Category: Education

“In Defense of Graphic Novels”

I must admit that when I was a (very) young lad, I enjoyed both “graphic novels” and comic books–and viewed them as separate classes of reading. Then again, the “graphic novels” I was exposed to 60 years ago were Classics Illustrated that whetted my appetite for the “uncondensed” versions, so I’m a bit at sea as to the new (well, to me) “graphic novel” genre. Although I long ago left highly-illustrated fiction behind me, I too appreciate the place such works can have in enjoyable reading experiences, and in expanding literacy (if the accompanying text is literately-written). I can even see a place for such works as a reader advances in literacy, just for entertainment’s sake if nothing else. Advancing educational goals through enforced rejection of such pleasure reading isn’t, necessarily–advancing educational goals, that is.

Still, most readers would, IMO, benefit from eventually “graduating” to other reading materials, even though that would not necessarily mean leaving “graphic novels” and comic books behind entirely. Of course, looking at the typical reading matter of a normal “adult” American (social media “memes,” captioned “cute cat pics,” and highly-illustrated–with photos–popular magazines, etc.), it doesn’t seem that many Americans go much beyond comic book reading, anyway.

Sometimes, “educators” vitiate learning by sucking any joy at all out of it.

*sigh* I see things like this all the time, mostly in social media, “news” articles from established Hivemind outlets, and more and more in published works whether from traditional “gatekeeping” publishers or self-pubs: the inexcusable abuse of the simple past tense when past perfect is dictated by the sense of the statement, as in: “14 Zip [XYZ] Hacks You’ll Wish You Knew Earlier.” No, “You’ll (you will) wish you HAD KNOWN earlier.” Often it is in the same work where the writer (and any “professional” editorial/proofreading eye) also has no clue about forming conditional statements, especially past [unreal] conditionals, for example, “If I WOULD HAVE owned a car, I would have driven to work.” No, cupcake. “If I HAD owned a car, I would have driven to work.”

These are all too typical, “You are NOT smarter than a fifth grader” literacy issues.

“. . .[T]he economy sunk [sic] deeper into the red. . . ” was all that was needed to convince me to stop reading the article. If neither the writer nor any putative editor could bother to be more literate than a fifth grader, then buh-bye! (And yes, there were other such things before the last straw.) When a writer has no real respect for his readers (and apparently no self-respect at all) such that he does not even bother to learn standard conjugations for strong verbs (by reading literate text, if nothing else!), then why should I pollute my time with his dreck?

And no, I refuse to link the piece here. I’ll have a hard enough time erasing the experience from memory. *heh*

Just in case any reader who did not pass fifth grade should stumble on this, “Sank is the past tense (e.g., the ship sank to the bottom of the sea). Sunk is the past participle, so it’s used in the perfect tenses (e.g., the ship has sunk to the bottom of the sea) and as an adjective (the sunk ship is at the bottom of the sea).”¹

Literacy is a spectrum. Illiteracy–the inability to even puzzle out those funny lil squiggles on a page of text–is the on one end of the spectrum. Formal Literacy is on the other end of the spectrum. True illiteracy is an absolute. Formal literacy has no upper/outer boundaries. Material Literacy is being able to puzzle out those funny lil squiggles but having only a bare concept of their meanings. Subliteracy is just beyond that: having a material grasp of basic meanings imparted by those funny lil squiggles, but a poor grasp of historical or cultural implications and hence able to grasp only basic information in text, at best. There is quite a large overlap of Material Literacy and Subliteracy. Formal Literacy indicates a grasp of cultural and historical contexts, along with many different sorts of idioms, such that a simple citation of, say, Gresham’s Law by name only imparts a great deal of information or simply saying (or writing) “There is a tide [in the affairs of men]. . .” with no further citation calls to mind the context of that remark. Examples are legion, and my own attempt to attain formal literacy is always finding more such cultural enrichment to add to my lexicon.

Where folks who have never made the effort to even start becoming formally literate (As I implied, I’m still just past the starting blocks in my search for formal literacy, myself) demonstrate their failure to READ MANY BOOKS *heh* is in mangling idioms. Using “free reign” instead of the correct “free rein,” “come down the pipe” instead of the correct “come down the pike,” “chomps at the bit” instead of the correct “champs at the bit,” and other such things just indicates that whoever writes such things stopped expanding their literate vocabulary probably somewhere around fourth grade. Such folks write what they have heard (or misheard) from their (probably) similarly subliterate peers, and as an unwillingness to read well-written text seems endemic to society nowadays, I suspect subliteracy to remain ascendant.

(When commenting, please feel free to misuse words, abuse or neglect apostrophes, mangle syntax and grammar, or simply type, “TL;DR.” I wanna feel like I posted this on FarceBook.)

#le_sigh