The Personal Side of High Stakes Testing

Dear Son,

You are eight years old, soon to be nine, and tomorrow you go to school to take the first of what will unfortunately be many, many, many state level high stakes tests that too many people believe say everything about not just you and your mental acuity but everything about your teacher, your school, and your community.  Sadly, this couldn't be further from the truth as these things are just tests.  They are a single snapshot from a single perspective of how well you seem to grasp some academic concepts: reading, math, science, a sense of history.  As such, I would never tell you not to care about them, just as I would never tell you to not care about school.  Learning and education are the single most important thing in your life right now and should be for a good long while.

Yet the world around you has chosen to blow the importance of these tests so far beyond normal that now we must add artificial weight to them.  And because I do not possess the tools to change that, I am sorry.  I am sorry that as you went to bed tonight the only thing you wanted to talk about was how many questions might be on the test.  Because, you see, I care what the test asks about because that's the nature of learning and growing.  Will it ask you questions about ancient Egypt or modern China?  Those are wonderful and important things to know.  Know your world; know math; know the planets and ask about gravity.  In fact, let's learn about gravity together because, damn, it still confuses the hell out of me.

But it kills my soul when we talk about whether the multiple choice questions will be in this format or that for that is truly irrelevant information to the cosmos.  So don't get me wrong: I hope you do well this week.  I hope you walk into all 6 days of this test (Monday through Monday) and find it easier than you expected.  I hope each afternoon you look over at me when I get home and ask, "What's the big deal about these things anyway?"  And I hope if you do hit a snag, a question that seems really obtuse, that you stop, take your time, think it through and answer it to the best of your ability.

I hope you do well not because I want to see perfect scores.

Not because I want to compare you to others.

Not because I think it says something about you or your teachers.

See, I want you do to well so you can grow up and end these things for your children.  Survive this hideous hydra-like beast so that when you are done and out and grown... you can slay it once and for all.

Dad

Just An Ordinary Tuesday Miracle

Do one thing everyday that scares you.

Several weeks ago, before Spring Break, several teachers in the English department with me got together to brainstorm how we should structure this coming 2 single week remediation blocks of time our school was putting in place starting April 15th.  We had a lot of options combined with a lot of restrictions.  Make it fun! But don't let kids get out of hand!  Make it educational!  But don't let kids be bored or fall asleep!  Relate it to state standards and the testing format and the individual student needs in your room and the school climate as a whole and whatever you do don't - don't - ask for help funding any of it.  Typical edu-babble stuff.  But the heads that came together settled on a pretty good plan: take the AP Language students in my classes, for whom the end-of-course reading test was a breeze and ask them to help work in a one-on-one fashion with some of the kids in other 11th grade English classes, for whom the reading test was a literal barrier to graduating high school.  Create the best and most powerful form of teaching and learning known to man: the personal kind.

I have to admit that I worked for a good week on how I would approach my kids to ask for their help.  I didn't want to deceive them into thinking this would be easy or every minute would be barrel-of-monkeys fun but at the same time I thought this was an opportunity in the most up-close-and-personal way anyone could ask for that we could bridge the single biggest divide at school.  Once I realized that my kids would benefit from this too, the appeal wrote itself.

It was melodramatic in places but never dishonest.  "What if that hour a day," I remember saying, "is the longest period of time in their entire day that someone listens to them in a positive way and helps them?"  That might be over-the-top but no one who works in a public school in this country could refute its essential truth.  See, in the end, I hoped to dispel the stereotypes that tend to get built up in schools on both sides of the divide.  I wanted to tear down the sense that some of my students labor under ("Well, they're all just lazy over there") as well as misconceptions other students have about them ("Well, they're in AP classes because they're just plain smart").  This goal would be combined with the more academic one: helping students who otherwise might not pass this standardized test to actually pass it.

And that was my greatest appeal.  To my kids: "You hate this standardized test and you have every right to.  But you are not the ones it is out to get.  So what if you foiled not just this test but the suits and ties in Richmond who made this test and sit so smugly in their offices thinking no average level English kid could pass this test?  What if through your effort and your attention and your work you helped that student whom the test knows can't pass it... to not just pass it but blow it out of the water?"

It worked.  I had double-digit signups in all my classes.  Then I got nervous.  What if it didn't go well?  What if personalities clashed?  What if a series of infinitesimal things added up to a gigantic failure?

worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum

So this week we started.  Monday I spent 5 minutes with my kids fielding some questions and generally going over how things would work.  It was all very structured: icebreaker activities, a little bit of reading comprehension but nothing deadly dull.  The first half was the getting-to-know-you bit and it went... well.  Actually, better than that.  It was like kids from different sides of the country or even other countries were meeting for the first time and finding... they had a lot in common.  There were some great conversation starters.

One question went like this: Which administrator really gets on your nerves?  Two students from different classes would pair up and something like this emerged:

"Hey I'm Kylie."
"I'm Jaron."
"So, what answer did you give to this one?"
"I said Mr. Brown."
"Oh, really, like, why?"
" 'Cause he always up in everyone's business when he don't need to be, you know?"
"You mean like dress code?"
"Yeah."
"He busted a friend of mine last week for that.  So stupid."
"Yeah, one time he told me..."

And there they went.  Two students who normally wouldn't even look at each other in the hallway much less smile or converse found pretty neat common ground.  Those kinds of conversations typically morphed into ones about classes and subjects and friends and family and home and...

It was working; it was really really working.

Tuesday was the next test.  Would these somewhat forced friendships stand up over more than a single hour?  Would the kids want to work together again?  Tuesday was a bit more academic with tiny bits of test prep thrown in.  Average level kids read a passage, got some help with pronunciation and vocabulary, then together with my AP kids banged away at some main idea and tone questions.  There was prodding and questioning in the right places: "Why do you think he phrased it that way?"  "What point is she making?"

I rewarded the kids who got top scores with candy (always a winner with teens) and dangled the reward before those who came close.  Another chance; another little passage and this time, you can do it!  90% or bust kids!  All of that went really well.  I don't know that we changed comprehension levels or reading skills or anything so grand.  But the average level kids spent an hour working on skills without the fear that an adult was watching of grading or judging.  It was just two kids with a common goal.  (That goal being candy; I mean, let's not kid ourselves here.)

As the period closed down, I let them stop about 5 minutes early.  "Take a break," I said.  "Chat it up; bell will ring soon.  Enjoy your candy."

Then, as I was passing a pair of students, I overheard them talking, probably picking up the fragment of a conversation from earlier.

"So, you were saying..." one of my kids prompted.
"Yeah, like she was all screaming at me and I wasn't gonna take that so I walked out 'cause don't no body scream at me."
"Where did you go?"
"Naw, it was late and I didn't want to go like all the way to my aunt's house so I slept in the back seat of the car while my mom cooled down."
"Just like hung out there?"
"Sorta.  I mean, her boyfriend showed up so I didn't go back in the house until like 2 in the morning but whatever.  Ain't like she never thrown me out of the house before."
I snatched a quick glance at my kid and her face, her expression will be forever imprinted on my brain.  I will never forget because it spoke volumes.  It said:

My God.  It's you.  I know all about you but only because I've read about you or heard about you from my teacher's.  I'm a doctor's kid and I've never not been allowed in my own house at night.  But you're here in front of me and not in the words on a page or in a newspaper article.  I'm not trying to visualize you or imagine anything about you because you are here in front of me telling me this story and I can't believe my god you exist here in this school in the classroom right next to mine and somehow I never knew and you're here.  It's you.

My student didn't say any of that out loud.  The bell rang a few moments later and the other girl smiled and hurried out.  Another bell to another class to another teacher.  Nothing this kid hadn't dealt with before.

Except someone sat and listened to her in the most positive and re-affirming way for possibly the longest period of time anyone would that entire day.

The Rational and the Subversive

Still plugging through Zen.  Ran into page 150 earlier today and two adjacent paragraphs hit me with completely opposite effects.  The first:

The real University, he said, has no specific location.  It owns no property, pays no salaries and receives no material dues.  The real University is a state of mind.  It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries and which does not exist at any specific location.  It's a state of mind which is regenerated throughout the centuries by a body of people who traditionally carry the title of professor, but even that title is not part of he real University.  The real University is nothing less than the continuing body of reason itself.

Most of this sits well with me as it echoes Thoreau in my head.  Tear down the structures, the things of this world that tend to represent thought and intelligence and wonder and yet still I have my mind and in my mind I have the images and feelings associated with those things.  Similarly, tear down the institutions responsible for instilling learning within us, deny them accreditation, do what you will and the process of learning and thinking and growing will still take place.  In this way, great education is not contained within walls anywhere, a sentiment the great thinkers of our race would agree with (Socrates, Twain, Whitman, Hemingway).  It also suggests the idea that teaching is something pretty innate as it contains the sum total of the desire to help another.  In this way it is an expression of ego but also of altruism.

The next part thus:

In addition to this state of mind, "reason," there's a legal entity which is unfortunately called by the same name but which is quite another thing.  This is a nonprofit corporation, a branch of the state with a specific address... But this second university, the legal corporation, cannot teach, does not generate new knowledge or evaluate ideas.  It is not the real University at all.

This discredits learning in a way that contradicts what I see in the first graph.  The narrator/author seems to want to separate the experience of school from learning.  Ok, he has precedent there.  Twain: "I never let schooling interfere with my education."  But the difference, I think, is the belief that learning CAN happen anywhere.  It is not confined to the classroom ("I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately") but neither is it, by definition, mutually exclusive of the classroom.  To defend the first and refute the second is illogical.  University structures may suffer flaws, as all organizations do, but until our culture produces enough roaming Socrates to meet with the masses under the tree of knowledge, then we need organization.  Question the method this learning tradition operates on, sure; but do not demolish its foundation or you remove the argument for learning altogether.

The Kantian Side of Sparkplugs

Suppose a child is born devoid of all senses; he has no sight, no hearing, no touch, no smell, no taste--nothing.  There's no way whatsoever for him to receive any sensations from the outside world.  And suppose this child is fed intravenously and otherwise attended to and kept alive for eighteen years in this state of existence.  The question is then asked: Does this eighteen-year-old person have a thought in his head?  If so, where does it come from?

Years ago, well decades ago, I was perusing the bookcases in the E.C. Glass library when I came across a book that looked mildly interesting:  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M Pirsig.  I read the jacket cover, picked it up with the intent to check it out but never did.  Why?  Who knows.  Did I see some Shakespeare or John Donne?  That sounds like the 17 year old me.  So imagine my surprise when, again perusing the stacks of the high school where I became myself, I again found this book.  This time, I thought, I take it up.  Here and now with all this reading and learning behind me surely the book will resonate.

The excerpt from above is from one of the sections the narrator describes as a Chautauqua, which a quick Google search indicates is a kind of "adult education movement" in the United States some time ago.  A scan of its history suggests it was a kind of pseudo-intellectual movement for somewhat non-intellectuals in the country to espouse whatever was on their minds.  I'm instantly on my guard: there's way too much anti-intellectualism in this country as it is, if you ask me.  "I'm not smart and I'm proud of it" seems to be the new American motto.  "Science is for sissies" and so forth.

So the story, such as it is, divides itself between these metaphysical/spiritual ramblings and a loose narrative about a motorcycle ride across the northern states of the country, from Michigan to Montana.  The narrator, his son, and a couple of friends.  He's aloof in a "I'm thinking about big things" kind of way.  And some of the big things are interesting: Kant and the history of empiricism.  But for the most part the narrative seems to be a gimmick to hold his dis-separate thoughts together.  As such this reminds me of another philosophy book I read a couple of year ago, Sophie's Choice.  My response to this book is much my response to that one.

Meh.

I like spilling words as much as the next person but there's something about philosophy books couched in literary traditions that don't sit well with me.  Here's an intriguing narrative, the author seems to hold out there.  And while you're on this cycle with me let me expostulate what beauty is and the empirical rationale for finding both truth and beauty in the world.

Sigh.  Can I get off at the next town?

My 17 year old self was probably wise to take a detour with Shakespeare, whose philosophy is second to his art, as it should be.  Hamlet provides us a more complex and powerful world view than any pop-philosophy book ever has.  There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreampt of in your philosophy, Horatio.

Some of this analysis is not just though.  I have to admit to being turned off on page 128; I've never found my way back to the author or narrator after he said: "From that agony [read: ancient man] of bare existence to modern life can be soberly described only as upward progress."  Not sure that giant factories that pollute our rivers and deforest our planet, weapons that can annihilate us several times over, and technology that pulls us away from sunlight and fresh air can be described by any rational human being as "progress".

I suspect 50 more pages and I'll be returning to my Thoreau and Whitman as replenishment for my soul.

Pathos and Les Miserable (Part 2)

A little less than a month ago I laid out my initial argument for our sense of pathos in Hugo's perennial masterpiece, "Les Mis".  I suggested that the convention of our affection as being Val Jean and his charge, Cossette, were wrongly founded.  If we are indeed asked to "pity" those in miserable circumstances, then surely Hugo as a relevant artist of words would provide us with reasons to feel such pity.  My thrust, then, was three-fold: Javert, Eponine, and ultimately Fantine.  I consider that side of the argument "the bright side" or the optimistic one.  At least, as far as one can be optimistic in a book (and time period) of pretty complete despair.  This time, though, comes the negativity.

I knew even after my first reading that while Jean Val Jean was cut after the martyr figure, the heroic Victorian man who sacrifices all he has for another, and thus at least mostly deserved the pathos that Hugo seems to artificial dress him in, the little tyke, this Cossette, had none of this.  I couldn't initially say why; but now I think I can.  And it has everything to do with conscious ignorance.

Cossette is born into ignorance, one might argue.  Her mother leaves her at a very young age with the almost Dickensian Thenardiers.  They manipulate her and her mother for nothing short of a king's ransom.  They fake report illnesses of the child to exact more money from the mother.  This of course leads Fantine to her ultimate debasement and one could argue her death.  But Cossette is never aware of any of this.

What does she know?  She knows she's unhappy.  She knows that the Thenardiers' children get better clothes, better toys and dolls, a better life (such as it is - though one could argue it's all squalor).  She is never aware of her mother's last desperate hour to see her; she is never aware that Val Jean, whom she comes to call Father, risks everything including his life several times over to keep her safe - not only safe but comfortable and happy.  After he liberates her from the Thenardiers and escapes Javert it is some time before we see the two of them again.  And when we do, how impoverished are they?  Well, see, that's the thing.  He has set up shop in Paris and works here and there providing her with pretty nice things.  She gets a childhood that most Victorian girls of impoverished backgrounds never get: walks in the park, pretty clothes. Oh and love.

The love triangle was inevitable, I suppose, as most Victorian literature functions on it in one way or another. But I wonder if that's half the problem: Marius love Cossette; Cossette loves Marius back (once she knows who he is) but they can't meet; so Marius uses Eponine to get to Cossette.  And of course, Eponine loves Marius.  While some love triangles function dramatically it strikes me that the most notable instances of love triangles in literature are comedic, not serious.  (Think Shakespeare in Twelfth Night.)  So this begs the question: why do we feel bad for Cossette again?  Because she born in bad circumstances?  Sweetie, get in line.  Because she can't be with the one she loves?  The one she saw across the park for the first time yesterday afternoon.  Once again, see Shakespeare who did the distance-lover-thing first and better.  Anything left?  Pity her because Marius is compelled to return to the barricade and fight in the Revolution?  Except he survives, once again, because Val Jean risks his life to drag him (unconscious lover that he is) to freedom.

I think it's the Eponine thing that really bugs me.  Marius is making a choice: the more beautiful woman?  The one who appears wealthier?  The one who is out of reach?  That's a pretty classic trope: want the thing you don't have (Cossette) rather than what's faithful and right in front of you (Eponine).  And while it doesn't make me like Marius, at least I know his type.  But Cossette.  I can't pity her.  Because she never knows any of this.  Hell, she allows Val Jean to be cast out while her new husband thinks he is a Royalist traitor.  How's THAT for thanks?  And when they both figure it out: his deathbed of course.

In this way, she's the ultimate one percenter.  Born to squalor and degradation.  Lifted out by someone kind and benevolent.  Completely unconscious of her fortune or how it came about for pretty much the entire novel.  Completely unconscious that the man she loves is hurting someone close to him...  for her.  Just... unconscious, in so many ways.  I suppose then it's fitting he is dragged away from battle literally unconscious.

It's worth noting that the characters I suggested last time as deserving our pathos: Javert, Eponine, Fantine... these are characters who are the opposite of unconscious in every way.  They are AWARE.  They understand in a deep and metaphoric way their place in this struggle and story.  They are, to quote Dr. Bloom, "free artists of themselves".  Interesting that their freedom then, in a sense, requires the ultimate sacrifice from each and every one.

Pathos and Les Mis (Part 1)

Note: This is part one in a two part series on Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.  Today's installment focuses on his concept of protagonist.

Nineteenth century European literature, with a few exceptions (e.g. Dickens), grates on my nerves.  I admit this openly both here and in my classes as my policy with students is: honesty, in all its forms.  I thin my primary issue with Victorianism (which I argue extends beyond English in the time period - most of the continent is affect by the modes of representation) is that even as many writers attempt to deride the social conventions of the age (money, style, status) they typically play right into those norms with their protagonists. Either these individuals end up happy and married or dead.  The Bronte sisters, George Eliot, even Tolstoy aren't immune to these trappings.  I've heard a few people defend Jane Austen from this trend but she's actually the primogeniture.  (That's another entry entirely though.)  Dickens, as I mentioned above, is the only standout.

And then there's Victor Hugo.

For years I was not a big fan of Hugo mostly because I found his sense of pathos too deeply rooted in the traditionally established Victorian mind-set.  Then I started teaching Les Mis a few years ago and I found myself rethinking his place in the stereotype of the age.  Then I saw the musical/movie/social event of the holiday a month ago.  And I think I found what separates him.  Not as much as Dickens distances himself, mind you; Hugo's not that good.  But buried in the layers of 19th century misery is a tricky argument.

I'm going to start with my thesis: Jean Val Jean is not the moral protagonist of the novel.  Neither is Cossette.  And they are not my focus today.

I think Hugo drops us enough hints to suggest our pathos should be bestowed on other characters.  A quick review of pathos to make my point: Pathos suggests the unending and sometimes irrational pity we feel for (a) particular character(s).  Good authors make us pity the right ones: Dickens, Magwitch; Shakespeare, Lear.  The bad ones miss the mark: Tolstoy, Anna Karenina.  But most Victorians are caught up in the huge cast of characters they feel indebted to create.  So it is with Hugo in Les Mis: Val Jean, Cossette, Javert, Thenardier, Marius, Eponine, Fantine... just to name a few.  But here's my point: the two big names of the story, the ones most people walk away remembering and talking about don't do much to be worthy of our pity.  And if pity (pathos) is Hugo's design, then I think it's accurate to say he had others in mind.

1. Javert.  I'm going to roll out my controversial example first.  I have argued to my classes earlier this year that Javert seems to have shading of the lawyer, Mr. Jaggers, in Dickens' Great Expectations. They both represent the driven, professional, don't-pity-me personality.  In Jaggers' case though it's earned and kept.  He remains aloof from the true action of the story even as he manipulates it to some extent.  But Javert drives not only plot and pathos but also resolution.  When Val Jean spares his life at the barricades in the end, it's obvious the Javert's world is upset.  This is not how criminals are, he seems to be thinking.  He can't reconcile his perception and the reality of the man he is chasing.  This culminates later in his suicide at the river.  His world is essentially already over when he makes that choice; the jump into the icy below is simply the sum total of what can become of his physical form.  How does an in-alterable law coalesce around the penitence of a man wrongfully imprisoned?  In Javert's case, it doesn't.  Hence: oblivion.  But in that demise and the choice of that demise Hugo provides us with enough commentary of Javert's epiphany.  It seems to me epiphany, above all modes of representation, are designed to sway a reader's heart by virtue of the fact that the character can never act on it.

Indeed, we sense Javert's change from the barricade to the suicide.  We hope (a feeling he would NEVER want from us) the change can create a new man, one a bit more nuanced in his application of the law.  In the best of Dickens, we see this transformation play out time and time again against different backdrops.  But alas, Javert cannot (will not?) reconcile this new self to his morals.  He cannot see his way to this New France that the revolutionaries speak of either.  (Notwithstanding they are all killed, minus Marius.)  This completes our pathos.

2. Eponine.  Less controversial, I suspect, but more suspect.  Part of this argument will lead to my anti-Cossette piece later in the week.  Eponine deserves our pathos for two reasons.  First, as the child of the Thenardier's, we are predisposed to hate her.  These are wretched scum of the earth, not because they are poor (indeed, they are not; they run an inn!) but because they subsist on trickery and deceit of honest people (who are truly poor: Fantine, Val Jean, Cossette).  When we meet her in Paris, after having endured her parents abusing Cossette and showering affection on their own children to the little orphan's dismay, we are instantly set against her.  How far did her apple fall from the tree?  We see her early discussions with Marius, born to nobility and denying it, and we think right, like she's going to stick around after grandfather cuts him out of the will.  But that's not the point: Hugo needs her as the most dynamic part of the love triangle.  Eponine loves Marius; Marius loves Cossette; Marius uses Eponine.

And there in that last verb is our pathos.  The musical does a good job of this too.  If there is something Hugo is railing against it has to be the using of one human being by another: knowingly, willingly, and yet without realizing the damage being inflicted.  Eponine's looks (even through the page) are palpable.  The fact that she keeps helping him even after realizing she is only paving his road toward another woman (a richer woman too) is heart wrenching.  There's no other way to put it.  Perhaps she holds out hope that Cossette will leave, flee to England or wherever, and Marius in his misery will turn to her.  But I don't sense anywhere that Hugo means for us to take that too seriously.  It will end badly for this girl.  Even as it started badly for poor miserable abandoned Cossette.

3. Fantine.  It took the musical to make me realize this but re-reading the novel the last few days with my students made me see it there too.  Fantine, above every other character - yes above Cossette her daughter and Val Jean the stalwart poor-then-rich-then-poor Frenchman - embodies the title of this novel.  We could list the ways Hugo blitzes her: she cannot keep her child, she is forced from her job by rumor and heresay, she is driven to desperation (loss of hair, teeth, virtue), she is found by the only good soul we know and short of her daughter's return: dies.  She dies in the presence, interestingly enough, of not just Val Jean but of Javert.  There's no indication that her death matters to him but I can't help wondering if Hugo means that connection to be more overt.

Her death appeals to pathos precisely because what Fantine wants is the simplest wish of the human heart... and the most impossible thing for the narrative.  Where is my little Cossette, she keeps asking.  Val Jean's only response: She is coming soon.  She will be here soon.  Do we begin to believe him toward the end of her life?  Do we join her in hoping against hope that somehow the little girl will appear.  Val Jean has sent for her.  Is this true?  Is it meant to make her feel better?  Does it then make us feel worse than her?  Do we mistrust Val Jean as a result?  Whatever the case, it is clear: Fantine is the living breathing embodiment of pathos.

Next time: Why you should not feel anything for Cossette.

An Open Letter to Johnny Depp

Dear Mr. Depp,

Hi! Sorry, big fan! And not just recently either. I'm not just a Pirates bandwagon junkie. I remember back in the day when you were just not quite there in terms of your stardom, fame, movie choices. I remember when your name spurred comments more like, "have I seen anything with him in it?" I remember educating my college friends on the more serious side of roles your played. And apologizing for your role in Tim Burton movie. Because really, Mr. Depp, you could do better.

So the standouts. "Donnie Brasco" of course. I mean, dude, you taught me the nuances of "fuhgeddabowdit"! And then you double crossed Al Pacino! And you lived to tell about it!

Most people I know have seen in part or in whole "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and I certainly can't fault your love of Hunter S Thompson. I can respect the fun you had making that movie even if it never ends up on my list of top five Depp movies.

But I was really a disciple of your when you worked for Robert Rodrieguez in "Once Upon a Time In Mexico". Honestly, you saved that final installment in the Mariachi trilogy. Best scene: as an undercover FBI officer in Mexico going after drug lords you met with potential suspects and witnesses all while wearing a black tshirt with huge white letters FBI. Tell me that was your idea.

Not gonna lie - there was a dry spell for a bit. Part of that dry spell seems to be your indoctrination to the Tim Burton way. Oh to have a time machine and go back to change that era! I suppose I can't knock it all because we got a few good things. Well, one good thing. Your Willy Wonka rivals Gene Wilder, and that's saying a lot.

Then there was the epic, celebrity-fest that was "Pirates". Now, look, Mr. Depp I'm not here to pass judgement on your Pirates movies the way many others have. (If you're unclear though see what many call the Matrix-problem.) Fact is, I'm a big fan of your character, even if occasionally over-done. Love the way he runs, by the way. But here's the thing: I read on the Internet today that you have agreed to do ANOTHER Pirates movie. Another? After the failure that was the last one? And seriously, it was a failure. Check the box office results if you don't read critic reviews.

Though, really, the critics say important things.

So, why? Why would you do it? It can't be money. You live on the French Riviera for Goodness sake! Did Tim Burton stop calling? Is there really nothing better? There's no reason to believe it's somehow the script or story. And costars? Not even Geoffrey Rush is returning for this and he couldn't save the last one. So you must be fixed on this character in a way that is not healthy. If so, have some advice. Now, this isn't going to sound like good advice at first. You have to let it sink in really. Let it resonate. Then go with it. Ready?

Kill Jack Sparrow. You can do it. Only you can do it. Don't let Disney turn him into a cash cow of a zombie. Do it while we all remember the good times.

Yarr indeed.