Things I like... Things You Should Like

Last night I watched “December Boys,” a sweet little film about one wonderful summer in the lives of four orphaned boys. By virtue of a little good luck, they’re able to spend some time on the Australian coast, away from the barren Outback wasteland where their orphanage is. The movie is a little summer romance and a little coming-of-age all in one.

Honestly, when someone handed the dvd to me, I really didn’t feel like watching it. It stars Daniel Radcliffe in his first non-Harry Potter role. For that reason alone I thought “novelty,” even though I’ve enjoyed those little movies about the boy wizard. So I reluctantly put it in and sat back to sort of force myself to watch it. It turned out to be a real treat.

One of the best parts about the movie is the scenery and cinematography. Filmed along a tiny cove, there are these wonderful sweeping shots of the Australian coastline. There are rolling hills, tall cliffs with extraordinary views, and gorgeous images of the blue sea. Watching it in the cold February of our North American winter, I found myself longing for warmer climates. Honestly, the movie could’ve been terrible… you could’ve muted it practically and the setting alone was enough to enjoy it all. Luckily, there’s a little more to it than that.

I’ve read some customer reviews that slammed the movie for being cliché and corny. Without a doubt, it is absolutely those things at times. Without question, this movie is nothing you haven’t already seen before. It certainly has its forgettable moments. It’s forced in places, and even tries to shove some goofy symbolism your way at other times. But all in all, it was a movie about relationships. The tangible bond between the four orphaned boys. The powerful love between a man and his ailing wife. The marital struggles of another couple who deal with the sometimes painful space between dreams and reality. The summer fling for a young kid and his first time. Yes, it’s all been done before, but what hasn’t? To some degree, everything’s been done before, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t find something in it that’s appealing.

So rent “December Boys.” It’s a sweet, warm sense of escapism that’s bound to make you smile at least once. And since when is that a bad thing?

It's Evolution, Baby !

I’ve been a high school English teacher for nearly thirteen years now. In that time, teaching a course that every student must take, I’ve seen the full range of adolescent ability. I’ve read some student work that made me so jealous of their natural gift for words. I’ve read other work that made me wonder if the kid had actually ever written or read words before. Such is the life on an English teacher. Reading and writing are two of the hardest things to teach, but recently I’ve begun thinking of a different approach.

I’d say that one of the biggest obstacles to the improvement of young writers is simply the fact that many of them barely read anymore. It’s certainly not for a lack of materials. I imagine that there are more books published and in print today than ever before. It’s the competition for one’s time that takes away the joy of reading. Simply put, it takes too much time to finish a book. We live in a very fast age now. Everything is instantaneous. We can reach just about anyone at anytime via cell phones. Don’t know something? Get online and you’ll know in a matter of seconds. Everything we do now is about doing it faster. Reading even a great book takes a lot of time and is not a very fast practice. It really goes against much of what society is doing today. And while I’m thankful every day for people like JK Rowling and Oprah Winfrey for revitalizing the book world, the archaic form of entertainment that is literature is probably losing ground to more technologically-savvy things like video games, the internet, etc. So how can we expect young people to read or write well when they don’t know what good writing is? They just don’t really see it too much anymore.

I’ve always believed that reading and writing went hand in hand. Every student I’ve ever had who was a good writer was also an avid reader, at least at some point in their lives. They know about good grammar, because all books are written that way. They know about sentence variety, because most good writers employ such techniques. They have a good vocabulary, because reading thousands of pages has taught them that. The other key to good writing is practicing it, and herein lies what I consider to be our greatest problem.

Look at younger people today and tell me what kind of writing they do. They text-message friends on their cell phones, IM them via the internet, or send emails to one another. Take a good look at those three mediums. Do any of them promote any of the virtues of good writing that I listed in the previous paragraph? Technological writing, as I’ll call it, has no rules. It’s about getting your point across quickly and in the fewest words, or in many cases symbols or characters, possible. If this is the primary form of writing that many young people are doing, how can we possibly expect them to write differently in class?

I’ve had many foreign-born students before who struggle with English. When their foreign-born parents ask me how their kids can learn to read, write, or speak better, I always paint this scenario for them. If I’ve got a Korean student, he probably goes home and speaks Korean almost exclusively in the house. He probably has a Korean newspaper to look at and through the virtue of cable can probably watch Korean TV too. Later, his family uses a Korean bank, a Korean dry-cleaners, eats at Korean restaurants, shops at a Korean grocery store, and attends a Korean church. In school, his friends are almost all Korean and in lunch they sit together and speak to one another in their native tongue. How is that kid ever going to get any better with English? He never, ever practices it.

How can a kid learn to write better and more properly if they never practice that form? Is it becoming an unrealistic expectation of teachers to demand such?

Language is evolving. Usually evolution is slow and takes place over a long period of time. No one can see it happening. But now, however, we can see English changing right before our eyes, all as a result of the computer and technological explosion that has happened in only about the last ten or fifteen years.

Email has probably become the primary form of writing now. Think about some emails you’ve read or written lately. Did they have paragraphs? Were they indented? Was everything you wrote a proper sentence? Did you use any internet slang like LOL or type the omnipresent :) after you wrote something funny? I can’t get through an email myself without writing or seeing those things, and I’m an English teacher.

At one time people said “thou.” Then they said “you.” Now they write “u.”

At one time people said “Fare thee well.” Then they said “goodbye.” Now they write “L8R.”

Just recently the term “Google” was added to Webster’s Dictionary. It’s listed as a transitive verb and means “to search for information on the World Wide Web.”

The world of language is changing. Why are we fighting it?

Many people will call me a fool for even suggesting such a thing. Many of those people, however, are blind champions of the old ways who live in arrogant denial. To them, everything they did in their day was right. “That’s not the way I was taught,” some will say. While I am a traditionalist in many regards, it’s only when I’ve reasoned that it’s the smartest way to do something. I don’t do anything simply because “that’s the way it’s always been done.” To me, that’s a ludicrous and dangerous way of thinking. The old way is always better? Do we still drive old cars with their outdated machinery? Do we still follow ancient ways of medicine, or employ archaic materials and practices for building purposes, for forensic investigations, or anything else for that matter? Of course not. Times change, and we change with them. Why are we holding fast with language in the classroom?

Some people have told me “they don’t write like that in the business world.” Not yet they don’t. Who’s running businesses today? Older people. But every day you hear about younger and younger entrepreneurs and corporate leaders inventing and taking over every form of business out there. Children are the future, right? Their ideas will guide us tomorrow, and so will their language.

It’s evolution, baby !