Comics belong in the classroom

Comic books and graphic novels belong in every teacher's toolkit, says cartoonist and educator Gene Luen Yang. Set against the backdrop of his own witty, colorful drawings, Yang explores the history of comics in American education -- and reveals some unexpected insights about their potential for helping kids learn.

When I was in the fifth grade,

I bought an issue
of "DC Comics Presents #57"

off of a spinner rack
at my local bookstore,

and that comic book changed my life.

The combination of words and pictures
did something inside my head

that had never been done before,

and I immediately fell in love
with the medium of comics.

I became a voracious comic book reader,

but I never brought them to school.

Instinctively, I knew that comic books
didn't belong in the classroom.

My parents definitely were not fans,

and I was certain that my teachers
wouldn't be either.

After all, they never used them to teach,

comic books and graphic novels were never
allowed during silent sustained reading,

and they were never sold
at our annual book fair.

Even so, I kept reading comics,

and I even started making them.

Eventually I became
a published cartoonist,

writing and drawing
comic books for a living.

I also became a high school teacher.

This is where I taught:

Bishop O'Dowd High School
in Oakland, California.

I taught a little bit of math
and a little bit of art,

but mostly computer science,

and I was there for 17 years.

When I was a brand new teacher,

I tried bringing comic books
into my classroom.

I remember telling my students
on the first day of every class

that I was also a cartoonist.

It wasn't so much that I was planning
to teach them with comics,

it was more that I was hoping comics
would make them think that I was cool.

(Laughter)

I was wrong.

This was the '90s,

so comic books didn't have
the cultural cachet that they do today.

My students didn't think I was cool.
They thought I was kind of a dork.

And even worse,
when stuff got hard in my class,

they would use comic books
as a way of distracting me.

They would raise their hands
and ask me questions like,

"Mr. Yang, who do you think
would win in a fight,

Superman or the Hulk?"

(Laughter)

I very quickly realized I had to keep
my teaching and my cartooning separate.

It seemed like my instincts
in fifth grade were correct.

Comic books didn't belong
in the classroom.

But again, I was wrong.

A few years into my teaching career,

I learned firsthand
the educational potential of comics.

One semester, I was asked to sub
for this Algebra 2 class.

I was asked to long-term sub it,
and I said yes, but there was a problem.

At the time, I was also
the school's educational technologist,

which meant every couple of weeks

I had to miss one or two periods
of this Algebra 2 class

because I was in another classroom
helping another teacher

with a computer-related activity.

For these Algebra 2 students,
that was terrible.

I mean, having a long-term
sub is bad enough,

but having a sub for your sub?
That's the worst.

In an effort to provide some sort
of consistency for my students,

I began videotaping
myself giving lectures.

I'd then give these videos to my sub
to play for my students.

I tried to make these videos
as engaging as possible.

I even included
these little special effects.

For instance, after I finished
a problem on the board,

I'd clap my hands,

and the board would magically erase.

(Laughter)

I thought it was pretty awesome.

I was pretty certain
that my students would love it,

but I was wrong.

(Laughter)

These video lectures were a disaster.

I had students coming up to me
and saying things like,

"Mr. Yang, we thought
you were boring in person,

but on video, you are just unbearable."

(Laughter)

So as a desperate second attempt,
I began drawing these lectures as comics.

I'd do these very quickly
with very little planning.

I'd just take a sharpie,
draw one panel after the other,

figuring out what I wanted
to say as I went.

These comics lectures would come out

to anywhere between
four and six pages long,

I'd xerox these, give them to my sub
to hand to my students.

And much to my surprise,

these comics lectures were a hit.

My students would ask me
to make these for them

even when I could be there in person.

It was like they liked cartoon me
more than actual me.

(Laughter)

This surprised me, because my students
are part of a generation

that was raised on screens,

so I thought for sure they would like
learning from a screen

better than learning from a page.

But when I talked to my students

about why they liked
these comics lectures so much,

I began to understand
the educational potential of comics.

First, unlike their math textbooks,

these comics lectures taught visually.

Our students grow up in a visual culture,

so they're used to taking in
information that way.

But unlike other visual narratives,

like film or television
or animation or video,

comics are what I call permanent.

In a comic, past, present and future
all sit side by side on the same page.

This means that the rate
of information flow

is firmly in the hands of the reader.

When my students didn't understand
something in my comics lecture,

they could just reread that passage
as quickly or as slowly as they needed.

It was like I was giving them
a remote control over the information.

The same was not true
of my video lectures,

and it wasn't even true
of my in-person lectures.

When I speak, I deliver the information
as quickly or slowly as I want.

So for certain students
and certain kinds of information,

these two aspects of the comics medium,
its visual nature and its permanence,

make it an incredibly powerful
educational tool.

When I was teaching this Algebra 2 class,

I was also working on my master's
in education at Cal State East Bay.

And I was so intrigued by this experience
that I had with these comics lectures

that I decided to focus
my final master's project on comics.

I wanted to figure out
why American educators

have historically been so reluctant
to use comic books in their classrooms.

Here's what I discovered.

Comic books first became
a mass medium in the 1940s,

with millions of copies
selling every month,

and educators back then took notice.

A lot of innovative teachers began
bringing comics into their classrooms

to experiment.

In 1944, the "Journal
of Educational Sociology"

even devoted an entire issue
to this topic.

Things seemed to be progressing.

Teachers were starting
to figure things out.

But then along comes this guy.

This is child psychologist
Dr. Fredric Wertham,

and in 1954, he wrote a book
called "Seduction of the Innocent,"

where he argues that comic books
cause juvenile delinquency.

(Laughter)

He was wrong.

Now, Dr. Wertham was actually
a pretty decent guy.

He spent most of his career
working with juvenile delinquents,

and in his work he noticed
that most of his clients read comic books.

What Dr. Wertham failed to realize
was in the 1940s and '50s,

almost every kid in America
read comic books.

Dr. Wertham does a pretty
dubious job of proving his case,

but his book does inspire
the Senate of the United States

to hold a series of hearings

to see if in fact comic books
caused juvenile delinquency.

These hearings lasted
for almost two months.

They ended inconclusively,
but not before doing tremendous damage

to the reputation of comic books
in the eyes of the American public.

After this, respectable American
educators all backed away,

and they stayed away for decades.

It wasn't until the 1970s

that a few brave souls
started making their way back in.

And it really wasn't
until pretty recently,

maybe the last decade or so,

that comics have seen
more widespread acceptance

among American educators.

Comic books and graphic novels
are now finally making their way

back into American classrooms

and this is even happening
at Bishop O'Dowd, where I used to teach.

Mr. Smith, one of my former colleagues,

uses Scott McCloud's
"Understanding Comics"

in his literature and film class,
because that book gives his students

the language with which to discuss
the relationship between words and images.

Mr. Burns assigns a comics essay
to his students every year.

By asking his students
to process a prose novel using images,

Mr. Burns asks them to think deeply

not just about the story

but also about how that story is told.

And Ms. Murrock uses
my own "American Born Chinese"

with her English 1 students.

For her, graphic novels

are a great way of fulfilling
a Common Core Standard.

The Standard states that students
ought to be able to analyze

how visual elements contribute
to the meaning, tone and beauty of a text.

Over in the library, Ms. Counts
has built a pretty impressive

graphic novel collection
for Bishop O'Dowd.

Now, Ms. Counts and all
of her librarian colleagues

have really been at the forefront
of comics advocacy,

really since the early '80s,
when a school library journal article

stated that the mere presence
of graphic novels in the library

increased usage by about 80 percent

and increased the circulation
of noncomics material

by about 30 percent.

Inspired by this renewed interest
from American educators,

American cartoonists are now producing
more explicitly educational content

for the K-12 market than ever before.

A lot of this is directed
at language arts,

but more and more comics
and graphic novels

are starting to tackle
math and science topics.

STEM comics graphics novels
really are like this uncharted territory,

ready to be explored.

America is finally waking up to the fact

that comic books
do not cause juvenile delinquency.

(Laughter)

That they really do belong
in every educator's toolkit.

There's no good reason
to keep comic books and graphic novels

out of K-12 education.

They teach visually,

they give our students
that remote control.

The educational potential is there

just waiting to be tapped

by creative people like you.

Thank you.

(Applause)