All posts by plthomasedd

P. L. Thomas, Professor of Education (Furman University, Greenville SC), taught high school English in rural South Carolina before moving to teacher education. He is a former column editor for English Journal (National Council of Teachers of English), current series editor for Critical Literacy Teaching Series: Challenging Authors and Genres (Brill), and author of Teaching Writing as Journey, Not Destination: Essays Exploring What ‘Teaching Writing’ Means (IAP, 2019) and How to End the Reading War and Serve the Literacy Needs of All Students: A Primer for Parents, Policy Makers, and People Who Care (IAP, in press). NCTE named Thomas the 2013 George Orwell Award winner. He co-edited the award-winning (Divergent Book Award for Excellence in 21st Century Literacies Research) volume Critical Media Literacy and Fake News in Post-Truth America (Brill, 2018). Follow his work @plthomasEdD and the becoming radical (https://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/).
Poverty

Debt and Poverty in a Christian Nation

[Header Photo by Ruth Enyedi on Unsplash]

One reason, I think, some people shun history is that historical context can be deeply disturbing—but that context also helps illuminate a better understanding of the present.

The following example is both disturbing (nearly impossible to believe) and an apt analogy for the current debate about college loan forgiveness.

Deborah C. England offers these sobering facts about marital rape in the U.S.:

Marital rape was a term that was viewed by the law as an oxymoron until shamefully late in U.S. history. Until the 1970’s, the rape laws in every state in the union included an exception if the rapist and the victim were husband and wife. In 1993, all 50 states had finally eliminated the “marital rape exception.” But the effects of these archaic exceptions persist and interfere with spousal rape prosecutions in some states.

The History of Marital Rape Laws

Only over the last three decades have wives been allowed to pursue legal consequences for being raped in their own homes, by their spouse, and thus, far more women have lived under the specter of marital rape than not in U.S. history.

Should those women be so offended by the change in law that they resent the new (and morally justifiable) law? Should they demand that all women continue to suffer as they did?

Of course not.

That many suffered needlessly is not grounds for maintaining a wrong.

Many in the U.S. live under the burden of student loans because the U.S. has chosen not to fully fund K-16 education and has chosen to ignore predatory lending and abusive interest rates and repayment schedules.

Student debt relief is acknowledgement of a wrong—not a give-away, not a slap in the face of those who were equally wronged.

My parents were working-class Boomers who made college a clear expectation. I am quasi-first-gen since neither parent graduated college but had 1 year, Mom, and 2 years, Dad, but I was aware paying for college was a burden on my parents.

That “burden” in the late 1970s and early 1980s was semesters that cost hundreds of dollars because I attended my local state university branch, living at home over half of that time as an undergraduate. I also tutored on campus and had other jobs, mostly to fund my recreational time.

My parents were very gracious and would have contributed even more if I had asked, but I always felt guilty and tried to lessen that burden. I enrolled in the maximum hours per semester allowed to make their contribution “worth it.”

And I chose to be a high school English teacher because I felt I should complete a “practical” degree and have a career. English, even in the early 1980s, was viewed as a “useless” degree—although my heart always longed to be a “straight” English major, as the rhetoric of my college years went.

My parents never told me what major to pursue, but I felt it was the right thing to do to honor their sacrifices. I graduated as an undergraduate in December and couldn’t find full-time teaching until the next fall.

That was a very hard time with lots of tension because I worried I wasn’t going to be able to follow through with the right thing. I was living at home and struggling to secure part-time work, including being a substitute teacher that spring and starting my MEd immediately.

My teaching career began in the fall of 1984 in the high school where I graduated in 1979. I taught over a decade and continued to cobble together graduate courses on top of my MEd until I entered a doctoral program in 1995. I took out one $6000 loan throughout my grad experience from 1984 – 1998.

And my school district reimbursed tuition for one graduate course a semester along the way.

I taught full time as a high school teacher, was an adjunct at several local colleges, and completed my EdD simultaneously—while married and with a young daughter. These were very tense and overwhelming years of continuing to do the right thing into my late 30s.

I cannot get past that much of these experiences were about “burdens” on my parents, me, and my family. I missed a lot, including my daughter scoring 6 goals one Saturday morning in recreational soccer while I sat in my 6-hour graduate course 90 miles away.

I want to add “unnecessary” to “burdens” because the US is a mostly hateful people, not meeting the label of “Christian Nation,” who think this sort of suffering is a good thing.

It isn’t.

All this to say—there should be no student debt and K-16 education should be fully publicly funded.

Regardless or especially because of those who have survived the horrible system we have created and allowed.

Many in the U.S., especially conservatives and libertarians, love to talk about choice, and that overlaps significantly with those who claim the U.S. is a Christian Nation.

The backlash over forgiving student loans is proof that both are veneers, essentially lies and distractions.

So in the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut, I, a humanist and non-Christian, want to leave you all with a little reading, a meditation of sorts (emphasis mine in bold):

15 At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts. 2 This is how it is to be done: Every creditor shall cancel any loan they have made to a fellow Israelite. They shall not require payment from anyone among their own people, because the Lord’s time for canceling debts has been proclaimed. 3 You may require payment from a foreigner, but you must cancel any debt your fellow Israelite owes you. 4 However, there need be no poor people among you, for in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, 5 if only you fully obey the Lord your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today. 6 For the Lord your God will bless you as he has promised, and you will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. You will rule over many nations but none will rule over you.

7 If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them. 8 Rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need. 9 Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: “The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near,” so that you do not show ill will toward the needy among your fellow Israelites and give them nothing. They may then appeal to the Lord against you, and you will be found guilty of sin. 10 Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. 11 There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.

Deuteronomy 15: 1-11

So it goes.

diversity, Education, Educational Research, race, racism, Ranking, school funding

Rank: Having a foul or offensive smell

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from communications associate at WalletHub.com, identified in the email as “(one of the leading outlets covering the personal finance industry).” The associate wanted me to respond to a series of questions and provide a picture for an article in their “consumer education section” and (maybe?) national media.

Of course, WalletHub is the source of one of the worst and most popular practices around U.S. education—ranking states by educational quality, 2022’s States with the Best & Worst School Systems. I noticed when searching my email, I had been contacted before by WalletHub, but likely deleted without replying. This time I sent a pointed response that since I focus on equity in my work, I would not want to be associated with their harmful and misleading ranking.

The exchange was irritating and frustrating—and just business as usual in terms of how the media, politicians, and the public label education. And then I read this in the Post and Courier (Charleston, SC):

Once again, our schools are ranked 46th out of the 51 public school systems, according to the website WalletHub.

Scores from 2020-21 showed only 31% of our public school fourth graders read competently, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress.

That means 69% of our children cannot read well enough to complete work at their grade level. It would be worse without the many homes where parents teach their children to read.

Part of the responsibility rests with the South Carolina Department of Education.

Where is the accountability for student learning?

Year after year we see the same results on fourth grade reading and math.

W. Edwards Deming, an eminent scholar and teacher in American academia, says that “A bad system will beat a good person every time.”

And South Carolina has a bad system for teaching reading.

The South Carolina Department of Education has at least at least 30 people in the Office of Early Learning and Literacy.

If South Carolina’s children have been failing for the past 40 years, what have they been doing? Why do we have them? Where is their accountability?

Do they not see failing as a bad thing?

The system focuses on the curriculum rather than focusing on reading.

To get everything in, reading is integrated into other subjects rather than given its own primary focus.

In trying to teach so much, school leaders accomplish so much less.

I don’t understand why parents are not outraged over this. I certainly am.

JAMES DANIELS

Lake City

Why does South Carolina seem to care so little for its children?

There is so much wrong here—the data, the claims about teaching and reading, the influence of ranking on how the public views education, etc.—I cannot address it all, but let’s just focus on the ranking and suggesting there are valid ways to label states as “best” or “worst” in education.

The problems with ranking educational quality among states are many, and I recommend simply Googling “Gerald Bracey” and “educational rankings” if you want to explore the granular issues with statistics, etc.

The short version is that the urge to rank is itself a problem since to rank, you must create metrics that will produce a spread among whatever is being ranked. It is a sort of self-fulfilling process that necessitates that some things are labeled “best” and some “worst.”

But at the deeper level, the metrics and data used to rank are always something other than what is being ranked to begin with. In education, rankings often claim to be labeling educational quality while using metrics and data that are mostly about issues of equity—poverty, race, native language, school funding, student/teacher ratios, teacher experience and certification, etc.

Therefore, there is a great deal of overlap in WalletHub’s nonsensical “best” and “worst” rankings and the following:

At the most basic level—and the issues are far more complex than this—note the tremendous overlap of “worst” and poverty:

Here is the ugly truth: State rankings by educational quality are mostly rankings by poverty, race/racism, racial diversity/equity, etc.

Here is an even uglier truth: Schools and education systems tend to reflect, not change or overcome, the inequities of states and communities.

There are many aspects of schooling we should (must?) address, such as teaching and learning conditions and access to high-quality teachers, curriculum (such as content being banned by Republicans), and materials (such as the books being banned by Republicans).

But separate from that, we must reject rankings as, well, rank, having a foul and offensive smell.

Recommended

Brief: The Adequacy of School District Spending in the U.S.

Education, Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn: August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010

Howard Zinn was born 100 years ago today, and I cite, quote, and draw inspiration from his work often. My public work and scholarship are grounded in one of Zinn’s central concepts:

From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country—not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society—cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian.

You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

In 2022, Zinn’s radical confrontation of the past and present as well as his steadfast commitment to activism is urgently needed.

See the Zinn Education Project and a couple posts of mine below:

Howard Zinn: “education cannot be neutral on the critical issues of our time”

Meditating on Teacher Unions and Tenure Post-Vergara

IAP, literacy, reading, Science of Reading

REVISED: How to End the Reading War and Serve the Literacy Needs of All Students (2nd Ed)

NEW REVIEW

TCR review by Michelle Kelley

How to End the Reading War and Serve the Literacy Needs of All Students (2nd Ed)

Published 2022

The twenty-first century Reading War is, in fact, nothing new, but some of the details are unique to our current culture driven by social media. This volume seeks to examine the current Reading War in the context of the historical recurrence of public and political debates around student reading abilities and achievement.

Grounded in a media fascination with the “science of reading” and fueled by a rise in advocates for students with dyslexia, the current Reading War has resulted in some deeply troubling reading policy, grade retention and intensive phonics programs.

This primer for parents, policy makers, and people who care confronts some of the most compelling but misunderstood aspects of teaching reading in the U.S. while also offering a way toward ending the Reading War in order to serve all students, regardless of their needs.

The revised/expanded 2nd edition adds developments around the “science of reading,” including the expanding impact on state policy and legislation as well as robust additions to the research base around teaching students to read.

CONTENTS
Introduction: Parent Advocacy and the New (but Still Misguided) Phonics Assault on Reading. Acknowledgments. CHAPTER 1: A Historical Perspective of the Reading War: 1940s and 1990s Editions. CHAPTER 2: The 21st Century Reading War: “The Science of Reading,” Dyslexia, and Misguided Reading Policy. CHAPTER 3: Misreading Reading: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. CHAPTER 4: How to End the Reading War and Serve the Literacy Needs of All Students: Shifting Our Deficit Gaze, Asking Different Questions About Literacy. CHAPTER 5: The “Science of Reading” in 2022, and Beyond: Not Simple, Not Settled. Conclusion: The Science of Literacy—A 5-Decades Journey and Counting. Appendix A: Recommended Reading. Appendix B: Fact Checking the “Science of Reading”—A Quick Guide for Teachers.

Academic Freedom, Censorship, Education, Lou LaBrant, reading, Science of Reading, Teaching

Looking Back to Understand “Science of Reading” and Censorship: Lou LaBrant 1936-1949 [Updated]

One of the most important aspects of understanding any issue or field of knowledge, I think, is to have nuanced historical perspective. That is vividly true about education and especially reading.

The current reading crisis, often referred to as the “science of reading” movement, and the incredibly chilling impact of curriculum bans, book censorship, and attacks on teaching and learning are not, I regret to emphasize, all that new (except the degree of the bans are in many ways unprecedented).

I am currently working on completing my online annotated bibliography of Lou LaBrant, and offer below some historical perspective on teaching reading and why censorship is always wrong for education and democracy.

Access my blog post on each work by clicking the hyperlink in the essay titles; many of her publications can also be accessed through JSTOR (links at end of bibliographies when available). I am including memes of key passages from LaBrant with the recommended works below.

Witty, P.A., & LaBrant, L.L. (1936, June). Aims and methods in reading instruction. Educational Trends, 5-9, 18.

LaBrant, L. (1939). The relations of language and speech acquisitions to personality development. In P.A. Witty & C.E. Skinner (Eds.), Mental hygiene in modern education (pp. 324-352). Farrar and Rinehart, Inc.

LaBrant, L. (1940, February). Library teacher or classroom teacher? The Phi Delta Kappan, 22(6), 289-291. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20330759

LaBrant, L. (1942, November). What shall we do about reading today?: A symposium [Lou LaBrant]. The Elementary English Review, 19(7), 240-241. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41382636

LaBrant, L. (1943, March). Our changing program in language. Journal of Educational Method, 21(6), 268-272.

Witty, P., & LaBrant, L. (1946). Teaching the people’s language. Hinds, Hayden, & Eldredge, Inc.

LaBrant, L. (1947, January). Research in language. Elementary English, 24(1), 86-94. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41383425

LaBrant, L. (1949, January). A little list. English Journal, 38(1), 37–40. https://www.jstor.org/stable/808110

book banning, Censorship, Education, reading, Teaching

Misreading Innocence in Teaching and Learning

Back to school 2022 looks different than any of my many years as a student and even more as a teacher. “Back to school” now means curriculum bans for teachers and censorship for students.

It’s the Upside Down of the American Dream and academic freedom.

One recurring (and misleading) justification by Republicans banning curriculum and censoring books is a manufactured crisis around “age-appropriate” content; however, several Republicans have also directly begun including in their claims that the role of school and teachers is to protect childhood innocence:

As a parent, grandparent, and almost 40-years a teacher, I want to emphasize that the role any adult plays in mentoring, parenting, or teaching children is not to protect their innocence (more on why later), but to provide support and guidance as children mature and come to know the full, complicated, and often disturbing real world.

To keep a child or teen innocent is to deny them their full humanity and autonomy.

As a reader and teacher of literature, I am aware of the power and allure of idealizing innocence.

Setting aside for a moment the tremendous problems with author J.D. Salinger, his career was built on a nearly fawning adoration of his central motif, the “catcher in the rye” imagery of Holden Caulfield’s quest to protect his sister’s (and all children’s) innocence because he clearly has been traumatized by his entry into the adult world.

Author Eudora Welty praised Salinger as a writer in her review of Nine Stories in 1953:

The stories concern children a good deal of the time, but they are God’s children. Mr. Salinger’s work deals with innocence, and starts with innocence: from there it can penetrate a full range of relationships, follow the spirit’s private adventure, inquire into grave problems gravely–into life and death and human vulnerability and into the occasional mystical experience where age does not, after a point, any longer apply. Mr. Salinger’s world urban, suburban, family, mostly of the Eastern seaboard is never a clue to the way he will treat it: he seems to write without preconception of shackling things.

Threads of Innocence

Like Salinger (and nearly as problematic as a human), e.e. cummings idealized childhood and seemed to lament adulthood: “children guessed(but only a few/and down they forgot as up they grew.” Like many writers and artists throughout history, cummings portrayed childhood innocence as being closer to God (or the Universe); adulthood is a forgetting.

Both of these authors were attractive to me as a young writer, teacher, and even scholar, but the most compelling work about innocence was always William Blake, who complicated the innocence/experience dynamic. Blake’s work shows the necessary duality of life without idealizing innocence—even as he detailed the darkness of experience.

What is innocence?

It is a lack of awareness, a lack of knowledge, the absence of living life that is idealized not only in literature but in Christianity—the fall from grace, eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, being cast out of the idyllic innocence of the Garden of Eden.

But innocence is extremely dangerous, and the innocent are easily manipulated, easily controlled.

And here is the truth about curriculum bans and book censorship: Republicans, conservatives, and Christian fundamentalists are primarily concerned about control—especially controlling women and children.

There is no crisis in our schools concerning exposing children and teens to content and books that are not age appropriate. If anything, traditional schooling still coddles children and teens—and especially young adults.

Protecting the innocence of children is not a valid goal for teachers or schooling; protecting the innocence of children is cruel and dehumanizing, in fact.

But that is not what Republicans are concerned about.

This is pure and simple a power grab, a way to control minds and impose a worldview on others.

Welcome to the Upside Down of the American Dream.

Recommended

Experimentalism and its relation to a new psychology (1935), Witty and LaBrant

Black Widow, comic books, sexism

Black Widow Underestimated: “I Reap What I Sow”

1 Comment

[NOTE: This is the next installment of a series begun at Comics Bookcase, which has made some changes; therefore, I am completing the series here, with this and then two final posts. I also hope to develop these posts into a book proposal because I think Black Widow deserves a deep dive into how the character has been underestimated (and hypersexualized) throughout Marvel’s less-than-adequate handling of the character.]

After Nathan Edmondson, writer, and Phil Noto, artist, set the bar very high in v.5 of Black Widow—avoiding the pitfalls of underestimating and hypersexualizing her—another all-star team took over with v.6, Chris Samnee handling pencils and co-writing with Mark Waid. This reboot repeats many aspects of previous volumes: a Daredevil team trying their hands at Natasha Romanov and portraying Natasha as possibly disloyal because of the ghosts of her abusive past that cannot be exorcized.

Yet, Samnee and Waid maintain the momentum set by Edmondson and Noto, especially with a visually compelling 12-issue run that also does not stoop to focusing on exposed cleavage and Black Widow bound by chains or rope.

A couple covers do involve Black Widow embraced—although these portrayals fit well into the tone and imagery of the run without reducing Black Widow’s agency as a character and a woman.

Covers for issue 002 and 009 feature Black Widow embraced. Pencil by Chris Samnee and ink by Matthew Wilson.

Enemy of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Again?)

Issue 001 opens with dynamic action and panels; Samnee (pencil and ink) and Wilson (colors) set the tone for the series by centering Black Widow’s athleticism and intelligence. However, once again, readers are in for another exploration of Natasha’s trustworthiness and how damaged she remains because of the trauma of her childhood training as an assassin.

Samnee and Wilson build to Black Widow’s dramatic escape in the opening pages of issue 001 in v.6, highlighting Samnee’s panel designs and Wilson’s brilliant coloring.

Similar to Noto, Samnee carries the narrative through textless panels and creates a film effect for much of the volume. After her dramatic escape from S.H.I.E.L.D., Natasha finds her foe for the volume in issue 002, Weeping Lion, and is again threatened with having her deepest secrets revealed. In many ways the focus of this series feels overworked already, but visually Samnee and Wilson maintain a compelling narrative.

Samnee and Waid also craft a smart approach to old topics because they clearly honor the complexity of Natasha/Black Widow as a rich and complicated human as well as superhero.

Once again, Black Widow finds herself bound and threatened in issue 002, but Samnee and Waid never stumble into the hypersexualized and reductive patterns in early volumes.

Instead of focusing on Natasha’s exposed body, Samnee depicts Black Widow in the context of images as a ballerina through the use of pastel colors and emphatic shading. As well, Natasha remains physically vulnerable, often battered, stabbed, and brought to exhaustion through a relentless parade of battles for her life.

A perfect scene for Natasha/Black Widow, in fact, in issue 003 involves her being stitched up in a flashback mixed in with her actual return to the Catacombs in the Red Room Academy. Natasha is told: “It will scar, which is good. A scar is not the mark of a mistake made, Natasha. It’s another lesson.”

Natasha as Black Widow is a life lived among scars, pain, and seemingly lessons that never end.

Issue 003 offers powerful uses of pastels—blues, pinks—contrasted with black shade and faded images.

Natasha is badly wounded and finds the help of Iosef in issue 004. Caught between the Weeping Lion and S.H.I.E.L.D., Natasha must secure the tools, old weapons from Iosef, to confront the Headmistress and Recluse in the Dark Room Academy, a replacement of the Red Room Academy, where young girls continue to be trained as assassins like Natasha was.

Samnee and Waid use parallel narratives—present and flashback—and motifs well despite this being overworked ground with Black Widow. The issues continue to be visually dynamic and compelling, breathing life into stories and conflicts we have read again and again.

Natasha and Iosef are one of the better pairings used in Black Widow series, at times playful but absent the empty sexual banter and tension too often present in Natasha’s relationship with men.

Issue 004 also highlights the power of images, the use of color and dynamic paneling, and either textless or sparse-text full-page spreads. Samnee gives this volume the same presence and visual weight that Noto provided in v.5.

The use of blue on this full-page panel and the simple “Well, damn” captures the vastness of Nastasha living in the present while continuing to fight the past.

The Arc of Black Widow’s Universe

After parallel stabbings—from her past and in the present, returning to the Catacombs—Natasha confronts the Red Room Headmistress and Recluse, complicating the main narrative involving S.H.I.E.L.D. and Weeping Lion. After recovering with Iosef’s help, Natasha moves to her mission to recover intel for Weeping Lion, which goes wrong, dramatically and violently with S.H.I.E.L.D. involved. The lingering question of Natasha’s loyalty is left in the balance.

The next test is Tony Stark/Iron Man joining issue 006, mixed with another flashback of Natasha’s life as a ruthless assassin. The Stark scene shows Natasha manipulating Stark: “Makeup and acting, Tony. You’ve always been a sucker for both. Thanks for the access.”

The “former lover” motif is a return to a pattern found in many Black Widow series; however, Samnee and Waid insert a power shift and portray Stark as the weaker of the two instead of hypersexualizing or reducing Natasha to stereotypes that do not suite her character.

The access she secures leads to Natasha discovering that Weeping Lion is part of a duo, including the telepath brother Ilija Knezevic in issue 006. Black Widow now turns the focus of the plot to her confronting the Headmistress and Recluse to rescue the girls from the Dark Room.

“No one gets into my head unless I let them,” Natasha informs Ilija Knezevic after turning Stark’s weapon on him. “And I rarely let them.”

Possibly the perfect tagline for Natasha/Black Widow is found in issue 006: “I reap what I sow.”

In issue 007, “No More Secrets,” readers witness a truly violent and disturbing flashback that centers both this series and Natasha/Black Widow by alluding to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

Natasha as a child assassin was supremely dedicated to her mission, a sort of moral code that is graphically displayed in the flashbacks depicting cold and calculated violence even in the face of innocence, notably other children—more of the weight of Natasha reaping what she has sown.

Issue 007 forces the reader to consider “justice” but also reveals the moral tension of the assassin’s mandate to leave no witnesses.

Natasha, the duo that is Weeping Lion, the Headmistress, and Recluse are all entangled by the end of issue 007 in a web of violence and an urge to seek justice warped by revenge and under the dark cloud of their pasts because Natasha failed to follow the full mandate of her assassin’s creed. After Headmistress’s death, Natasha claims, “…her mother did just die. I am not a monster.” The issue ends with Knezevic’s ominous, “Right.”

Issue 008 involves current-day child assassins in the White House with Natasha undercover. When the child assassins are exposed, Natasha confronts the girl calling herself “Death” with “You have been programmed for as long as you can remember. I know this. I was too.” Natasha adds that the Headmistress made her a “living weapon.”

Here, an important question about who is culpable and for how long when the actions are extreme, but the person is only a child, a child behaving in ways that they have been indoctrinated to believe and act upon.

Black Widow seeking to save these child assassins foreshadows later issues with Bucky Barnes involving tensions of savior and sacrifice.

The killing of Iosef in issue 009 adds to Natasha’s fear of death in the wake of anyone knowing her, and sets up her confrontation with Recluse, who has captured Bucky Barnes. Natsha chastises Barnes for wanting to protect her, but Barnes has another mission, bringing Black Widow to Nick Fury, now The Unseen.

On the moon in issue 010, Black Widow, Weeping Lion (telepath), and Bucky meet Fury/The Unseen. This dense issue includes the death of the telepath, a child assassin stowaway, and a familiar plot element, Natasha demanding that she be sacrificed: “My turn…to be the savior.”

Paneling and color continue to stand out as some of the most powerful work on v.6.

In the final two issues, Natasha must subvert the plan of a group of child assassins, charged with destroying S.H.I.E.L.D. and eventually confront Recluse.

The determination and skill of Natsha/Black Widow are highlighted in v.6.

The series ends with a climactic battle between Black Widow and Recluse, displaying some of Samnee’s finest work. The issue is also well written by Samnee/Waid as the plot builds to Natasha surrounded by the child assassins stating to Recluse, “I remain a better fighter than you. But a lesser assassin.”

Here is Natasha as savior without being sacrificed.

Yet, when all is said and done (including another scene with Stark), Natasha is asked to confront that her “lone wolf act” doesn’t mean she is alone. To that, Natasha agrees to “come in out of the cold.”

Samnee and Waid’s run on Black Widow fulfills the message of the universe bending toward justice, at least momentarily, at least for some.

Regretfully, Marvel abandons Black Widow again, until v.7 in 2019, a brief 5-issue run that regresses to early, weaker runs and breaks the excellent momentum created by Edmondson/Noto and Samnee/Waid.

Noto variant covers for v.6.
Education, Media

Don’t Write Like the NYT

1 Comment

At first glance, I thought this was satire from The Onion or McSweeney’s:

Since this is a real thing, I want to state clearly for anyone aspiring to be a writer or (which is the case for many of us) for anyone currently being a writer and trying to continue our journey, don’t write like the NYT.

I am not being satirical, by the way, and I am not being hyperbolic.

The NYT provides an unmatched platform for their journalists and opinion columnists:

The New York Times (NYT) is an American daily newspaper, founded and continuously published in New York City since September 18, 1851. It has won 112 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other news organization. Its website is one of America’s most popular news sites, and the most popular among all the nation’s newspapers, receiving more than 30 million unique visitors per month as reported in January 2011. The paper’s print version remains the largest local metropolitan newspaper in the United States and third-largest newspaper overall, behind The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Following industry trends, its weekday circulation has fallen to fewer than one million daily since 1990. Nicknamed The Gray Lady, The Times is long regarded within the industry as a national “newspaper of record”. It is owned by The New York Times Company. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., whose family has controlled the paper since 1896, is both the paper’s publisher and the company’s chairman. Its international version, formerly the International Herald Tribune, is now called the International New York Times. The paper’s motto, “All the News That’s Fit to Print”, appears in the upper left-hand corner of the front page. Its website has adapted it to “All the News That’s Fit to Click”. It is organized into sections: News, Opinions, Business, Arts, Science, Sports, Style, Home, and Features. The New York Times stayed with the eight-column format for several years after most papers switched to six, and was one of the last newspapers to adopt color photography.

Roper Center for Public Opinion Research

Yet, invariably, nearly daily, the NYT and its journalists badly mangle their public duty to report the news and offer high-quality and informed opinions from what can be argued as the loftiest perch in print/online newspapers in the U.S.

Being this big and this powerful, it seems, has simply allowed the NYT to be arrogant and incredibly lazy—even petty.

A search on my blog site reveals that over the past ten years I have blogged dozens of times about the inaccurate, misleading, and even harmful articles that are essentially what is common in the NYT.

In a 2017 open letter to the NYT, I detailed why the newspaper of record is failing its mission, including a list of posts where I detail those failures:

And over the past five years, I have continued to catalogue the many predictable ways that the NYT fumbles their relentless coverage of education (and specifically teaching reading) and other topics:

So here, at no cost, I want to outline why no one should write like the NYT, and ironically, how reading critically the NYT can serve as a “what not to do” as a conscientious and credible writer.

First, at a superficial and practical level, the NYT simply represents that mainstream media and journalism are in serious decline (however, I want to emphasize, as I will explain below, that the NYT essentially is deeply flawed because of traditional and long-standing journalistic standards of writing). Even major newspapers have been firing editors and journalists for many years.

The field of journalism has contracted significantly, and one of the great costs has been a reduction in editing and editorial oversight as well as shifting the workforce from veterans with full-time, well paid positions to younger (read: cheaper) and even part-time (or freelance) journalists who often have to survive through their own blogging even while being traditional journalists or after they lose their full-time position. (For a little peak at the consequences, I recommend following Typos of the New York Times on Twitter.)

More substantially, however, the NYT is a bastion of bad writing that is a reflection of bad thinking—again, in part, because that is how journalists are trained to write (and think).

In the posts I include above, I have detailed all these essential problems with bad writing/thinking at the NYT and all across mainstream media, but here let me make an accessible list of those problems:

  • Both-sides journalism. The NYT is certainly among almost all journalism in this flaw, but, again, the outsized platform that is the NYT makes their impact far greater, and more harmful. Journalists are taught to look for and present “both sides” of issues to give the appearance of not being biased (see more on this below). First, presenting any issue as a “both sides” argument is lazy, the sort of thinking I would not allow in my first-year writing students. Next, by presenting “both sides,” journalists often give the impression the sides are equally valid (and they often are not).
  • Press-release journalism. As a result of the contracting industry, journalists have ceded investigative journalism and research to aggressive think tanks and advocacy organizations. Too often, articles in the NYT and across mainstream media are simply repackaged versions of press releases, regardless of the credibility of the information or perspective. Readers are left with deeply biased information presented as credible and unbiased “news” coverage of a topic.
  • Crossing the Big Foot Line. Press release journalism is one aspect of a larger shift in journalism. At one point, tabloid journalism and the type of credible journalism found in the NYT were distinct. The example I use is Big Foot. The National Inquirer (tabloid) used to run when I was growing up repeated stories about someone seeing Big Foot. The scam was that the tabloid simply covered that someone made the claim (there was no effort to verify the claims of the source). Just because a tabloid printed a story that Bob claimed the world was going to end in October didn’t mean the tabloid actually was reporting the world would end in October; the article was about Bob claiming the end of the world. Not to be nostalgic or to oversimplify, but mainstream media at that time decades ago would not have touched that sort of story. Yet, during the Trump era and again because the field is contracting, more and more mainstream media simply covers a topic without seeking verification of credibility of any claims (see the many years of Trump when mainstream media simply reported Trump saying false things but refusing to label his claims as “lies”).
  • Peddling stereotypes. One of the most insidious flaws with the NYT is grounding journalism and commentary in stereotypes and “common sense” thinking. The NYT perpetuates stereotypes about people living in poverty, public education, policing, race/racism, and essentially every topic they cover. The NYT is absent any critical interrogation of assumptions—mostly because journalists and commentators have little or no background in the topics covered.
  • Lacking historical context and crisis rhetoric. Journalists tend to have backgrounds in journalism (a problem as noted above). Without expertise in a topic, journalists and commentators are often trapped in presentism, and the result is Christopher Columbus journalism—the delusion that you have discovered something new and the failure to realize there is a history and likely many experts on the topic to draw from. This is common in coverage of education topics. Because of the lack of context, the coverage often frames topics in crisis rhetoric. Over the past few years, the media coverage of reading is a classic example of misreading a topic, failing to offer historical context, and misidentifying an issue as a “crisis.”
  • Taking an objective/non-political pose (and fearing the “liberal media” label). The journalism especially, but the commentary also, at the NYT is mostly discredited by the relentless effort to take an objective pose. That is inherently a lie since everything is subjective, and political. By simply choosing to cover a topic, journalism is biased; by deciding which “side” of “both sides” to present first, journalism is biased. As I have noted before, when I interact with journalists and challenge them for framing “both sides” as equally credible (when they are not), those journalists have often retorted, “It isn’t my job to determine if the position is credible or not.” Yet, in fact, that certainly should be their job. Since journalism and the NYT are often slandered as “liberal media,” the NYT seems determined to prove otherwise—resulting in a constant gaze into the minds of conservative America. The key point here is that the NYT (and any media) cannot be unbiased, objective, or non-political; instead, the NYT could make a much greater effort to be biased toward nuanced and valid claims about the topics they choose to cover.

Suffice it to say, don’t write like the NYT.

And don’t believe most of what you may read in the NYT because the “national ‘newspaper of record'” is broken.

#BlackLivesMatter, Censorship, Critical Race Theory, indoctrination, politics

Thoughts from Driving Cross-Country in 2022: Kansas

I am not in Kansas
I can't slow down and I can't stand it
Broadcast News into Hallelujah
Hanne Darboven had a great idea
Make a list, write it down
Shave your head, draw a crown
Move back home with mom and dad
The pool is drained and they're not there
My bedroom is a stranger's gun room
Ohio's in a downward spiral
I can't go back there anymore
Since alt-right opium went viral

"Not in Kansas," The National

This was going to be a different blog post. In early July and then again in early August, I drove cross country—from SC to CO and then back.

This drive crosses for significant stretches Kansas and Missouri. And driving for hours along Interstate 70 in those states is a vivid and disturbing snapshot of the U.S.A. in 2022.

After posting about driving to OH and back, I had begun to think even more deeply about the current political state of the union. We are not a country divided by Right v. Left or Republican v. Democrat.

The division involves those of us who favor community and those who are seeking authoritarianism. I was motivated to continue this idea after seeing a Tweet from Allison Gaines:

I agree with her, and I think that poll captures the divide I identified above; non-religious and Jewish people have chosen community, and Catholics, Protestants, and Mormons have chosen authoritarianism.

The problem is that these ideologies are being leveraged in our political system. The very real and immediate danger is that those seeking authoritarianism are using government to impose those ideologies onto everyone—and they are winning. Those seeking community—people who believe democracy is a way to provide everyone space to live freely in ways that are diverse and not mandated by an authority—are losing. Badly.

As I wrote in my post on provincialism, you can learn a lot about how people think by the billboards (professional and homemade) that line our highways.

Kansas and Missouri billboards tell you that you are in Trump Country, that you are surely going to hell, that we are baby killers, that being gay or trans is a ticket to hell, that pornography is killing us.

Those billboards also tell you to follow and trust in Jesus—and “every glock is in stock.”

God. Country. Family. Guns.

I was driving just before Kansas voters were going to polls to amend their constitution. Like many other states, Kansas was attempting to further restrict access to abortion. The campaigns, advertising, and signs along the interstate were a garbled mess of misinformation and scare tactics.

Lots of Jesus. Lots of Hell. Lots of babies.

During the drive, I would have guaranteed another state was turning against women.

And then, hope?

Kansas voters chose to maintain the right to abortion in their state constitution by a significant majority.

One of the most troubling aspects of the push to ban abortion and the success in overturning Roe V. Wade is that polls overwhelmingly show a solid majority—about 2/3 of Americans—support the right to abortion.

None the less, the minority view that all abortion must be banned is winning. The political system in the U.S. is not a democracy, not a voice of the majority and not a mechanism for protecting the rights of minorities.

Our government is firmly the tool of conservatives. Republicans dominate state governments and use that power to ban, censor, and remove freedoms that have been painstakingly gained over decades of progressive efforts.

And here is the essential problem with authoritarian ideology:

No one loses anything because other consenting adults have different ways of being sexual, of expressing gender, but this parent is offended by “normalizing” even after reading a book and finding it “filled with ‘kindness and caring.'”

The authoritarian urge is mainly among white religious people who are essentially fundamentalist in their beliefs. For fundamentalists (I was born and have lived my entire life in the fundamentalist South), their beliefs and ways of living are not simply how they want to live; they are not seeking a country that allows them the freedom to believe and live as they choose.

Fundamentalists see it as their sacred duty to God to impose their beliefs on everyone else. Fundamentalists have missionary zeal, the arrogance of thinking their beliefs are not just right for them, but right for you (and you may not even know it!).

This is why Republicans and conservatives are banning books and censoring curriculum and instruction in schools. Republicans and conservatives are not trying to fight indoctrination; they are demanding that only they have the power to indoctrinate.

Republicans are afraid of books, history, ideas, and diversity even when none of these materially take anything away from them, when none of these are using the power of government and law to deny people their own freedoms and choices.

We on the left are materially afraid of gun violence, police killing people before they can be proven guilty or innocent, pandemics, laws denying women body autonomy, and literally losing our freedoms because of laws passed exclusively by Republicans (abortion bans, anti-CRT laws, book bans, etc.).

And that is what this blog post was originally about—false equivalence.

Every day our mainstream media—demonized by the Right as liberal—feeds us the false “both sides” narrative that suggests using government to ban abortion, censor what students can be taught, and erase freedoms gained is somehow the same as protesting abortion bans and curriculum gag orders, somehow the same as calling for expanding freedoms and rights for all regardless of race, beliefs, sexuality, gender, etc.

Authoritarian power grabs of the government are in no way the same as using democracy to create a more perfect union that allows individual and consensual freedom for everyone.

As my post on driving to OH examined, this remains a problem of rural v. urban.

Driving across rural Kansas and Missouri is a disturbing harbinger of the country the authoritarian right wants, that the authoritarian right is actively building.

God. Country. Family. Guns.

Mass shootings? No problem.

School shootings? Just the cost of the Second Amendment.

The world view of fundamentalist religious Americans lacks logic, is absent coherence, and is built on lies.

Back in SC, I am not in Kansas.

But I am well aware that the fundamentalism and authoritarianism of my home state is not unique, not simply a feature of the South.

Rural America is determined to control us all, determine to mandate what counts for everyone’s life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

That is not America, at least not the ideal we were raised to believe.

I am afraid that it is too late.

Should the vote in Kansas give us hope?

Maybe, but hope means nothing without action.

And for now, the authoritarians are the ones willing to make their world happen.

What are we willing to do for each other?

For everyone?

For anyone?