It was a typical day at the television station, and I was meeting with my news director for the ritual proofing of the day’s news promotions. The news promos were my primary duty, and for the first time in my life, I was getting paid to write. Having called myself a writer since I was twelve, it was refreshing to say it professionally rather than as some quixotic pronouncement. It’s only true if you get paid for it.
“Ugh,” my news director grumbled, scratching her pen across my copy as if it were a lottery ticket she already knew was a loser. “You and your big words.”
The offending word was thoroughfare. Yes, street could have worked (and did eventually replace my choice), but I chose thoroughfare for its rhythm and flavor. Sadly, big words were theoretically anathema to the station mantra of clear, to-the-point and easy to understand. In the eyes of my news director, thoroughfare would cost us viewers. I like to think that it wouldn’t have had any effect on our viewership, or that maybe it would have even caused a few people to tune in to find out what this exotic “thoroughfare” thing was.
As a lover of language, the world of television news writing was not for me. Aside from the occasional articulate commentary from some of the national cable news figures, news writing is intentionally clinical and simplistic. In fact, I envy my fellow producers’ abilities, many of them exceptionally intelligent writers, to limit themselves for their chosen profession. My heart broke a little each time I was told to dumb down my copy for the sake of the viewing public.
But simple language is not exclusive to television news. Thanks to the internet and cheap text plans, an entire generation has begun using punctuation exclusively for emoticons and trading an extensive vocabulary for a catalogue of insipid acronyms. Cheaply produced reality shows are forcing incredible, literate writers like Aaron Sorkin off the airwaves. And our most recent commander-in-chief made his uninspired speeches memorable only through his unique issues with proper definitions, pronunciations, or syntax.
Where did this disregard, or at least disinterest, in our language begin? Part of me blames schools. This is not quite what it seems. I come from a family of teachers, and I admire them more than any other public servant. But as much as I worship their highly undervalued and mistreated profession, I am not as faithful to the sacred cows of English and literature classes.
There’s been an increasingly mournful chorus from the adult population as our children’s eyes have been stolen away from the wonders of literature by movies, television, video games and the internet. Unfortunately, the sales pitch we’re giving for books gets weaker with every passing year as the standard tomes become less and less relevant to the American youth.
The label “classic” is interesting to examine. In my lifetime I’ve heard the term christened on such disparate works as King Lear and Tommy Boy. It’s been treated so cavalierly in its history that it’s virtually meaningless (sorry, Tommy Boy). But I can guarantee that when a teacher hands a student a book as an assignment, the label is implied. If these “classics”, representatives of the best the written word has to offer, don’t live up to their status, what motivation will students have to explore other options outside of school?
There’s an incredible power in the choices teachers and administrators make in their classrooms. Not only do they infer that the books they assign are masterworks, but there’s also the suggestion that there is some sort of failing on the students’ parts if they can’t find something of value in what they’ve read. It takes incredible courage to stand up to a teacher and say, “This has nothing to offer me.” I went through this trial twice: once with literature in high school and then again in film school. As a student, one is told what’s great, and it’s a failing on our part if we cannot recognize the brilliance of one work or the other. It wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I had the courage to say, “The Scarlet Letter is worthless” or “2001: A Space Odyssey is a good reason to take a nap.” Right now, my girlfriend, an exhausting bookworm, is struggling to get through Huck Finn, one of my favorite books, and one on many high schools’ reading lists.
The love of reading and the love of language are largely reinforced along extremely rigid lines in our schools. When I was in grade school my mother had several parent-teacher conferences because of what I chose to read in school. It was personally rewarding to be allowed to read Stephen King by my parents, but it was a minor scandal in the eyes of my teachers. Then there were the comics – Marvel, DC, and reprints of the old EC horror comics (comics that suffered from mass book burnings across the US in the 1950’s). I couldn’t be relied upon for Sunday school attendance, but you could be sure I wouldn’t miss the weekly sojourn to Tim’s Corner, a comic book store in Rock Island. I was a weapon of mass consumption when it came to comics, but that was typically frowned upon by my teachers. Funny how, with few exceptions, I barely remember the reading assignments they gave me, but I can recite issue numbers of comic books that changed the way I viewed storytelling.
English curricula should be reexamined frequently with a simple question in mind: “What will this teach our kids?” If it’s a hand full of characters and plot lines to memorize and regurgitate on the test, perhaps we can search a bit deeper or get a bit more imaginative. We want reading to be a continuous, substantive contribution to our children’s lives, not a mechanism for rote memorization they will dismiss outside of the classroom.
Most importantly, we should not dismiss those books and media that our youth have embraced. I wouldn’t mind a little literature-based rebellion in this country. While I don’t think Twilight or Harry Potter are going to cut it, I would encourage our youth to unite behind some book or graphic novel that gets their parents and teachers in a huff. I’d love to see some of the magnificent rhyming schemes of rap artists put along side “classic” poets. It’ll expand our horizons as adults and give us a window to the younger generations. Everybody wins.
I know how hard it is to change what we’ve been doing for so long. However, nothing bothers me more than a book remaining a classic for no other reason than it was called a classic yesterday. Everything is worth another look. If a book is worth revisiting, the second look might be enjoyable. If it’s not, perhaps we should look in an unexpected direction.
How wonderful would it be to live in a country where American Gladiators wasn’t putting Aaron Sorkin out of work, where our President’s speeches were profound, articulate, and inspiring, or where I was free to use “thoroughfare” in a television ad without being chastised for my use of “big words?” It’s time to take a long, hard look at those sacred cows we’ve returned to so tirelessly over the years.
I’ll happily volunteer to host the first The Scarlet Letter barbeque.
