Installment+22

South of Denver - Chapter 22

August 31, 2005

The Newspaper class at Rock Canyon doesn't have a textbook - in the introductory course we used The Radical Write, Law of the Student Press, and The Newspaper Designer's Handbook, and we can certainly refer to them - but we still have required reading.

Most staffs have some sort of newspaper reading built in the schedule somewhere, I suppose. Someone once said in a JEA/NSPA convention session long ago: "You should read a good newspaper and bad newspaper every day." I've never figured out exactly why we need the bad examples. When I taught British lit, I didn't hunt for mediocre to poor Elizabethan poets to contrast with Shakespeare, after all.

But I get the idea of reading a good newspaper. So our reading is the Sunday New York Times.

Why the Times? Just check out some of what the Newspaper kids and my AP Language & Comp kids found in this past Sunday's paper (August 28):

gratified that the Times has discovered what they have been obsessed with for the past year, but they were blown away when they read that MySpace passed Google in hits in April. My favorite comment came from the junior who said, "Well, if 27 million young people are doing this, I need to find some new alternative." Now there's a kid who gets the essence of being a rebellious teen. newspaper-averse AP-types make a regular stop to see what's up with "Modern Love." This one is a classic. Written by a woman who has been hitchhiking for decades, with no horrible incidents (the ones we warn our daughters about), this rivals Kerouac in some ways in expressing an American longing for movement, the open road, adventure. When I mentioned On the Road to my AP classes, of course, I didn't get a shred of recognition. Is there time during the year to teach that book? Or are there certain books that belong to just a generation or two, and then are lost to history? That led to an interesting discussion about just what books the current generation DOES consider its own. evolution vs. intelligent design debate, but they got the reference when we found the review of Desmond Morris's latest: The Naked Woman, A Study of the Female Body. The head was "Highly Intelligent Design," and several students were clearly intrigued by the concept of a zoologist examining gender differences closely as well as the evolution of the human body in general. I was gratified to find some pre-feminists in my classes who were particularly interested in Morris's contention that women were gradually returning to what had been true for millions of years: a basic equality with men. in Review," Section 4, page 1 - "To Play Is The Thing." I was delighted to find a large number of students who got the "Hamlet" allusion. But what stayed with some readers was the comparison-contrast essay on baseball philosophies. It sort of boils down to using statistics to make decisions on strategy and player selection, vs. a more traditional, almost gut-level "feel for the game" philosophy. This got a few AP kids talking about whether this had anything to do with two of the required summer reading choices they had: Blink and Freakonomics. They thought the Freakonomics writers would favor the statistical analysis approach, while Gladwell's latest might favor the feel for the game. Wow! Actually seeing connections between reading assignments and the "real world"? What a concept! on the Iraq War and this week's column headlined "The Vietnamization of Bush's Vacation," was no exception. (You can find it on page 10 of the Op/Ed section.) Love him or hate him, Mr. Rich knows his persuasive techniques. I'm not sure he would agree with my kids, but they thought he actually managed to use all three classic rhetorical approaches -- logos, pathos and ethos - in this one essay. But it really doesn't matter if the students are correct. What matters is that they have a great model to work with. in which he discusses a classic strategy that has proven successful in the past in similar situations. In other words, as one kid said, "Rich thinks we are in Vietnam. Brooks thinks we can avoid Vietnam." Well, actually Andy Krepinevich, the author of the essay in Foreign Affairs magazine that Brooks quotes from, thinks we can avoid another Vietnam. Is there anywhere else in American journalism where you can find two essentially opposing views on an issue argued so eloquently? Jeffrey Rosen, and he proposes that we are about to argue over the wrong issues when John Roberts has his Supreme Court confirmation hearings. The issues will be wrong because the new justice is likely to be making decisions for the next 30 years, and the author sees a number of looming controversies, mostly involving technology, which no senator will ask about. It's a closely argued piece of expository writing, educational yet fanciful, since it is predicting the future. you missed it, he took a look at metaphors in the fashion industry. For instance, I didn't know that belly flesh that hangs over the waistband is referred to as "muffin-top." Gosh! And Safire examines the etymology of "klutz" and "doormat" as a bonus. one-time tennis star who suffered a horrible brain injury, and has battled back to live his life. It's classic story telling, with our main character having to overcome incredible odds, keeping his integrity, exhibiting courage. he's still a pro tennis player, though not in the top 20, but he's already won the contest that matters. Isn't this exactly the sort of story we all hope our reporters will someday cover?
 * Style (Section 9) - page 1: "Do you MySpace?" Students were
 * Style - page 11: "Riding Shotgun and Living Life" Even my most
 * Students at Rock Canyon are remarkably sanguine about the whole
 * The Times hooked a few jocks in class with the lead story in "Week
 * Students always get riled up by Frank Rich's nearly weekly polemic
 * Turn to page 11, and we find David Brooks' column "Winning in Iraq,"
 * I can't leave out the New York Times Magazine. The cover story is by
 * Also in the magazine is William Safire's column "On Language." If
 * Finally, the magazine features a longish feature on James Blake, a

Okay, Okay. Your eyes are glazing over at this point. Is the list of cool stories that kids can use as models, as foils, as inspiration simply unending? The number is finite, but the above examples are not exhaustive.

Bottom line: is there a better $2.90 to be spent on education than a home delivery Sunday New York Times?

Jack Kennedy

Rock Canyon High School

Highlands Ranch CO 80124

 jkkennedy@comcast.net

 jack.kennedy@dcsdk12.org

Note: This is the latest chapter - or maybe it's a sidebar -- in a series of columns on working with a young staff in a young school (8 of the 10 staff are sophomores and no senior class yet). It is cryptotherapy for me. It may occasionally provide something positive for you. Please go to the JEAHELP archives to read the previous chapters if you missed them and have absolutely nothing else to do.