Education

This is the second post in a series about adding independent study to high school.  My series was inspired by a single post by Dave Pollard on his blog, How to Save the World.  I invite you to read “No more teachers, no more books” (the first post in the series) for context and for a link to Mr. Pollard’s thought-provoking essay.

“Keeners” aren’t the only group of students who might be interested in trying the independent study concept described by Mr. Pollard.  He describes the most successful of his former classmates as “natural learners.”  These students were able to thrive by learning at their own (accelerated) pace and by working cooperatively to master the curriculum.  Another too-common type of student, a type I’ll call “unmotivated slackers,” should find similar benefits in this less-structured environment.  As I explain below, these two archetypes are really just two sides of the same coin.

Natural Learners

 Natural Learners are the stereotypical “gifted” students.  They are the students who love to read, get in arguments with their friends about philosophy or other abstract concepts, write poetry and short stories, and ask thoughtful, insightful questions that leave the teacher at a loss for an answer and perhaps a bit intimidated.  I would guess that about a third of my Honors students fit into this category.

The problem with putting Natural Learners into a regular classroom with more “average” students is that the teacher will either devote most of his or her attention to the Natural Learner’s questions and comments, which leaves the rest of the class feeling confused, then bored, then restless… or else the teacher will devote most of his or her efforts toward teaching and remediating the average or sub-average students, leaving the Natural Learners feeling bored with the tedium and restless as a result.

Even when Natural Learners are separated into an “advanced” or “honors” course, the necessity of following a curriculum can mean that classwork is repetitive or uninteresting.  Additionally, placing a lot of these kids into a confined space and forcing them to work together sometimes creates rivalries and explosive arguments as each student tries to demonstrate his or her intellectual superiority.  Even in a well-behaved honors class, there’s usually that one “smarter-than-thou” kid who does to class discussion what Ahmadinejad does to United Nations meetings.

In a different environment, all that can change.  Mr. Pollard describes the effect that independent study had on these students:

We discovered that, together, we could easily cover the curriculum in less than an hour a day, leaving the rest of the day to discuss philosophy, politics, anthropology, history and geography of the third world, contemporary European literature, art, the philosophy of science, and other subjects not on the school curriculum at all.  We went to museums, attended seminars, wrote stories and poetry together (and critiqued each others’ work).

The Natural Learners in this program were able to help each other cover the curriculum without wasting time with repetition.  They then went beyond the curriculum, learning and discussing subjects that a high school teacher would never have taken the time to introduce.  Presumably, the “Ahmadinejads” and other loners in the group ended up studying alone, preventing rivalries and clashing personalities from disrupting the learning environment.

Unmotivated Slackers

A common thorn in many teachers’ sides is the presence of students who simply can’t be bothered to pay attention or to complete assignments.  What many teachers fail to realize is that these Unmotivated Slackers are often among the most intelligent and curious minds in the classroom.  Natural Learners who become bored with repetitive, tedious, quantity-over-quality lessons and assignments often transform, as if by magic, into Unmotivated Slackers… often as soon as early adolescence.  This group makes up the last third of my Honors students… and they are almost always the students who don’t get recommended for Honors the next year.

The degree of “laziness” varies from Slacker to Slacker:  some will simply refuse to do anything useful, some will skip homework but take tests, and others will do the bare minimum necessary to pass the class by as small a margin as possible.  All of them, however, will be more willing to apply their intelligence if they see the chance for real rewards with a minimum of tedium.

While I hate assigning labels to individuals without actually knowing much about them, I noticed some interesting facts about Mr. Pollard in his post:

In Grade 11, my second last year of high school, I was an average student, with marks in English in the mid 60% range, and in mathematics, my best subject, around 80%.  I hated school.

Barely scraping by in at least one class?  Sounds almost like an Unmotivated Slacker, especially considering what happened when he saw that improving his grades would qualify him for the independent study program:

The chance to spend my days with this latter group, unrestricted by school walls and school schedules, was what I dreamed of, so I poured my energies into self-study.  By the end of the first month of school my average was almost 90%, and I was exempted from attending classes in all my subjects.

Motivation + intelligence = remarkable improvement.  After Mr. Pollard had been in the program for a while, his grades were even higher… because his peers had shown him the intrinsic rewards of learning.

My peers had done what no English teacher had been able to do — inspire me to read and write voraciously, and show me how my writing could be improved.

What have we learned?

This independent study program proved beneficial to the Natural Learners because it kept them from sinking into the depths of Unmotivated Slackerhood and allowed them to learn far more than they would have in the classroom.

The program helped the Unmotivated Slackers find motivation and transform back into the Natural Learners they were always capable of being.

My question is, why on Earth aren’t we doing this in more schools?

In the next posts in this series, I’ll explore a partial (and, to my mind, wrong) answer to this question, along with the benefits of the independent study program on the average, everyday student.

The full text of this post, including the excerpts from Dave Pollard’s essay, is licensed under the CC-by-nc-sa 2.0.

I found a fascinating essay on the subject of “unschooling” at Dave Pollard’s How to Save the World.  While I can’t say that I’m in complete agreement with Mr. Pollard’s essay, I was very much inspired by the narrative with which he opens his “Unschooling Manifesto.”  The copyright notice on his website indicates that the essay was published under a Creative Commons license, so I’m quoting a few paragraphs below (heavily edited for brevity; I’m already going to be posting my thoughts in a series of posts spanning several days).

In Grade 11, my second last year of high school, I was an average student, with marks in English in the mid 60% range, and in mathematics, my best subject, around 80%.  I hated school.

Then in Grade 12, something remarkable happened: My school decided to pilot a program called “independent study”, that allowed any student maintaining at least an 80% average on term tests in any subject (that was an achievement in those days, when a C — 60% — really was the average grade given) to skip classes in that subject until/unless their grades fell below that threshold.  There was a core group of ‘brainy’ students who enrolled immediately.  Half of them were the usual boring group (the ‘keeners’) who did nothing but study to maintain high grades (usually at their parents’ behest); but the other half were creative, curious, independent thinkers with a natural talent for learning.  The chance to spend my days with this latter group, unrestricted by school walls and school schedules, was what I dreamed of, so I poured my energies into self-study.

To the astonishment of everyone, including myself, I did very well at this.  By the end of the first month of school my average was almost 90%, and I was exempted from attending classes in all my subjects.  We discovered that, together, we could easily cover the curriculum in less than an hour a day, leaving the rest of the day to discuss philosophy, politics, anthropology, history and geography of the third world, contemporary European literature, art, the philosophy of science, and other subjects not on the school curriculum at all.  We went to museums, attended seminars, wrote stories and poetry together (and critiqued each others’ work).

As the year progressed, the ‘keeners’, to my amazement, found they were struggling with this independence and opted back into the regular structured classroom program.

My peers had done what no English teacher had been able to do — inspire me to read and write voraciously, and show me how my writing could be improved. My writing, at best marginal six months earlier, was being published in the school literary journal.

Our independent study group, a handful of students from just one high school, won most of the province-wide scholarships that year.  I received the award for the highest combined score in English and Mathematics in the province — an almost unheard-of 94%.

Now… I know what I said in my recent post “Broken pieces, broken whole,” and I stand by that.  “Fixing” things with educational instutions won’t get us where we need to go; we’ve got to fix the entire educational system, including the parents and lawmakers and so forth.

Even so… this “independent study” program sounds like it has promise.  Real promise.  There are a number of student archetypes described in the anecdote (as well as a few that aren’t), and I’d like to discuss the benefits of this program for each of them.

Keeners

Mr. Pollard refers to a group of students that he calls “keeners.”  These students are heavily motivated to succeed in their classes… as long as someone is breathing down their necks.  In the Honors classes that I teach, I’d say at least a third of the students are in this group.

These students have “extrinsic” motivations; they succeed because reward or punishment is offered based on the degree of their success or failure.  These students are typically afraid of their parents, often bursting into tears when they see a bad grade.

Keeners thrive on structure.  When a teacher is watching, they will behave.  When their assignments are being graded, these students will do their work.  When parents are checking report cards and contacting teachers, these students will work their keen little butts off to get things done.

It’s interesting… but not really surprising… to read Mr. Pollard’s description of how the keeners failed to succeed in the unstructured independent-study environment.  No work is being graded, no teachers are keeping an eye on them, and parents don’t have any feedback from the school that they can use to reward or punish their children.  The extrinsic motives and constant supervision are removed, so the keeners’ motivation withers and dies.

So how is this independent study beneficial to the keeners?  For one, it’s often hard to judge whether someone is extrinsically or intrinsically motivated to learn… that is, whether they are a “keener” or a “natural learner” like those who thrived in the independent environment.  When the keeners tried to motivate themselves to learn, they discovered their own limitations.  This could either help them to choose more wisely in higher-stakes circumstances in the future, or to identify and overcome their own limitations.  Self-motivation can be learned, and the earlier a student realizes that he has been relying on others for motivation, the sooner he can begin working to correct that difficulty.  I suspect the long-term consequences for the keeners’ grades were minimal, while using the independent study as a type of diagnostic exercise could have significant benefits.

To be continued…

As I warned you earlier, I can’t possibly fit all my thoughts on this independent-study program into a single reasonably-sized post.  Coming up next:  the “natural learners” like Mr. Pollard’s friends, and the “unmotivated slackers” whose motivation could be rescued by a program like this one.

The full text of this post, including the excerpt from Dave Pollard’s essay, is licensed under the CC-by-nc-sa 2.0.

I occasionally get a moment in which I can think straight enough to make a few observations about life, work, and other miscellany.

For example…

• I do not consider a peach shirt with an indigo bowtie to be professional dress (especially sans jacket), since I don’t consider clowning a profession.  Why is this oddly-dressed gentleman considered qualified to judge whether we’re running a school in a professional manner?
• If I hear one of the football coaches commenting on the cheerleading coach’s bootimus maximus, does that count as Pig Latin?
• Why have three different guys of Far Eastern origin, working at three separate Dairy Queen drive-thrus, commented on how nice my Honda Element looks?  I mean, they’re right, but that particular demographic seems to include my car’s biggest fans.
• How can there be a Lego Rock Band video game when there is no minifig-sized Lego guitar accessory?  Will Lego soon be producing such accessories?
• If retro clothing is such a big thing with every generation, how come the dirndl never made a comeback?
• Before that Central Office employee sent out an angry email denying the huge raise she allegedly received last year, why didn’t she check the public records to see whether her jump from $65,000 in Financial Year 2007 to $89,000 in FY08 might be viewable by pretty much anyone connected to the Internet?  (By the way… it is.)
• How can people justify charging $500 for an improve-your-blog’s-readership course that consists mostly of a two-word message:  “Use Twitter”?
• Will you pay me $500 if I tell you to use Twitter to promote your blog?
• Who has time for Twitter anyway?  Instead of spending hours of your time making flimsy and shallow “connections” with people in 140 characters or less, why not go out and find gainful employment?  The pay is better, and you’ll actually get to know someone.
• If I disappeared right now, everyone I call a friend would join in the search or otherwise assist law enforcement… and they wouldn’t let the search end until I’d been found.
• If Mr. I’m On Twitter disappeared right now, everyone he calls a follower would check Google in a week or two to see if he’s shown up on some other “social media” website… and then they’d forget about him.
• A man with one friend is more fortunate than a man with 1,000 followers.

And most importantly…

• Why did my SAM Infantry units (with bazookas!) on Civilization IV just get trounced by musket-wielding British Redcoats?

Hi… I was wondering if you had time to talk about God.

But first, let’s talk about the economy.

Normally, as I sit down to write this blog, I try to pretend that “the economy isn’t happening”… although, ironically, even Johnny Truant has recently been seen making occasional posts about the economy.

Sometimes, though, I have to face the facts.  Those facts are:

• Teachers in my system are being asked to “voluntarily donate” part of their salary to help offset our system’s budget shortfall.
• When teachers leave the system for any reason, their positions are not being filled with new hires (we can’t afford them, but that will increase class size).
• If I do have a job, the local school system may opt not to supplement the state’s salary I earn (resulting in thousands of dollars less for teaching more students… see above).
• There is no absolute guarantee that I or my wife will have a job next year anyway.
• Obama’s tax cut has added a tiny bit to my monthly paycheck, which may help offset a fraction of my lost income, but it has also significantly reduced the income of the government which helps pay me… probably resulting in a smaller education budget in years to come, which will (over the long term) most likely reduce my earnings by several times the tax decrease.  Save $50 (approximation) per month now so that I can lose $5000 (pure speculation) per year later… that’s the spirit…

At times like this, there’s one thought that does offer a little comfort.

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

(Matthew 6:28-31)

I’m toiling, and I’m spinning, and I’m doing the best I can for myself… but it’s nice to remember that God’s got my back.

I hope that this thought offers you some comfort as well in these rough times.

(Image credit and license)

I have this one student who is a constant thorn in my side.  Every day it’s the same story… he refuses to do work; he talks constantly, even calling out across the room to annoy his classmates; and he doesn’t seem to mind the fact that he’s failing miserably.

I try to deal with this misbehavior, of course.  I fuss at him.  I yell at him.  I threaten to send him to the principal for disrupting his classmates (which usually does stop him from calling out).  I send letters home (after trying and failing to reach his parents by phone) letting them know that he will not receive credit for my class unless he shapes up.

It doesn’t matter.  Three things are always certain:

He will not do his work.

He will continue talking.

He won’t act even slightly resentful toward me.

It bothers me.  It gnaws at me.  Most troublesome students have the decency to get irritated with me from time to time.  They usually act like I’m interfering with their lives when I fuss or yell at them.  Practically all of them at least give me the cold shoulder and a quiet sneer when I crack down on their misdeeds.

Not this one.

He just shrugs and smiles… not sarcastically or rebelliously, but as though I’ve said something mildly humorous.  He’ll quiet down or write a couple of words on his paper, but five minutes later he’s back to talking or staring off into space.

When I run into him after school, he’s completely friendly, as though I’m his favorite teacher.

What the heck is wrong with this kid?

Does he honestly enjoy being in trouble all the time?  Is he glad that I take the time to tell him to shut his mouth and do the work?

It bugs me.  He’s a disgrace to high school dropouts everywhere.

Dang.

Some of our disaffected youth really need to learn how to act like hoodlums.

Writer Dad writes that he will be focusing his thoughts on education this week.  His first post for the week got me rather fired up, even before I got a chance to see the video.

Since I haven’t had much to say here for a long time (first busy, then distracted, then exhausted), I thought I’d use one of my comments to Writer Dad as the springboard for an education-related post of my own.  I wrote (slightly edited):

Education is a system, like a computer is a system.  It is a system in the sense that it depends on multiple, interdependent, functioning components to be useful.

Parents, teachers, students, administrators, lawmakers… these form the system that is our educational process.  In my “system”:

• Parents are too focused on their jobs, divorce proceedings, and mind-altering substances to function well.
• Teachers are too demoralized, cynical, and entrenched in dogmatic curriculum to function well.
• Students are too distracted by bad homes, cell phones, and sexual escapades to function well.
• Administrators are too intimidated by parents, frustrated with teachers, and out of touch with the students to function well.
• Lawmakers are too resentful of their educational experiences, ignorant of the real process of educating young minds, and distracted with other political concerns to function well.

Take a computer system — any computer system — and smash its mouse, keyboard, monitor, CPU, and power supply with a baseball bat.  How useful is it now?

With practically every component of a system broken or damaged, the system cannot be expected to operate.  Education systems are no different… and we are all to blame.

Parents

If you are failing to encourage, discipline, and provide learning support for your student at home, you are the reason your child is failing.

If you aren’t putting even more effort into your child’s education than his teachers do, you have failed your child.

Teachers

If you have stopped caring about your students, you are the reason your students are failing.

If you aren’t trying to make your subject matter relevant to students’ lives and to the world in which they live, you have failed your students.  (I know that sometimes this is difficult, and I know that sometimes it’s practically impossible.  I hope to address these scenarios later.)

Students

If you aren’t paying attention in class and making a sincere and total effort to do what the teacher asks of you, you are the reason you are failing.

Whenever you give up or leave things unfinished, whenever you allow your friends to distract you from learning, and whenever you convince yourself that high school doesn’t matter because it isn’t “the real world,” you have failed yourself (more on that last point in a later post).

Administrators

If you aren’t protecting the teachers’ right to insist upon a strict and orderly learning environment, you are the reason your school’s students are failing.

If you are backing down in the face of an angry parent or whiny child, if you are ignoring issues which distract children from their learning, or if you are dealing with children who break the law at school by slapping them on the wrist, you have failed your school.

Lawmakers

If you aren’t personally visiting schools and interviewing teachers from your constituency before voting on each and every education-related proposal to enter your jurisdiction, you are the reason your constituents’ students are failing.

If you don’t have face-to-face conversations with teachers and administrators in a solid and sincere grass-roots effort to thoroughly understand the issues facing education, or if you choose to ignore educational issues because you think you have other priorities, you have failed education in your country.

So…

I’ll say it again:  Education is a system.  The system’s components are the reason the system fails.

Think this doesn’t apply to you, because you’re not in one of the five categories?  Think again.  If you live in a democratic society, you can take part in the lawmaking process at the very least.

Is it futile?  No, probably not.  How hard will it be to change?  Extremely difficult, since it requires major attitude adjustments for parents, teachers, students, administrators, and lawmakers.  Pointing fingers doesn’t help.

Ask any of the five components of education where the problems lie, and they will choose two or three other components to blame.  No one component is willing to admit that all five components are at fault.

We blame, we fail.  We fail, we blame.  Round and round the bottle goes…

A teacher in my building died this week.

The students mostly found out either Thursday evening or Friday morning. They got the word mainly
from family members or peers, since our administrators decided not to make an official announcement.

Today was hard.

Fortunately, we already had a half-day scheduled to kick off President’s Day weekend.
I’m still grieving. He was a good man and a good teacher.

Today reminded me of old Ebenezer getting his ghostly visits. Ghosts from the past, present, and
future have visited my disheveled mind today.

Past

I was in tenth grade — about 15 or 16 years old — when I heard that my first high school art
teacher had died.

She had been one of my favorite teachers. Her dry observations about art, life, and teaching were
equal parts hilarious and insightful. She bore the stupidity of my classmates with many
longsuffering sighs, and she encouraged me to take advanced art, which was taught by her husband.

One day, on the way home from school, she had a stroke. Her car swerved and collided with other
vehicles. She was placed on life support while doctors tried to deal with the severe bleeding
inside her skull. Two weeks later, they pulled the plug.

Her husband — whose class I was taking at the time — was out for about eight or nine weeks.

Present

I don’t react immediately to tragic news. My tears flow when I witness other people’s reactions,
as though I need to empathize with others to express my own pain.

Students walk down the hall with tears streaming down their cheeks. They quietly sob in class.
They try to comfort their friends with inexperienced, ineffective pats and platitudes.

It’s all I can do to hold myself together, to act professional. I look at the grieving ones as
little as possible, trying to focus my attention on the students who were not in his class or who
are better at hiding their grief and shock.

It’s hard.

Future

Someday my time will end.

I hope that it will be many decades from now… my family tends to be long-lived, frequently
reaching the upper nineties while still sound in mind and body.

On the other hand, it may well happen during my teaching career. Looking at students’ faces today,
I know that I am seeing the same shock, the same grief that other teachers may see after I’ve lost
my sight forever.

As with Ebenezer and his final ghost, I see one possible future haunting the faces of my students
today. Like Ebenezer, I hope that this future does not arrive.

Like Ebenezer, all I can do is accept my own mortality and live my life as best I can.

Please

Please pray for the family, the friends, the co-workers, and — perhaps most of all — the students
of our departed teacher.

(Photo credit and license)

Why do I teach?

I could answer this question with some starry-eyed fluffy-footed flannel-pajama-clad tripe about the youthful enthusiasm and innocence that radiates from the eager young minds as they enter my classroom, their intellectual safe haven, where they can express their love of learning and curiosity about the world without fear of criticism from their peers.

I could, but I do like to include a “shred of truth” with every blog post, and such an answer would pretty much close the door to that.

So… why do I teach?

Because sometimes, in between reminding this girl to watch her language and that boy to stop wasting our time and those kids not to throw things, not ever, in my classroom, especially not 1100-page textbooks from a distance of 20 feet…

…in between being harassed by parents because it’s obviously my fault the kids never turned in their essays or returned their books or learned that sometimes the real world kinda sucks and they’d better get used to it…

…in between the parents who think their 14-year-old should still be reading the Ramona books but never, ever, that Harry Potter witchcraft devil’s work and certainly nothing with cussing and the parents who don’t want their child to learn about the Holocaust or the Civil Rights Movement or any of that other wussy liberal crap I’m trying to shove down their throats…

…in between the administrators who want me to monitor the boys’ bathroom even though I could lose my certificate over it and the state officials who think my students need to know exactly what curriculum standards we’re learning today, even though the standards are written in jargon my students would need college degrees to understand, and due to the very nature of English and Language Arts we’re doing about fifteen standards at once, anyway…

…sometimes, more frequently than you’d expect, a student asks a question or makes a comment that, deliberately or not, leaves me laughing my head off, or that makes me pause and consider something really cool that I’d never thought about before, or that reminds me that a precious few really are interested in learning what I have to teach.

Occasionally, in between the your-boyfriend-snuck-off-with-that-girl drama and the I’m-not-reading-because-Shakespeare-didn’t-ride-bulls-like-me apathy, I even have a former student walking in through my door between classes to tell me how much they enjoyed my class and miss me, especially since now they have that teacher for English and I was way cooler.

Those are nice.  The ones I like even better are the ones who don’t say I’m cooler, but instead say I taught them more than most of their teachers.

The times I like most of all, the times that are so rare that I almost forget they happen at all, are when a student walks in on a teacher work day (when no students are supposed to be at school) and thanks me for all I’ve done for them.

I think that’s happened about three or four times in the last three years.

Once, this happened while a parent was whining to me out in the hall about something for which her sweet angel really shouldn’t have been penalized (yeah, right).  The ex-student who had come to visit stood around awkwardly for a minute before walking into my classroom and scrounging up paper and a pen.  She wrote for a while, then left with a quiet wave.

When my entirely calm, pleasant, denser-than-a-neutron-star demeanor completely frustrated the upset parent, who stormed off in search of an administrator (who fussed at her for wasting my time, heh heh), I entered my classroom.  On top of my desk was a note.

Coach Mac, Mr. MacOdys, (sorry)
You taught me more about English than most of my English teachers ever have, and along the way I learned more history than any of my high school history teachers even tried to teach.

You encouraged me to work hard and told me you were proud of me.

Thank you for inspiring me and being the best teacher I’ve ever had.

I think I’ll make it to retirement, yeah.

(Photo credit and license)

Training is key.

There was a fight in my hall today.  It’s the first genuine fight I’ve witnessed since becoming a teacher; most of them tend to happen elsewhere on campus.When I was a student, I was completely nonaggressive.  I never got in a fight; in fact, I never provoked anyone to the point where he tried to start one.  I also never played any sport or took part in any other physical extracurricular activity.  I can count on one hand the number of times I play-wrestled with my friends.

As a result, the prospect of having to break up a student fight invariably leaves me shaking with tension.  Heroically charging in and separating two beefy farm boys who are trying to kill each other doesn’t exactly fit with my personality.

On the other hand, I am more or less obligated to do so.  If I stand by and allow Billy Bob and Jimbo Joe to crack each other’s bones, I could be considered neglectful of my duty to maintain a safe learning environment.

All of this flashed through my mind before I reluctantly charged… er, stumbled… heroically forward.

The blur zipping past me, fortunately, was the football coach from across the hall.

I could say that Billy Bob went tumbling head over heels in one direction as Jimbo Joe slid chin-first across the floor in the other.  I could, but that would be a more obvious exaggeration than I generally like in my writing.

Suffice it to say that all I had to do was escort Billy Bob, now looking decidedly more like a B.B., to the office.

And yet… even so, as I returned to my classroom, restored order, and began writing vocabulary terms on the board, my hand was shaking.

Are you ready for some down and dirty deep-fried fisticuffs? I know I am! — Alton Brown

Two new Wordpress errors:  if you see the “financial advice” post appear in your feed, it’s not supposed to have gone public yet… and if you see this post doing anything weird, it’s because Wordpress is giving me fits with posting at the correct times.

Now that I’ve finished whining, on to the post…

“It wasn’t written like I thought it would be,” he said.

“How so?” I asked, although I had warned him the book isn’t what most people expect.

“I thought it would be written from Dracula’s point of view,” he said. “Instead it’s written from Jonathan’s.”

Written fr… what?

Then I remembered which generation I was dealing with, and it all made sense.

Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series is now at the height of its popularity (the cynic in me expects the books to be “so yesterday” in a year or two). In case your personal world has been teenager-free for the last twelve months or so, Twilight is about a teenage girl named Bella Swan who falls in love with Edward Cullen, who happens to be a vampire.

Part of me is rolling its proverbial eyes right now.

Part of me wants to send Meyer a thank-you note for getting teens to read.

The English teacher in me is taking full advantage of the situation by pushing my students to read Wuthering Heights, which (according to Wikipedia) is Bella’s favorite book, and Dracula, the granddaddy of all modern vampire novels.

So this obliging young man had paid a visit to our school’s media center and checked out a copy of Bram Stoker’s novel. About a quarter of the way through the book, he commented that he was surprised the narrative wasn’t from Dracula’s point of view.

It’s a Victorian vampire novel, I thought. Why on Earth would it be written from Dracula’s point of view?

Then I realized my confusion was the result of a generation gap. From this fifteen-year-old’s perspective, it made perfect sense for Dracula’s voice to carry the narrative forward. After all, teens and vampires have a lot in common.

…Now, after I make that statement, your reaction indicates your age. If you’re old enough, you’re thinking something like, “Did he just say that? Holy crap… he really doesn’t like teenagers, does he?”

If you’re young enough, on the other hand, you’re thinking, “Well, duh, I mean, vampires rock. I wish I could be one!”

Think about it. Vampires get to stay out all night, sleep all day, and wear all black. Vampires captivate their prey with forceful and often rather sexy charisma. Vampires are, like, dark and gothic and wicked. They’re the rock stars of the undead.

On the other hand, Stoker’s narrator (Jonathan Harker) is a bloomin’ lawyer. Not. Cool. At. All.

My student was fully enjoying the novel, however, and I expect he finished it over Christmas break. Too bad I couldn’t be there when he encountered the character Renfield, who is possibly the coolest vampire-groupie ever.

Never read Bram Stoker’s Dracula? As I told my student (and as he discovered), it’s really not what most people expect. Modern vampire fiction is mostly a pale, cliché-ridden, and rather juvenile imitation of the original. Go buy it… or if you’re strapped for cash, Project Gutenberg has text and audio downloads for free. So you really have no excuse.

Likewise, you might be surprised by Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights if you haven’t picked it up yet. Project Gutenberg can help you out again with the text, but you might have to visit LibriVox to get the audio download.

Now, go read.

One thing vampire children are taught is, never run with a wooden stake. — Jack Handey