Lamb and Frog

If you want to pass literature class in your junior year in high school, DO NOT–

• Turn in your essay test on T.S. Eliot with nothing on it but your name and the date as your way of saying “T.S. Eliot sucks.”
• Answer the essay question on J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye by saying “If you took the word ‘lousy’ out of this book it would be half as long and that would be fine by me.”
• Come to class…chemically impaired…more than once.

My name is Amber. I flunked a semester of literature in high school. I now have a B.A. in English Literature (with honors) and earn a living as a freelance technical writer. How? Well, I remembered the single best piece of writing advice I ever received (and, quite possibly, the single best piece of writing advice ever).

Student: “I know what I want to say, I just don’t know how to say it.”

Teacher: “If you don’t know how to say it, then you really don’t know what you want to say.”

Las Vegas High School. 1984/1985. Joan Cutuly’s class. The one I was actively flunking. And I do mean actively flunking. Pouring gas on my shot at valedictorian and lighting a match. Oh well. All that really matters is that I learned pretty much everything I needed to know to make a successful writing career from that one sentence: “If you don’t know how to say it, then you really don’t know what you want to say.”

Over the last 20 years those words have served me well. And, while the thought of revisiting Salinger makes my eye twitch, I have made my peace with both T.S. Eliot and Joan Cutuly. Joan just self-published Prisoner of Second Grade: What’s Really Been Missing From the Last Fifty Years of Education Reform in America. I just got my copy in the mail and can’t wait to dive in. You can get yours here. I know many of you, my small but merry band of readers, put education reform pretty high on your own priority lists. I’d like to encourage you to read what Joan has to say. I can’t guarantee you’ll agree with her. Hell, judging from our past history, I can’t even guarantee that I’ll agree with her (although…shoe choices aside…I have grown up a little in the last 20 years). But I can tell you that her insights will be valuable and well presented.  I can also tell you she is one helluva good writer, was a passionate and dedicated teacher (until she was driven underground by an idiotic bureaucracy), and is a fine individual.

I hope she can forgive me for being such an insufferable little bitch. I hope you all will consider reading the book. And I hope that, if there is a lesson to be learned from this post (uh, other than the writing thing), it’s that irreconcilable differences…aren’t. Are you hearing me America?!