean Piaget.

Using LOGO, which was developed during the 1970’s, students use a keyboard to manipulate a triangular cursor (the electronic directional signal found on most computer-terminal screens) called a “turtle.”

Through trial and error with the turtle–“discovery,” Mr. Papert calls it–children can understand concepts such as large numbers, angles, and curves that traditionally are taught to older students.

A child as young as three or four can design objects on the computer, line by line. For example, to program a box, the student might instruct the computer’s cursor to go forward a set number of spaces four times and make a 90-degree right turn three times.

The student, by pulling together many such simple sets of instructions, or “subprocedures,” eventually can write programs that become as complicated as variations of “Pac-Man” and other video games, according to the MIT scientist.

In the process of programming, Mr. Papert said, students create their own “microworlds.” The microworld involves a physical object–in this case, the turtle–that a student can use to play with and to become familiar with larger numbers and the ideas that go with them.

Microworlds, Mr. Papert said, enable children to learn much faster. ”Why is it that children have to do 98,000 repetitions of this?” Mr. Papert said, pointing to an addition problem. “One reason is that they don’t know what they’re looking at. They need an object to think about other things with.”

Mr. Papert contends that the ease with which students grasp LOGO and their own microworlds eventually could lead to a kind of educational utopia.

In that perfect world, all children would have access to a computer and LOGO programs throughout their years in school. They would use the computer to learn “powerful ideas,” not only in mathematics but also in physics, English, art, and music. The computer would make them significantly more curious and capable of understanding other fields, such as history and science.

Also in this perfect world, the traditional teacher-student relationship would change. Instead of attending several classes daily, children would be given sets of academic goals that they would be required to achieve. There might be one lecture per week in each area of study, and during the rest of the week the students would direct their own studies.

Such a vision is controversial–“subversive” is the word Mr. Papert uses–and he said he has no illusions about achieving it in the near future. But he added that he is confident that some programs under way in the U.S.–in New York City’s “Computers in the Schools” program and at the Lamplighter School in Dallas–will start to convince educators that such changes are desirable.

“This computers-in-the-schools project in New York [does not have] the shock of sudden change,” he said. “We started off by training some teachers … and then increasing [computer use] to two or three in the classroom, and now there are a few classrooms where there are 15 or 16 computers.

“It takes a little bit of time, but you begin to see in these contexts quite dramatic results,” he added. “It’s seeing those results, documenting them, making them as visible as possible” that eases the worst fears of teachers.

For the time being, Mr. Papert said, educators should “start clearing their heads about notions that computers are expensive. Every child should have a computer like an Apple II.”

Mr. Papert noted that New York City schools spend more than $30,000 on a student over the course of his 13 years of public schooling. If the computer were priced at its manufacturing cost, he said, it would cost no more than $1,000 to equip a student throughout his formal schooling.

“For a negligible cost, you can have this change that can transform education,” he said. “Get rid of any ideas that this is mythology.”

Plan for Development

It is the relatively low cost of computers and the lack of established educational systems in developing countries that attracted Mr. Papert to Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber’s ideas for the third world.

The idea for the Centre Mondial Informatique et Ressources Humaines grew out of Mr. Servan-Schreiber’s involvement with the Paris Group, a collection of international economists, politicians, and scientists formed in 1979 to study problems of world development. The Paris Group concluded that the microcomputer could be decisive to third-world development.

Mr. Servan-Schreiber convinced French President Francois Mitterand in the fall of 1981 to support the idea of an international center to use computers in third-world development, and the center opened its doors last March. But it has been embroiled in controversy ever since.

Mr. Papert and others blame Mr. Servan-Schreiber and their own political inexperience for the problems. The problems began, the participants said, when Mr. Servan-Schreiber took strong control of the organization and irritated officials from Kuwait, India, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines who had expressed an interest in the project.

The problems continued when researchers, who Mr. Papert said were promised that they would be able to use whatever equipment they felt was necessary, were criticized for using non-French products.

“This was an example of how fundamental research gets diverted into something more trivial,” Mr. Papert said.

“There had been a very formal though verbal agreement that the center would never be restricted to use technology because it’s French, or for that matter to choose people who were French. But very quickly we were very severely criticized for accepting a gift from Digital Equipment Corporation.”

The pressure to buy French never abated, Mr. Papert and others said. Finally, the center passed from the control of the Ministry of Research to the Ministry of Communications–without the consultation of Nicholas Negroponte, the executive director, or Mr. Papert. It was considered a coup for the French electronics industry, and the ultimate defeat for the center’s foreign researchers.

World Center Projects

But before that development–which led both Mr. Negroponte and Mr. Papert to announce their resignations–the center had started work on research and pilot-development projects in Marseille, France, and Dakar, Senegal.

In both places, officials from the center sought out members of the community who expressed an interest in using computers and gave them training in everything from programming to repairing a broken computer. The job of those “vectors” was to introduce computers to every segment of society possible.

If residents of the community expressed a desire to use computers to plan agriculture or medical programs, Mr. Papert said, the researchers in Paris set out to either find the appropriate software or to create new software.

The project now “is going at a snail’s pace,” Mr. Papert said. If it were on schedule, he said, the World Center’s projects would be moving from the cities to smaller towns–“ultimately aiming at the most un-urban, traditional village, with a low level of literacy.”

A training program for unemployed youths in Paris using LOGO, Mr. Papert said, showed the promise of computers for the most desperately troubled people.

“My experience working with this group is really quite moving,” Mr. Papert said. “Generally, their attitude to computers is very negative–they blame the computer for bureaucracy, for putting people out of work. They are very militant about it. They are very angry.

“The other element, the paradoxical element, is that they absolutely can’t keep their hands off. In the end, bit by bit, some of the people were expert enough to be able to go out and work with [unemployed people] on their own. [Such programs] can magnify literacy.”

The ability to achieve some success with these youths is not that surprising, Mr. Papert suggested, when one considers the way children of all ages and backgrounds enjoy playing “Pac-Man.”

“There’s no question that there’s a certain real holding power,” he said. “This tells us that we can harness these powers. We have to think in terms of what will make children fall in love with learning.”

Schools Drop the Ball on Improving Fitness

By Charlie Euchner
Education Week, April 6, 1983

The past two decades have seen a fitness revolution of sorts in the United States. But, with scattered exceptions, that revolution has not found its way into the schools, physical-education experts say.

While adult Americans have flocked to Nautilus machines and aerobics dance classes–the National Athletic and Health Institute estimates that $7 billion is spent each year on health clubs, bicycles, and running shoes–physical-education classes in schools across the country have changed little.

As a consequence, the experts said, most children are out of shape and tend to become even less active as they get older. Physical-education programs that stress running and proper movement instead of games that exclude many students, said one specialist, “are more the exception than the rule.”

“Far too many classes are just roll calls and kids standing around scratching their heads,” said David B. Marsh, the director of health and physical education in the Ridgewood, N.J., public schools.

C. Carson Conrad, the executive director of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness for the last 12 years, added: “I’ve never seen physical education in as low morale as it is today.”

Mr. Conrad said he has written letters to 12 members of the House of Representatives, including Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill Jr., asking for a comprehensive study of physical education and its later effect on the health and fitness of adults and on national defense.

The Committee of Physical Fitness of the Defense Department last month issued a statement expressing concern over the physical condition of high-school graduates who volunteer for military service.

Surveys Show Lag

Surveys taken in the 1979-80 and 1980-81 school years by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) and Nabisco Brands Inc. found that only 43 percent of participating students could perform exercises such as running, jumping, situps, and pullups up to the minimum standards for their age and size.

In fact, the survey results suggest, students become less fit as they progress through school. The average 17-year-old male, for example, takes 12.8 seconds to run 100 yards, while the average 14-year-old takes 12.6 seconds. And the average 17-year-old girl can do 38 modified pushups; the average 12-year-old girl can do 43.

More fundamentally important, according to Thomas B. Gilliam, a health-care consultant in Cleveland, is the small amount of time in which children engage in physical activity.

Ideally, Mr. Gilliam said, children will exercise enough each day to raise their heart rates to more than 160 beats per minute for 30 minutes, and to 141-to-160 beats per minute for 43 minutes–a total of one hour and 13 minutes of active play daily.

But according to a survey of Michigan children that Mr. Gilliam conducted during 1974, the average child spent only 18 minutes per summer day in intensive physical activities, even though most children had the whole day free.

Girls–“due to cultural differences,” Mr. Gilliam said–are much less active than boys. According to the study, they spent seven minutes engaged in the physically intense activities.

And the situation has not changed since the survey was taken, Mr. Gilliam said.

“We spend so much time worrying about how fast they can run and how many pushups they can do,” Mr. Gilliam said. “But the real test is what they do in their spare time. That shows what kind of physical education they have.”

Wynn Updike, professor of physical education at Indiana University, said that adults usually continue the habits they developed while in the physical-education classes.

“You have to know what it feels like to be in good physical shape,” he said. “People who have that experience know that they don’t have to be tired all the time. But you need to get that awareness at an early age.”

The ‘Typical’ Program

There is no nationwide study of state physical-education requirements and the way that those classes are run, but officials at the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD) and the President’s Council are preparing such a survey.

Educators said, however, that there is enough anecdotal evidence to suggest what a “typical” physical-education class offers.

In a majority of cases, they said, the class stresses playing games rather than working on calisthenics, running, and weight-training to get into shape. During those games, the less talented students often spend most of the period sitting on the bench or playing positions that require little physical activity.

And some games–such as softball, archery, golf, and dodge-ball–require little physical exertion for any student.

“It becomes very discouraging,” said Mr. Gilliam. “Teachers fail to use the intensive component in the classes. In a typical class, the kids are put into lines with five or six children in a line. And there are eight or nine minutes of physical activity in a 25-minute period.”

The typical pe program, he and others said, starts with “cat and rat” games in the early grades and moves into competitive sports as early as the 3rd grade. From the 5th or 6th grade on, there are few activities besides the major team sports–football, soccer, basketball, and softball for boys; field hockey, basketball, and volleyball for girls.

“It should be a developmental curriculum,” said Mr. Gilliam. “We don’t teach kids what they’re not ready for in other subjects–we don’t teach geometry in the 3rd grade. All we need to do for pe is what we do for other subjects.”

Teachers’ Colleges Blamed

The educators interviewed blamed the teachers’ colleges for the way classes are structured. Most prospective physical-education instructors are gifted athletes and see fitness as an outgrowth of participation in team sports, they said, and the college curricula reinforce that approach.

“What the colleges prepare are teachers good in one sport, but incapable of teaching a class,” said Roswell Merrick, the executive director of the National Association for Sports and Physical Education, a division of AAHPERD. “Coaches are great at after-school sports but lousy at teaching gym class.”

Adds John Berryman, associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Washington: “Look at the Universities of Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Marshall University–you look at the curriculum and they have to take baseball, swimming, tennis, volleyball. The first move has to be better-trained teachers … putting emphasis on fitness and exercise.”

An example of an “ideal” preparatory program, in Mr. Merrick’s opinion, can be found in the University of Michigan’s School of Education.

All students are required to take several classes in kinesiological and physiological bases of human movement, psychological and sociological bases of human movement, the history and principles of physical education, kinesiology, testing physical education, and motor movement.

In addition, students are required to take courses in human growth, several noneducation courses, and courses focused on developing skills in many sports.

AAHPERD’s consultant for elementary education, Margie R. Hanson, complained that few education schools pay much attention to elementary-school physical education. Before the early 1970’s most elementary schools did not have full-time physical education teachers, she said.

Most physical-education programs at teachers’ colleges still only offer “one or two courses for elementary preparation,” Ms. Hanson said. Classroom teachers with no physical-education training are assigned gym duty.

Budget Cuts

Physical-education and sports programs are often the first to be cut when budget problems arise, educators said.

Fifty-one percent of the nation’s schools do not have adequate funding for their sports and physical education programs, according to a survey conducted last spring by the American Sports Education Institute and the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.

The states that are in the poorest shape, according to the responses of more than 4,000 school officials nationwide, are West Virginia (89 percent reported funding problems), Alabama and North Carolina (88 percent), Delaware (83 percent), and South Carolina (81 percent).

Despite a consensus that elementary programs are the most important part of physical education, they are in the worst financial shape, Mr. Gilliam and others said.

“If a millage [increase] is defeated they cut the elementary program” instead of a high-school program, he noted. It would be better to cut from the top down, he said, because students taught good fitness habits early tend to keep up their physical activity regardless of the formal program.

Many elementary schools do not have facilities for a full-fledged physical-education program in the first place. “They use what they call a ‘cafetorium,’ a combination gym and cafeteria,” Mr. Gilliam said.

The pressures of budget cuts for both public and private schools, said R. Inslee Clark, the headmaster of the Horace Mann School in New York City, leave them little latitude to improve the content of their physical-education classes.

“Where you get a real divergence from quality is where they’re cutting back or where they’re under pressure to produce a winning team,” he said. “They’re doing what they can just to stay alive.”

Reform Proposals

Opinions on approaches to a restructuring of physical education–and on the question of whether the subject should be changed in the first place–vary widely.

The Paideia Proposal, a wide-ranging manifesto for changing the overall structure of elementary and secondary education, suggests mandatory physical education and participation in intramural sports. It does not specify how those activities should be carried out, however.

AAHPERD promotes “movement” instruction, in which students are taught specific skills that they can later use in sports–especially the so-called lifetime sports, such as tennis and other racket sports, swimming, and soccer.

In a movement program (see accompanying story), students are taught ”space awareness” by using their bodies for a variety of activities. Children use balls, rings, beanbags, tires, and balance beams–in fact, about any safe object available–for the purpose of developing specific skills.

A key part of the program, said Mr. Merrick, is allowing children to invent their own games and avoid the competitiveness that sometimes develops into the habit of uncooperativeness.

Gradually, the students learn to apply the specific movement skills to game applications. By junior high school or high school, the students are playing in games.

But Mr. Gilliam and Mr. Berryman, among others, said the movement program is sometimes “too soft.” While movement exercises give a student many of the skills that will be needed to function on a basketball court or soccer field, they said, they do not do enough to give the student endurance, strength, or agility.

Mr. Berryman said the movement advocates put too much emphasis on making class pleasurable. “I didn’t like Latin, but I was forced to do Latin grammar,” said Mr. Berryman. “Teachers who know better must take control. We’re not in a popularity contest. Why should physical education be fun?”

If carried out correctly, a tough exercise program will be embraced by students, Mr. Berryman said. “Kids could like it,” he said. “There’s nothing more important to some of these kids than looking good and feeling good.”

Mr. Marsh said running is the most popular physical-education elective course among high-school students. In his classes, students start out running one-half mile and gradually increases the distance to four miles in the three-week course.

“Kids I never thought I would ever see running are saying, ‘Hey, this is terrific,”‘ Mr. Marsh said.

Moreover, Mr. Marsh and others said, once students become part of such active programs, they spend more of their own time in similar activities.

In a 1979 experimental “intervention” program, Mr. Gilliam said, Michigan students were taught about the physical habits that lead to a risk of heart trouble and were put in the “intensity-oriented” program that Mr. Gilliam recommends.

‘Intensive Activities’

The result: “The children were more active the following summer. … The number of minutes spent in intensive activities almost doubled to 33 minutes. And they were eating more nutritionally.”

But besides offering strenuous fitness programs, the Ridgewood schools offer several less demanding activities such as golf and softball, Mr. Marsh said. The idea, he said, is to keep the interest of the students with fewer athletic inclinations.

“Education has to be more than just fitness,” Mr. Marsh said. “You have to give the students positive attitudes, show them it’s not a matter of punishment to run. If you turn off the ‘Fat Freddies,’ they’ll just go home and eat cake. Golf is a legitimate activity if paired with an active activity. We have kids that we have to force to run.”

State Government Role

For any reform to take root, Mr. Berryman said, the state must be more specific in its requirements for teacher certification and the content of physical-education classes. State regulations in both areas are too vague for improvement on the sports-oriented programs, educators said.

But, if anything, state governments appear to be backing off physical-education requirements. “It’s a sad story,” said Mr. Conrad, that California and Illinois are both considering loosening high-school graduation requirements. Pennsylvania’s nominee for secretary of education, Robert Wilburne, asked that state’s Board of Education to postpone consideration of ending high-school physical-education requirements.

“Changes are very isolated–there are always one or two people that take it upon themselves to do it,” said Mr. Berryman. “There’s never any leadership from the top down.”

Physical-Education Evolution

Physical education has not always been so heavily dominated by sport. Guy M. Lewis, a sports historian, said that until about 1906 physical education consisted of formal training directed by physicians.

That changed, said Mr. Lewis, an associate professor of physical education at the University of Massachusetts, with the growth of intercollegiate sports and the belief that team sport builds character and helps to solve social problems. Among the most vocal advocates of this view were President Theodore Roosevelt and the muckraking journalist Jacob Riis.

By 1929, the public schools in 46 states were required to provide physical education. Those programs were usually run by athletic directors with impressive backgrounds in team sports but no background in physical education. Eventually, physical education and sport became synonymous in the schools.

Until recently, girls’ programs avoided the physical education\sport nexus. But educators said that the movement for equal rights for the sexes has gradually changed the girls’ programs.

Most physical-education programs, said Mr. Merrick, are now at least partly coeducational. Gone, he said, is the “myth” that boys and girls cannot work together without “hanky-panky.”

Hurt Some Programs

But Lucille M. Burkett, the director of health and physical education for Cleveland public schools, said Title IX, which bars federally financed schools and colleges from discriminating on the basis of sex has sometimes hurt girls’ programs.

“There used to be an idea in women’s sport that all girls had a right to play,” said Ms. Burkett. “Everybody in this field had a service ideal. And we had, at that time, a fine secondary physical-education program for girls, much more inclusive than the programs for boys.”

“With Title IX, we have to have teams like the boys do. And we now don’t have the many intramural programs for girls that we had up to 1972-73. The girls’ teams are far better than they used to be, but very few girls get to play. And the stars get all the attention.”

Kenneth Komoski Helps Wary ‘Consumers’ By Evaluating Computer Products for Schools

By Charlie Euchner

New York–P. Kenneth Komoski was giving a visitor a tour of his offices at the Teachers College of Columbia University when he paused before a row of cubicles that contained desktop computer terminals.

Here, he said, is where researchers evaluate the computer hardware and software that is marketed for educational uses. “Do you know what used to be here?” he asked, smiling. “Language labs.”

Mr. Komoski, the executive director of a nonprofit organization called the Educational Products Information Exchange (EPIE), took great delight in the irony. His self-appointed job is seeing that educational applications of computers do not meet the same fate that earlier attempts to bring innovations into the classroom have.

To accomplish that, one of Mr. Komoski’s highest priorities these days is convincing educators that EPIE is the place to turn to for sophisticated evaluations of all educational computer products–from hardware to software to printers to user manuals. EPIE’s evaluations are now printed on large, shiny file cards, but, appropriately, they will soon be accessible electronically

Early Signs

Mr. Komoski says he hopes eventually to be able to convince one-fourth of the nation’s nearly 16,000 school districts to subscribe to the service.

And he has dreams of creating a databank that would integrate evaluations of all kinds of educational products–a project that would cost about $2 million per year, or about $25 for each public school, he estimates.

EPIE has taken a major step toward its goal by joining forces with Consumers Union, the national organization that evaluates consumer goods, to study computer products.

The EPIE-Consumers Union project has received a two-year, $300,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, $200,000 of which will be spent this year.

EPIE’s $700,000 budget for this year also includes a $100,000 grant from the Carnegie Foundation and about $400,000 in revenues from product evaluations and newsletter subscriptions.

Mr. Komoski says he has initiated negotiations with several state governments to sell the product evaluations in mass quantities–a process that has been helped by the availability of block-grant money.

With a full- and part-time staff of about 25 and more than 300 free-lance product evaluators nationwide, Mr. Komoski says he has the base necessary not only to keep a steady stream of evaluations, but also to increase his contacts with schools.

Elementary schools and smaller districts have been among the most receptive to EPIE’s computer-evaluation services thus far, Mr. Komoski says.

Rather than eschewing evaluation altogether because their staffs are too small to warrant the investment, he said, they have come to view EPIE as their research department.

If EPIE gets the district subscribers it wants and creates the databank it dreams of, its influence over the sales of all educational products–which are already esti-mated at more than $1 billion annually–could be considerable.

Teachers Uneasy

Some educators are uneasy about using computers in schools, Mr. Komoski acknowledges. Teachers fear that computers are just another of what they have come to see as a long line of “fads.” The earlier “fads” included just about everything besides textbooks and chalkboards–overhead projectors, teaching machines, filmstrips, movies, television, and, of course, language laboratories.

Mr. Komoski and others founded EPIE in 1967 after spending years developing such now-spurned teaching aids. The idea, he says, was to ensure that educational products are evaluated, and when they are found wanting, to give the schools the information they need to demand better ones.

Mr. Komoski still has faith in the early innovations. To explain a point about the way teachers structure class time, he pulls out a plastic sheet with a grease-pencil chart, the kind used on overhead projectors. “These things are great,” he says, waving the transparent sheet, “if you know how to use them.”

The innovations of the 1960’s, Mr. Komoski says, failed because schools acquired materials without knowing what to do with them and, consequently, there was no imperative for the manufacturers of educational products to make them fit the needs of teachers in the classroom.

There was a great influx of federal money for education in that era, Mr. Komoski explains, but much of it was spent without a clear sense of purpose. The clearest guidance came from the manufacturers, he notes, suggesting that that only added to the problem.

“That money was play money,” Mr Komoski says. “The sales representatives in many cases became the partners in writing purchase orders and helping [the schools] through the federal labyrinth. It was very difficult to get across the idea that the money should be spent wisely.”

The ideas behind the innovations, Mr. Komoski still says, were good. But, he adds, the products were hustled onto the market so quickly that most schools were not adequately prepared to judge which products actually were worthwhile.

Many of the teaching tools that had been lauded in theory by Mr. Komoski and others–as a way to help teachers better develop a curriculum, a way to give students more exact and personalized instruction–were soon collecting dust on school shelves and ridicule from critics.

Educators’ Computer Needs

Although there are signs that computers might receive more of the scrutiny needed to assure effective classroom use, computer products to date have been ill-suited, for the most part, to the needs of educators, Mr. Komoski contends.

Evaluations by EPIE staff members of most educational computer products produced in the last few years have concluded that:

No large-scale software package is available for high schools, and most programs available are for drill and practice.

The major emphasis of most computer programs is on recall of previously learned facts. There is little emphasis on “higher-order skills,” such as analysis and synthesis of material.

The programs that are available perpetuate a myth that computers largely are designed for mathematics applications. Ninety-five percent of the large, computer-managed packages are for arithmetic.

Graphics are rarely an integral part of the instruction. Mr. Komoski says that the visual representation of ideas is often easier for students to understand. But graphics usually are no more than supplements to the written text, and the graphics that are used are often are distracting.

Users usually cannot control more than the speed of the program and getting out of the program. There is little choice in the sequence of activities the student goes through.

The “diagnostic help” provided by most computer software is minimal. When a student makes an error, he generally is not told what went wrong. Programs often involve simply a series of cues and guesses through which a student can eventually get the right answer but learn little from the experience.

Past Problems–and Hope

Publishers, Mr. Komoski asserts, have never been held accountable for the materials they produce. The most telling example, Mr. Komoski says, is the story of how “Dick and Jane” readers were brought into schools–a clear case, he adds, of “industry-created demand.”

Such texts using a limited number of repeated words, called “controlled vocabularies” by reading experts, were first used to teach English to adults in India, according to Mr. Komoski. Without conducting any research on their effectiveness, Scott, Foresman & Co. published a controlled-vocabulary reader for elementary schools that sold briskly. Other publishers followed suit.

Control over teaching devices must shift back into the hands of educators, argues EPIE’s founder; he points to three developments that may encourage such a change.

First, the advent of the microcomputer marks a shift in the way the whole society conducts its business. Businesses and parents are demanding that schools get involved with computers and that school programs respond to the changing educational needs of students.

“Did you ever remember community leaders saying, ‘We must have filmstrips, we must have overhead projectors’?” Mr. Komoski says.

Second, in era of budget-cutting, schools are more likely to subject purchases–including computers–to careful scrutiny.

Third, most teachers are willing to admit–and redress–their ignorance of computers. More than half of the respondents in a recent survey by the National Education Association expressed an interest in learning about instructional applications of computers, operating computers, and programming, and more than 80 percent said they would like to take a computer-related course. (See Education Week, Jan. 12, 1983.)

This last development is perhaps most important, Mr. Komoski says. Earlier EPIE studies and anecdotal evidence had suggested that many teachers would not or could not deviate from their lesson plans. One survey, for example, found that 90 percent of classroom time is devoted to a textbook-based curriculum.

“The teachers were saying [of the earlier innovations], ‘Oh, I don’t know. … Is that any better than what we’re doing now?”‘ Mr. Komoski says. “They became so dependent on the textbook” to plan classroom activities that they failed to understand the new products.

If computers are to be used wisely in the schools, Mr. Komoski says, teachers must not only learn enough programming to alter software, but also stop treating all pupils in the same way.

A drill-and-practice program, which is appropriate for students who have trouble organizing thoughts in a structured way, would be worthless to a student who is capable of learning “higher-order skills,” Mr. Komoski asserts.

“Teachers have to learn to fit the students with [the proper program],” he says.

“I think teachers would rather do that than stand all day in front of a chalkboard.”

Are teachers today able to develop more flexible attitudes about the structure of their lesson plans?

“I wouldn’t have said so ten years ago, and I probably wouldn’t have said so five years ago,” Mr. Komoski answers. “But now you have this situation where things are changing so rapidly that teachers are saying, ‘That’s the way things are. I have to deal with it.”‘

Early Involvement

Mr. Komoski–educated at Arcadia University in Nova Scotia and the Union Theological Seminary–got involved in educational technology in the late 1950’s through B.F. Skinner, the behaviorist who developed the teaching machines that were at the heart of educational innovation in the 1960’s.

Then a teacher at the Collegiate School in New York City, Mr. Komoski and other faculty members learned to program the machines, which presented the student with questions and offered immediate responses to their answers.

“I became fascinated by the idea that the machines taught a lot about instruction,” he says. “You have to know each step of the way what’s going on, how to lead the learning. Every teacher should have to go through the steps to see what it is that works.”

Eventually, Mr. Komoski says, he became disenchanted with the “incredible commercialization and oversell” of the products–and with Mr. Skinner’s theory that learning occurs through a series of physiological responses to stimuli.

The problem with Mr. Skinner’s approach, Mr. Komoski says, is the idea that learning progresses in small increments.

“Learning often takes place in larger chunks,” Mr. Komoski says. “The way some of these people turned out these programs, kids could get through them and not learn anything. The machine didn’t take into account the contingencies of the environment.

“What I’m saying is that you have to open the thing up and allow the programmer of the tutorial or the simulation to be somehow shaped by the learners’ responses.”

Out of the such failures of such educational machinery, Mr. Komoski adds, grew “my intense conviction that until we got consumers out there demanding that [producers] make better things, we weren’t going to get any good out of technological change.”

Enter EPIE.

 

Teaching Reading by Teaching Writing

What if writing was the most natural skill that we possess? Would that change how we teach children to read and write … or develop as writers throughout their lives?

Researchers on evolutionary biology tell us that storytelling is the essence of the human experience. Other species eat, drink, play, sleep, and mate. Some species use language and tools. But as far as we know, humans are the only storytelling species.

Young children delight in hearing and telling stories. Given the chance, they will talk endlessly about their experiences, both real and make-believe. So what if we tapped that energy and that intellectual firepower? What if we taught kids how to put those stories down on paper, even before they learned how to read?

These are some of the issues  I explored as a staff writer for Education Week. This piece comes from the December 22, 1982 issue.

By Charles Euchner  

Once each hour at Congress Heights Elementary School in Washington, D.C., kindergartners and 1st graders gather and neatly put away their supplies in the “Writing to Read Center.” Without instructions, with few words among themselves, the students line up at the door to return to their regular classrooms.

They file out in two lines–one for boys, the other for girls–and soon the room is filled again with a new group of equally well-mannered students who go to their five workstations and get to work without any directions from the teacher or aides.

It is a scene that would not have surprised Frank N. Freeman or Benjamin DeKalbe Wood, who 50 years ago wrote the book that would inspire a retired teacher named John Henry Martin to start the writing experiment that involved these Washington public-school students.

Freeman and Wood, who studied the effects of typewriters on the classroom performance of about 15,000 elementary-school students from 1929 to 1931, found that the children were fascinated with the machines and had much better work habits when they used them.

The Depression-era researchers quoted a 1st-grade teacher: “I notice an awakening sense of responsibility; the children remember to put away typewriters and leave offices in order; they are pleasant and polite in choosing helpers …”

Not incidentally, the researchers also found improvements in academic performance. They were less certain of the typewriter’s value in lower grade levels, mostly because of the inadequate testing methods for younger students.

On a recent tour of schools experimenting with his “Writing to Read” program, John Henry Martin did not express any doubt that his contemporary version of the program works.

Tests have shown, he said, that a combination of computer, typewriter, workbooks, and pictures makes it possible for children to write almost as soon as they enter school.

“I proclaim it,” he told a group of Washington principals. “It works.”

The “it,” the Florida-based consultant says, is a classroom situation that combines “truly interactive” machines with a child’s natural desire to know and express himself in words. After seven years of developing and testing his idea, Martin concluded it worked because children of varying backgrounds scored well above national norms in reading and writing tests.

“It’s amazing,” Martin said, “that with the research of the last 50 years, and especially the last decade or so, we have failed to use the typewriter and other things … that are truly interactive.”

Martin’s project, financed by the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), now involves 10,000 students from a variety of economic and educational backgrounds. Besides the 15 schools in Washington, the experiment includes districts in Florida, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Texas, and universities in California, Florida, Massachusetts, and Vermont.

The Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton, N.J., has contracted with IBM to evaluate the program.

The program is based on the premise that students already have many ideas to express by the time they enter school. A kindergartner has a working vocabulary of 4,000 to 5,000 words, said Martin, and just needs to engage more in “multi-sensory-receptive” activities to express ideas.

Children are wrongly taught to read before they learn to write, Martin says, but it has not always been that way. Prior to the early 20th century, students expressed their ideas in writing from “day one,” Martin said.

“In the past, children used a slate and chalk to, using the old expression, ‘make their letters,”‘ Martin said. “Sometime between 1910 and 1920, writing and reading were made into separate processes.”

‘Positive Reinforcement’

With the stress on reading before writing, Martin said, students do not receive the “positive reinforcement” that the behaviorist B.F. Skinner identified as an essential part of learning.

Children in the “writing to read” program work each day for one hour. They work with partners of their own choosing at workstations for computer work, typing, workbook exercises, creative writing, and listening to tape-recordings. They also work on miscellaneous projects, such as labeling and matching pictures with appropriate written material.

The students use all letters of the alphabet except Q and X, and a set of letter “blends” such as oi, ei, th, sh, sc, and gh.

Teachers and computer programs, which give and receive sound, teach the students how to pronounce the letters and blends and how to use them in words.

At the computer station, the student strikes the terminal’s keyboard when instructed by the program, then watches as the letters and blends fall into place to spell a word. At each step, the student hears then repeats the sound.

After completing 10 “cycles” of instruction, the student will have learned the 42 phonemes he needs to write about almost any subject. As soon as the student has mastered these basics, he can begin to write strings of related sentences and complete essays, paying attention to the grammar and spelling that before would only have hindered the writing flow.

The typing skills, which Martin said most students should be able to develop in the 1st or 2nd grade, will not only give the students a head start on working with computers but will also enable them to write much faster and more creatively throughout their lives, Martin said. Martin said his approach differs from the Depression-era experiment and from other current uses of computers in the classroom because his approach is “truly interactive.”

“The typewriter, by itself, is not interactive, and the cathode ray tube is not interactive,” he said. “What makes this interactive is that it gets students to make physical, bodily responses.”

Martin said that he adopted the program’s components only after eliciting such responses with a broad cross-section of students–from the gifted to the average to the slow learners, from those in small groups to those in large groups.

The approach to writing was tested for two years with a group of 60 students at the University School of Nova University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The striking results there, Martin said, convinced IBM officials that a test with a larger sample was needed.

Joseph Randazzo, the University School’s headmaster, said 1st graders who learned under Martin’s program scored 2.7 on a reading grade-equivalency test, while others scored 1.8. Half of the entire group scored in the 94th percentile nationally on the test, Randazzo said.

Career Start

Martin started his career 45 years ago in a one-room schoolhouse in Alabama. After serving with the Navy in Europe in World War II, he worked as a teacher, principal, curriculum consultant, and superintendent in seven districts on Long Island and in New Jersey.

On the side, he has done extensive consulting, serving on panels for two presidents.

Martin said he first became interested in the use of typewriters and other “multi-sensory” instruments when a friend recommended that he read the Freeman-Wood book, which carries the bulky title, An Experimental Study of the Educational Influences of the Typewriter in the Elementary School Classroom.

Martin has toyed with the idea for years since. Seven years ago–bored with a retirement forced on him by a heart attack–he decided to study it in a clinical setting. He took his proposals to Abraham S. Fischler, the president of Nova University, and soon started soliciting money for his work from the private sector.

The 1932 book, Martin says, now occupies the prized position on the coffee table in his Fort Myers, Fla., home.