Back to School

Learning from little people.

by Brian Howard

I walk down the dark hall, led by a 4-foot-tall escort. I'm praying for the coffee (two mugs of espresso downed in my apartment and one cup of Dunkin' Donuts java I inhaled in the waiting room) to kick in.

I generally have no problem talking in front of people. I often joke that I became a writer because I can't talk; the fact of the matter is this: If the subject is "what I do," I can be hard to shut up. But today, I'm quaking in my shoes. I'm going up in front of what I anticipate to be a tough, potentially disinterested, possibly belligerent crowd. I'll be talking to sixth-graders.

I'd been up late fretting over this. What do you tell a class full of 12-year-olds about the importance of journalism when all anyone hears these days is what a bunch of fact-fudging frauds we are? Would they care?

Then I thought about comics, box scores and record reviews, the only things that a sixth-grade Brian Howard cared about in the Allentown Morning Call. I scrapped the outlines. I was doomed to flop.

Entering room 213 of the Belmont Charter School at 40th and Brown streets, I found myself in front of about 20 students, all dressed in matching white button-up shirts, staring intently at me. (Formerly under the purview of the school district, the Belmont School, once one of the least safe, poorest-performing academic institutions in the city, went under charter during the 2002-2003 school year. Since then, test scores have improved significantly and on-site social services have been provided.)

I ran through my "prepared" material — a quick rundown of the differences between City Paper and the Inquirer along with a breakdown of the sections you'll find within — in about five minutes. Then I froze. I expected slings and arrows. Instead I was bombarded with raised hands.

Turns out a lot of the students read papers, the dailies at least. One girl in the front row said she reads papers for crime stories; given the steely look in her eyes, I didn't doubt her.

One wanted to know if we wrote about video games. Another if I'd listen to his band. After I explained that I didn't bring in many samples of the paper because we sometimes use bad words, one intrepid kid's hand shot up and, when called on, showed amazing restraint, explaining with a grin that he didn't think he should ask his question because he didn't want to get in trouble.

"Are you happy with your paycheck?" asked one. (I'm tickled to get paid to do something I enjoy.)

"If your paper is free, how do they pay you?" asked another. (Um … concert and real estate ads, mostly.)

We were having fun. "How much of what you write is your opinion?" (I leave that to people with interesting things to say.)

"Do you use figurative language?" asked a precocious little dude in the front row. (Does the Pope wear a funny hat?)

Then came the bomb. A quiet girl in the back who'd been feigning ennui for much of the session raised her hand.

"Do you ever lie?"

I answered with a question: "When you read something in the newspaper, do you generally believe it to be true?"

I got a bunch of yesses, but not nearly as many as I'd hoped.

"We try to never, ever print anything that we don't believe to be true," I said, doing a bit of damage control for my profession.

"Do you ever write anything that makes people mad?" asked another.

I explained that, yes, it's sometimes our job to tell stories that some people don't want to be told.

Of course, I never thought about this stuff back then. At their age, I took newspapers for granted. They appeared in the mailbox. The stories they told were true. It would be years before the term "liberal media bias" meant anything to me.

But where I was afraid that the flurry of media scandals had rendered the Youth of Today calloused toward what we do here, I discovered it's made them more interested than I ever was, back when there was no need to question. Which, I'm sure you get this, is no endorsement of media scandals, but rather of at least one sixth grade class full of burning questions, which, as a journalist, impressed me more than they know.

Brian Howard never uses figurative language around the office. If you would like to respond to this Slant or submit one of your own (750 words), contact Duane Swierczynski, editor in chief, City Paper, 123 Chestnut St., third floor, Phila., PA 19106 or e-mail Duane Swierczynski