Writing wrongs
Pasadena’s youngest scribes use words to help build a perfect world
By Kevin Uhrich 12/11/2008
When I was asked by Jennifer Sarja of the YouthInkwell Writing Center, an independent writing school for students of all ages, to help judge a contest among 60 Pasadena elementary school students who had ranked as semi-finalists among more than 150 entrants, I jumped at the chance.
Many, many young people have come through the doors of this newspaper over the past decade. And many of them have gone on to do relatively great things in journalism, in both academia and in the so-called “real” world. Perhaps some of these kids would do the same. You never know.
After reading all 60 entries — each written on the theme of envisioning a perfect world — I can honestly say that I hope they do show up one day, because they were excellent, well-reasoned, well-constructed pieces, and I would publish them all in the paper if there were room.
Some of the kids turned their own sometimes tragic personal experiences into tales of hope and compassion. Other students — competing in three categories of first through third, fourth and fifth and sixth through eighth graders — were not so optimistic about their futures, or that of poor old planet Earth. In every case, though, the kids were hipper than we sometimes give them credit for to the mess that we’ve made of the world — war, poverty, injustice, racism, economic collapse, environmental decay.
Some of the kids — and all of them were incredibly empathetic toward the oppressed and downtrodden, with one boy saying there was no excuse for homelessness — saw little hope, yet they still offered solutions. On the other hand, some were extremely optimistic, putting great faith in technology — one of them creating a machine that makes rain clouds for water to drink and to sprinkle life-sustaining noodle soup on impoverished people. Others turned to science — and science fiction — for answers in other, far less fortunate planets far out in space. And a handful of kids set to poetry their visions of tomorrow’s perfect world.
One potentially disturbing aspect of all this, though, was that the contest itself seemed to be exceedingly imperfect — pitting rich private school students against less affluent public school kids, many of whom wrote their stories longhand, while private school counterparts printed their stories from computers. The obvious digital divide separating these kids only added to a gnawing suspicion that the private school children had received better overall educations and would walk away with all the prizes.
But after reading over all the entries many times, I can happily report that did not happen. The public school kids represented themselves and their schools splendidly.
Originally, I was told to judge the entries by the overall idea of the story. But, after reading through all the entries several times, I decided to use some of my own criteria. They were: imagination, presentation/organization, expression and language proficiency. Since I look for clarity in my own writers, I threw that one in, too.
One quick way to determine the clarity of a story is by writing a headline for it. The easier a story is to read and immediately understand, the easier it is to come up with a catchy three- or four-word headline to sum it all up. Or at least that’s how it works with me, a guy who reads and edits dozens of stories and news and arts items a week, and then writes headlines for most of them. When I was finished, each story that made the final cut had two, three and in some cases four new headlines — even if it already had one, which some of the stories did.
In the end, we were unable to run them all, although I wish we could have. But we did publish the top stories in each category.
It was more than an honor and pleasure to serve as a judge for this contest: It was fun. But even more than that, this brief peek into the minds of these talented kids was an eye-opening experience. As you too will see, they all have a lot of intelligent things to say, and lots of good ideas for making the world a better — if not perfect — place.
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