{"id":1155,"date":"2007-12-26T11:11:33","date_gmt":"2007-12-26T15:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=1155"},"modified":"2007-12-26T11:11:33","modified_gmt":"2007-12-26T15:11:33","slug":"comic-book-demerits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=1155","title":{"rendered":"Comic book demerits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s New York Times story by Elissa Gootman on comic books as curriculum<\/a> has a fairly typical narrative structure in education reporting: creative person invents Method X to engage kids, which relies on popular culture; it’s spreading like wildfire, and attracting critics.<\/p>\n

In the case of Gootman’s story, the creative person is Michael Bitz, the method is the Comic Book Project<\/a>, the evidence of diffusion is an unsourced claim that almost 900 schools are using it, and the critic quoted in the article is Diane Ravitch. <\/p>\n

Hrrmmmn… because this article fits the narrative structure too neatly, let’s read between the lines a bit. First, my guess is that Gootman quoted Ravitch because she is eminently quotable and treats reporters well (i.e., calls them back quickly, before deadline). There is no evidence that Ravitch has been a public critic of the project, but she is a Quotable Source that could be relied on by the reporter. Two demerits<\/strong> to the reporter for working backwards from a source to craft the narrative she evidently wanted to write in the first place.<\/p>\n

The rest of the material on criticism is quoting advocates of using comic books, when they refer to vague critics (i.e., parents who are a touch skeptical). No evidence of a search for anyone who knew of the project before Gootman contacted them and was willing to be quoted. One demerit<\/strong> for laziness in scrounging for sources.<\/p>\n

I would also have expected a New York Times<\/em> reporter would also have written about the long-term change in attitudes towards comic books, from the Kefauver hearings on crime comics in the 1940s to huge conventions of comic-book fans and collectors, the development of “graphic novels” as art form (e.g., Maus<\/em>), and the use of comic books to reach youth (including all sorts of efforts to change teen behavior through comics). I don’t know if Gootman goofed on that, or if the editor excised any context. Two demerits<\/strong> to the Times<\/em> for ahistorical writing.<\/p>\n

Finally, there is absolutely nothing in the story about the existing evaluations of such efforts, at least one of which is available in a single click from the project’s website. Haven’t we had enough fads without looking at what the consequences are? Two demerits<\/strong> for a romantic portrayal of instructional methods without looking for evidence. <\/p>\n

None of this says anything about using comic books as either instructional material or as projects for elementary students. (Use a different format, and we’d be talking about student-as-author projects with picture books.) But this is weak education reporting on the first page of the Times<\/em> metro section (B). <\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: Kevin Carey says more<\/a> and even mentions Fredric Wertham. Two points to Carey for historical alertness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s New York Times story by Elissa Gootman on comic books as curriculum has a fairly typical narrative structure in education reporting: creative person invents Method X to engage kids, which relies on popular culture; it’s spreading like wildfire, and attracting critics. In the case of Gootman’s story, the creative person is Michael Bitz, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-policy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-iD","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}