If ever there were a case for eliminating the discipline, the sidebar explaining some of the dissertations being offered by the best and the brightest of black-studies graduate students has made it. What a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap. The best that can be said of these topics is that they’re so irrelevant no one will ever look at them.
I understand why people call her racist: as commenter chuckkle notes, Ms. Riley “makes definitive evaluations of academic research without having bothered to read it…. She is clairvoyant, and can judge it in advance. The Queen has delivered her verdict, judging it in advance. There’s a word for that: prejudice.” In other words, Ms. Riley’s type of casual generalizations also underwrites racist thinking. However, Riley’s primary problem (as a writer, at least) is less her susceptibility to the bigot’s false assumptions and more an entire way of reasoning that makes her vulnerable to all sorts of unproven ideas (including many varieties of prejudice).
Based on her Chronicle columns, Ms. Riley appears to lack the ability to reason. Indeed, should she happen to come across this blog post, I humbly suggest that she might begin her reeducation at the Thou Shalt Not Commit Logical Fallacies website. There, she will learn about the fallacies of relying on anecdotal evidence (say, relying upon five dissertation descriptions to represent an entire field), personal incredulity (because Ms. Riley cannot understand the field, it therefore must not be true), and false cause (assuming, for instance, that having a black president means that racism has been solved). Her response to the criticism is classic tu quoque: instead of engaging with the criticism, she just turns it back on those who accuse her.
Ms. Riley’s inability to sustain reasoned argument is troubling, but the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s decision to employ her is baffling. Plenty of bloggers play fast and loose with facts or succumb to logical fallacies. But why would a publication that covers higher education wish to grant a platform to a person who seems to have learned so little?
This is fun. Reading Is Fundamental‘s new promotional video features a song by the Roots; vocals by Jack Black, Chris Martin (Coldplay), John Legend, Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Jason Schwartzman, Nate Ruess (vocalist for fun.), Melanie Fiona, Carrie Brownstein (Sleater-Kinney, Wild Flag), Regina Spektor and Consequence; appearances from Pinocchio, Madeline, Greg (the Wimpy Kid), the Three Blind Mice, Humpty Dumpty, Curious George, Little Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf, and even Captain Ahab on waterskis! Plus many many more! (Find them all!)
I don’t enjoy flying, but I do like traveling. There is pleasure in being somewhere else, in experiencing a different city or country. All that is taken for granted in daily life cannot be taken for granted — and this is especially true when in another country, when the food, language, and culture differs in varying degrees from one’s own. Prior to dinner, the Swiss have apero, a kind of extended meal of hors d’ouvres. In a Japanese restaurant, shoes get left at near the doorway, and hands adjust to eating with chopsticks instead of a knife and fork. But even in one’s own country, cities are not identical. Normal, Illinois (where I am flying from, as I write this) has three independent record stores on the same block, and a superlative used bookstore — with lots of children’s books — on the same block. And I ran along a trail I’ve never run along before.
When traveling, daily work does not vanish. The draft of the panel proposal must be edited and rewritten, via a series of email exchanges with a colleague at another university. The invited talk itself must be timed, polished, cut, honed, rehearsed. Emails from students, colleagues, editors, and others require answers.
But all of this work happens out of context, in a different space — on a plane, in an airport, at the hotel lobby, in the back of the taxi, in the hotel room. Because it is happening in different locations, it acquires a slightly different flavor, even a greater sense of clarity. This sharpness of perception may derive from the simple fact of being somewhere else: because they are unfamiliar, surroundings demand more attention, perhaps heightening attentiveness more generally. It may also derive from urgency: being a conference attendee or invited speaker creates a daily schedule that reorganizes time in ways that cannot always be anticipated.
I like that, though. And, since I’m almost always traveling for business, I enjoy the interchange of ideas — in the Q+A session of the talk, or the conversations over dinner, after the panel session, and so on. During the past few days, talking with Jan Susina, his wife Jodie Slothower, their son Jacob, my former graduate student Elizabeth Williams (and other University of Illinois grad students, faculty, and families), I’ve learned about lots of books and articles I need to read: Theories of affect, collections of comics, young adult novels. Beyond that, there are ideas that lodge in my subconscious, emerging later, sometimes long after I’ve forgotten the source. At some point, I’ll ask Jan to elaborate on the connections he sees between Paul Klee and Crockett Johnson.
Though academics work long hours (as I’ve documented elsewhere) for less compensation than we’d like, I feel privileged to have a job in which I get to learn, share what I’ve learned with other people, and learn from other people.
Combining these intellectual exchanges with the displacement of travel brings the experience of learning into focus, sustains a degree of clarity absent from my workaday life, prods me to keep moving forward into new areas.
And it’s especially nice when someone else picks up the cost! (I pay for most conference travel myself, but I’m coming back now from two invited talks, both of which were covered by the host institution.) So, thanks to the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of English (especially Marah Gubar), and to Illinois State’s Department of English (especially Jan Susina and Roberta Trites), and to everyone who hosted, chatted, came to the talks or otherwise participated. It’s been a great few days! Until next time!
OK Go! They Might Be Giants! Joel Plaskett! Elvis Costello! R.E.M.! Stevie Wonder! Lots of musicians have recorded songs for children — either lyrically revised versions of one of their tunes, or entirely new ones. Here are 10 great ones.
OK Go, “3 Primary Colors Song”
“3 Primary Colors Song” is just out from OK Go. It’s scheduled to appear on the February 2nd episode of Sesame Street. Right now, you can watch it via Rolling Stone or via the embedded YouTube video below.
Joel Plaskett, “Fashionable People”
Joel Plaskett and a yam puppet perform a quite different version of his song “Fashionable People” (original version appears on his Ashtray Rock, 2007). This is from a 2012 episode of the CBC’s Kids’ CBC.
Elvis Costello, “Monster Went and Ate My Red 2″
On a recent Sesame Street, Elvis Costello redid his “(The Angels Want to Wear My) Red Shoes” (from his brilliant debut, My Aim Is True, 1977) as “Monster Went and Ate My Red 2″ (2011), with vocal assistance from Elmo. Also featuring Cookie Monster as the monster.
They Might Be Giants, “Nine Bowls of Soup”
They Might Be Giants have released four albums for children, and all of them are super. Indeed, if you get the most recent three, I’d recommend buying the accompanying DVD, because the videos are a delight. The one below is from Here Come the 123s (2008), and it’s one of my all-time favorite TMBG songs — for any age group!
R.E.M., “Furry Happy Monsters”
Another from Sesame Street. With Stephanie d’Abruzzo singing Kate Pierson’s part, R.E.M. perform a new version of “Shiny Happy People” (Out of Time, 1991) as “Furry Happy Monsters” (1991, with new lyrics by Christopher Cerf).
Stevie Wonder, “Sesame Street”
While we’re thinking of Sesame Street, Stevie Wonder created his own “Sesame Street” theme song when he appeared on the show in 1972.
Paul Simon, “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”
Also from Sesame Street in the early 1970s, here’s Paul Simon performing “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” (1972). He didn’t rewrite the song for the show, but one of the kids had her own ideas about how the lyrics should go, and so the song gets revised anyway. ”Dance, dance, dance!”
The Evens, “Vowel Movement”
The Evens — featuring Ian MacKaye (Fugazi, ex-Minor Threat) and Amy Farina (ex-The Warmers) — wrote “Vowel Movement” for Pancake Mountain (a Washington DC children’s TV program) in 2003.
Weezer, “All My Friends Are Insects”
Weezer performs “All My Friends Are Insects” on Yo Gabba Gabba! in 2010. The person who created this video combined footage of Weezer on Yo Gabba Gabba! with footage of SpongeBob SquarePants. So, visually, you’re getting something a little different than what was originally on the show.
The Roots, “Lovely, Love My Family”
Also on Yo Gabba Gabba!, the Roots perform “Lovely, Love My Family” (2009). A very happy song, and a fine place to conclude.
Are there other great songs for children? Yes, of course there are. At some point, I’ll post my series of children’s mixes. But that’s all for today. Enjoy!
If you enjoyed these songs, you might also enjoy these mixes:
Harold taks his purple crayon to the walls of the Ben Franklin School, on Flax Hill, in Norwalk, Connecticut. The school houses the Head Start program. I’m told that the mural was painted by employees of Pepperidge Farm.
The photos are all courtesy of Jackie Curtis, a friend of Ruth and Dave — a.k.a. Ruth Krauss and Crockett Johnson. Known as Dave to his friends, Johnson created Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955) and its six sequels. Krauss, author of A Hole Is to Dig (1952, illus. by Maurice Sendak) and The Carrot Seed (1945, illus. by Johnson), was married to Johnson. Both lived in Rowayton (South Norwalk), about three miles from the school where the above mural appears. And, as readers of this blog will be aware, Johnson and Krauss are the subjects of my double biography, scheduled to appear in September of this year.
I’m doing it again — teaching an entire course devoted to Dr. Seuss (the link in this sentence takes you to the current draft of the syllabus). Art! Politics! Verse! Nonsense! Activism! These are but some of the subjects we’ll explore in English 710: Dr. Seuss, a graduate-level course which begins on Wednesday.
Aiming to improve on the earlier Seuss course (taught 5 years ago), I did not look at the earlier syllabus as I drafted this one. Only when I finished the draft did I read the 2007 version of the class, incorporating some of the worthier parts of that syllabus. The idea, this time, is to structure the class around a dozen sets of questions — any of which, as I’ve pointed out on the paper assignment, could lead students to a fruitful paper. Here are a few:
1. The Child: The Boy in the Book. How do Seuss’s works conceive of the child? With which understanding of childhood would you link his children? In his works, what sort of power do children have? And which children get that power? How is Seuss’s work influenced by his own childhood, including what he read?
3. Activism, Part 1: Horton Hears a Heil! How do Seuss’s politics play out in his own works? Are there ideological inconsistencies between his stated goals and other messages that the books may convey? What makes an activist children’s book persuasive to its readers?
4. Cartoons, Camp, & Surrealism: The Art of Dr. Seuss. What kind of artist is Dr. Seuss? How do cartoons inform his aesthetic? How do artistic movements inform his aesthetic? Beyond The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T., does camp play a role in his aesthetic? Indeed, what is the Seuss aesthetic? How does his art work?
7. Gender: Is Seuss for the Goose Seuss for the Gander? The most blunt way to ask this question is this: Was (or is) Dr. Seuss sexist? More subtle ways to ask the question might include: In what ways do Seuss’s books participate in gender stereotypes? In what ways do they resist gender stereotypes? What role, if any, should Seuss’s biography play in your answer to these questions?
10. Marketing: Quick, Henry, the DDT! There’s debate among those who study Seuss, and in the wider public discourse about Seuss. On the one hand, there are those who argue that much of the posthumous merchandising (Grinch selling breakfast cereal, etc.) violates Seuss’s wishes: his work had a moral and aesthetic value, not merely a commercial one. On the other hand, there are those who will point out that Seuss was a successful advertising man (until the publication of The Cat in the Hat, his primary source of income was advertising), and in fact entered into merchandising agreements during his life. Wade into this debate about art and commerce. Which side is more correct? Or is there a different set of questions we should be asking?
Above: Seuss’s Ford advertisements, 1949
There are also questions about poetry, race, and adaptations, among other topics. (You can find a full list on the paper assignment.) I chose this structure because the best discussions derive from good questions.
Another change from last time: using the anthology Your Favorite Seuss, instead of having the students buy individual Seuss books. I have mixed feelings about this choice. On the one hand, this is far cheaper than having them buy the individual books — and that’s my primary reason for doing this. I realize that books are expensive. And, also in its favor, Molly Leach has done a really nice job in redesigning the layout for each Seuss book. On the other hand, I’d prefer for students to read the books as originally laid out. Your Favorite Seuss includes all text, but moves artwork around so that it can include 13 books in fewer pages. As a compromise, I’m putting the original versions on Reserve (at the library) so that students can also see the originals.
One assignment I’ve retained from the original version of the class is “Sighting Seuss,” which requires students to keep an eye out for appropriations, references, parodies, etc. of Seuss in contemporary popular culture. Examples might include this Kids in the Hall sketch (1990), in which Dave Foley presents the “Dr. Seuss Bible”:
Another example is NicePeter’s recent “Dr. Seuss vs. Shakespeare: Epic Battles of Rap History #12″ (2011):
As it’s an election year, we should find many examples of Seuss in political satire. Since the 1990s, people have been aligning Newt Gingrich with the Grinch.
But he’s not the only one. John Kerry, George W. Bush, Osama Bin Laden, Barack Obama, and others have all been caricatured as the Grinch.
There are hundreds of examples of Seuss in popular culture. The point is to get students to think about the ways in which Seuss circulates in the public imagination. When people invoke Seuss (or his anapestic tetrameter, or his characters, etc.), to what purpose do they use him? In popular culture, what does Seuss mean?
One big change from the last time I taught this is that formerly obscure short films by Seuss are now easy to find. 5 years ago, I showed the class a bootleg DVD of Your Job in Germany (1945), a propaganda film written by Theodor Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss) and directed by Frank Capra. You can now see this via YouTube or Archive.org.
Indeed, until this weekend I had never seen Our Job in Japan (1945), another U.S. Army propaganda film written by Geisel — and, incidentally, considered so sympathetic to the Japanese that General MacArthur worked to prevent it from being shown to the troops. But now, it’s very easy to find (as in below, also courtesy of Archive.org).
I’ve assembled a whole page of these films. We’ll still view a few of these in class, but now the students have the luxury of re-watching them and seeing more than those screened during class. For those of you who lack the time to view all of those Private SNAFU cartoons, here are a couple of the better ones, which, yes, include some “adult” humor. (The audience were GIs, not children.) You will also note the sort of ethnic caricature common to Warner Bros. cartoons of the period.
Private SNAFU: Spies (Aug. 1943)
Directed by Chuck Jones. If the voice reminds you of Bugs Bunny, that’s because Mel Blanc is also the voice of SNAFU. (From Archive.org)
Well. Any suggestions? Let me know. Classes start on Wednesday, and I’ll be editing the syllabus until then. Though (of course) I can modify the reading list during the term, I tend to do that only minimally once the semester begins. If no suggestions, well, I hope you’ve enjoyed learning about, oh,… the thinks that we’ll think!
Gene Marks’ instantly infamous “If I Were a Poor Black Kid” column (Forbes, 12 Dec. 2011) is a classic example of how privilege remains invisible to the privileged. Though he acknowledges that he is “a middle aged white guy who comes from a middle class white background” and so “life was easier for” him, the rest of his column betrays too little of the awareness expressed by those early sentences. For instance, “If I was a poor black kid I’d use the free technology available to help me study” assumes that the kid in question would have access to this technology. Even a claim as benign as “If you do poorly in school, particularly in a lousy school, you’re severely limiting the limited opportunities you have” overlooks the fact that it takes an unusual student to rise above the limitations of a “lousy school.” Sure, there are students who do this, but they’re the exception, not the rule.
Mr. Marks assumes that opportunity is equally distributed. While we might admire the personal optimism conveyed by a claim like “I believe that everyone in this country has a chance to succeed,” the article does not sufficiently acknowledge that some people — those with access to better schools, those who do not go to bed hungry, those with health care — have a much, much better chance of success.
I owe my own success to precisely that sort of privilege. Don’t misunderstand: I have worked hard, and I continue to work hard. But my success in life derives not just from my work ethic. It also comes from unearned privilege.
If I had stayed in public school, I’m not sure that I would have gone to college at all. On my first day of first grade, the teacher asked which of us could read. I was among those few who raised my hand — I’d been reading since I was 3 years old. She gave us literate students a book to read. I finished it first, and raised my hand. “I’ve finished,” I said. Her response: “Read it again.” I began to read it again. On my first day of school and subsequent ones, I learned that school was boring.
The result was that, though I still read for pleasure, I became a terrible student. I’d finish the worksheet first, and then devote my free time to amusing my classmates. I paid attention only when it suited me, trusting that I’d be able to master the material on my own. For a few years, this approach worked well. However, by the time I reached sixth and seventh grade, it was no longer working. My grades were slipping, and I began to slip behind.
And here’s where that unearned privilege saved me.
Just before I entered eighth grade, my mother got a job teaching at private schools — first, Shore Country Day School (in Beverly, Mass.), and second, Choate Rosemary Hall (in Wallingford, Conn.). Her employment allowed my sister and me to attend both schools for free. That’s right: in addition to receiving a salary (and on-campus housing in the case of Choate), her labor enabled her offspring to attend gratis. Had she lacked a college degree, had she lacked experience teaching and working with computers, I would not have had that opportunity.
She’s also a great example of how privilege — or its lack — gets compounded over time. She worked hard, overcoming both the diminished expectations accorded her gender, and discrimination from male bosses. But she also benefited from privilege. As a white South African, she had access to educational opportunities that black South Africans did not. I can say with certainty that if my mother were from the same country but of a different race, I would not be where I am today. That’s unearned privilege.
Attending private schools made all the difference for me. Although I had peers in public school (a perfectly adequate public school) who did well and went on to college, I too easily succumbed to the prevailing attitude (among the students) that one should do as little as possible. In private school, however, the prevailing attitude was that we all needed to work hard. The work was challenging, and we had to rise to our teachers’ expectations.
That was just the nudge I needed. I didn’t become an “A” student overnight. Indeed, I had to do an extra year at Choate to pass the language requirement (there was no way I was going to make it through third-year Russian), and to get my grades up enough to get into college. Aided by a semester abroad (in Valladolid, Spain), I did three years of Spanish in two years, improved my grades, and got accepted at a couple of good colleges.
At the University of Rochester, I became a model student, and graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in both English and Psychology. But, here, too, privilege came to my aid. Having that excellent private-school education meant that I knew how to study. During my freshman year, many of my public-school friends were shocked by the amount of work. I wasn’t. The work may have been harder, but I knew what I had to do.
In calling attention to the role privilege has played in my own success, I do not mean to dismiss the role of a solid work ethic. Mr. Marks is correct to emphasize the importance of hard work. For most of college, I worked two jobs — one via Work/Study, and one as a Resident Advisor (which paid for room and half of board). I say “most” because I became an R.A. my second year; indeed, I was one of two sophomore R.A.s that year. (The others were all juniors and seniors.) In addition to those jobs, I studied hard, spending long hours in the library. I carried those work habits on to graduate school and into my career as an English professor.
However, I must point out that I was not working, say, 30-hour weeks in addition to doing schoolwork. The hours of the R.A. job varied, and the Work/Study job was, to the best of my recollection, about 8 hours a week, give or take. I have students now who work full-time, are the sole caregiver for their children, and are pursuing a B.A. That’s a much steeper hill to climb.
The problem in this country is not laziness. The problem is unacknowledged, unearned privilege. It’s not that people lack industry; they lack opportunity. But the privileged — unconscious of the degree to which their own advantage has aided them — fail to see this, and so write well-intentioned, naïve articles like “If I Were a Poor Black Kid.” Mr. Marks means well, but his prescription for success would not have helped me. And I was a middle-class white kid.
The photo is of me, at about age 11, reading The Hobbit.
Moments after I finished my the oral portion of comprehensive exams, Professor Michael Kreyling (a member of my committee) turned to me and said, “You’re going to want to relax. But you can’t.” He then listed many reasons for not relaxing: I needed to write a dissertation proposal, start working on the dissertation itself, send out articles to journals, and so on.
In the decade and a half since then, I’ve often thought of those words. The longer I’ve been in academia, the busier I’ve become. Indeed, had you told me in graduate school that, in a single semester (this one), I would be giving two different invited talks, delivering one conference paper, writing another (for MLA in January), writing an afterword (for The Complete Barnaby vol. 1), posting twice weekly to a blog, editing a book series, writing two book reviews, heading up the children’s literature track of our M.A. program, serving on various committees, teaching a couple of classes, and that this would be a laughably incomplete list of my activities,… I’d have thought: Yeah, right. No one can do that much in one semester. (I would also have thought: What? Me? Employed as a professor? You must be joking.)
Life was not always this busy.
Once upon a time, I was — to put this generously — not very industrious. As a young person, formal education held little interest for me; indeed, I was at best an indifferent student. I had interests, but they tended to fall outside of school curriculum: reading and writing stories, working out songs on my guitar, playing games on the computer. Then, at about the age of 18, I applied myself, improved my grades, went on to college, and have been working hard ever since.
But, for many years, I still retained (and, in some measure, still retain) the perception of myself as lazy — or, at least, as having tendencies towards sloth. Empirically, I realized that (as a brief look at my CV confirms) this notion is absurd. So, I’ve also had a competing perception of myself as at least somewhat accomplished in my field of endeavor. These perceptions have competed with one another for years. At present, the latter view is in the ascendant.
One motivation for taking on so much was to combat my secretly slothful nature. If I signed myself up for a lot of different projects (books, essays, invited talks, conference papers), I reasoned, then I’d have to rise to the challenge and get it done. As Jim Infantino sings,
I’m addicted to stress — that’s the way that I get things done.
If I’m not under pressure, then I sleep too long,
And hang around like a bum.
I think I’m going nowhere and that makes me nervous. (Jim’s Big Ego, noplace like Nowhere, 2000)
Though (contrary to the song) I don’t actually drink coffee, this “motivated by pressure” approach has proven quite a successful strategy — if a rather exhausting one.
These days, I’m not “addicted to stress.” Indeed, I would welcome fewer tasks. And yet… I have more to do than ever before. Rarely do I get 6 hours a sleep per night (I function best on at least 7, although that hardly ever happens anymore).
Having said that, to complain about this predicament (especially in these dire economic times) would seem churlish in the extreme. After all, I am an academic with a tenure-track job. Heck, I’m an academic with tenure. For any non-academics reading this, here’s a little context: 50% of students in doctoral programs drop out before earning the Ph.D. Of those who do get the doctorate, job prospects within academe are few and shrinking. Each year, the academy produces five times as many Ph.D.s in English as there are tenure-track jobs for Ph.D.s in English. When I got my degree (1997), the stats were slightly better — annually, four times as many Ph.D.s as there were jobs for Ph.D.s.
Beyond having “beat the odds,” I also have an interesting job. Let me say that again: I also have an interesting job. Of the people fortunate enough to be employed, how many have jobs from which they derive meaning? I don’t have the stats on this question, but I suspect the answer is: very few. It’s a great privilege to have a job from which you gain more than a paycheck. True, such intrinsic motivation is especially important when your last pay raise came in 2007. (I’m told we’re getting one at the end of this year, though. Here’s hoping!) But my point is that being a professor is a really great job. I get to learn stuff, and then share what I’ve learned — in the classroom, at conferences, in my books and articles, and even on this blog. How awesome is that? (Answer: very!)
Still, I also have the suspicion that might enjoy life more if I did not work 60+ hour weeks. I often think of that New Yorker cartoon, where, with a hamster wheel in the background, one hamster says to the other: “I usually do two hours of cardio and then four more of cardio and then two more of cardio.”
So, despite all that I love about my job, I sometimes want to ask: Will I ever get off the treadmill? On the other hand, I do prefer my treadmill to the one in the cartoon.
In North America, those of us who are teachers or students are thinking about school. In August and September, the summer holidays end, and a new term begins. To commemorate (or commiserate?) this season last year, I posted Dark Sarcasm in the Classroom: A Back-to-School Mix. This year, I’m posting a mix about language. Enjoy!
1) The New A B C Lambert, Hendricks & Ross (1959) 3:06
Leading the mix itself and its “ABC” section (which concludes with track 7), it’s the vocalese trio of Dave Lambert (1917-1966), Jon Hendricks (b. 1921), and Annie Ross (b. 1930). From their album Lambert, Hendricks & Ross! (a.k.a. The Hottest New Group in Jazz!).
On Sesame Street, Big Bird (voiced by Carroll Spinney) tries to pronounce the alphabet as a single, 26-letter word. From Songs from the Street: 35 Years of Music.
3) African Alphabet Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Kermit the Frog (1991) 1:51
In another one from Sesame Street, the voices of Ladysmith Black Mambazo join Kermit the Frog (voiced by Jim Henson). This song can also be found on Songs from the Street: 35 Years of Music.
“West Xylophone, Yemen, Zimbabwe!” They Might Be Giants’ alphabetical trip around the world, from their second children’s album, Here Come the ABC’s. If I weren’t restricting myself to one song per artist, I would definitely include other TMBG songs in this mix.
I don’t know much about Gordon MacRae, but Jo Stafford was a popular vocalist in the 1940s and 1950s. With husband Paul Weston, she was also half of the deliberately off-key comedy duo Jonathan and Darlene Edwards. This song appears on the compilation Small Fry: Capitol Sings Kids’ Songs for Grown-Ups.
Steven Page mocks Ed Robertson’s attempts to write a new alphabet song. Appears on Snack Time!, the first BNL children’s record. Word is that the group (now sans Page) is working on a second children’s record.
“These are the books I like to read / Because reading suits me. / With every page I turn, the pictures coma alive. / Imagination takes what’s possible to new heights.” And the song name-checks both Harold and the Purple Crayon and Green Eggs and Ham! From Frances England‘s Fascinating Creatures.
The first of 6 songs from Schoolhouse Rock on this mix. Since I encounter students (yes, college students) who do not know what a noun is, I often wish that these were still airing during Saturday morning cartoons.
“Hey, you know what? A round cookie with one bite out of it looks like a ‘C.’ A round doughnut with one bite of it also looks like a ‘C.’ But it is not as good as a cookie. Oh, and the moon sometimes looks like a ‘C,’ but you can’t eat that.” Words of wisdom from the Cookie Monster. The song appears on Songs from the Street: 35 Years of Music, and (I expect) on many other compilations.
This always sounded to me a bit like a combination of a nursery rhyme and a reading primer. From the end of Yellow Submarine, where the Beatles appear on screen and talk to the audience:
Putting onomatopoeia into practice, Mr. Tex Ritter tells us all about noises — those made by cows, pigs, ducks, sheep, railroad trains,… even college boys.
Though I expect this song appears on more than one compilation, it appears here via the 3-CD set The Great Danny Kaye. Can anyone sing this lyric at the pace that Kaye does? I doubt it.
Cheerful pop from Jason Mraz. Appears on the album Mr. A-Z.
19) A Word a Day Phil Silvers & Rose Marie (1952) 3:32
A song of malapropisms, a term named for Mrs. Malaprop, a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals (1775). This particular song, however, is from a different play — the Broadway musical Top Banana (1952), with music and lyrics by Johnny Mercer and book by Hy Kraft.
The second Schoolhouse Rock number on this mix addresses pronouns. Actor, jazz trumpeter, and singer, Jack Sheldon also sang the Schoolhouse Rock numbers “Conjunction Junction” and “I’m Just a Bill.”
From the band’s debut — a 6-song cassette. This Canadian quartet were my favorite group of the 1990s. Their live shows were something to behold. Below, an example of their improvisational stage shows. The song itself starts at around 4:30. Warning to our underage listeners: in the live performance below, Jian Ghomeshi drops a bunch of F-bombs at around 7:40 or so. The audio-only version (above) is clean.
Continuing the nursery rhyme theme, here’s a #6 pop hit for Aretha Franklin. The B-side of “Say a Little Prayer,” the song appears on 30 Greatest Hits (Atlantic, 1985).
The jump blues of Louis Jordan (and others) helped create the sound that would become known as “rock ‘n’ roll.” From The Best of Louis Jordan (MCA Records, 1975), a solid single-CD collection of his work.
The final song in our “nursery rhyme” sequence appears on A Good Man Is Hard to Find: The Middle Years Part Two (1938-1940). One in Bluebird/RCA’s fantastic series of Fats Waller CDs — now, alas, out of print.
The song for which Barenaked Ladies named their 2000 album appears on Ken Nordine’s spoken-word/jazz classic, Colors. I’ve placed it here because, like nursery rhymes and playground chants, the song is as much about the sound of words as what they mean. And, linking us to the next song, the theme of the record is Nordine trying to describe colors — the sort of task for which one might want to unpack some adjectives….
The mix concludes with four Schoolhouse Rock songs. I generally don’t like to use so many songs from the same record (in this case, a 4-CD set), but since each track is performed by a different artist, I’ve given myself a pass here. Here, the late Blossom Dearie — of “Peel Me a Grape” fame — teaches us about the adjective.
31) Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here Bob Dorough (1974) 3:02 Bob Dorough — who had previously worked with Miles Davis on “Blue Christmas (To Whom It May Concern)” — sang (and wrote) a number of Schoolhouse Rock songs, including “Three Is a Magic Number.”
32) Verb: That’s What’s Happening Zachary Sanders (1974) 3:00
“A verb tells it like it is.” In addition to teaching us about verbs, this cartoon features an African-American superhero — not a common sight on television either in the early 1970s or today. Zachary Sanders also sang the Schoolhouse Rock song “Electricity, Electricity.”
33) Interjections! Essra Mohawk (1974) 3:01
“Darn! That’s the end.” Essra Mohawk also sang the Schoolhouse Rock song “Sufferin’ Til Suffrage.”
What was high school like 90 years ago? This Newtown High School Handbook provides some sense of what it was like in Newtown, Queens in 1921, when Crockett Johnson (a.k.a. David Leisk) was a student there. No yearbooks from the Newtown class of 1924 (Johnson’s graduating class) survive, but plenty of things do: The Queens Public Library’s Long Island History Division has a class of ’24 photo, and one issue of the Newtown H.S. Lantern from the period. Via eBay, I obtained other copies of the Lantern — in which you can find Crockett Johnson’s earliest cartoons (see this earlier blog post on the subject). Reading through copies of the Daily Star (the local paper) also helped.
I had to do a lot more of this sort of work for Crockett Johnson than I did for Ruth Krauss. She wrote about herself, and attended private schools that kept records. He did not write about himself and attended public schools. The children of the wealthy leave more traces than the children of the working class. Anyway, this little book only yielded a couple of paragraphs in The Purple Crayon and a Hole to Dig: The Lives of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss (forthcoming 2012 from the University Press of Mississippi), but it’s a fascinating document.
At 5 ½ in. (14.5 cm.) tall x 3 3/8 in. (8.5 cm.) wide x ¼ in. (7 mm.) thick, the book fits easily into a pocket — which perhaps contributed to the rounded and slightly frayed edges of my copy.
Note that the aims include “Training for American citizenship” (patriotic), “Training for a life career” (vocational), and “Training for service” (civic). I’m not sure whether Newtown High School still publishes a handbook, but the school’s website now describes it as “a school that consists of ambitious and intellectual students who are willing to do the best they can in order to accomplish their goals in life.” That strikes me as roughly parallel to the “aims” section of the handbook.
Then, the school day began at 8:55 a.m. and ended at 2:57 p.m. Now, the day begins at 7:30 a.m. and ends at 3:51 p.m. – about 1 hour and 20 minutes longer than it used to be. So, whether education now is less rigorous than it once was (as some contend), students at Newtown do receive it for a greater period of time than they once did.
I find this inter-period exercise drill fascinating:
Also: though regimented nature of the “two-minute drill” has an oddly military flavor, a little calisthenics between periods strikes me as a promising idea. It would help wake students up a bit. I know that, as a student, I often needed a bit of waking up. (Since adolescence, I’ve been chronically short of sleep.)
Note the expectations conveyed by “Home Study” and “Employment,” above. The handbook recommends 2-3 hours (no more, no less) of study each day. Students seeking remunerative employment “after school or on Saturdays” need to be at least 16 years old. If they are not, then they require “working certificates.” And check out the strict prohibition against cheating (below): “Any pupil detected in cheating will receive ZERO FOR ALL HIS TESTS THIS SESSION.” They don’t mess around at Newtown.
The current Newtown High School’s rules has a prohibition against cell phones. In 1921, “The office telephone may not be used for any other than official business. Pupil will not be summoned to answer any telephone calls whatever; nor will telephone messages be delivered to pupils except in cases of extreme emergency, and then only through the principal.”
… and Freehand Drawing. Given his work for the school literary magazine and his later success as “Crockett Johnson,” I imagine that young Dave Leisk took these classes.
More curricula: Mechanical Drawing, General Science,…
… History and Civics, and Household Arts — which, you’ll note, “may be elected by girls in all courses, as a substitute for an academic subject, and counts toward graduation.” Just by girls, mind you. Boys have to take the “academic subjects.”
The “Cookery and nursing” course in Household Arts “aims to make the girl a good homemaker and enthusiastic expert in home administration, who will put new life and interest into the old story of ‘Cooking’ and ‘Housekeeping.” Ah, socialization — and, very likely, one reason that you’ve heard of Crockett Johnson, but not of his sister Else.
On to English! As a professor of English, I’m most intrigued by the one I don’t understand: “U — Unity. Rewrite the sentence.” Although I’ve certainly encountered sentences that lack unity, this directive doesn’t convey why the sentence lacks unity. And I get a big kick out of “MS — Manuscript Slovenly.” Sure, we’ve all seen these, but I expect that few of us have used this particular locution to describe their substandard condition.
Following these rules, a “Spelling List” extends for eight pages, with groups of words in sub-lists identified by different types of common errors … all of which are (sadly) common at the college level today. You can see the first two types above (“Possessives,” “Apostrophe for Omission”). Below, “Capitals,” “Groups,” “EI and IE,” “Compounds,” and “Homonyms”:
That Newtown High School was racially integrated makes particularly interesting the inclusion (in the 7th item of “Groups”) of “mulattoes, negroes.” Such words would have been viewed as “neutral” to the faculty who assembled the handbook — “mulatto” indicated someone of “mixed race,” and “negro” described someone “black” or “African-American.” I’m placing all of these racial terms in inverted commas because they’re social constructs: When it comes to human beings, “race” is purely imaginary (we’re all part of the human race). However, as this handbook suggests, people deploy such imaginary categories in very real ways. That two of fourteen examples are racial classifications suggest that these racial designations were in common use.
In addition to serving as a grammar textbook, the Newtown High School Handbook was a literary anthology. Its “Memory Selections” offer a sense of what were considered “canonical” literary works for high school students in 1921:
Here’s a breakdown of canonical works by author:
3 from William Wordsworth.
2 from Robert Louis Stevenson, William Shakespeare.
1 from Samuel Francis Smith, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Russell Lowell, John McCrae, Robert Browning, Francis Scott Key, Henry Van Dyke, Edmund Vance Cooke, George Eliot, Thomas Gray, Abraham Lincoln, John Masefield, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Edward Rowland Sill, John Milton, Daniel Webster, Josiah Gilbert Holland, Winifred Mary Letts.
By gender:
Works by men: 24.
Works by women: 2
By nationality:
Works by English authors: 15
Works by American authors: 10
Work by Canadian author: 1
By date:
The most recent works are Letts’ “The Spires of Oxford” (1916) and McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” (1915), both patriotic poems in support of the Allied effort in World War I.
The earliest works are the excerpts from Shakespeare’s Macbeth (c. 1603-1606) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1594-1596)
An on it goes, up to page 128 — the final six pages are advertisements. Had we but world enough and time (a poem not included here), I’d take you through the second half. But we do not. Indeed, I would be surprised if anyone is reading these final few sentences. This is, I know, a rather long post.
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I’m doing it again — teaching 
Another change from last time: using the anthology Your Favorite Seuss, instead of having the students buy individual Seuss books. I have mixed feelings about this choice. On the one hand, this is far cheaper than having them buy the individual books — and that’s my primary reason for doing this. I realize that books are expensive. And, also in its favor, Molly Leach has done a really nice job in redesigning the layout for each Seuss book. On the other hand, I’d prefer for students to read the books as originally laid out. Your Favorite Seuss includes all text, but moves artwork around so that it can include 13 books in fewer pages. As a compromise, I’m putting the original versions on Reserve (at the library) so that students can also see the originals.
In North America, those of us who are teachers or students are thinking about school. In August and September, the summer holidays end, and a new term begins. To commemorate (or commiserate?) this season last year, I posted 
What was high school like 90 years ago? This Newtown High School Handbook provides some sense of what it was like in Newtown, Queens in 1921, when Crockett Johnson (a.k.a. David Leisk) was a student there. No yearbooks from the Newtown class of 1924 (Johnson’s graduating class) survive, but plenty of things do: The 
