Occasional Paper-The bias of the producer

I recently watched a documentary about the Titanic produced by James Cameron, who directed the feature film, Titanic.  Actually, I think the show was a documentary about making a documentary, which is all the better for purposes of this occasional paper.  Flush with cash from his successful movie career, Cameron wanted to finally and definitively answer all the lingering questions about the sinking of the Titanic. He assembled an impressive array of experts to assist him in his quest for answers.  There were several engineers from different specialties, naval historians, representatives from the company that built the Titanic, underwater salvage experts, experts in determining the cause of ship sinking, experts in force and stress, and myriad other experts with experience and training in ship engineering, ship building and ship wrecks.  Cameron also had the most advanced technologies available to these experts.  They had two mini-submarines equipped with lights and cameras in which they crawled all over the wreck of the Titanic and the floor of the sea around the wreck, recording in great detail the wreck and the debris that surrounded it.  Then, Cameron gathered all of these experts in a big room with a huge screen upon with they could show film, pictures and diagrams, and they all set out to analyze the evidence and to answer once and for all how and why the Titanic sank.

What quickly became apparent, however, was that James Cameron had his own hypotheses about how and why the Titanic sank, and exactly what  happened that fateful night and why it happened.  It was soon apparent that Cameron was not so much interested in determining exactly what happened and why as he was in proving his own preconceived notions about what happened and why.  He would actually shout down any expert who tried to disagree with him.  After a few futile attempts to advance their own theories, based on their training and expertise, these experts, in the face of Cameron's steamrolling, would shrug their shoulders and give up. I don't suggest that Cameron set out to change history or to cover anything up.  I don't even think he was aware of what he was doing.  What I do mean to suggest is that Cameron is a man of significant ego, with a very high opinion of his own intellect and powers of deduction, and he was funding the entire enterprise, including paying the experts.  Therefore, this documentary, in the end, would be a statement of James Cameron's theories of how the Titanic tragedy occurred and why. This got me worrying that people would watch this documentary and think that they were learning historical fact, when in fact they would be learning James Cameron's version of history.

I have long been troubled by Hollywood's version of history.  Not so much troubled by the fact that Hollywood chooses to make entertaining films about historical events and historical characters, as troubled by the fact that the history depicted in these films is so often bad and often just wrong.  It has always concerned me that the only exposure to history that many people get is through films and television, and that they will come to think what they saw on the screen is historical fact.

The concern of producer bias doesn't stop at film and television.  One must consider the bias of the writer of historical works of non-fiction and even history textbooks.  It is the equivalent, if you will, of James Cameron writing a book about the sinking of the Titanic with the same inherent bias that went into his production of the documentary film.

I think it is incumbent on all social studies teachers to warn their students to always consider the potential bias of the producer of any historical document, including their own text books, and to seek out as many other source materials as they can to compare one to another.  It would be incumbent upon every social studies teacher to make those other source materials available to their students.  As a social studies teacher, I will also warn my students to be careful of the history that they see on movie and television screens, and to thoroughly research those historical depictions in other source materials before they form their own opinions.
.

En Espanol, por favor.

The mother of two of my grandchildren is from Mexico.  One of them, Little Suzy, is pictured in my profile picture.  Their mother is adamant that these children grow up to be fully acclimated, English speaking Americans.  She insisted that they have English names, Susan and Andrew.  It isn't that she is ashamed of her Mexican heritage, it is just that she very much wants her children to succeed in this country.  She is in fact, proud of her Mexican heritage, so my son and she are raising the children to be bilingual.  The children are learning to speak Spanish and English with equal fluency.

To that end, my wife and I were overjoyed to find that we could find a Spanish language version of nearly every classic story book that you typically find in English.  Often the books are exactly the same, same cover, same illustrations, the only difference is that the text of one will be in English, the other in Spanish. Every time that we buy a story book for those grandchildren, we buy both the Spanish and the English version. So, for instance we have Goodnight, Bunny and Buenas Noches, Conejito.  We have The Three Little Pigs and The Big, Bad Wolf, and we have Los Tres Cerditos y El Lobo.  We have great fun reading first one version and then the other.  We think it helps the kids learn to speak and to read both languages with equal facility.  I love it when Little Suzy points to a picture and proudly proclaims "Bunny!" and then, a second later, almost whispers "conejito" (self-talking?).  I often wonder what it means that Suzy always selects the English version for us to read to her first.

There are a lot of students in the school system for whom English is their second language. I think that it is important that teachers recognize their cultural and language differences and strive to take that into account in the classroom.  I am not teaching yet, but I would have no problem if a student could find content readings in their native language and use them to help learn the lesson, so long as the student can read and write the answers in English.  I think that my grandchildren are going to be thoroughly bilingual speakers and readers, and I think that is great.  If it helps the student to learn the lesson by using study aides in their native language, I think that teachers should respect that and facilitate it.

Journaling

I have been keeping journals since I was in college.  Some are simple. The one I carry with me each day often consists of just quick, short hand notes about what happened that day and reminders.  It may not look like much, but if my wife wants to know what day we put the car in the shop, I can look back through that journal and tell her. Another journal consists of long stream of consciousness rambles that run into many pages.  That is the journal where I record my feelings and work through things that are going on in my life. One journal, kept in the bookcase, contains, simply, an entry for each book that I finish; title, author, date I finished it, and that's all.  It also happens to be my favorite journal.  I will sometimes just sit and read through it, smiling as I remember the truly great books that I read and when I read them.  I never go back and read the journal were I pour out my soul on page after page.  Once that is down on paper, I never go back to it.  Sometimes I will keep a journal when I am going through some long stage of my life that has a beginning and usually an end.  Like when I was dealing with kidney cancer.  That journal was more in the nature of a diary, and it was for that specific time in my life.  When that chapter in my life closed, that journal closed.

Journals have been an invaluable asset in my life.  And, occasionally, an excellent tool.

A teacher should encourage their students to keep a journal for the duration of the class.  I think that a journal would be a useful tool for students to record what they learned that day and their impressions of what they learned that day.  It could also help them realize that they have questions that need to be answered, and act as a reminder to bring up that question in the next class.  It could be an excellent adjunct study guide for the final exam.  Mainly, it would be a tool to reinforce the learning and give the student ownership of what they learn.


Click here for Journaling Podcast

Alfred, Lord Tennyson and The Band Perry

Reading this blog, people must think that I was an odd child, reading Kipling and Poe and Steinbeck and Hemingway from the age of twelve.  Maybe I was an odd child with all of that reading, but I did normal things too.  We played daylong baseball games in the pasture next to the calf lot.  We played vicious games of tackle football, without pads in the same pasture.  I rode my bike into town and bought comic books and bubble gum.  I built camps in the woods and tree houses in the trees and forts out of bales of hay in the loft.  However, like as not, I would be holed up in my tree house or hay bale fort with a good book.

At around 12 or 13 I was reading a lot of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poetry. I was a bit carried away by the Arthurian legends and bold cavalry charges.  In fact, my favorite of his poems was The Charge of the Light Brigade.  "Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, all in the valley off Death, rode the six hundred....."  Oh, the majesty of that gallant but doomed Light Brigade!  In fact, I memorized the poem and had to go around and recite it to all the sixth grade classes.  They had no clue what I was talking about.

Imagine my surprise when, over forty years later, my 20 year old daughter comes to me and asks if I have a book of Tennyson's poems!  Of course, I do, and as I pull it down from the shelf, I ask her why she is interested in Tennyson.  Turns out that she has seen a music video by The Band Perry for their song 'If I Die Young'.  In the video, the beautiful blond singer for the group lies down in a boat with a book of Tennyson's poems on her breast, singing about what to do if she dies young.  At the end of the video, the pages of the book flutter open to the poem The Lady of Shallot, wherein the beautiful but cursed blond heroine floats in a boat down to Camelot but, tragically, dies before she reaches Sir Lancelot.  Off Emily goes to read The lady of Shallot and off I go to watch the video by The Band Perry.

What a wonderful link from new to old!  The modern media of a YouTube video sent my daughter in search of a very old poem.

Teachers should always be on the look out for new media, especially music, that can tie into the literary content of the subject matter that we teach.  If teachers can make the subject matter more relevant to what is going on in their students' lives, the students will surely be more receptive to learning the material.  There are lots of movies of Shakespeare's stories set in modern times, with modern characters and modern settings, but with the original story line.  Teachers should always be on the lookout for more modern media, videos, movies, blogs, music, that can bring the subject content alive for their students, and, hopefully, cause them to seek out original source material.

Thanks, Dad

More than anyone else, my father shaped my reading history.  My father did graduate high school, but he didn't go to college.  He should have, but boys who grew up on tobacco farms in rural Guilford County in the 1940's didn't usually graduate high school, much less go to college.  Plus, he and my mother started a family and got married, in precisely that order, right out of high school.  Lucky for me, unlucky for Dad.  Dad didn't go to college, but he read all the time, right up to the day he died.  Kipling, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Poe.  He didn't borrow these books from the library, he bought them and kept them in a bookshelf by his bed.  No paperbacks for him either; only hardbacks with the brightly illustrated dust jackets.   And I saw him read.  I saw him, often, in an easy chair, under a bright light, his reading glasses sliding down his nose, completely absorbed in a book.

Dad would call me over to that easy chair, with a book in his hand, and say " I think you are ready to read this, I want you to give it a try and tell me what you think".  It started with Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.  Not a Walt Disney picture book, but the actual book.  Then the Just So Stories, Riki-Tiki-Tavi, and then, Kipling's poems.  Then it was on to Edgar Allen Poe's poems, then Poe's short stories, and then, when I was twelve years old, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

I remember starting that book in my room one Saturday morning and the next thing I knew it was dark nighttime.  I had read the entire day through, not stopping for meals or to go outside or anything, but being completely unaware of the passage of time at all. That was probably the first time a book had had that effect on me.  I remember feeling stunned, disoriented even, by the power of that family's story.  And in the process, I learned a lot about the Great Depression, The Dust Bowl, exploitation of migrant workers, labor unions and strikes.

It seems to me as teachers we must find and recommend literature that will make the subject matter come alive for students.  I can think of no  text better to teach the Great Depression than The Grapes of Wrath.  I think that we all hope, as teachers, that what we are doing is opening a door to learning that the students will push open wide when they leave our classrooms.  The best way for them to push open that door and to continue their education beyond the classroom is through reading.  I feel that it is the duty of teachers everywhere to assign books and readings that are both accessible and inspiring so that our students will continue to read in the content area we teach. Perhaps one of the most valuable tools with which we can equip our students is a comprehensive reading list of great books in our content area to take with them and to read from for the rest of their lives.

When Dad died, I inherited all of his books.  I can think of no other legacy that could have meant as much to me.  I re-read them often, and I think of him reading those same books and I am grateful.  Thanks, dad.

Dick and Jane didn't thrill me, but Dan Frontier saved me.

This is going to sound strange, but I do not remember learning to read. However, I also do not remember not knowing how to read. What I do know is that I came from a family that read constantly.  My parents weren't teachers. There were no teachers in my family.  My father was a lumber salesman. My mother stayed home and raised five children.  My paternal grandfather was a maintenance man.  My paternal grandmother was a secretary.  My maternal grandfather was a machinist.  My maternal grandmother sold ladies clothing in a department store. None of them, not my parents, not my grandparents, went to college. Yet, they all read, all the time.

My Dad had a tidy library of classic literature, whose covers dazzled me. I  can still see him reading those books, sitting in an easy chair under a bright light.  My Mom tended more to magazines and popular novels.  I can remember that she told me that she felt my love of history and the Civil War was because she read Andersonville, by MacKinlay Kantor  and Confessions of Nat Turner, by William Styron when she was pregnant with me, her first child.  My paternal grandfather had the first and only recliner that I ever saw as a child with a pocket on the side.  In that pocket were always his reading glasses and a book, usually a religious book by Billy Graham or something by Norman Vincent Peale.  My maternal grandmother subscribed to the Saturday Evening Post, and I loved to go to her house to thumb through those magazines.

My mother and my maternal grandmother read to us children constantly.  Little Golden books, mostly, but a lot of Mother Goose and Hans Christian Anderson as well.  And books that we saw on Captain Kangaroo and went to library to check out, like Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, Caps for Sale and Stone Soup.  I well remember my brothers and sisters and I and usually a cousin or two all piling into one bed to listen to my grandmother read a story to us, hanging breathlessly on every word.

So, I don't remember being taught how to read, but I know that I arrived in the first grade already able to read.

And what did they give us?  Dick and Jane.  I was horrified.  I was disgusted.  This was drivel!  This was the silliest pap that I had ever clapped eyes onto.  The babies at home were being read silly stuff like this.  I was up to Mowgli and The Jungle Book!  To make matters worse, when my teacher realized that I could read, she called on me, often, in reading groups to read this silly stuff out loud.  I was not happy.

However, because I could read, the teacher didn't have to work with me at all, so, while she worked with the other kids, she would send me to the back of the room for "independent reading".  It wouldn't take me long to read the assigned Dick and Jane stuff, so I was soon looking for something else to read.  And there, in the back of the classroom, on a shelf low to the ground, was a whole row of Dan Frontier books!  I had never heard of Dan Frontier, but someone had written a whole lot of books about him, a whole series.  He was a fictional Daniel Boone-type character who went on some great adventure in every book.  Hunting bears, cutting trails through the mountains, building cabins, fighting Indians.  It was still pretty simple stuff, but it beat the heck out of Dick and Jane.  I would say Dan frontier was more on a third grade level.  So, all through the first grade, while everyone else struggled through Dick and Jane, I sat in the back of the room and devoured a whole series of Dan Frontier books.

Dick and Jane didn't thrill me, but Dan frontier saved me.