CSotD: Feedback
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Some extraordinary news out of Providence, RI, to counterbalance the depressing news out of NYC.
Norm Feuti has announced that reader outcry has induced the Powers That Be at the Providence Journal to reinstate "Gil" as a Sunday-only strip. For now, you'd have to either buy the ProJo or go here to see it, but Norm's drawing new Gils and rebuilding the Gil site as we speak.
Yes, it's kind of a sad state of affairs when a newspaper responding to reader input qualifies as news, and, when it does happen, it usually consists of undoing the dropping of one strip and addition of another. Too often that's a case of the older demographic rescuing a tired legacy strip at the expense of a new, more cutting edge offering.
That, in turn, is generally the unbalanced result of retired people having more time to ponder such things than those who read the paper on their way out the door in the morning, decide to write to the editor, but then lose the impetus in the flow of a busy work day and don't think of it again until the next morning when they read the paper … rinse and repeat.
And there are also editors who allow online input to influence them despite it coming from people who couldn't find their city on a map, never mind their newspaper on a rack.
The only thing more useless than a "comics poll" that doesn't force people to make meaningful distinctions, and then fails to examine the results by demographic as well as by raw numbers, is one that doesn't differentiate between potential readers and distant kibitzers.
All of which is to say that, upsetting as the NYPost's decision to drop comics may be, they don't, and shouldn't, give a rat's patoot what someone in Iowa or New Mexico or Surinam thinks of their decision. If there isn't an outcry from their own readers, and, even better, a measureable drop in circ, they're not going to change course.
However, apparently not all newspapers work on cold and bloodless lines. That is, wit all doo respeck to Norm, I really doubt the ProJo's numbers went off a cliff when they dropped Gil, and, furthermore, "the guy has stopped drawing it" is a pretty darned good reason to no longer carry a strip.
Yet they listened to readers, they worked with Norm, they figured something out and Gil is coming back.
This is more than a little cool. This is very cool.
Feedback matters.
Speaking of which …
It would be nice to get more feedback rolling in the educational field, and Mr. Fitz is digging in hard on the topic of testing. The artist has announced that this week's strips will be sharper than his normal criticism of high-stakes testing, but I've gotta say, the past week has been pretty strong to begin with.
Here's today's strip, plus the last one from last week, and you can go here and scroll through recent strips. I can't wait to see what he has coming that he felt should be singled out as particularly pointed.
As I've said many times, I don't know any teachers who object to standards as such, or who object to meaningful tests.
What they object to is stupid, unworkable ideas from people in high places who haven't thought it through or perhaps never understood it in the first place. And who refuse to listen to the workers in the field who actually know how the pieces fit together.
While the process of undermining education has certainly ramped up in recent years, it's not all that new. Below is something I said 17 years ago, when New York began to cheapen the Regents diplomas that once set standards throughout the state and were respected nationwide.
To set the stage, Regents Exams were content-area tests given on the same day throughout New York, so that a kid in Buffalo who had an 88 in American History knew pretty much the same thing as a kid in Poughkeepsie who also got an 88 on the final.
It guarded against teachers only getting as far as the Civil War, or making up local tests that lacked rigor.
Not everyone took the Regents, however. Some kids were in a vocational track. They graduated with a "local diploma" and went on to blue and pink collar jobs, perhaps directly, perhaps after trade school, junior college or the military.
As far as I know, it worked. Kids got the education they wanted, they learned the things they wanted to learn and then they went on and lived the lives they wanted to live, or, if they didn't, it wasn't the school's fault.
But then the snobs with the Regents diplomas and the college degrees decided that, unless you had their style of education, you weren't really educated at all.
Hijinks ensued, and have done so ever since.
Obviously, my input didn't have any impact, and I don't know that Mr. Fitz will either. But there is beginning to be a rumble from teachers, and I hope it's not too little, too late.
The good news is that it isn't just the teachers who are questioning all this "reform."
However much the privatizers and rightwingers demonize teachers unions, the fact that our economy is in the crapper is, indeed, making people wonder why they should invest $100,000 or more in an education that won't provide nearly the living those "local diplomas" provided a generation ago.
(Ted Rall)
I am reminded of the aftermath of Custer's defeat, when the general's body somehow escaped being mutilated, though the reasons why remain unclear in the welter of history and legend that surround that battle.
But some Cheyenne women said that they drove awls into his ears, so that whatever had kept him from hearing them in this life would not keep him from hearing clearly in the next.
It's best, I think, to clear out your ears and listen before things have come to that point.
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