Comic Book Guy Can Read

Back from a two-week hiatus, will be catching up on various edu-related stories that occured in my absence.

Starting with the most significant, that of course being this NYTimes piece about schools using comic books as an instructional tool:

In Maryland, the State Education Department is expanding a new comics-based literacy curriculum, after a small pilot program yielded promising results. In New York City, a group of educators applied to open a new small high school that would be based around a comics theme and named after the creators of Superman; their application was rejected but they plan to try again next year. And the Comic Book Project, a program run out of Teachers College at Columbia University that has children create their own comic strips as an “alternative pathway to literacy,” is catching on. Six years after it started in one Queens elementary school, it has expanded to 860 schools across the country.

It all sounds good, but edu-eminence Diane Ravitch throws cold water on the idea, saying "If you’re going to use comics in the classroom at all, which I have serious doubts about, it should be only as a motivational tool. What teachers have to recognize is that this is only a first step."

This reflects two common assumptions about comic books, both which are wrong. First, that comic books are fundamentally unsophisticated as a medium. Second, that supporting a youthful enthusiasm for comic books reduces the likelihood of students moving to more serious, legitimate literary forms.

Comic books seem simple, but they're not. This mistake stems from confusing the form with the genre. The most popular American comic books have long been superhero stories, featuring lots of explosions, skin-tight costumes, and tales of good vs. evil. But the most popular forms of all media tend toward pop-culture, lowest-common demoninator fare; whether it's Transformers at the box office, American Idol on television, Chris Daughtry in music, or Harry Potter in the book store. Don't get me wrong, I like Harry Potter, but J.K. Rowling ain't Henry James. The fact that the number one movie of 2007 was Spider-Man 3 doesn't lead anyone to conclude that film as a medium is always and irredeemably low culture.

The comic book form is actually very complex. First you have all the challenges of story, pace, characterization, narration, and dialogue that are inherent to writing. Then you have a whole separate set of challenges related to creating visual art -- tone, perspective, color, mood, composition, etc. Then you have to figure out how to present a host of images in sequence, understanding the way readers will mentally fill in the transitions from one perspective, scene, and point of view to another. Finally (and most importantly) you have to understand how the words and pictures fit together, the manner and impact of readers rapidly switching back and forth between reading words and seeing pictures, two very different cognitive experiences. Comic books incorporate elements of writing, painting, illustration and film, but it's really the combination of forms that make them unique and complex. As Umberto Eco once said, "Comic books have a language of their own."

The mistaken idea that comic books are simple leads to the second, Ravitchian idea that introducing students to comic books is educationally dangerous. This is wrong. Reading comic books is reading, first of all, not watching TV or playing Halo 3 or listening to Chris Daughtry. I don't think there's some kind of substitution effect at work where students who read comic books will read fewer books; rather they'll read more of everything and not read less of everything else.

Case in point: I've been reading comic books regularly since I was nine years old and now I essentially read and write for a living. More broadly, when I think of the typical comic book reader, "illiterate" isn't the word that comes to mind. Sartorially and socially challenged, maybe, but as a rule comic readers tend to be much more intellectual and word-focused that the average Jane or Joe. Rather than continuing the ignoble tradition of Fredric Wertham, education scholars faced with the massive problem of illiteracy should support every promising avenue they can find.

Update: Sherman Dorn makes many good points about the generally shoddy, ahistorical nature of the education reporting in this piece here.