One of the most powerful axiomatic lines
in all of Shakespeare, [albeit next only to Hamlet’s!] ;-) is Juliet’s
discourse on words in general, or names in particular!
Says she –
What’s in a name? That
which we call a rose / By Any Other Name would smell as sweet.
Saussure seizes upon this
sweet idea and makes it yet-a-bit-a-explosive for all of academia! ;-)
To Saussure, the
word in itself ain’t gonna matter at all, as long as it
is accepted by every speaker of that particular language to represent the same
thing!
Similarly, Orwell, who’s given
us a lorry load of loveable words including Newspeak and Big Brother, in his
delightful little essay titled, ‘New Words’ opines that,
It would be quite feasible to
invent a vocabulary, perhaps amounting to several thousands of words, which
would deal with parts of our experience now practically unmeanable to language.
Added, he also gives us such raving rubrics
to go ahead gung ho and create words!
David Crystal, again, in his
500-page Encyclopedia on Language, also attests to this interactive, participatory
nature of language!
Says he –
The language as a whole
belongs to no one, yet everyone owns a part of it, has an interest in it, and
has an opinion about it. In a sense, we are all truly equal when we participate
in the language game!
How trueee!
And that’s exactly what Nick, a fifth grader in school does, in this quite fascinating children’s novel!
A motivational read especially
for language teachers / professors and parents towards tapping the fullest
potential of their kids in the most creative of ways!
This engrossing children’s
novel of 68 pages is by Andrew Clements, titled, Frindle, and for a reason at that!
Frindle opens
thus –
IF YOU ASKED the kids and the
teachers at Lincoln Elementary School to make three lists—all the really bad
kids, all the really smart kids, and all the really good kids—Nick Allen would
not be on any of them. Nick deserved a list all his own, and everyone knew it.
Was Nick a troublemaker?
Hard to say. One thing’s for sure: Nick Allen had plenty of ideas, and he knew
what to do with them.
One time in third grade
Nick decided to turn Miss Deaver’s room into a tropical island.
What kid in New Hampshire isn’t
ready for a little summer in February? So first he got everyone to make small
palm trees out of green and brown construction paper and tape them onto the
corners of each desk.
Miss Deaver had only been a teacher
for about six months, and she was delighted. “That’s so cute!”
The next day all the girls
wore paper flowers in their hair and all the boys wore sunglasses and beach
hats.
Miss Deaver clapped her hands
and said, “It’s so colorful!”
That’s little Nick in a
nutshell for us all!
Fastforwarding now, with
Nick, to his fifth grade!
There were about one hundred
fifty kids in fifth grade. And there were seven fifth-grade teachers: two math,
two science, two social studies, but only one language arts teacher. In
language arts, Mrs. Granger had a monopoly—and a reputation.
She was small, as
teachers go.
It was her eyes that did it.
They were dark gray, and if
she turned them on full power, they could make you feel like a speck of dust.
Her eyes could twinkle and
laugh, too, and kids said she could crack really funny jokes.
But it wasn’t the jokes
that made her famous.
All the kids at Lincoln Elementary
School knew that at the end of the line—fifth grade—Mrs. Granger would be the
one grading their spelling tests and their reading tests, and worst of all,
their vocabulary tests—week after week, month after month.
Every language arts teacher
in the world enjoys making kids use the dictionary:
“Check your spelling. Check
that definition. Check those syllable breaks.”
But Mrs. Granger didn’t
just enjoy the dictionary.
She loved the
dictionary—almost worshipped it.
Her weekly vocabulary list was
thirty-five words long, sometimes longer.
As if that wasn’t bad enough,
there was a “Word for the Day” on the blackboard every morning.
If you gave yourself a day off
and didn’t write one down and look it up and learn the definition—sooner or
later Mrs. Granger would find out, and then, just for you, there would be two
Words for the Day for a whole week.
Nick had no particular
use for the dictionary.
He liked words a lot, and he
was good at using them.
But he figured that he got
all the words he needed just by reading, and he read all the time.
When Nick ran into a word he
didn’t know, he asked his brother or his dad or whoever was handy what it
meant, and if they knew, they’d tell him.
But not Mrs. Granger.
He had heard all about
her, and he had seen fifth graders in the library last year, noses stuck in
their dictionaries, frantically trying to finish their vocabulary sheets before
English class.
That’s a pretty good chunk for a
teaser ain’t it!
So how does Nick work his way in
fifth grade and does an Orwell or a Shakespeare? ;-)
Well, thanks to Mrs. Granger who brings out the
wordsmith in Nick, just in the nick of time!
And how!
Over to vibrant Mrs. Granger –
Who says dog means dog? You
do, Nicholas.
You and me and everyone in this
class and this school and this town and this state and this country.
We all agree.
If we lived in France, we
would all agree that the right word for that hairy four-legged creature was a
different word—chien—it sounds like ‘shee-en,’ but it means what d-o-g means to
you and me.
And in Germany they say hund,
and so on, all around the globe.
But if all of us in this room
decided to call that creature something else, and if everyone else did, too,
then that’s what it would be called, and one day it would be written in the
dictionary that way.
We decide what goes in that
book. A
And she pointed at the giant
dictionary.
And she looked right at Nick.
And she smiled again.
Nick stooped over and picked
up the pen and held it out to her.
“Here’s your …”
And that’s when the third thing
happened.
Nick didn’t say “pen.”
Instead, he said, “Here’s your … frindle.”
“Frindle?” Janet took her pen and
looked at him like he was nuts.
She wrinkled her nose and said,
“What’s a frindle?”
Nick grinned and said,
“You’ll find out. See ya later.”
And by the time he had run
down the street and up the steps and through the door and upstairs to his room,
it wasn’t just a big idea.
It was a plan, a whole plan,
just begging for Nick to put it into action. And “action” was Nick’s middle
name.
The next day after school
the plan began. Nick walked into the Penny Pantry store and asked the lady
behind the counter for a frindle.
She squinted at him. “A
what?”
“A frindle, please. A black
one,” and Nick smiled at her.
She leaned over closer and aimed
one ear at him. “You want what?”
“A frindle,” and this time Nick
pointed at the ballpoint pens behind her on the shelf.
“A black one, please.”
The lady handed Nick the
pen. He handed her the 49¢, said “thank you,” and left the store.
Six days later Janet stood at
the counter of the Penny Pantry.
Same store, same lady.
John had come in the day
before, and Pete the day before that, and Chris the day before that, and Dave
the day before that.
Janet was the fifth kid that
Nick had sent there to ask that woman for a frindle.
And when she asked, the lady
reached right for the pens and said, “Blue or black?”
Nick was standing one aisle
away at the candy racks, and he was grinning.
Frindle was a real word. It
meant pen. Who says frindle means pen?
“You do, Nicholas.”
Half an hour later, a group
of serious fifth graders had a meeting in Nick’s play room.
It was John, Pete, Dave,
Chris, and Janet. Add Nick, and that’s six kids—six secret agents.
They held up their right
hands and read the oath Nick had written out:
From this day on and forever,
I will never use the word PEN again.
Instead, I will use the word
FRINDLE, and I will do everything possible so others will, too!
And all six of them signed the
oath—with Nick’s frindle.
The plan would work.
Thanks, Mrs. Granger.
An enthralling exemplar of
sorts that teaches us all lessons in lorry loads, ain’t it?
And all of us have had our own
sweet shares of those lovely, delightful language teachers like Mrs. Granger,
ain’t we?
Those memorable, loveable grangers,
oops teachers, who gave us all our
love for language! ;-)
In fact, when a learner in class
is taught well enough, they tend to apply their learning to real life
situations!
And that, dearie folks,
makes the difference, ain’t it!
As the difference there is,
betwixt chalk and cheese!
So why wait!
Let’s all granger with
grandeur!
’T is not too late to seek a newer world!
image: amazondotcom
drawing: brianselznick