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By Elvin Lim

In recent memory, there was Al Gore , then it was John Kerry. It was a only a matter of time before President Barack Obama would be compared to the failed Democratic presidential bid of Michael Dukakis in 1988. According to Noemi Emery, Dukakis and Obama are “both creatures of the liberal Northeast and of Harvard, with no sense at all of most of the rest of the country; both rationalists who impose legalistic criteria on emotion-rich subjects; both with fixed ideas of who society’s victims are, which do not accord with the views of the public.”

With the economy still struggling and the President insistently on the unpopular side of the debate about the Ground Zero mosque , Barack Obama has become the newest target of an ancient charge that Democrats are “clueless, condescending, and costly.”

Abraham Lincoln once invited the nation to be guided by “the better angels of our nature.” But when he said those words in 1861, the North was less than inspired and the South was surely unmoved. The nation did eventually come to the right conclusion about slavery by the end of the Civil War but it would take much longer (via the detour called Jim Crow) before we came close to the right conclusion about racial equality.

The civic education of a nation takes time, and Barack Obama should take heed. In a democracy, public opinion is king. And the king should either be obeyed (and this is typically the path of least resistance), or he should be educated (this is leadership). But Barack Obama has done neither. People say he has been too professorial. But maybe he hasn’t been professorial enough.

For after endorsing the idea of the mosque near Ground Zero and resisting the path of least resistance, a day later, the president back-tracked, saying, “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right that people have that dates back to our founding.” (As Kerry was for the Iraq war before he was against it.) Well done, Polonius.

If Obama was referring to the Declaration of Independence, he should have known (as Lincoln came to know) that even truths which are self-evident must nevertheless be said, resaid, and said again before stubborn majorities come to see the light. Obama should either have deferred to the majority against the idea of the mosque, or tried to convince the majority that their particular sensitivity about the location of the mosque was illegitimate. What he should not have done was perform the unhappy medium: tell people they were wrong but not wrong enough that the President himself would take up the considerable challenge (called leadership) of disabusing stubborn majorities of their ill-conceived conclusions.

If presidents dare tell the American people that they are wrong, then they should also be brave enough to follow through with a thorough explanation. “I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there” is not an explanation. It is an abdication.

Where Gore, Kerry, and now Obama have fallen short is their failure to assume that that which is self-evident to them almost always demands explanation for others. And quite a lot of it, because our better angels have never popped up spontaneously like a burning bush. Ask the abolitionists, and the suffragists (and the best teachers): they of all people knew that intuitions feel utterly right and unassailable until they are brought under the prolonged and penetrating light of reason. We have always fumbled our way toward the right side of history because most of our leaders have bowed to public opinion where

by Jen McVeity

Writing a story is hard work, even for authors. There are characters to create, dialogue to deliver, plots to plan, tension scenes to capture, endings to invent and starts that have to sizzle align=”left”so much they superglue your reader onto a chair.

Then you have to put it all into interesting sentences that flow smoothly. Whew! Breaking the complex process of writing into chunks makes helping kids with their writing more effective - and far more fun too.

Here are two ‘chunks’ you could try to help your child write with more impact.

Show, Don’t Tell

As we read words, pictures form in our mind. See what happens when you slowly read the lines below:-

• Snow glistens, thick and white on a mountain top.

• Orange and yellow poppies stand tall and cheerful in a vase.

Our job as writers is to create these pictures in the brains of our readers. That’s what Show, Don’t Tell is all about.

However, how can we do this when the idea is more abstract - like emotions? That’s much harder for kids to write as there is no picture. Therefore we need to show them how to create one. For instance:-

TELL: My brother is lazy.

SHOW: ‘Your turn for the dishes Tank,’ said Mum. ‘Yeah, later,’ he said, yawning, and turned up the TV louder.

‘No, now,’ said Mum. She stood in the doorway, arms crossed. She knew later in Tank’s mind meant somewhere between the year 2012 and infinity. Once, as punishment, Mum put all the dishes and saucepans Tank had forgotten on top of his bed. He just dumped them on the floor. A week later they were still there, a shoe in the spaghetti sauce, sweaty socks on the plates and a really bad smell wafting out the door.

Ah, now we have the picture for our minds. It takes much longer to write - but as readers we are far more convinced.

How to Write Tension Scenes

Imagine a birthday party, a top restaurant, friends and family - and a massive earthquake that ends in disaster.

Here’s the starting point by a 9 year old boy:

We were having fun in the restaurant when suddenly the ground started to shake. I didn’t believe it. Then glasses started to break all over my plate. My sister tried to stand up, she was afraid. The ground was trembling, there was noise everywhere…

Tension scenes are one of the hardest parts of a story to write. Kids often make them too basic and short. Why? Well, we say ‘write what you know’, but children often don’t have enough ‘emotional experience’ to imagine this sort of thing.

However, other people do - and their words are all in a dictionary or thesaurus.

So try this: Get your child to underline key words in the story - and then use a thesaurus to help bring the scene alive. You can actually do this BEFORE they write as well. Just ask, ‘what are some things which will happen?’ and make a list for them to use.

e.g.

fun - delight, enjoyment, amused, teasing, laughing, happy

shake - shudder, shiver, quake, quiver, buzzing, tremor,

break - crumble, disintegrate, collapse, crush, shatter

afraid - scared, fearful, terrified, panicked

tremble - quiver, shudder, beat, vibrate, grind

The idea is NOT to merely substitute one word for another. It is to give a greater variety of words/inspiration/ideas to the writer - and let their subconscious do the melding.

After:

The waiter smiled as he put down a hot chocolate pudding right in front of me.

‘You’re not going to eat all that!’ said my Dad. ‘Here, I’ll help!’ He reached across with his spoon, teasing me. I pulled my plate away fast. Everyone laughed.

‘Just a little bit,’ Dad begged.

I shook my head. It was weird, but there was a strange buzzing sound as if everything was not quite real. I lifted my spoon, my hands felt like they were shivering. Or was it really the floor shaking? It wasn’t possible, but now all the glasses were starting to clink. Suddenly one fell, shattering glass across my plate and into the dark chocolate. Then the noise hit me, harsh, grinding, vibrating right into my brain…

Get the idea? See how the word ‘fun’ has turned into something more specific - teasing and Dad trying to steal chocolate pudding. A simple ’shake’ now has triggered ’shivering’ and a ‘buzzing’ in the head. Best of all look at that last line; the words suggested from ‘tremble’ have now made this incredibly evocative and powerful.

If you want rich writing, give kids plenty of rich ingredients to work with.

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© Jen McVeity, National Literacy Champion

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The Seven Steps to Writing Success program, designed by successful author, Jen McVeity, is used in over 900 Schools. Suitable for the home school curriculum and gifted children, it has been shown to rapidly advance children’s writing skills and enjoyment.

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