When I was in the fifth grade, I bought an issue of "DC Comics Presents #57" off of a spinner rack at my local bookstore, and that comic book changed my life. The combination of words and pictures did something inside my head that had never been done before, and I immediately fell in love with the medium of comics. I became a voracious comic book reader, but I never brought them to school. Instinctively, I knew that comic books didn't belong in the classroom. My parents definitely were not fans, and I was certain that my teachers wouldn't be either. After all, they never used them to teach, comic books and graphic novels were never allowed during silent sustained reading, and they were never sold at our annual book fair. Even so, I kept reading comics, and I even started making them. Eventually I became a published cartoonist, writing and drawing comic books for a living.
Saat kelas lima, saya membeli DC Comics Presents jilid 57 dari rak majalah di toko buku daerah saya, dan komik itu mengubah hidup saya. Kombinasi kata dan gambar menyebabkan sesuatu terjadi di kepala saya untuk pertama kalinya, dan saya langsung jatuh hati pada komik. Saya menjadi pembaca komik yang serakah, tapi tak pernah bawa komik ke sekolah. Saya menyadari bahwa komik tidak seharusnya ada di ruang kelas. Orang tua saya bukan penggemar komik, dan saya yakin guru-guru saya pun begitu. Komik tidak pernah digunakan untuk mengajar, komik dan novel grafis tidak pernah digunakan untuk kegiatan membaca, dan tidak pernah dijual di pameran buku tahunan di tempat kami. Meski begitu, saya tetap membaca komik, dan bahkan mulai membuat komik. Akhirnya saya menjadi kartunis, menulis dan menggambar komik sebagai mata pencaharian.
I also became a high school teacher. This is where I taught: Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland, California. I taught a little bit of math and a little bit of art, but mostly computer science, and I was there for 17 years. When I was a brand new teacher, I tried bringing comic books into my classroom. I remember telling my students on the first day of every class that I was also a cartoonist. It wasn't so much that I was planning to teach them with comics, it was more that I was hoping comics would make them think that I was cool.
Saya juga menjadi guru di Sekolah Menengah Atas. Saya mengajar di: SMA Bishop O'Dowd di Oakland, California. Saya mengajar matematika dan seni, tapi seringnya ilmu komputer, dan saya mengajar selama 17 tahun. Saat masih menjadi guru baru, saya mencoba membawa komik ke dalam kelas. Di hari pertama pelajaran, saya berkata di depan para murid, bahwa saya seorang kartunis. Alasannya bukan karena saya hendak mengajar menggunakan komik, tetapi karena saya harap komik dapat membuat mereka menganggap saya keren.
(Laughter)
(Tertawa)
I was wrong. This was the '90s, so comic books didn't have the cultural cachet that they do today. My students didn't think I was cool. They thought I was kind of a dork. And even worse, when stuff got hard in my class, they would use comic books as a way of distracting me. They would raise their hands and ask me questions like, "Mr. Yang, who do you think would win in a fight, Superman or the Hulk?"
Saya keliru. Saat itu adalah tahun 90-an, jadi komik belum membudaya seperti saat ini. Murid-murid tidak menganggap saya keren, tapi malahan dianggap norak. Dan lebih parahnya, saat ada masalah di dalam kelas, mereka akan menggunakan komik sebagai pengalih perhatian. Lalu mereka mengangkat tangan dan bertanya, "Pak Yang, menurut Bapak, siapa yang akan menang, Superman atau Hulk?"
(Laughter)
(Tertawa)
I very quickly realized I had to keep my teaching and my cartooning separate. It seemed like my instincts in fifth grade were correct. Comic books didn't belong in the classroom.
Seketika itu saya sadar bahwa mengajar dan membuat kartun harus dipisahkan. Tampaknya insting kelas lima saya benar. Komik tidak seharusnya ada di ruang kelas.
But again, I was wrong. A few years into my teaching career, I learned firsthand the educational potential of comics. One semester, I was asked to sub for this Algebra 2 class. I was asked to long-term sub it, and I said yes, but there was a problem. At the time, I was also the school's educational technologist, which meant every couple of weeks I had to miss one or two periods of this Algebra 2 class because I was in another classroom helping another teacher with a computer-related activity. For these Algebra 2 students, that was terrible. I mean, having a long-term sub is bad enough, but having a sub for your sub? That's the worst. In an effort to provide some sort of consistency for my students, I began videotaping myself giving lectures. I'd then give these videos to my sub to play for my students. I tried to make these videos as engaging as possible. I even included these little special effects. For instance, after I finished a problem on the board, I'd clap my hands, and the board would magically erase.
Tapi lagi-lagi, saya keliru. Setelah mengajar selama beberapa tahun, saya mengalami sendiri potensi mendidik menggunakan komik. Di satu semester, saya diminta untuk menggantikan kelas Aljabar 2 untuk jangka waktu yang panjang, saya setuju, tapi ada masalah. Saat itu, saya juga menjabat sebagai teknisi pendidikan di sekolah, yang artinya setiap beberapa minggu, saya terpaksa meninggalkan satu atau dua kali pelajaran, karena saya berada di kelas lain, membantu guru lainnya yang berhubungan dengan komputer. Bagi murid-murid kelas Aljabar 2, hal tersebut tidak menyenangkan. Mendapat guru pengganti jangka panjang itu tidak menyenangkan, tapi bagaimana kalau diganti lagi? Itu lebih parah. Dalam rangka memberikan pengajaran yang konsisten untuk murid-murid saya, saya mulai merekam video saat sedang menjelaskan pelajaran, lalu video itu saya serahkan pada pengganti saya untuk diputar di kelas. Saya berusaha membuat videonya semenarik mungkin. Saya bahkan menambahkan efek-efek khusus. Contohnya, saat saya menyelesaikan soal di papan tulis, saya akan menepukkan tangan, lalu papan tulisnya akan menghilang secara ajaib.
(Laughter)
(Tertawa)
I thought it was pretty awesome. I was pretty certain that my students would love it, but I was wrong.
Menurut saya itu lumayan keren. Saya sangat yakin murid-murid akan menyukai video itu, ternyata saya keliru.
(Laughter)
(Tertawa)
These video lectures were a disaster. I had students coming up to me and saying things like, "Mr. Yang, we thought you were boring in person, but on video, you are just unbearable."
Video-video itu gagal total. Banyak murid menemui saya dan berkata, "Pak Yang, kami pikir Bapak orang yang membosankan, tapi di video, Bapak lebih parah."
(Laughter)
(Tertawa)
So as a desperate second attempt, I began drawing these lectures as comics. I'd do these very quickly with very little planning. I'd just take a sharpie, draw one panel after the other, figuring out what I wanted to say as I went. These comics lectures would come out to anywhere between four and six pages long, I'd xerox these, give them to my sub to hand to my students. And much to my surprise, these comics lectures were a hit. My students would ask me to make these for them even when I could be there in person. It was like they liked cartoon me more than actual me.
Selanjutnya, saya mulai menggambar pelajaran dalam bentuk komik. Saya melakukannya dengan cepat dan minim perencanaan. Saya hanya mengambil spidol, menggambar panel demi panel, memikirkan yang ingin saya katakan sambil menggambar. Komik berisi pelajaran ini biasanya berjumlah empat atau enam halaman, saya memfotokopi komik itu lalu menyerahkan kepada guru pengganti. Dan saya terkejut, karena komik itu sukses besar. Murid-murid meminta saya membuat komik, meskipun saya bisa hadir di kelas. Rupanya mereka lebih menyukai versi kartun saya dibanding yang asli.
(Laughter)
(Tertawa)
This surprised me, because my students are part of a generation that was raised on screens, so I thought for sure they would like learning from a screen better than learning from a page. But when I talked to my students about why they liked these comics lectures so much, I began to understand the educational potential of comics. First, unlike their math textbooks, these comics lectures taught visually. Our students grow up in a visual culture, so they're used to taking in information that way. But unlike other visual narratives, like film or television or animation or video, comics are what I call permanent. In a comic, past, present and future all sit side by side on the same page. This means that the rate of information flow is firmly in the hands of the reader. When my students didn't understand something in my comics lecture, they could just reread that passage as quickly or as slowly as they needed. It was like I was giving them a remote control over the information. The same was not true of my video lectures, and it wasn't even true of my in-person lectures. When I speak, I deliver the information as quickly or slowly as I want. So for certain students and certain kinds of information, these two aspects of the comics medium, its visual nature and its permanence, make it an incredibly powerful educational tool.
Ini mengejutkan, karena murid-murid saya adalah bagian dari generasi yang dibesarkan dengan layar, jadi saya kira mereka akan menyukai belajar melalui layar dibandingkan melalui lembaran kertas. Saat saya bertanya pada murid-murid, kenapa mereka menyukai komik yang saya buat, saya mulai memahami potensi komik dalam dunia pendidikan. Pertama, tidak seperti buku pelajaran matematika, komik mengajarkan materi secara visual. Murid-murid kita besar di lingkungan visual, jadi mereka terbiasa memahami informasi secara visual. Tapi bukan seperti cara visual lainnya, contohnya film, televisi, animasi, atau video, menurut saya komik itu permanen. Dalam komik, masa lalu, sekarang, dan masa depan letaknya berdampingan. Artinya, jumlah informasi yang diterima berada dalam kendali pembaca. Saat ada murid yang tidak mengerti suatu materi di komik saya, mereka hanya perlu membaca ulang sesuai kecepatan membaca masing-masing. Itu seperti memberikan remote control kepada mereka. Hal tersebut tidak ada di video yang saya buat, dan bahkan tidak ada dalam pengajaran yang saya berikan. Saat saya berbicara, kecepatan adalah kewenangan saya. Bagi beberapa murid dan beberapa jenis informasi, dua aspek yang didapat melalui komik, yaitu visual dan sifat permanen, menjadikan komik sebagai sarana pendidikan yang sangat berguna.
When I was teaching this Algebra 2 class, I was also working on my master's in education at Cal State East Bay. And I was so intrigued by this experience that I had with these comics lectures that I decided to focus my final master's project on comics. I wanted to figure out why American educators have historically been so reluctant to use comic books in their classrooms. Here's what I discovered.
Saat saya mengajar di kelas Aljabar 2, saya juga sedang menempuh pendidikan di Cal State East Bay. Saya tertarik dengan pengalaman saya menggunakan komik dalam mengajar, hingga saya memutuskan untuk memusatkan topik penelitian saya pada komik. Saya penasaran mengapa pendidik Amerika, ragu untuk menggunakan komik dalam kegiatan belajar mengajar. Berikut adalah temuan saya.
Comic books first became a mass medium in the 1940s, with millions of copies selling every month, and educators back then took notice. A lot of innovative teachers began bringing comics into their classrooms to experiment. In 1944, the "Journal of Educational Sociology" even devoted an entire issue to this topic. Things seemed to be progressing. Teachers were starting to figure things out. But then along comes this guy. This is child psychologist Dr. Fredric Wertham, and in 1954, he wrote a book called "Seduction of the Innocent," where he argues that comic books cause juvenile delinquency.
Komik pertama kali menjadi media massa pada tahun 1940-an, sebanyak jutaan cetakan terjual setiap bulannya, dan para pendidik menyadarinya. Banyak guru inovatif mulai membawa komik ke dalam ruang kelas untuk bereksperimen. Pada tahun 1944, "Jurnal Sosiologi Pendidikan" bahkan mengkhususkan satu jilid untuk membahas topik tersebut. Semuanya mulai berkembang. Para guru mulai menyadari perubahan yang terjadi. Namun datanglah seorang pria. Dia adalah psikolog anak, Dr. Frederic Wertham. Pada 1954, dia menulis buku berjudul "Seduction of The Innocent," dia berpendapat bahwa komik menyebabkan kenakalan remaja.
(Laughter)
(Tertawa)
He was wrong. Now, Dr. Wertham was actually a pretty decent guy. He spent most of his career working with juvenile delinquents, and in his work he noticed that most of his clients read comic books. What Dr. Wertham failed to realize was in the 1940s and '50s, almost every kid in America read comic books.
Dia keliru. Dr. Wertham sebenarnya pria yang lumayan baik. Dia sering menghabiskan waktu bersama kriminal remaja, karena hal tersebut dia menyadari kebanyakan kliennya membaca komik. Dr. Wertham tidak memahami bahwa di era 40 dan 50-an, hampir semua anak di Amerika membaca komik.
Dr. Wertham does a pretty dubious job of proving his case, but his book does inspire the Senate of the United States to hold a series of hearings to see if in fact comic books caused juvenile delinquency. These hearings lasted for almost two months. They ended inconclusively, but not before doing tremendous damage to the reputation of comic books in the eyes of the American public.
Pembuktian dari Dr. Wertham sedikit meragukan, tapi bukunya menginspirasi Senat Amerika Serikat untuk melaksanakan pemeriksaan, guna membuktikan bahwa komik menyebabkan kenakalan remaja. Pemeriksaan tersebut berlangsung selama hampir dua bulan. Hasilnya tidak meyakinkan, tapi sayangnya berhasil merusak reputasi komik di mata penduduk Amerika.
After this, respectable American educators all backed away, and they stayed away for decades. It wasn't until the 1970s that a few brave souls started making their way back in. And it really wasn't until pretty recently, maybe the last decade or so, that comics have seen more widespread acceptance among American educators.
Setelah itu, para pendidik Amerika yang dihormati mundur, dan menghilang selama beberapa dekade. Baru pada tahun 1970-an, beberapa pemberani mulai kembali. Dan baru belakangan ini, mungkin sekitar satu dekade, komik mulai diterima secara luas di kalangan pendidik Amerika.
Comic books and graphic novels are now finally making their way back into American classrooms and this is even happening at Bishop O'Dowd, where I used to teach. Mr. Smith, one of my former colleagues, uses Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" in his literature and film class, because that book gives his students the language with which to discuss the relationship between words and images. Mr. Burns assigns a comics essay to his students every year. By asking his students to process a prose novel using images, Mr. Burns asks them to think deeply not just about the story but also about how that story is told. And Ms. Murrock uses my own "American Born Chinese" with her English 1 students. For her, graphic novels are a great way of fulfilling a Common Core Standard. The Standard states that students ought to be able to analyze how visual elements contribute to the meaning, tone and beauty of a text.
Komik dan novel grafis akhirnya menemukan cara untuk kembali ke ruang kelas di Amerika, dan bahkan terjadi di SMA Bishop O'Dowd, tempat saya dulu mengajar. Pak Smith, salah satu rekan kerja saya, menggunakan buku Scott McCloud, "Memahami Komik" untuk kelas sastra dan film, karena buku itu membekali murid-muridnya dengan bahasa untuk mendiskusikan hubungan antara kata dan gambar. Pak Burns menugaskan esay komik kepada murid-muridnya setiap tahun. Murid-muridnya diminta untuk menelaah novel menggunakan gambar, mereka diminta untuk berpikir lebih dalam, bukan hanya mengenai ceritanya, tapi juga mengenai penyampaian ceritanya. Dan Ibu Murrock menggunakan buku saya, "Warga Amerika Keturunan Tiongkok" untuk murid di kelas Bahasa Inggris 1. Baginya, novel grafis adalah cara yang bagus untuk memenuhi standar Common Core. Standar tersebut mengharuskan murid mampu menganalisa bagaimana elemen visual memengaruhi makna, nada, dan keindahan teks.
Over in the library, Ms. Counts has built a pretty impressive graphic novel collection for Bishop O'Dowd. Now, Ms. Counts and all of her librarian colleagues have really been at the forefront of comics advocacy, really since the early '80s, when a school library journal article stated that the mere presence of graphic novels in the library increased usage by about 80 percent and increased the circulation of noncomics material by about 30 percent.
Di perpustakaan, Ibu Counts telah menyediakan koleksi novel grafis yang mengagumkan untuk SMA Bishop O'Dowd. Ibu Counts dan semua rekan-rekan pustakawannya menjadi pelopor dalam hal penggunaan komik, sejak awal tahun 80-an, saat artikel tentang perpustakaan sekolah menyatakan bahwa kemunculan novel grafis di perpustakaan meningkatkan jumlah pengguna sebesar 80 persen, dan meningkatkan sirkulasi materi non-komik sebesar 30 persen.
Inspired by this renewed interest from American educators, American cartoonists are now producing more explicitly educational content for the K-12 market than ever before. A lot of this is directed at language arts, but more and more comics and graphic novels are starting to tackle math and science topics. STEM comics graphics novels really are like this uncharted territory, ready to be explored.
Terinspirasi dari ketertarikan para pendidik Amerika, saat ini kartunis Amerika membuat konten edukasi yang lebih eksplisit bagi kelompok anak TK-SD. Kebanyakan diarahkan pada seni bahasa, tapi semakin banyak komik dan novel grafis yang mulai membahas matematika dan sains. Novel grafis Sains Teknik Matematika seolah menjadi wilayah tidak terdata, yang siap untuk dijelajahi.
America is finally waking up to the fact that comic books do not cause juvenile delinquency.
Warga Amerika akhirnya menyadari fakta, bahwa komik tidak menyebabkan kenakalan remaja.
(Laughter)
(Tertawa)
That they really do belong in every educator's toolkit. There's no good reason to keep comic books and graphic novels out of K-12 education. They teach visually, they give our students that remote control. The educational potential is there just waiting to be tapped by creative people like you.
Bahwa komik pantas menjadi bagian dari perlengkapan pendidik. Tidak ada alasan kuat menjauhkan komik dan novel grafis dari pendidikan anak TK-SD. Komik mengajar secara visual, memberikan kendali kepada murid-murid. Potensi komik dalam pendidikan sudah tersedia, menunggu untuk dijamah oleh orang-orang kreatif seperti Anda sekalian.
Thank you.
Terima kasih.
(Applause)
(Tepuk tangan)