Notes from the Wise: Bringing Professional Study Notes into the Classroom

Abstract

yellow striped paperbacks-stacked on my desk in public view. Blasphemy in a high school English class? No, reality. I had decided to bring Cliffs Notes, Monarch Guides, and samples of every available professional study guide into my classroom for a two-week lesson, from the Wise (subtitled for educators: If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em). For too long, English teachers have cringed at the thought of students touching, much less referring to, professional study guides. The fact is, however, it's a losing battle. Cliffs Notes, which controls 80% of the professional study notes market (Meeks 1989, 206), has sold over 100 million copies worldwide (There 1995), as many as five million copies a year (Barrette 1994). The Cliffs Notes guide to The Scarlet Letter hit USA Today's Top Twenty Paperback Bestseller List in 1995, and one critic remarked that the Cliffs Notes version was clearer than the Demi Moore movie (Corliss 1995, 94). Al Pacino, in his 1996 documentary Looking for Richard, brandishes a Richard III Cliffs Notes. The Lincoln, Nebraska, firm publishes more than 200 titles, 22 of them on multicultural literature (Authors 1995), and advertises heavily on MTV (Barrette 1994), in teenage magazines, and in college newspapers. A few novelists and high school teachers, however, are getting into the act. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, author of the young adult book Farewell to Manzanar, and Rudolfo Anaya, author of Bless Me, Ultima, collaborated with the Cliffs Notes writers for their respective novels (Authors 1995). Though Amy Tan didn't assist with Cliffs Notes for The Joy Luck Club, both the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and The Chicago Tribune report that Tan brought her personal copy of Cliffs to speaking engagements. When stumped by an audience member's question in Miami, Tan replied that she didn't remember, but promised to find the answer and reached for Cliffs Notes (Cazares 1995). Gary Carey, editor at Cliffs Notes, says he prefers to have high school teachers with master's degrees author the Notes intended for a high school audience, and some do. High school teachers also request Cliffs to publish new titles for works with which they are unfamiliar.