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The Cliffs Notes Crutch
Cliff Notes are not academically honest if you are using them as the only source for information about a book. They should never be used as a "hook." That's what's wrong- students have too many choices of how to get out of doing the work. It is time consuming to read a book, but should we teach them that learning is free ride? Presented with this debate in high school or college then I probably would have been pro Cliff Notes. However, times have changed. You are finding more students who hate to read and use Cliff Notes like a big crutch. When I was in school you had fewer people who hated to read. Not now. With the arrival of getting something for nothing and putting in less to get more no one takes reading as seriously as they once did. I don't want to put the entire Cliff Notes industry out of business. Cliff Notes have a value if you choose to use it as a companion guide to a book you're reading. Some people just can't read everything and understand it on the first try. Some can't read a book and understand it after many tries. That's why there is a need for Cliff Notes. I don't believe they were designed to help you be lazy. However, I believe they could be used for that purpose. Because laziness is what happens in the end. Of course I can also add that they did come in handy for me when I had had four types of literature and writing classes and all required me to read books that were thousands of pages long in a limited span of time. So I chose to read two of the books and use Cliff Notes for the other two books. But most of the time my usage of those prized notes was based on laziness. I have to be honest here Cliff Notes are the fuel for laziness. That doesn't mean that when I was a student I didn't love to read. If I had been given assignments to read Grapes of Wrath, White Teeth, or Shogun I'd have had all of them read in possibly a week.
However that's leisure reading.Not the same as being given Chaucer.
But even if I had of used Cliff Notes I probably later in my life would have had that itch that made me feel as if I was missing something and would be compelled to buy the books I left behind and read them anyway. But then again that's just me I'm not speaking for everyone. There used to be a world where you were forced to read the entire book. If you hated to read-too bad. On the bright side you would at least gain a respect for the book because you had to endure it for weeks feeling as if you were in prison labor camp. If you loved to read then the book would always be a part of you and maybe in the future you might add it to your personal collection or refer the book someone who hasn't read it. For those living in those eras who felt forced to read a book then you hoped for a day that you could get away with knowing the characters, antagonist, protagonist, plot, main dialogue in less than an hour. I'm sure those that hoped were happy because unfortunately that world of reading a book cover to cover had ended by the time I came into existence. We had a new way to chop through a two to three hundred page book-Cliff Notes. The beauty of it was it didn't require you to think because it did all the thinking for you. All you had to do was grasp a basic knowledge of how to make a sensible sentence and paragraph. Make sure you stay on topic-you can't write about the American Revolution then stray off into WWII. Add that with a knack at how to click spell check and grammar, and be able to hit that magic formatting button and bingo! You now have a paper worth giving to your teacher who's probably so bogged down with papers that she'll give you an A just because the paper is formatted correctly and has good grammar and punctuation. Don't get me wrong I used Cliff Notes in high school with much bravado and flair. I thought that it was the greatest thing to human creation other than the car (I was sixteen and loved to drive). I could crack it open and just flip to whatever point in the story I needed and cram and copy to my heart's content.
I remember how happy I was receiving that A on one of my English paper's and how quickly I tossed the paper, the book The Jungle, and my cliff note book on The Jungle happily in the nearest trash receptacle. I was elated-until I entered college. I never thought that book would haunt me again.
My literature professor was speaking on the use of propaganda in fiction and happened ask, "Have any of you read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle?" I threw my hand up ready to leap from the chair with eagerness. I was the only one who did this. Then I vaguely remember him asking this question, "So how do you think Jurgis losing his wife Ona and child set the stage for him to want to join the socialist movement?", I gave him a blank stare and said, "He had a wife?"
Cliff Notes should be used by students but with caution. There's a difference between someone who hates to read and needs to cram before Tuesday's paper due on Treasure Island and the person who wants to get a better understanding of the book. Think of Cliff Notes as being a cold cheese burger and fries and the book being hot Fillet Mignon with scalloped potatoes. Yes, both will satisfy your hunger but only one you would take pleasure from eating (there are some who would enjoy eating the cold cheese burger).
You need to have a tool to bounce your ideas off the characters, plot, subplot, etc. Cliff Notes are that tool. Imagine that you're in a room where you have five to ten people show up for a discussion about a certain author's latest novel. Everyone has read this novel. There will be some present who can understand a little, some who understand a lot and some who don't have a clue. The beauty of it is that all of these minds together in that room can attain a better understanding just by bouncing around their ideas about the characters and plot around. Cliff Notes takes all of those ideas from minds that would normally be present at a book club discussion and pulls their ideas together into one little book to give you one factual opinion of that book to go on. Then you can find out if you're on the right track or somewhere stuck knee deep in muck.
Note I said opinion. Because you can't agree or disagree with the material in Cliff Notes until you've read the book.
Don't be alarmed. Yes, you heard correctly, I said disagree. Cliff Notes are just a guide-it just points you in the right direction. It is no different from a Frommer's travel guide which highlights key locales for you to see, tells you where to go, how to get there and how much it will cost you. But nothing comes together unless you travel to these destinations.
Cliff Notes keeps you on the path to understand the book but it doesn't understand it for you. You are the one who has to interpret if you are getting the same message or maybe a better message-after you read the book.
I have disagreed many times. People, (even places depending on the locale) can be just too complex to be broken down into lists of facts-even if they are only works of fiction dreamed up by the author.
This is why students who depend solely on Cliff Notes write papers that are missing how their brains churned out the material they read. Their papers sound so robotic and lifeless. You could read a ton of papers like that and have no choice but to feel sympathy for the professor and teacher who has to read this rubbish. Sure the student can ace their exam on the book but they can't write a paper on what they "thought" the author was trying to convey to save their lives. They don't realize that the wording in Cliff Notes is like an instructional manual and not meant for you formalize your ideas. You want to formalize an opinion then you have to read the book. That's why Cliff Notes on their own shouldn't be used. Cliff Notes can't be compared to a book in its entirety. And Cliff Notes can't draw you inside the world of the author. Cliff Notes will only explain that world. But you won't know anything about that world because you weren't there.
I say this because if you're asked to write a paper about Lord of the Flies and you decide to either cram everything from Cliff Notes or even copy word for word everything out of the book you won't be gaining any real insight, but you will be able to write a five page paper overnight and take it hot off the presses in the morning so you can present to your instructor. |
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