|
|
|
 |
Archives |
An Interview with Marianne and M. Blouke Carus, Advocates for Education Excellence and Pioneers in Children's PublishingM. Blouke Carus is Chairman of Carus Corporation and Vice Chairman of Carus Publishing Company, which includes Open Court General Books and 14 children's magazines. Mr. Carus obtained a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Caltech in 1949 and continued his studies in foreign languages and chemistry at Mexico City College, the University of Freiburg in Germany, and the Sorbonne in Paris. He joined Carus Chemical Company in 1951 and holds seven patents from his work during this period. In 1962, with the family publishing house of Open Court, Mr. Carus developed a reading and language arts program based on the work of successful teachers and an elementary mathematics program that was field tested over a 12-year period. The textbook division of Open Court was sold in 1996 to SRA/McGraw-Hill, and the Open Court reading program is now being widely used throughout the country. Mr. Carus has served, by Presidential appointment, as a member of the National Council on Education Research and was instrumental in establishing the International Baccalaureate North America (IBNA) in 1973. He served as Chairman of the IBNA until June 1985, and he was a Council member for International Baccalaureate in Geneva, Switzerland, from 1977 to 1994. Marianne Carus is founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Cricket Magazine Group and Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Cricket Books. A native of Germany, Mrs. Carus majored in English and German Literature at the University of Freiburg and completed additional studies in French Literature and Art History at the Sorbonne, Paris, and the University of Chicago. From 1982-1985 Mrs. Carus served as adirector on the ALSC Board (American Library Service for Children), a division of the American Library Association, and from 1990-1994, she was elected to the Executive Board of IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People), 2 years as Vice President. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Youth Library in Munich and serves on the Board of Carus Chemical Company and Carus Publishing. She has spoken about children's literature, creative writing, and children's magazines at many universities and at writers' and literature conferences here and abroad. In a recent email interview, the 2006 Hall of Fame Inductees talked about their beginnings, perseverance, and the role of quality literature in the development of early reading skills. Q: The Open Court reading program and Cricket magazine are both representative of an "outside the box" way of thinking - Open Court with its advanced reading selections and persistence in the face of the Whole Language movement and Cricket by employing famous authors and illustrators to produce high quality literary content. Tell me about this unconventional mindset. Where does it come from? Marianne Carus: We were convinced that children - all children, not just our own - should get the best we could give them, especially the best reading materials in school and the best magazines and books for their own reading at home. Since there were not any exceptionally good quality magazines to be had at that time (early 1970s), we decided to start such a magazine. This did not require any especially "outside the box" thinking or any "unconventional mindset," it was simply something that needed to be remedied. We wanted to supply something that was missing in every child's world - an interesting, exciting, captivating, lively quality magazine that could only be created with the help of the best authors and illustrators we could find. Why the best? Simply because nothing but the best could be good enough for children. M. Blouke Carus: The so-called "unconventional mindset" (in reference to pedagogy) came from a variety of sources that reinforced each other. Trendiness in style, ideas, and concepts has never meant much to us. Rather, we have been fortunate that we were exposed to the classics in history, music, literature, the arts, and philosophy through study and travel abroad, from the major museums, and from leading a Great Books discussion group for seven years. I was especially influenced from reading most of my grandfather’s (Paul Carus) works in philosophy and world religions. I was also fortunate in my choice of higher education, namely Caltech, which cultivated the habit of examining evidence very carefully and translating theory into practice. In the realm of pedagogy, I always felt my cello teacher provided the insights that were transferable to teaching young children to learn how to read. In addition to wide reading, the engineering ethic, methodologies, and experience gave me the skills of analysis and synthesis to become very skeptical about the then widely-accepted assumptions and pedagogy of Progressive Education. I became convinced that the basic educational concepts of Dewey, James, Kilpatrick, Francis Parker, and especially the Father of Dick and Jane, William S. Gray, were not appropriate for American education. There had to be a better way. Both Marianne and I were familiar with the humanistic (Classical) Gymnasium in Germany (similar to secondary education throughout the continent of Europe). But whenever I mentioned the rigorous and broad European education for students ages 10-19, I frequently received the same answer: "The European system is too elitist. America is far more democratic, and our goal is to educate all children." I found that dogma to be a great oversimplification and basically no longer true. Most Americans simply have not known or studied foreign education until the last few decades. (Witness Admiral Rickover’s fascinating little book Swiss Education and Ours; Why Theirs is Better.) Q: What was it about Open Court that made you believe it would succeed, even when the Whole Language movement came about? M. Blouke Carus: For any researcher or any scientist who has read the educational research literature, there was and are no major controversies about how to teach reading. Jeanne Chall of Harvard led the way in 1967 with her definitive summary of the research called Learning to Read: The Great Debate, which created a great deal of interest in what we were offering with the Open Court Reading Program, including the importance of introducing children to great literature. So when the Goodmans and others introduced the ideas of so-called "whole language," we looked at it as another example of taking the easy way out (by not teaching the essential skills). There was no good evidence that "whole language" was effective in teaching reading. The Open Court approach was based on a solid research-based pedagogy and combined all four basal textbooks in the language area (reading, penmanship, spelling, and language arts) into one textbook program. We also added a systematic composition program to the Open Court Program starting in Grade 1 (which was not done in America). So we were astounded and dumbfounded that anyone could call a program "whole language" when in fact it was miseducating children and it did not come close to "whole language." For our own internal consumption, we felt as confident as ever that we had already created the genuine "Whole Language Program" in the 1960s, which took us about 30+ years to develop, polish, and refine. Q: Harold Bill Henderson, author of the recent book, Let's Kill Dick and Jane, maintains that Open Court Reading fought the culture of American education and revolutionized the way people thought about children's literacy. Were you aware of the program's potential impact from the beginning, or was this something that became more apparent as Open Court's success spread? M. Blouke Carus: We were very conscious of swimming against the stream from day one. Because we were small and had no axes to grind, nor did we have any excess baggage to carry around, we felt that we had a great opportunity to construct a program to introduce genuine, authentic, classical children's literature, starting in grade one, similar to the readers before the age of Dick and Jane. This was our main objective from the very beginning and still is today. Q: Why a literary children's magazine? What was it about Cricket that made you confident enough to undertake such a risky proposition? Marianne Carus: "Literature" has always been a rather forbidding term. Why literature in basic readers? Who ever heard of such a thing? Why literature in a magazine for children? Writers who write good books, good stories, and win national and international prizes for their writing were thrilled about the possibility of having a new outlet, a new market in the magazine field. Parents and teachers loved to see stories by these famous writers and pictures by famous artists appear in Cricket. We were fortunate to have Clifton Fadiman (Kip) on our staff, who could get me in touch with most of the best writers here and abroad. He and we and these wonderful authors and artists were confident that good stories, really good stories with believable characters, exciting plots, interesting settings and great writing would make readers out of even the most reluctant and disinterested children - and now, after 35 years, I am proud to tell you that we have many letters from children, parents, and teachers who can attest to this. Q: Cricket has remained highly successful for over 30 years, which speaks to the quality of its content. How has the magazine managed to stay relevant to kids in the digital age? What other challenges do you foresee in the future of children's magazine publishing? Marianne Carus: It is easy for magazine editors to stay in touch with their audience. Kids love to write to us and tell us about their problems. They ask us for advice; they want to discuss "the big questions" they hear discussed in their school and at home: Is evolution the right answer to why we are here and why our world is the way it is, or was it "intelligent design?" Is it right to hunt innocent animals and then eat them? What is happening to the rainforest? We have great discussions going on in our letterbox and we know what worries and what delights today's kids. The books they read, the magazines they read are just as important to them as their computers - they love to hear about ancient Greece and ancient Egypt, they love mythology, fantasy, folk tales, but they also love science fiction and science. We try to have something for every taste in Cricket. Of course kids love TV and computer games, but that does not mean they don't want to curl up with a good story or a good book on a rainy day or in front of the fire. It is an accomplishment to read a story from beginning to end, and if it is a great story, they will take something away from it, something that will help them grow and accomplish great things in their lives.
Questions, ideas, or in need of more information? Please contact Stacey Pusey at 302-295-8349. |
Click here to read more on Pat, or for more information on the Educational Publishing Hall of Fame. |
|
© 2011 The Association of Educational
Publishers |
||
