Comics in the Classroom

[Andy]

I wrote a paper about the history of comics and their use in America's schools. Would anyone be interested in reading it? If so, is it possible to attach a document to a message in this board?

[cynlee]

I wrote a paper about the history of comics and their use in America's schools. Would anyone be interested in reading it? If so, is it possible to attach a document to a message in this board?

I would like to read it, if you find out how to link it here or whatever you have to do.

[Stan Sakai]

As you may know, I do classroom visits and library presentations, so I would like to read it as well.

[Usagi]

that seems interesting- I wouls love to read what you have to say!

[Andy]

I've got it online through my web page. Try clicking this link

http://andrewwales.com/final.PDF

[Steve Hubbell]

EXCELLENT AND INFORMATIVE ARTICLE,
VERY WELL DONE.

[cynlee]

DUDE!

I'd forgotten "Sedution of the Innocent"-- didn't Mumy and Ferrer also call their band that?

Cool article-- hope you get a good grade!

Cynthia

[Andy]

I now have a "teacher website". I put some links for comics in education on it. Check it out at

http://classes.athensasd.k12.pa.us/meta ... l?iid=2914

[Andy]

Here is the plain text version--but trust me, the one with the pictures posted above is more fun to read!



Comics in the Classroom:
A History
by Andrew Wales
History & Philosophy of Art Education
Midterm Paper
February 23, 2005


INTRODUCTION.
As an art teacher, I am frequently asked by administrators to find ways to integrate art with reading and writing. Comics seem to me to be a natural means of doing so since students can read and discuss existing comics and then create their own characters and comic productions. I believe this art form can be a helpful ally to both the art teacher and the teachers of other subjects including language arts.

In this paper, I would like to look closely at the history of the comic arts medium. I would also like to look at the tenuous and sometimes-volatile relationship the comics have had with the educational establishment. The question formulated by many in the last 70 years has been, “Do comics belong in the classroom?”

THE HISTORY OF COMICS

Some prefer to call this medium sequential art, since not all of the work is really “comic” at all. (Wright, 2001). Sequential art is “an art form that features a series of static images in fixed sequence, usually to tell a story.” (Wikipedia). This form of art can be seen throughout history in cave paintings and in Pre-Columbian and Egyptian art, among others. (McCloud, 1993).

The first comic strip appeared in American newspapers in 1895. This new combination of words and images was so immensely popular that it led book and magazine publishers to experiment with the publication of anthologies of these daily strips. The comic book in the size and format we associate it with first appeared in 1933. Soon comics were more than reprints. Titles composed of entirely new material became the norm.
Eventually, humorous comics soon gave way to serious adventure strips that paralleled pulp fiction stories or popular movies of the time. The success of Superman is responsible for what is known as the Comics Boom. Sales of Superman comics soon reached unprecedented proportions, with a circulation of 1,250,000. By 1942, 15 million dollars a year were being spent on comics, largely in part because of the success of Superman. (Wright, 2001). An abundance of costumed heroes followed, created by both DC and other publishers.

Though comics were immensely popular with both children and adults, they were not without their critics. Sterling North wrote an article for the May 8, 1940 Chicago Daily News, branding comic books a “national disgrace.” (Wright, 2001, page 27). This article was widely reprinted and claimed that the comic reading trend was a “poisonous mushroom growth.” He went on to claim,

"The bulk of these lurid publications depend for their appeal upon mayhem, murder, torture, and abduction…Unless we want a coming generation even more ferocious than the present one, parents and teachers throughout America must band together to break the “comic” magazine." (Wright, 2001, page 27).

Publications like the Wilson Library Bulletin and Parents’ Magazine were less hysterical, but agreed that there was a concern.

There was no doubt that comics were hugely popular. In 1942 fifteen million comics were sold each month. (Wright, 2001). Periodicals of the time addressed the issue of comics from both sides of the extreme: hearty endorsements and harsh criticism.

THE COMICS GO TO WAR!

The armed forces were quick to see the potential of comics to educate. When the Army and Navy were developing their training programs they consulted the makers of comics along with other media experts. (Gruenberg, 1944).

The comic character “Li’l Abner” was used to instruct new soldiers in military courtesy, safety, and other elements of basic training. Other comic characters were developed to present a variety of information to servicemen in comic strip form. In fact, the widest educational use of the comic strip at the time was in the military. (Sones, 1944).

The comics being published in the United States, indeed, were not just read by children. Men in the armed services clamored loudly for them. It was said that the comics sent to troops overseas were “passed from man to man until there is nothing left of them.” (Zorbaugh, page 198). The New York Times reported that one of every four magazines shipped to troops overseas was a comic book. (Wright, 2001).

COMICS: EDUCATIONAL, ENTERTAINMENT, OR ART?

Most comics in the forties were produced for commercial reasons. Publishers would discover a trend that seemed to sell well and these comics were made to order to supply the demand for them. When readers lost interest in that genre, publishers rushed to find alternate types of titles.

There were publishers who were an exception to this. M.C. Gaines believed that comics had tremendous potential as an educational tool. He founded EC Comics (or, Educational Comics), which published Picture Stories from the Bible. These were followed with similar series based on U.S. History, World History and Science. Because they sold fairly well, other publishers followed his example.

Another exception to the commercial attitude towards comics was found in a man named Will Eisner, a groundbreaking pioneer of this new medium. Around 1949, Eisner gave an interview to the Baltimore Sun in which he proposed that comics were a legitimate literary and artistic form.
As a comic book creator Eisner saw himself as both an artist and an educator. When World War II arrived he abandoned his comic book The Spirit and worked for the army. Concerning his work for the armed forces he said:

“I’m a teacher; I’m turning out instructional material…I have been devoting the last 20 years, really, to developing the comic strip media, which I have always experimented with, into a serious teaching tool. This is really the thing I’m proud of. And I’ll teach anything with that tool.” (Thompson, page 127).

Eisner devoted his life to advancing the way comics were viewed. He wrote his views about comics in books, taught about comics and created comics that have been far above the status quo. Eventually, he was first to coin the phrase graphic novel and wrote autobiographical works that pushed comics into the realm of literature and art. Today, one of the highest achievements a cartoonist can attain is receiving an Eisner award.

Comics had their critics. With no rating system, there was no way to differentiate what had been written for adults and what was suitable for children. Most comics were harmless and entertaining. Yet there were comics that were quite violent and a child could easily walk up to a newsstand and buy it. Instead of focusing on the titles that were problems, critics wanted to see all comics no longer available to children. Groups went so far as to organize book burnings. (Zorbaugh, 1944).

The criticism steadily grew. Between 1935, the year the comic magazine was born and nine years later, more than a hundred critical articles had appeared in educational and nonprofessional periodicals. (Sones, 1944).

Response to comics from educational circles ranged from enthusiastic to critical. The Educational Journal of Sociology devoted an entire issue to the subject of comics in 1944. The same journal again devoted an entire issue to this subject in 1949. The works in these journals were in large part, defensive of comics, going into great detail the many ways they were being used successfully in classrooms.

In the 40’s, an English teacher in Massachusetts, with the assistance of D.C. Comics, prepared a workbook in language to be used with the Superman comic. It was a laboratory guide in English study involving vocabulary and word meanings, language interpretations, and other aspects of language study. His experiment was immensely successful with his students. The only downside reported was that it occasionally offered the bothersome difficulty of students finishing a whole week’s work in one evening. (Sones, 1944).

Many of the educational articles of the time proclaimed the benefits for using comics, including:

1. Comics were a positive cultural force. They had been used to mobilize the youth of America to take part in the war effort. The comic characters sold bonds, promoted salvage drives, organized victory garden clubs, kept the public alert to sabotage, combated intolerance and absenteeism, recruited blood donors, recruited men and women for industry and the armed forces, etc. (Zorbaugh, 1944).

2. Comics can be used to teach. “Some people are more easily reached through one medium than through another…There is hardly a subject that does not lend itself to presentation through this medium.” (Gruenberg, 1944, page 211-213).

3. Comics build on a child’s prior knowledge. Children came to class having read them. Why not use this prior knowledge in instructioin? (Sones 1944). (Huthinson, 1949, p. 236).

4. Comics were helpful when used in remedial reading instruction. Because they often had simple vocabulary but were still exciting to older children who had reading problems, they motivated them to read. (Sones 1944). Another researcher reported “the physical form of the comic strip which gives clues in the pictures to the meaning of the printed text, was an aid in assisting poor readers.” (Hutchinson, 1949, page 239).

5. Comics were successful in teaching language skills. Some of the objectives addressed through comic book lessons were: reading for story and interpretation; identification of new words and finding meaning from context and dictionary. There were many other objectives addressed as well. (Hutchinson, 1949, p. 239).


ARGUMENTS AGAINST COMICS

1. Aesthetics. One must remember that when these articles were written in 1944, the institution known as comics was barely ten years old! Here was a brand new medium.

In 1949 the Director of the Child Study Association of America perceptively observed that though much of the art and writing in comics were crude, they had been gradually improving in detail and “acquiring some of the refinements that we demand of any cultural instrument”. He went on to say that “they have barely begun to show what is possible when writers and artists have learned to use the form for expressing their own ideas and sentiments, for transmitting their enthusiasm, their own likes and dislikes.” (Gruenberg, 1944, page 206).

Some critics of comics were concerned that comics, being “bad art”, would stunt the children’s appreciation of good art. One art teacher deplored what he saw as the tendency of children to “ape” the comics in their spontaneous drawing. Another art teacher “saw that this form or formula was the children’s first untutored approach to drawing long before the comics became a universal language.” (Frank, 1949).

Picasso, never one to follow conventions, professed his admiration of the comic strip “The Katzenjammer Kids”. (Zorbaugh 1944). It didn’t seem to inhibit his appreciation of good art.

2. Objectionable material. There was material in some comic books that should not have been available for children. Opponents, however, pointed to the obscene or lascivious material that appeared in some comics as an indication that the comic book medium as a whole was ‘bad”. Josette Frank, Staff Adviser to the Children’s Book Committee of the Child Study Association of America urged parents and teachers that it was apparent that:

“not all comic books are alike. There are wide differences not only in their content…They contain some very good and some very bad writing, some really excellent and some execrable drawing…It (was) impossible, therefore, to classify comic magazines as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Like other publications, each must be judged on its own merits…” (Frank, 1949).


3. Improper Grammar. Some argued that comics introduced improper language and relied on colloquialisms. Professor Sones, however felt that “the number of ‘word distortions’ was not sufficient to influence language habits undesirably.” (Sones, 1949).

4. Comics do not fit in to the sequence of work going on in the classroom.
5. Education is serious business and should not be approached through levity.
6. Comics make learning too easy.
7. Teachers don’t have time to do these extra things.
8. Comics contributed to juvenile delinquency. Some of the claims sound ludicrous today, but I’ll discuss this one more later.

As World War II came to a close the opposition against comics began to intensify. At the same time, the content of some comics seemed to become more and more gruesome.

Interest in superhero comics began to wane, and post-war readers looked for something more sophisticated to read. New varieties of comics began to appear, such as crime, horror, and science fiction comics.

EC Comics (now known as Entertaining Comics and run by Gaines' son William) became known for gruesome elements. Each succeeding story seemed to try to outdo the ones that went before it in grisly detail.


COMICS CRISIS CULMINATION…

A psychiatrist named Dr. Frederic Wertham was the fiercest opponent of comics and received the most attention. In talking to juvenile delinquents he found that many of them read comic books. This should not have been surprising since 90% of America’s did at the time. He argued that comics reading led to crime. Many parents and educators were convinced that he was right.

In 1954 Wertham published a book called “Seduction of the Innocent” which rallied the opposition to comics like never before. Many experts, however, found fault with his unscientific means of reaching conclusions. Wertham attacked anyone who disagreed with him. Any psychologists in favor of comics were accused of being paid by the comic industry. He called the work done in the Journal of Educational Sociology an “all time low for American science.” (Wright 2001, p. 162).

Eventually there was even a Senate Congressional Committee appointed to investigate the connection between comics and juvenile delinquency, and hearings were held without any official action being taken.
The comics industry responded by policing themselves through the Comics Code Authority, a committee that decided what content could be in a comic and approved each title before it was published. Most comics became much tamer as a result. However, the damage was done. To many, comics had been given a bad name.

In 1952 there were 500 comics titles. By 1955, only 300 remained. The Comic Boom was over. Anti-comic book crusaders played a part, but so did the growth of television. More and more homes had a new form of entertainment that helped create a lack of interest in the medium. Criticism faded as comics changed and a new scapegoat was found in rock and roll music.


COMICS IN THE POST-CRISIS CLASSROOM…

It has taken comics a long time to recover from the black eye given by the controversy of the fifties. Further research on the instructive worth of comics was rare until the 70s. Comics never were accepted whole-heartedly into the educational community, but from time to time various proponents have recommended their approval.

In the forties, parents and educators were worried that children who read comics would be seduced from reading “better” books. In the seventies, they were hoping to find anything to entice the children away from the television sets and get them reading. In 1979 an article in Media and Methods implored, “Comic Books: In Case You Haven’t Noticed, They’ve Changed”. In the same year Reading Teacher magazine reminded educators that comics had motivational value to turn children on to reading. (Wright, 1979).

In an article from the journal Art Education in 1982 art teachers were encouraged to allow comics to be used in various capacities in their art program. “The majority of …comic books can provide a wealth of visual stimulation for the child’s own art.” What many observed was that most children who utilized them did not copy them, but looked to see how artists drew something and then adapted it to their own style. (Hoff, 1982.)

References in educational periodicals are few and far between over the last few decades. At the present time, however, there is an amazing amount of support and attention being given to the inclusion of comics in the field of education.

BUT...IS IT ART?

In the sixties, Pop Artists like Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol forced us to reexamine images that had been written off as low art. They proved that artwork could include allusions to popular culture and still be Art with a capital “A”.

As always, most comics published during the last fifty years were created as a commercial enterprise. There have been some interesting trends that warrant attention from the artistic point of view. The seventies and eighties saw the creation of independently produced comic books. These artists approached the medium more as an art form than that of a “work for hire” mentality.

Will Eisner started to work in longer-form stories in 1978 with the 200-page A Contract With God, the first work he referred to as a graphic novel. When Art Spiegelman won the Pultizer Prize in 1992 for his graphic novel Maus, many comic artists saw it as a “symbolic victory for the cause of comics as literature and comics as art.” (McCloud, 2000).

Conclusion: The Return of Comics!

I have always been a fan of comics and as a teacher I have sought to find ways to occasionally include them in my teaching. My research has convinced me that for the teacher in 2005, the comics are too great a resource to ignore. This medium has the tremendous potential to teach. Children love to include in their artwork references from popular culture and the comics are rich with them. It would be wise however, to be careful to peruse the material ahead of time.

As art teachers we should teach children about many different forms of art. Comics are just one of a multitude that we need to make room for, but one that many art teachers neglect.

I believe that art educators should also allow their students to express themselves in their own style. Many children naturally develop a style similar to cartoons and the study of comics can lead to greater sophistication for them. I think that every teacher should include some unit on the art of comics within their curriculum.






Bibliography
Books:
Cloud, Scott. (1993). “Understanding Comics”. New York: Kitchen Sink Book.
Goulart, Ron. (2001). “Great American Comic Books”. Lincolnwood, Illinois: Publications International, Ltd.
Wright, Bradford W. (2001). “Comic Book Nation”. Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Single Chapters from Edited Books:
Thompson, Maggie. (1973). “Blue Suit, Blue Mask, Blue Gloves – and No Socks.” (Pages 119-144.) New Rochelle: Arlington House.
Journal Articles:
Brocka, Bruce. (1979). “Comic Books: In Case You Haven’t Noticed, They’ve Changed.” Media and Methods (15)9. Pgs. 30-32.
Frank, Josette. (1949). “Some Questions and Answers for Teachers and Parents”. Journal of Educational Sociology 23(4). Pgs. 206-214.
Frank, Josette. (1949). “What’s in the Comics?” The Journal of Educational Sociology 23(4). Pgs. 214- 222.
Gruenberg, Sidonie. (1944). “The Comics as a Social Force”. Journal of Educational Sociology 23(4). Pgs. 204-213.
Hoff, Gary R. (1982). “The Visual Narrative: Kids, Comic Books, and Creativity.” Art Education 35(2). Pgs. 20-23.
Hutchinson, Katharine. (1949). “An Experiment in the Use of Comics as Instructional Material”. Journal of Educational Sociology 23(4). Pgs. 236- 245.
Weller, Hayden. (1944). “The First Comic Book”. Journal of Educational Sociology 18(4), Page 195.
Wright, Gary. (1979). “The Comic Book – A Forgotten Medium in the Classroom.” Reading Teacher 33(2). Pgs. 158-161.
Zorbaugh, Harvey. (1944). Editorial. Journal of Educational Sociology 18 (4). Pgs. 193-94.
Zorbaugh, Harvey. (1944). “The Comic – There they Stand!”. Journal of Educational Sociology 18 (4). Pgs. 196-203.