When They Stop Teaching the Classics...and Cursive

I heard recently that the school district I am in has decided to stop teaching Shakespeare.  That alarms me for so many reasons, but also for a personal one.

Quite simply, I'm having a hard time finding books to use as examples in teaching fiction writing.

I used to have a lovely example, when trying to show what was meant by 'plot'.  I'd ask my class:  "What is the plot of Gone with the Wind?"

Several people would put up their hands, and say, "It's about the Civil War." 

And I would say, "No it isn't.  You've just described setting.  The SETTING of Gone with the Wind is the civil war.  The PLOT is something like this:  Scarlet O'Hara falls in love with a man who does not return her love, and she spends the entire civil war chasing after him.  Until in the end, she decides other things are more important."

Lots of Ohs! and Ahs!  Smiles all around.

Flash forward to my last term. I ask the same question of the class (all adults):  "What is the plot of Gone with the Wind?"

Not a single hand went up.

Nobody had read it or even seen the movie.

Me:  "Come on, people!  I can't use Harry Potter for EVERY example!"  (lots of laughter)

Yes, Harry Potter seemed to be the only book everyone in the class had read.  And - dare I say it - most had seen the movie Twilight (but not necessarily read the book.)  This does not leave a lot for me to reference as examples.

Further gripe: 

So here we are today, taking Shakespeare out of the school system.  Does anyone honestly think kids will read Shakespeare on their own?  Are we honestly to face a world in which no one knows the lessons learned in The Scottish Play, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, the Richards and Henry's?  And so many more.

A world in which I could say, "He would make a great Caliban" in a business meeting, and no one would know what I meant?  (I made the mistake of saying that once.  Probably not my best political move...)

So this leads me to my latest fear:

I hear they are no longer teaching Cursive.  Which means, in a few years, only a very very few people will be able to read any historical documents.  Any manuscripts in the original.

In fact, I was told today that a California town is asking people who know Cursive to apply for town jobs. 

Does this not scare others?  When only a few can access original text, I worry that everything will be 'as interpreted' by a central body.  

We already know how Homer's work was translated and tinkered with by men centuries ago to change and sometimes diminish the role of women in it.

Dammit, I'm worried.  I want a world where everyone is given the chance to be exposed to ideas.

Not a world where only a few can refute the masters (AI or other) who control the narrative.

Melodie Campbell worries and writes on the shores of Lake Ontario.  Her latest book (available for pre-order everwhere) was given the following review by BOOKLIST (we're permitted to post one sentence in advance of issue date):

 

 

 

 

 

 

Made by hand.

            I never learned how to create on a typewriter.  I tried, but I just couldn’t do it.  Instead, I wrote in tiny cursive so I could fit as much as possible on a yellow pad, since pads were expensive when you didn’t have much money. 

            I eventually evolved a useful compromise, where I would advance the work as far as I could by hand, then type it up, double-spaced, which I would continue revising through subsequent drafts.  But I could never conjure those first words and sentences solely through mechanical means. 

             (Ironically, I’d learned touch typing in high school to such a proficiency that I could work as a Kelly Girl, leading to a nice gig at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, but that’s another story.)

            But then I was introduced to my first word processor.  It was a Wang, which no one under fifty remembers, but was the de riguer method of digital composition in its heyday.  I immediately fell in love with that sickening green screen and those pixilated, poorly kerned characters.  The real beauty was you could modify and correct on the fly, balance out the formatting and be able to read the polished result as soon as it emerged from the printer.  This was sorcery, a seamless blend of human imagination and electronic technology.  I never wrote creatively in longhand again, unless it was to sign my federal tax return.

            Another wonder was the speed you could achieve with a computer.  Even the slickest IBM Selectric felt clunky and under-powered in comparison.  That you could quickly repair all the typos and mangled constructions caused by such reckless haste, in real time, only encouraged more daredevil velocity. 

            Since the Wang was modeled on the minicomputer, you worked on a (nearly) dumb terminal hooked up to a central disc storage unit in a secret room somewhere in the office, lorded over by the emerging class of IT professionals just beginning to hone their technical and interpersonal skills.  I once lost a whole day of work because a tech wanted to scoot out early and just flicked off the machine.  In a reverse Big Bang, pages of copy, due the next day, collapsed into one tiny green dot in the middle of the screen, forever irretrievable.

             Unlike disasters faced by earlier pioneers, no one was killed in the catastrophe, though the thought crossed my mind.

            Now that we’ve reached the point where Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law, that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” is nearly realized, all you hear is people bitching about technology.  Official magicians like Gandalf and Saruman the White never had to put up with that kind of kvetching.  No matter how powerful, how convenient, how fast and furious our devices become, they’re never good enough.  You can have virtually the entirety of human knowledge at the tips of your fingers, but really, only 60 Hz -110 PPI screen refresh rate?   What is this, the Middle ages?

          

I’ve been known to hurl invective at any number of glowing screens, but in my heart, I’m actually grateful.  I feel the same way about air travel, even when snaking through the TSA line at JFK.  It doesn’t seem possible that all I have to do is be hungry, sleepless and crippled by leg cramps for only a little over six hours and I’m in Ireland.  Tell that to the ragged refuse making the reverse trip in steerage. 

            But my deepest gratitude is toward my laptop, which feels like an extension of my inner being.  I avail myself of only a tiny fraction of its functionality, and I’m often lost in the simplest management of files, formats, upgrades, applications and other torments that gush at me on a relentless basis, but what really matters is how fast and easy it is to convert my cacophonous jumble of thoughts and feelings into words on the page, with only the limitation of talent to stand in the way.