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'...And gladly would he learn and gladly teach'

By Dennis Cripe, IHSPA adviser and visual communications coordinator, Franklin College's Pulliam School of Journalism

Let me begin by saying that you should never be surprised by the news.

A reporter who was being inducted into this same Hall of Fame in 1986 expressed that sentiment. I was here that year to help celebrate the induction of my friend and mentor, Mary Benedict.

The Challenger space shuttle had blown up a couple months earlier and the inductee that year suggested that citizens should have known – should have been better prepared by the media – that there were problems with that spacecraft.

You should never be surprised by the news, he said, and I’ve been intrigued and challenged by the idea ever since.

But sometimes news catches us by complete surprise anyway, like when Ernie Wilkinson called to tell me that this prestigious group would honor me with this recognition, on this spring day.

I never saw it coming.

But I learned a long time ago that whatever makes your wife happy and your mother happy, and your mother-in-law happy should never be questioned. These significant women in my life say they weren’t surprised by the news. I accept their hopelessly biased assessment as truth. At least for today.

I want to thank the selection committee for acknowledging – with my selection – a teacher whose primary contribution to Indiana journalism is in the form of high school and college teaching, advising and service, not the usual credentials, I imagine, for most of those enshrined in this Hall.

So I struggled initially when Ernie asked me to send him a few things that would show me as outstanding in my field for some sort of display featuring each inductee. Hmmmm. No book to send…no recent lead stories in a major magazine or newspaper…how do I show teaching and service…That’s when Linda…my keenly alert wife…came to my rescue.

Disappearing upstairs for a few minutes, she returned with this picture. Indeed, it shows me… out…standing…in a field…close to my former home in Avon, next to my Miata. I doubted if Ernie would appreciate the subtle humor of my better half.

(Show picture of me standing out in a field with my Miata).

But that got me to thinking about what any life-long educator might include in a snapshot of a career that has emphasized classrooms rather than newsrooms.

I didn’t have the resources to send my best work to Ernie ahead of time so I’d like to show it to you now and ask you to use your imaginations a little. As I said before, some things are hard to capture in the traditional 8 x 10 inch frame.

This first photo includes every student who passed through the journalism program at Ben Davis High School from 1971 through 1985. Imagine roughly 1,400 students in this photo who either took classes or served on the yearbook or newspaper staffs.

If you squint and look real close, you’ll see Laura Wilkinson and Denise Pierpont. Laura is now Laura Baenen who planned to fly in today from her home in Minnesota but ran into conflicts. And Denise is now Denise Roberts, who is here today.

Laura, of Plymouth, Minnesota, is a former Associated Press writer and editor who today is a public affairs officer for the Minnesota Department of Transportation. I mention that because thoughts of Laura maybe being here today reminded me of a plaque she gave me in 1977. Here it is. I’ve kept it now for 31 years.

The plaque was inscribed with these words from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. “And Gladly Would He Learn and Gladly Teach.” She told me by e-mail just this week that she selected that quote because she thought I enjoyed learning from my students as much as teaching them. I hope Laura is right because for me good teaching is a little like flying a kite. You may have to run out ahead at first. But the best times are when the kite is flying high on its own with you gently holding the string.

For the past 18 years, Denise Roberts has taught at Griffith, Bremen and most recently, Greenwood High School where she heads up one of the best journalism, publication and broadcast program’s in the state.

Beyond all her accomplishments in scholastic journalism, our relationship moved from teacher/student to fellow colleague and friend. I’m extremely proud of Denise Roberts and the work she continues to do.

Obviously, Laura and Denise WERE NOT just two students passing through the program at Ben Davis nearly 30 years ago. Laura was one of the first editors of the newspaper to push the program to the next level. In effect, Laura had two journalism advisers – me and her dad, Ernie – and that may explain her rapid rise as a writer and reporter.

Denise Roberts may have become a teacher anyway. All the tools were there early on. But I’d like to think that somewhere along the way, Denise and Laura and literally hundreds of other students learned something about the power of words, and that journalism education also was for them a great exercise in democracy.

If you’ll permit me to jump on my soap box for just a minute, let me say that when journalism is taught in a free and responsible school environment by a certified journalism teacher within a curriculum that values journalism skills as much as it does math, science, or social studies, THEN and only then do you have a high school that turns out graduates like Laura and Denise – students who value freedom of expression and are equipped to respond when their lives require true leadership.

This next photo in my personal collection of “decisive moments” was taken on Dec. 7, 2001 at the Abe Martin Lodge in Brown County State Park. It’s one of my favorite times as director because this is precisely the weekend we re-invented the Indiana High School Press Association.

Imagine the hills of Brown County where, for a weekend, we escaped the pressures of home and school to focus fully on what we expected of ourselves and of the IHSPA.

Mike Frazier, Hanover Central H.S., challenged the officers first to read “Built To Last,” a book by James Collins that studied the long-term corporate success stories of 18 visionary companies. With our homework read, sort of, we were ready to begin our weekend together.

It was a daunting task and we found ourselves struggling to identify what Collins called “core values.”

Late in the weekend as exhaustion set in, we relaxed and started to tell stories about the students who inspired us as teachers. We talked about the impact that our programs had on students who simply wanted the freedom to make their own decisions and learn from honest mistakes.

We recalled the courage it took for some of our students to stand up for what they believed even in the face of school sanctions. It became clearer what we would fight for in our teaching lives. We made a list. We simply WOULD NOT compromise when it came to matters of truth, integrity, courage or freedom.

We couldn’t say it more simply or more meaningfully.

We would continue to put faces on these concepts through the new and innovative First Amendment Symposium, an annual program that brings hundreds of students and teachers to the Statehouse downtown each March.

Diana Hadley and the current officers have done a wonderful job of fighting not only for our core values, but also for academic standards that ensures journalism’s place in every high school curriculum in this state.

Research from the academic community validates these efforts. Dr. Jack Dvorak’s definitive book titled “Journalism kids do better,” finds strong links between students with journalism experiences and higher overall GPAs, higher ACT composite scores, higher ACT English scores, College freshman English grades and in College freshman grade point averages.

Despite these realities, scholastic journalism remains in a downward spiral since the Supreme Court’s now famous Hazelwood decision in 1988. That decision gave school officials much greater latitude in censoring the content of the student press in high school and even some colleges.

Many administrators, often bending to the will of school boards and other groups, have not hesitated in shutting down school publications or firing advisers for doing nothing more than telling the truth about their school communities. Unfortunately, censorship is part of the culture serving as a daily reminder to journalism students and advisers that they must be very careful in order to survive.

A friend of mine suggested recently that if the First Amendment were put to a national referendum vote, he doubted if it would pass. If that’s true, it’s because few people have had positive experiences exercising their rights to free speech. Being sent to the principles office or being expelled for tackling controversial topics in a school publication is no way to prepare young people for citizenship in a free society.

But if that’s the message some schools are sending (and in fairness I should say that there are pockets of strong journalism programs throughout the state) then the IHSPA and other scholastic journalism groups need the help of professional media to push for reform.

We need a standardized journalism curriculum. We need certified journalism teachers to lead responsible programs. We need internal school policies that guarantee First Amendment rights for all students. And we need a law on the Indiana books that reverses the terrible affects of Hazelwood.

This final image I’d like to share actually is the front page of a special 100-year centennial edition of my parent’s newspaper, The Review-Republican. That’s Doug and me posed in front of my mom and dad in this issue dated Dec. 16, 1954. I was 7 years old.

My mother, who is 86 years old now and my brother are both here today. My dad passed away in 1984. Together, my parents – as Diana has mentioned – co-edited and co-published the paper for more than 50 years. While my dad was the writer in the family, my mother was the editor. She knew names. She knew places. And she had no patience with grammatical errors or errors in fact. Except for one time, which was really not her fault.

It was time for me to learn the linotype, a machine by the way that reportedly drove its creator – Mergenthaller – crazy, was nearly doing the same to me. I had been setting type one evening to help mom when I came across a weekly feature called “Remember When,” that pulled some news item from the past. An item under the subhead, “25 years ago” read something like this:

“A local man, John Smith, was bitten by a dog near his home this week. Following treatment at Community Hospital, the man returned home where he expects a full recovery. Well, being silly and 16, and needing a break from the crazy linotype machine, I rewrote the item for my amusement with the knowledge that my eagle-eyed mother would catch it, laugh, and correct it. Here was my “new and improved” version.

“John Smith was bitten by a large dog near his home this week. The dog was immediately taken to the local veterinarian for treatment but Fido later died from his injuries.” After laughing at my cleverness I put it out of my mind. To my horror, the item appeared in print that week.

Though I’m sure my mom was none too happy, I wasn’t censured or punished. Knowing I had let my parents (and myself) down was punishment enough. It was a teaching moment and I would never play with words in print again. And though my prank was harmless enough, I fear what would have happened in too many high schools today had my silly mistake been made in the school newspaper instead.

This 16-year old could have learned instead that the First Amendment only applies when work is perfect or washed clean of any controversy. I was lucky. In my world there was room for mistakes even silly ones and there was time to learn from them and mature.

It also occurred to me that for most of the years mom and dad produced their weekly newspaper for readers in Warren County, there were few technological changes in the way the paper was produced. My mom was the primary typesetter. My dad wrote his weekly column. I wrote sports for the paper and Doug was the paper’s photographer.

Doug, I might add, is the best portrait photographer I know and I continue to this day to try to impress him with my meager photography skills. He’s kind enough to compliment me from time-to-time and that keeps me going. But we all had our jobs do each week as we grew up thinking of journalism less as a vocation and more as mission in my family.

And that same unrelenting pattern repeated itself 52 times a year with very little change. My own life, in contrast, has been a constant swirl of change since my first teaching contract in 1971. I’ve dealt with the ramifications of offset printing, to desktop publishing, to the rise of the personal computers, to the Web, to reporting now with digital cameras, video cameras, podcasting and blogging.

Though technology certainly would have made my parent’s job a lot easier, it still wouldn’t have changed the reason they got into the newspaper business to begin with: love of community.

If life is a stage, then our town was the backdrop for a story my family would help write each week for 50 years. It was an unfolding story told through that same lens of honesty, truth, integrity and courage. I’d like to think the process of telling the story of Warren County helped define it, bring it to life and provide it direction.

I believe every student will be called upon at some point in their lives to lead, to act on behalf of their communities, maybe through a thoughtful letter to the editor; speaking out at a town council meeting, or maybe running for a position on the local school board.

The question I pose to my students is, “Will You Be Ready When That Moment Comes?” Can you discern the facts, craft a reasonable argument and persuade others to consider your point of view. Students who understand what journalism has to teach ought to have the advantage when leadership comes knocking.

For 37 years I’ve been given the opportunity to pass along to my students the same gift my parents gave to me: the belief that every one has the potential to grow and to make a difference in the communities they will one day help to shape.

If I’ve grown and if I’ve made a difference, it’s because my own teachers – Fred Walker jr., Louis Ingelhart, Earl Conn, Mary Benedict, Larry Glaze, Jim Brown, Susie Fleck, and so many others – who saw something more in me than I saw in myself.

I could not have asked for a better place to finish my career than Franklin College, a small college with a reach big enough to embrace both the Pulliam School of Journalism AND the IHSPA. I thank my colleagues – John Krull, Joel Cramer, Hank Nuwer, Ray Begovich, Ann Barton and Diana Hadley – our family as John likes to call us – for being exactly that: a family that truly cares about each other and about the honorable task of teaching our students.

This award means a lot to me personally. But I accept it on behalf of journalism teachers – many of whom are in this room – whose success can be measured best by the quality of their own students.

Teachers – all of them – who gladly learn and gladly teach.