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When I was in the fifth grade,
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I bought an issue
of "DC Comics Presents #57"
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off of a spinner rack
at my local bookstore,
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and that comic book changed my life.
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The combination of words and pictures
did something inside my head
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that had never been done before,
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and I immediately fell in love
with the medium of comics.
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I became a voracious comic book reader,
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but I never brought them to school.
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Instinctively, I knew that comic books
didn't belong in the classroom.
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My parents definitely were not fans,
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and I was certain that my teachers
wouldn't be either.
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After all, they never used them to teach,
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comic books and graphic novels were never
allowed during silent sustained reading,
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and they were never sold
at our annual book fair.
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Even so, I kept reading comics,
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and I even started making them.
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Eventually I became
a published cartoonist,
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writing and drawing
comic books for a living.
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I also became a high school teacher.
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This is where I taught:
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Bishop O'Dowd High School
in Oakland, California.
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I taught a little bit of math
and a little bit of art,
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but mostly computer science,
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and I was there for 17 years.
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When I was a brand new teacher,
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I tried bringing comic books
into my classroom.
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I remember telling my students
on the first day of every class
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that I was also a cartoonist.
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It wasn't so much that I was planning
to teach them with comics,
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it was more that I was hoping comics
would make them think that I was cool.
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(Laughter)
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I was wrong.
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This was the '90s,
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so comic books didn't have
the cultural cachet that they do today.
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My students didn't think I was cool.
They thought I was kind of a dork.
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And even worse,
when stuff got hard in my class,
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they would use comic books
as a way of distracting me.
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They would raise their hands
and ask me questions like,
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"Mr. Yang, who do you think
would win in a fight,
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Superman or the Hulk?"
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(Laughter)
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I very quickly realized I had to keep
my teaching and my cartooning separate.
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It seemed like my instincts
in fifth grade were correct.
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Comic books didn't belong
in the classroom.
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But again, I was wrong.
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A few years into my teaching career,
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I learned firsthand
the educational potential of comics.
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One semester, I was asked to sub
for this Algebra 2 class.
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I was asked to long-term sub it,
and I said yes, but there was a problem.
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At the time, I was also
the school's educational technologist,
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which meant every couple of weeks
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I had to miss one or two periods
of this Algebra 2 class
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because I was in another classroom
helping another teacher
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with a computer-related activity.
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For these Algebra 2 students,
that was terrible.
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I mean, having a long-term
sub is bad enough,
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but having a sub for your sub?
That's the worst.
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In an effort to provide some sort
of consistency for my students,
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I began videotaping
myself giving lectures.
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I'd then give these videos to my sub
to play for my students.
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I tried to make these videos
as engaging as possible.
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I even included
these little special effects.
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For instance, after I finished
a problem on the board,
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I'd clap my hands,
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and the board would magically erase.
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(Laughter)
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I thought it was pretty awesome.
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I was pretty certain
that my students would love it,
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but I was wrong.
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(Laughter)
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These video lectures were a disaster.
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I had students coming up to me
and saying things like,
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"Mr. Yang, we thought
you were boring in person,
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but on video, you are just unbearable."
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(Laughter)
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So as a desperate second attempt,
I began drawing these lectures as comics.
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I'd do these very quickly
with very little planning.
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I'd just take a sharpie,
draw one panel after the other,
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figuring out what I wanted
to say as I went.
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These comics lectures would come out
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to anywhere between
four and six pages long,
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I'd xerox these, give them to my sub
to hand to my students.
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And much to my surprise,
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these comics lectures were a hit.
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My students would ask me
to make these for them
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even when I could be there in person.
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It was like they liked cartoon me
more than actual me.
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(Laughter)
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This surprised me, because my students
are part of a generation
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that was raised on screens,
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so I thought for sure they would like
learning from a screen
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better than learning from a page.
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But when I talked to my students
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about why they liked
these comics lectures so much,
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I began to understand
the educational potential of comics.
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First, unlike their math textbooks,
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these comics lectures taught visually.
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Our students grow up in a visual culture,
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so they're used to taking in
information that way.
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But unlike other visual narratives,
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like film or television
or animation or video,
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comics are what I call permanent.
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In a comic, past, present and future
all sit side by side on the same page.
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This means that the rate
of information flow
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is firmly in the hands of the reader.
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When my students didn't understand
something in my comics lecture,
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they could just reread that passage
as quickly or as slowly as they needed.
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It was like I was giving them
a remote control over the information.
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The same was not true
of my video lectures,
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and it wasn't even true
of my in-person lectures.
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When I speak, I deliver the information
as quickly or slowly as I want.
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So for certain students
and certain kinds of information,
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these two aspects of the comics medium,
its visual nature and its permanence,
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make it an incredibly powerful
educational tool.
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When I was teaching this Algebra 2 class,
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I was also working on my master's
in education at Cal State East Bay.
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And I was so intrigued by this experience
that I had with these comics lectures
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that I decided to focus
my final master's project on comics.
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I wanted to figure out
why American educators
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have historically been so reluctant
to use comic books in their classrooms.
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Here's what I discovered.
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Comic books first became
a mass medium in the 1940s,
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with millions of copies
selling every month,
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and educators back then took notice.
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A lot of innovative teachers began
bringing comics into their classrooms
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to experiment.
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In 1944, the "Journal
of Educational Sociology"
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even devoted an entire issue
to this topic.
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Things seemed to be progressing.
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Teachers were starting
to figure things out.
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But then along comes this guy.
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This is child psychologist
Dr. Fredric Wertham,
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and in 1954, he wrote a book
called "Seduction of the Innocent,"
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where he argues that comic books
cause juvenile delinquency.
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(Laughter)
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He was wrong.
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Now, Dr. Wertham was actually
a pretty decent guy.
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He spent most of his career
working with juvenile delinquents,
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and in his work he noticed
that most of his clients read comic books.
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What Dr. Wertham failed to realize
was in the 1940s and '50s,
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almost every kid in America
read comic books.
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Dr. Wertham does a pretty
dubious job of proving his case,
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but his book does inspire
the Senate of the United States
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to hold a series of hearings
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to see if in fact comic books
caused juvenile delinquency.
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These hearings lasted
for almost two months.
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They ended inconclusively,
but not before doing tremendous damage
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to the reputation of comic books
in the eyes of the American public.
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After this, respectable American
educators all backed away,
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and they stayed away for decades.
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It wasn't until the 1970s
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that a few brave souls
started making their way back in.
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And it really wasn't
until pretty recently,
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maybe the last decade or so,
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that comics have seen
more widespread acceptance
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among American educators.
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Comic books and graphic novels
are now finally making their way
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back into American classrooms
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and this is even happening
at Bishop O'Dowd, where I used to teach.
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Mr. Smith, one of my former colleagues,
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uses Scott McCloud's
"Understanding Comics"
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in his literature and film class,
because that book gives his students
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the language with which to discuss
the relationship between words and images.
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Mr. Burns assigns a comics essay
to his students every year.
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By asking his students
to process a prose novel using images,
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Mr. Burns asks them to think deeply
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not just about the story
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but also about how that story is told.
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And Ms. Murrock uses
my own "American Born Chinese"
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with her English 1 students.
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For her, graphic novels
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are a great way of fulfilling
a Common Core Standard.
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The Standard states that students
ought to be able to analyze
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how visual elements contribute
to the meaning, tone and beauty of a text.
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Over in the library, Ms. Counts
has built a pretty impressive
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graphic novel collection
for Bishop O'Dowd.
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Now, Ms. Counts and all
of her librarian colleagues
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have really been at the forefront
of comics advocacy,
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really since the early '80s,
when a school library journal article
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stated that the mere presence
of graphic novels in the library
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increased usage by about 80 percent
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and increased the circulation
of noncomics material
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by about 30 percent.
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Inspired by this renewed interest
from American educators,
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American cartoonists are now producing
more explicitly educational content
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for the K-12 market than ever before.
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A lot of this is directed
at language arts,
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but more and more comics
and graphic novels
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are starting to tackle
math and science topics.
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STEM comics graphics novels
really are like this uncharted territory,
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ready to be explored.
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America is finally waking up to the fact
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that comic books
do not cause juvenile delinquency.
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(Laughter)
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That they really do belong
in every educator's toolkit.
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There's no good reason
to keep comic books and graphic novels
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out of K-12 education.
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They teach visually,
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they give our students
that remote control.
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The educational potential is there
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just waiting to be tapped
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by creative people like you.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)