Tag Archives: education

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

Monday Musings: Old Dog, New Trick

It has long been said that canines of a certain age are incapable of mastering new tricks. As a proverbial long-in-the-tooth pooch myself, I thought it might be amusing to test the cliché. And, as it happens, I have a great excuse to do so, which I will explain in just a moment. So, this old dog is doing more than just chase his tail.

Not so very long from now, Nancy and I will be heading to Italy for a few weeks. There, we will spend time in Rome, Venice, Florence, and the Tuscan and Umbrian countrysides. This was a trip we had hoped to take to celebrate big birthdays that we both endured survived celebrated back in 2022/2023. Events intervened. But we are finally going this year, and we are very excited.

In preparation for the trip, we are both learning Italian on our phones using DuoLingo.

Okay, a few things. DuoLingo is hardly a rigorous way to approach learning a language. We know this. There are other ways we might have gone about learning Italian had we more time and fewer things on our collective plate. But I have a deadline, she has work to get done, and we wanted to make this fun, as well as useful. And fun it is.

I took years and years of French when I was in junior high and high school, and I was a competent if unspectacular student of the language. I never really mastered French, but I learned a lot, and could probably have stumbled my way through a simplistic and stilted conversation with a patient, generous native speaker of the language. Sadly, as it turns out, these are somewhat hard to find . . . .

More to the point, though, I never enjoyed French class. This was my own fault. I was lazy, and languages take work and patience and more work. My teachers were, all of them, good at their jobs, although there was one, who I had my sophomore year in high school, who merits detailed mention. I won’t give her name, but I will say this: Our class met right after lunch, and she was reputed to be a bit of a tippler who apparently built up quite a thirst during her morning classes. As a result, after imbibing enjoying her lunch, she would return to the classroom in an alcohol-induced temper, and with her accent rendered nearly impenetrable by her “meal.” For some reason, she liked me, which is good, because otherwise I would have gotten the grade I deserved . . . .

DuoLingo works for me because it gamifies the process. Like a hamster batting at a lever and being given little food pellets by way of reward, I do my language exercises, getting my little dopamine rush from the “ding-ding!”s of my phone and the treasure chests of virtual gems the app gives me periodically. Am I learning Italian? Um . . . sure. I’m picking up words that I might need in restaurants and bars and stores and hotels. I can say, “Salve! Piacere!” which means, “Hello! It’s nice to meet you!” I can say “thanks” and “your welcome,” “good morning” and “good evening,” “I’d like the chicken” and “I need the bathroom.”

No, that’s not much, but Nancy and I are still learning (she is ahead of me, having started earlier), and more to the point (and in all seriousness), we think part of the importance of this is making the effort, not being the infamous “ugly Americans,” who just show up in a country expecting everyone else to speak English to make them comfortable. We want to be able to show that we have cared enough to learn something about the country, including how to make ourselves understood there. Yes, we will absolutely need help from English-speakers in Italy, but we won’t be helpless, and we won’t be assuming it’s the job of every person there to accommodate us.

So that’s my new trick. Not bad, right? Not great, but not bad.

I will close with this story that my father used to love to tell. Years and years ago, he and my mom traveled to Italy, starting their trip in Rome, as Nancy and I will do. My father had picked up a few words of Italian somewhere. From a book? From someone he knew in New York City? From a TV show? Who can say? But he had convinced himself that he could fake his way through a conversation in the language. He and Mom were trying to find some tourist site — a museum or something — and he approached an Italian police officer on the street and asked the man how to find the museum, using his best broken Italian. The officer eyed him for a moment, and then said, in flawless English, “Three blocks down and make a right; you can’t miss it.”

My father and mother laughed. And so did the police officer. Which, ultimately, is the point.

Have a great week.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

Monday Musings: Reflections on College Graduation Weekend

This weekend, Nancy, as acting president of the university here, is presiding over her second, and last, college graduation. In July, a new president (or Vice Chancellor, as the president here is known) will take over, and Nancy will begin transitioning back to normal life. I look forward to her having more time, to her sleeping better, to her not carrying the weight of the world — or at least this entire little college town — on her shoulders.

But as we go to one graduation event after another — her as the Big Kahuna, me as her Arm Candy — I have been thinking back on my own college graduation, which took place nearly four decades (!) ago. I have incredibly fond memories of my college years, and of that weekend in particular, and yet I also remember my final days at Brown as deeply bittersweet. I find myself regarding this year’s crop of graduates with a blend of envy and sympathy.

Envy because they are all so young — no cholesterol medications or morning muscle aches or worries about the latest IRA statements from beleaguered brokerage houses for them! It’s a cliché, but it’s true: They have their whole lives ahead of them. They can go anywhere, do anything. Or at least they think they can, which is really the part that matters.

The sympathy, though — that’s where my thoughts have settled today. Because while I reject entirely the notion that “these are the best years of their lives,” I do acknowledge that they are saying goodbye to a unique and glorious interlude in their lives.

There is lots of debate in education circles these days about the necessity of a four-year, liberal arts education. Many believe — perhaps with some justification — that the traditional college experience isn’t for everyone, and that by trying to force every 18-year-old onto that path we do a disservice to many. On the other hand, I reject the notion that liberal arts education per se is impractical, that it doesn’t prepare young adults for “the real world.” Quite the contrary. A liberal arts education teaches us to analyze, to question, to write, and to read critically. Put another way, it teaches us to think. Has there ever been a time in our history when we are more in need of an intellectually engaged, critically thinking populace?

For four years, we encourage our young people to dive into knowledge, to dabble in lots of disciplines and learn broadly, or to immerse themselves in one discipline that fascinates them, building expertise that they can draw upon throughout their lives. Ideally, most students will do both. Where — where — is the harm in taking four years out of a long life and devoting it to scholarship, to exercising the mind?

Of course, the four-year residential college experience is about far more than what happens in the classroom and the library carrel. It is a time of community, a time when kids build lifelong friendships. It is also a time of frivolity, of excess, of varying degrees of debauchery. Living in a college town, it’s sometimes hard to remind myself that I was no better at that age, no less self-involved, no less debauched. And I certainly understand those who would say, looking at the totality of higher education, that students need more practical education and less of the “Animal House.”

And yet . . . .

We spend the bulk of our lives, from the time we leave college, to the time we are finally able to retire (if we ever are), running at eighty miles per hour — getting a job, getting a promotion, building a career (or two, or three), perhaps building a life with someone, paying a mortgage or rent, perhaps having kids, perhaps paying for all the things kids need and want and do and getting our kids through a college experience of their own, saving for retirement, caring for our parents as they slide into their elder years, etc., etc., etc.

Most of us would probably love to hit the pause button in the middle of all that, maybe at the age of 40 or even 50, and go to college THEN. Four years of learning, of allowing our minds to roam and expand and explore. Four years of hanging out and getting high and listening to music and meeting new people, of going to parties and sleeping late and setting our own schedules. Youth, as the saying goes, is wasted on the young . . . .

My point, though, is this: There is no way most of us can take time out from our lives and do the college thing midstream. (If you can, more power to you! Go for it!) And so I would ask if it’s really such a bad idea to offer that experience to our young adults as they prepare for their life journey. Sure, overindulgence in college life is a thing. It has been for a long, long time. But there is value in the intellectual journey offered by higher education. I still draw upon my education on a daily basis — not merely the stuff I learned, but, far more importantly, the analytical and heuristic skills I honed. There is certainly value in the interpersonal connections that come with the residential college experience. I am 38 years removed from my college graduation, and most of my best friends in the world are still the people with whom I went to Brown.

I understand that all I have written thus far comes from a place of privilege. I went to college because my parents could afford to send me to college. My kids went to college because Nancy and I could afford to send them. The price of higher education is prohibitive for too many students, and too many of those who do matriculate are saddled with unconscionable levels of debt upon graduating. And, of course, the economic burdens of higher education fall disproportionately on people of color.

I also understand that the cost of higher education has spiraled beyond what many believe is reasonable. When one year of college, including tuition, books, room, and meals, costs $50,000 or $60,000, something is out of whack. Sending a child to a four-year college shouldn’t set a family back nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

But the answer to this is not to turn our backs on higher education. Rather we need to put a liberal arts education within reach of all families and all students, regardless of economic status. This means that institutions of higher learning need to find ways to cut costs and control their spending. And it means we need to reconsider public policy with respect to higher education. We think nothing of giving tax breaks to multinational corporations for, well, just about everything. Why shouldn’t we make college tuition affordable for all. We could do it through tax credits (not just deductions). We have the means; we simply need the will, the political courage, the understanding that education has value, not just for individuals, but for society itself, and for the entire economy.

That’s where my thoughts are this weekend, as the university in our little town sends another cohort of graduates out into a demanding world.

I hope you have a great week.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, teaching, Writing

Monday Musings: How I Started Writing — A Case Study of Dubious Worth, part II

Last week, in the first of what I expect to be a three or four part series on how I got started in writing, I posted about my early creative efforts and the teachers who were so influential in encouraging and inspiring me. I titled that first installment “A Case Study of Dubious Worth” and I think the title holds for this week as well. This entire exercise — the writing and posting of these essays — might be interesting, I certainly hope it’s entertaining, but I’m not at all sure how illustrative it will be or whether it’s at all relevant. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m pretty old, and the world is a different place from what it was when I was getting started. And yet, I continue . . .

My last semester in high school, I was in a creative writing workshop class, taught by one of those outstanding teachers I mentioned last week (Phil Restaino), and populated by a remarkable, talented, close-knit group of fellow students. Many of them remain friends to this day. What I wrote in that class was, overall, pretty mediocre. But I learned so much about writing, about the creative process, about critiquing others and building a safe, productive space for having those intimate, at times difficult conversations.

My Brown graduation pic.

And so I went off to college thinking I would be a creative writing major, and fully expecting that I would find at Brown University a similarly nurturing creative environment.

[Cue sound of screeching brakes…]

Talk about rude awakenings.

Even then, I knew I wanted to write fantasy, and I had an idea for a novel. This idea would eventually morph into Children of Amarid, my first published book, which won the Crawford Award, but this early incarnation was a long, long, long way from that finished product. It was not very good. I know this. But that doesn’t excuse what I encountered in the very first creative writing class I took at Brown. Our professor was a writer of stature, well known in academic fiction circles. I’m willing to believe that early in his career he was a fine teacher. When I had him, he was a year or two away from retirement. His classes meandered, and he left most of the important work, including the facilitation of the critique sessions, to his graduate assistant.

But he did make clear that, in his view of the world, there was “Literary Fiction,” and then there was the genre stuff that didn’t really count because it was, well, genre stuff. And so, perhaps taking their cues from him, or perhaps responding to the fact that my work still needed a good deal of refinement, my fellow students savaged my manuscripts in the critique sessions. No one had taken time to teach our class the rudiments of critiquing. There was no “start with what’s good, move to what needs work, return to what is good and can be built upon.” There was just “this is bad.” After the wonderful experience I had in that high school workshop class, I found the experience devastating.

I should say that I did get one bit of good advice from that class. It came from the graduate assistant, who was unable to steer the critique discussion, but who went out of her way afterward to assure me there were strong elements to my writing, my storytelling, and even my world building. And she said, “I know that session was hard, but don’t retreat into rewrites. Keep moving forward with your book and revise these early chapters when you’re finished.”

It was, and still is, sound advice for any writer, and to this day I offer it to writers I work with. But the fact is, the graduate assistant’s kindness and wisdom were not enough to overcome the negative experience. I never took another workshop class at Brown. I did continue thinking maybe I would be a creative writing major, but I moved away from fiction toward journalism, where I had some better experiences. Sadly, though, that terrible first class pushed me away from writing fiction for a decade.

As I say, I was still thinking about a creative writing major as I began my sophomore year. But then I had a conversation with my mom and dad. Now, as I mentioned last week, my parents were very supportive of my writing. They were also my mom and dad and they worried a creative writing major would have little or no value in the real world. So they gently but persistently encouraged me to channel my interest in writing toward something more practical. Looking back, I am not sure how wise their advice was, but at the time, I found it compelling. I liked nice guitars and nice stereo equipment, and I had figured out that those things cost money . . .

I wound up choosing as my major American Studies, an interdisciplinary program combining (among other things) literature, political science, and history. I found these subjects and their intersections quite interesting, and, to my delight, I found as well that all my classes in the field were writing intensive. By the end of my second year at Brown, I was on the trajectory that would lead me to get my Ph.D. in history.

More on that as I continue this story next week.

But here are the most important things I would like you take away from this post. First, a badly run writing workshop, one in which critiques are done without sensitivity, without compassion, without pairing encouragement with criticism, can do irreparable harm to the aspirations of beginning writers. Dreams are powerful, but they can also be fragile. And just as last week’s post emphasized the importance of pedagogical excellence, this week’s ought to highlight the potential harm that can come of slipshod and lazy teaching.

Second, the literary prejudice that favors “literary” fiction over other sorts of storytelling is as poisonous as it is misguided. Writing is hard, whether our stories are about our world or another, whether they are firmly rooted in realism and “now” or imbued with magic and cast in different timelines. Quality work can be found in any genre; so can mediocrity. And lest we forget, some of the best and most important writing happening today is being done by writers in fantasy and science fiction. Ask N.K. Jemisin.

And third, stuff happens for a reason. I truly believe this. Yes, I was discouraged from writing fiction by a bad class and also by my parents’ overly developed sense of what was pragmatic. It would be easy for me to look at the changing trajectory of my life during my college years, and look as well at where I am now, and decide I had wasted that decade of my life when I didn’t write any fiction at all. But if I hadn’t gone to graduate school in history, I would have missed out on academic training that taught me so much about crafting prose, about doing research, about writing with discipline. If I hadn’t gone to grad school in history, where I developed a real interest in the American Colonial Era, I doubt I would have wound up writing the Thieftaker books. Most important, if I hadn’t gone to grad school, I never would have met Nancy and I wouldn’t have my two brilliant, beautiful daughters.

So maybe that class I hated so much was the best thing that ever happened to me.

More next Monday.

In the meantime, have a great week.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, teaching, Writing

Monday Musings: How I Started Writing — A Case Study of Dubious Worth, part I

I’m often asked how I became an author, and by way of answering, I point to a book I wrote when I was all of six years old — “Jim, the Talking Fish.” Written and illustrated by yours truly, bound between two pieces of blue construction paper and tied with yellow yarn, it was my first novel. I crack a few jokes about the “book,” but then make clear that so early in my life, storytelling was already in my blood. What I usually leave out, for brevity’s sake, is that this was hardly the only book I wrote, illustrated, and bound at that age. There were several. I don’t talk about those others, because I can’t remember all the salient details.

There’s something else I leave out as well, and I really shouldn’t. Ever.

I wrote those books because I had a first grade teacher who encouraged me, and all of my classmates, to write. To create. To dive into our imaginations and explore. And I kept on writing because all through elementary school, and middle school, and high school, I had opportunities to write. I had teachers who encouraged us to write, who required us to write. And not just reports and such. We were required to write fiction, or to write about ourselves, or to journal.

When I was in seventh grade, I was in a team-teaching program at my middle school. Five teachers taught a group of about 100 students on a rotating basis. We were divided into classes of twenty, and we were with our cohort throughout the day, moving among the team of teachers, who covered English, Social Studies, Math, Science, and French. It was an amazing program. All the teachers were excellent. And for the second half of the school year, we 100 students were assigned to keep a journal as part of our regular homework. We could write whatever we wanted, but we had to write pretty much daily.

I still have the journal I kept that semester, in its original folder. I wrote poetry. I wrote about my life. But mostly I wrote stories. Every night before bed, I would put on my favorite music, and write for a half hour, or forty-five minutes, or, if a story really took hold of me, an hour. On some of those nights, my mother or father would come into my room wanting to know why I was still up. And seeing that I was writing, they would quietly retreat from my room and let me keep working.

That’s another thing I tend to leave out when asked about how I got started. I became a writer, in part, because when I was young my parents encouraged me. They loved my stories and kept nearly everything I wrote throughout grade school. They also held on to that journal.

My public high school, in our admittedly privileged town in the suburbs of New York City, was remarkable in many respects, and we had great teachers in many subjects. But no academic department was more impressive than our English Department. Starting my sophomore year, I had one outstanding teacher after another, including one man of incredible energy and passion and creativity who taught every one of us Coe kids — from my oldest sibling, my brother Bill, to me — spanning an age gap of fifteen years. All of those amazing teachers, who I name here — Duke Schirmer, Rose Scotch, Michael DiGennaro, and Phil Restaino — because they deserve to be named, encouraged us to write and spent as much time critiquing our prose as they did the substance of what we wrote. They held us to exacting standards, but did so with humor and compassion and a sense of mission that made us appreciate the importance of the written word.

I write because I love it, because I’ve been passionate about crafting stories for as long as I can remember. And because when I was young, the most important adults in my life — my parents and my teachers — encouraged to me to feed that passion, to follow it wherever it might lead me (to a point — more on that in next week’s post).

Today, we live in a world driven by science and technology, and the recognition of this has, by necessity, changed so much about how we educate our children. Math and science have taken primacy in school curricula. Language skills remain important, of course. But the arts have become afterthoughts. We also live in a time when school budgets have been slashed and teachers and school administrators alike have seen their opportunities for career advancement shackled to student performances on standardized tests. Education professionals have no choice but to devote more and more time to preparing students for those tests, leaving less and less room for passion and creativity in American classrooms.

I believe this is a tragedy, and I hope for a day when test scores will cease to matter so much, and once more students will have ample time during their school day to write — and paint and sculpt and sing and play instruments and act and dance. I fear, though, that this day will be a long time in coming. In the meantime, in today’s education environment, even the most dedicated of teachers will be hard pressed to do for their students all that my teachers were able to do for me in a simpler time. And so it falls to us, as parents, friends, and mentors, to support and inspire the next generations of young creators.

Without such people spurring me on in my youth, I would not be an author today, and I assure you I’m not alone in that regard.

Have a wonderful week.