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I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I could not put this book down. It does have a plot and characters that will grab your heart but it is not an original story line. In Learnt Mr. Baldwin revisits the theme made popular in books and films such as The Blackboard Jungle, To Sir With Love and Stand and Deliver. A teacher is forced to come up with ways to reconnect disengaged, unmotivated students with school and hope for their future. Tony Avery is the latest entry into this class of caring educators.
What sets this book apart and kept me riveted was the high quality of Baldwin's writing. His ability to portray the disillusioned students and staff is wonderful but we have met the characters before. It is the ability to look into a modern classroom and show the fears, foibles and futures of the educational partners, teacher and student, that shines in this novel. He maintains his variety of themes while including two compelling story lines- that of new teacher Tony and that of his new student Kenny. The book has triumph and tragedy, hope and disillusionment. It has it all.
I will admit I had trouble getting used to his extensive use of dialect through out the book. It almost caused me stop reading in the beginning. But it is a crucial element in the book, with the setting and the plot. I suspect that my reaction to it is just the one Baldwin hoped to cause. In the book he coins the word "Choklish" to describe it- combining 'chocolate' and 'English' together because chocolate can be white or dark. This use of language to its fullest, to examine the beauty of spoken words is one of the many enduring aspects of this work. It looks at language as a reflection of who we are, who we want to be and how we want to be seen and how we see each other. He also uses the written voices of the students to portray their thoughts and viewpoints.
Baldwin's PR indicates that he wants to be "America's Education Novelist" but this book expands to lessons outside the classroom. He examines the role of how race is perceived in and outside of schools. He delves into the role of the parents in shaping the student, both the positive and the negative. Tony’s own mother is a direct, stark contrast to that of the troubled student Kenny's in every way possible. He uses those two characters as polar opposites to show the effects parenting can have. He discusses the role of blame educators can try to put on others"...students-they aren't students by choice, but by law. Not the parents'- many are parents either by chance, by default, or both...Students and parents haven't gone through workshops and internships, bent on honing their techniques before being awarded with the title of "student" or 'parent...neither student nor parent makes a very good scapegoat- at least, not any more." He has many different themes that run under his suspense filled plots. It is not a moralistic work that preaches, it is a caring work that whispers its truths while shouting its intentions.
Baldwin's writing career could take many future forms. It will be interesting to see how he uses his extensive talent to continue the theme of "classroom dramas." It is just hoped that he does not sacrifice his considerable writing ability and potential to meet a preset, publicity phrase. The possibilities of using a school setting as the structure for examining the strengths and weaknesses of our society are endless. If Baldwin continues to use this as well as he has in Learnt he will be the up and coming writer for our modern culture. —Barb Radmore, Front Street Reviews
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I haven't exactly chosen to read any books in the inspirational teacher genre, but I do declare this one to be a nicely successful one. —John Lloyd, The Bookbag, United Kingdom
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Learnt is for this reader one of the most powerful, engaging, poignant, and learned books of the year. These may sound like excessive praise for a first major novel by Edward M. Baldwin, but if this novel gains the readership it deserves over the next year it likely will make its way to the top 10 list: reading Learnt is 'time invested, not spent'!
Edward M. Baldwin is an African American writer whose background as a high school English and literacy teacher in Florida provided the seeds of inspiration that drive this novel. The book not only tells a perfectly formed and molded and executed story, but it also addresses many important concepts that are necessary to face and even more necessary to mend. Dealing with contemporary attitudes and prejudices concerning education, racism, interracial marriage, crime, abusive parenting and the coexistent abusive response from the victim children, Baldwin stirs this hefty stew with the added ingredients of teacher/student relationships and semiotics and the result is first an excellent story, and second a plea for change and growth.
African American Tony Avery returns to his Florida home after college where he gained his degree in English, learned the fine art of speaking and writing, met and became engaged to a white girl, Sarah, who accompanies Tony to his loving home, fully at ease with her new family (as they are with her). Tony decides to take on a job teaching at Lincoln High School (a primarily African American last ditch stand of a repository for tough students) while Sarah returns North to complete her studies. Tony is encouraged by his loving and wise Mama and takes his place in front of a classroom of foulmouthed kids who show little respect for the 'Uncle Tom-sounding' new English teacher. Through a series of events, events that include introduction of unforgettable characters - each with social and mental burdens to carry - Tony finds that language and communication must be centered on mutual respect. Tony can lapse into 'Choklish', the name he assigns to the colloquial 'English' of the students, and in showing the students that his background is anchored in theirs, he lifts the class to standards of learning and compassion that have been sorely missing in this school. One student that enters the classroom soon after Tony's arrival is the obese, unpopular, parentally abused Kenny, and it is Tony's manner in which he alters Kenny's self concept and life by honoring his hidden gifts and nursing his social needs with true friends that drives the novel to its stunning conclusion.
The reader of Baldwin's book must allow 'time to invest and spend' with this opus. Baldwin uses brilliant 'translations' of the colloquial African American dialect allowing the reader to climb inside a language known to many of us as Rap sounds. But reading this 'new language' as Baldwin so carefully spells it out is time-consuming - until our brains begins to feel the flow and the honest beauty of the communication. Perhaps that is part of the teacher-influence in Baldwin's writing, but it is an eloquent mastery of a near impossible task that deserves recognition. Lapsing back and forth between 'proper English' and 'Choklish' allows each of the characters space to be defined and to grow into a union of humanity that is rarely seen in current books.
Much could be said about the genius of Baldwin's pen and the warmth of his imagination and heart, but reading this novel will share all of those attributes as well as providing a story that will remain vividly implanted in the mind long after the back cover is closed. Learnt is a brilliant novel, one that likely will grow by word of mouth until the general public becomes aware that a special writer has arrived! Highly recommended for all audiences. —Grady Harp, Top 10 Amazon Reviewer
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Remember the name Edward M. Baldwin. It’s likely to become for the classroom drama what John Grisham’s name is to the legal thriller, or Stephen King’s is to horror, or David McCullough’s is to historical novelizations.
His first published novel Learnt is as promising a piece of fiction as I’ve had the pleasure to read. Drawing on his own experiences as a professional educator, Learnt is a tight, well-paced and character-driven work that explores public schools, race relations, families and friendships.
Kenny Houston is a fifteen year old troubled white student with a difficult home life, a tragic past, and what many adults would dismissively file under ‘discipline problems’. He’s spent much of his young years escaping into books, and is more well-read than many of his teachers. But his knack for getting into scrapes gets him sent to Lincoln High School, a bottom-rung institute where kids with either learning problems or disciplinary issues go. Teachers can’t control the students. Many barely even try anymore.
Tony Avery is a young African American teacher with a supportive family and fiancée who, like many beginning teachers, is being sent to Lincoln as well. Faced with students who don’t care, or are afraid to show they do, Tony’s bleak prospect is spending his first job trying to reach kids whom many would probably call ‘incorrigible’.
The issue of language is a factor, as those of us who made it through the system knows, your prospects for the future can be narrow if you lack a good command of “Standard English”, regardless of how you might talk to your friends and family. Dialects may be common, informal and comfortable, and even indicative for all of us as to who we are and where we came from, but Tony knows part of his job is to prepare his students for life outside the classroom…the real world, as it were. And the real world meets us with certain expectations and assumptions, and if we can’t rise to them, that real world can be a hard and cold one.
Tony is no idealistic crusader. He’s bright, he’s capable, he wants the best for his students, but he comes to Lincoln High with no more expectations than does Kenny. Individually, they may view it as a stepping stone from one phase of their lives to the next. With the wrong outlook, a stepping stone can quickly become an obstacle. But with the right attitude, it can go from a trial to be endured to a challenge to be met and overcome.
The novel surprised me pleasantly in that even though it’s a classroom drama, it’s something more than has ever really been offered in such a setting. It isn’t just a parable about the benefits of education, or a scathing exposé of problems in public schools. It doesn’t imply that one wise and caring teacher can change the entire world, or that kids with no focus or support can suddenly become valedictorians in the mere turning of a few hundred pages. It’s positive, but no crusade in unbridled idealism. Cautiously optimistic would be a better phrase. These characters, this school, these scenarios are all rooted in reality. Solutions are never clear-cut and nicely packaged, but if we want to better our reality, the first step is to focus on it for what it actually is.
The drama of the story quite honestly moved me to tears, and it seemed to rise effortlessly with Baldwin’s well-defined and very real characters. As Tony reminds his students, all choices have consequences. For each of the individuals in Learnt, there are choices to be made. Some are made by them, others are made on their behalves. Even good choices can have bad outcomes, but that doesn’t make the choice any less good. One can find sometimes find oneself up against a fence, but Tony says it best: “Every fence has its gate.” And if you can’t find the gate…you make one.
Baldwin writes from a place of conscience and clarity, and a compassionate understanding of human nature, even when said nature comes in unattractive forms. In Learnt, it’s not about heroes and villains. It’s about humanity…how we think, how we act, how we love, how we hate. And most of all, how we learn. —Michael Jacobson, author of Jacob Have I Loved, editor of DVD Movie Central
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Reviews Continued
