My cousins are having some troubles with the local school. Sufficient troubles that they actually sat down and wrote a book, and then sent the manuscript to me for advice. My cousin Billy was a BMOC in his time—wrestling champ and whatnot—so his kids being bullied by teachers and officials is especially upsetting. Anyway, here's what I wrote to them, with some details removed, as the advice is generally good for anyone who is Really Angry and ready To Blow The Lid Off of something or other:
Institutional bullying is an important subject, and because institutions are self-policing it is rarely written about. This has the potential to be a great book, but right now it needs a lot of work. Many people sit down and decide to write a book after something terrible happens to them, and unfortunately they often all look the same, laden with dictionary definitions, unclear legal arguments, and the close recounting of conversations that the writer expects the reader to be shocked by. You've chosen the same set of strategies, which are almost never successful. Here are my recommendations:
The whole book should start with a story. I need a shocking, telling DETAILED anecdote right up front. It doesn't need to be, and indeed, shouldn't be, the first thing that happened to your son, but the most upsetting—a "straw that broke the camel's back" type of incident. You talk about "maltreatment" but as a reader I have no idea what happened. You mention "verbal, emotional, and even physical abuse"—if teachers put their hands on your kid you must start with that! By describing what happened! Was he shoved against a locker, slapped across the face, dragged by the scruff of his neck? The best non-fiction books start with some sort of anecdote, whether they are policy books or personal tales of one's experiences. Then fill the book with stories, and fill the stories with details! Without stories at the very beginning, I literally have no idea what you're going on about half the time. You start with [someone] being banned from the grounds, but I have no idea why, or what started it, or how he was told he was banned—without details, readers will think that you're hiding something.
Flesh things out. You tend to hide behind names like "Educator A" and vague generalities like "a language course" and "three different law firms." Note that just obscuring someone's name, if you give their job title and are writing about a small school district, won't actually protect you from defamation suits. If I can figure out the name of any official or teacher just by going to the district website, you may fine yourself in legal hot water. It is nearly impossible to win a libel suit in the US, so it's not necessarily that big a deal, but right now all this obfuscation just makes the book hard to read. Speak in specifics—when you talk about Charlie's experience of "daily ridicule" I need to know how he was being ridiculed. Literally, "One morning the teacher said/did made Charlie do/ etc. The next day, it got worse." THEN the teacher's horrifying explanation that he did it just to "destroy Charlie's credibility" will make sense and be properly shocking. A little later, when you talk about Joey and the fat jokes he was the victim of, that works a little better because at least we know what went on. We can imagine a little fat kid being mocked by a teacher, and then the other kids in class joining in and repeating the jokes, etc. It would work better if we knew what even one of the jokes was, and then one specific student-to-student incident that Joey faced. Ditto Rashid, who was mocked by the teacher for his ethnic name. That's good stuff—we need some more details though. Was he called "al-Qaeda", was he a "black kid with a made-up name" according to the teacher, etc.
Also, avoid recounting conversations that sound like the parental hectoring. For example, in the anecdote about the students who did not fill out the Emergency Contact Cards, you go on quite a bit with questions like "Did the supervisor realize that the information on the cards belonged to the parents?" (Note: phone numbers and addresses are often public information, NOT owned by the parents) "Did the supervisor understand that it was immoral to threaten children with punishment for the actions or even inactions of the parents?" With this sort of strategy, you'll turn off more readers than not. Most people will just wonder what the big deal is to fill out a card with the information anyone could find in a phone book. Some will decide that the parents are simply wrong. A lot of the book, because it lacks detailed storytelling, reads as though a teacher was annoying or stupid, and then the parents storm in and demand answers and don't get any and then go off to get a lawyer or the ACLU. It makes the parents and families look bad. So, the need for obvious detailed anecdotes and a reduction of the pleading go together—the stories have to convince us, nothing else will.
Immediately strip out all the dictionary definitions, quotes from Martin Luther King and Hannah Arendt, court case citations in the epigraphs, discussions of what legal terms like "reasonable" means (it ultimately means, "what a jury believes is reasonable" anyway) etc. At worst, all this stuff will put you in the kook file and you'll get a form rejection from any publisher you send it to. Note: this will likely happen whether your argument is logical and cogent or not because publishers and agents receive four or five manuscripts like this A DAY about all sorts of subjects from motorcycle helmet laws to the demand to legalize incestuous marriage. At best, you make it past the assistants and to an editor who shows it to the publisher's legal counsel and HE OR SHE rejects it if on any level he finds the legal argumentation dubious. This would happen even if you were both Harvard law school grads and famed jurists yourselves. I guarantee you this is exactly what will happen. I suspect that 99% of agents editors, etc will stop reading at the sentence "The slanderous libel of their attempt at defamation of my character was recorded in an official exchange." Editors don't know all of the law, but they are very well versed in libel law as part of their job and "slanderous libel" is a meaningless phrase.
I'd also eliminate many of the Latinate words, which tend to be overused and somewhat misused. For example, on p. 14 you mention a "virulently egregious and inexpiable incident"—virulently is not quite right. I'd recommend using egregious or inexpiable, not both. Then, when I read the story, I see that a kid accidentally gets stabbed with scissors (I'm not told who stabbed him at first) and then the building supervisor reports it falsely as a self-inflicted wound. Well, that's just not all that egregious; it's wrong of course, and ridiculous, and is all about liability, but that's not the core of the story. I don't find out till the next page that "Jimmy" stabbed "David" by accident and was apologetic. That should be how the story starts. Then, when it is obvious to me as a reader that the wound was not self-inflicted, the supervisor insisting that it was will be properly upsetting.
When talking about events outside of your particular school, use sources to get details and such. When you discuss the ACLU's suit against New York schools, THEN use newspaper reports, court cases, etc. For example, this story from the NYCLU's website is properly upsetting:
"Plaintiff D.Y., 13, is an eighth-grade student at Lou Gehrig Middle School in the Bronx. On Oct. 7, 2009, D.Y. was unlawfully arrested by SSOs following a confrontation in front of her school initiated by two adult strangers who had threatened her. An SSO instructed D.Y. to go into the school with the strangers. Frightened, D.Y. told the SSO that she preferred to wait outside for her mother who was coming to pick her up.
In response, the SSO grabbed D.Y. by the arm, handcuffed her, forcefully threw her down and pinned her to the ground. D.Y. sat handcuffed at a desk until her mother managed to find her. No charges were filed against her. D.Y. required medical attention as a result of the assault."
Note that the story is told in chronological and logical order, and specific details ("threw her down and pinned her to the ground", "sat handcuffed at a desk") are used to paint a mental picture of what's going on. That's the kind of thing your book needs to be full of—you need to write just like that, and not in any other way. That's how you build a case for a problem with your district and with districts around the country. Tell stories, show a pattern, then get into some of the legal mumbo-jumbo and recommendations for change. When you can quote from newspaper articles or court documents, quote from the narrative bits, not the jargon.
As you can see, I'm suggesting some pretty serious revisions here. Basically, you'll need to start from page one and work all the way to the end again, using the same information but concentrating on actual concrete experiences with plenty of details. That's what will make your argument for you, not all the legal and policy claims about monopolization and what the Supreme Court should be saying. I hope this helps, and would be pleased to look at any rewritten chapters you care to send me via [sister]. Take care, Cousin Nick.
Institutional bullying is an important subject, and because institutions are self-policing it is rarely written about. This has the potential to be a great book, but right now it needs a lot of work. Many people sit down and decide to write a book after something terrible happens to them, and unfortunately they often all look the same, laden with dictionary definitions, unclear legal arguments, and the close recounting of conversations that the writer expects the reader to be shocked by. You've chosen the same set of strategies, which are almost never successful. Here are my recommendations:
The whole book should start with a story. I need a shocking, telling DETAILED anecdote right up front. It doesn't need to be, and indeed, shouldn't be, the first thing that happened to your son, but the most upsetting—a "straw that broke the camel's back" type of incident. You talk about "maltreatment" but as a reader I have no idea what happened. You mention "verbal, emotional, and even physical abuse"—if teachers put their hands on your kid you must start with that! By describing what happened! Was he shoved against a locker, slapped across the face, dragged by the scruff of his neck? The best non-fiction books start with some sort of anecdote, whether they are policy books or personal tales of one's experiences. Then fill the book with stories, and fill the stories with details! Without stories at the very beginning, I literally have no idea what you're going on about half the time. You start with [someone] being banned from the grounds, but I have no idea why, or what started it, or how he was told he was banned—without details, readers will think that you're hiding something.
Flesh things out. You tend to hide behind names like "Educator A" and vague generalities like "a language course" and "three different law firms." Note that just obscuring someone's name, if you give their job title and are writing about a small school district, won't actually protect you from defamation suits. If I can figure out the name of any official or teacher just by going to the district website, you may fine yourself in legal hot water. It is nearly impossible to win a libel suit in the US, so it's not necessarily that big a deal, but right now all this obfuscation just makes the book hard to read. Speak in specifics—when you talk about Charlie's experience of "daily ridicule" I need to know how he was being ridiculed. Literally, "One morning the teacher said/did made Charlie do/ etc. The next day, it got worse." THEN the teacher's horrifying explanation that he did it just to "destroy Charlie's credibility" will make sense and be properly shocking. A little later, when you talk about Joey and the fat jokes he was the victim of, that works a little better because at least we know what went on. We can imagine a little fat kid being mocked by a teacher, and then the other kids in class joining in and repeating the jokes, etc. It would work better if we knew what even one of the jokes was, and then one specific student-to-student incident that Joey faced. Ditto Rashid, who was mocked by the teacher for his ethnic name. That's good stuff—we need some more details though. Was he called "al-Qaeda", was he a "black kid with a made-up name" according to the teacher, etc.
Also, avoid recounting conversations that sound like the parental hectoring. For example, in the anecdote about the students who did not fill out the Emergency Contact Cards, you go on quite a bit with questions like "Did the supervisor realize that the information on the cards belonged to the parents?" (Note: phone numbers and addresses are often public information, NOT owned by the parents) "Did the supervisor understand that it was immoral to threaten children with punishment for the actions or even inactions of the parents?" With this sort of strategy, you'll turn off more readers than not. Most people will just wonder what the big deal is to fill out a card with the information anyone could find in a phone book. Some will decide that the parents are simply wrong. A lot of the book, because it lacks detailed storytelling, reads as though a teacher was annoying or stupid, and then the parents storm in and demand answers and don't get any and then go off to get a lawyer or the ACLU. It makes the parents and families look bad. So, the need for obvious detailed anecdotes and a reduction of the pleading go together—the stories have to convince us, nothing else will.
Immediately strip out all the dictionary definitions, quotes from Martin Luther King and Hannah Arendt, court case citations in the epigraphs, discussions of what legal terms like "reasonable" means (it ultimately means, "what a jury believes is reasonable" anyway) etc. At worst, all this stuff will put you in the kook file and you'll get a form rejection from any publisher you send it to. Note: this will likely happen whether your argument is logical and cogent or not because publishers and agents receive four or five manuscripts like this A DAY about all sorts of subjects from motorcycle helmet laws to the demand to legalize incestuous marriage. At best, you make it past the assistants and to an editor who shows it to the publisher's legal counsel and HE OR SHE rejects it if on any level he finds the legal argumentation dubious. This would happen even if you were both Harvard law school grads and famed jurists yourselves. I guarantee you this is exactly what will happen. I suspect that 99% of agents editors, etc will stop reading at the sentence "The slanderous libel of their attempt at defamation of my character was recorded in an official exchange." Editors don't know all of the law, but they are very well versed in libel law as part of their job and "slanderous libel" is a meaningless phrase.
I'd also eliminate many of the Latinate words, which tend to be overused and somewhat misused. For example, on p. 14 you mention a "virulently egregious and inexpiable incident"—virulently is not quite right. I'd recommend using egregious or inexpiable, not both. Then, when I read the story, I see that a kid accidentally gets stabbed with scissors (I'm not told who stabbed him at first) and then the building supervisor reports it falsely as a self-inflicted wound. Well, that's just not all that egregious; it's wrong of course, and ridiculous, and is all about liability, but that's not the core of the story. I don't find out till the next page that "Jimmy" stabbed "David" by accident and was apologetic. That should be how the story starts. Then, when it is obvious to me as a reader that the wound was not self-inflicted, the supervisor insisting that it was will be properly upsetting.
When talking about events outside of your particular school, use sources to get details and such. When you discuss the ACLU's suit against New York schools, THEN use newspaper reports, court cases, etc. For example, this story from the NYCLU's website is properly upsetting:
"Plaintiff D.Y., 13, is an eighth-grade student at Lou Gehrig Middle School in the Bronx. On Oct. 7, 2009, D.Y. was unlawfully arrested by SSOs following a confrontation in front of her school initiated by two adult strangers who had threatened her. An SSO instructed D.Y. to go into the school with the strangers. Frightened, D.Y. told the SSO that she preferred to wait outside for her mother who was coming to pick her up.
In response, the SSO grabbed D.Y. by the arm, handcuffed her, forcefully threw her down and pinned her to the ground. D.Y. sat handcuffed at a desk until her mother managed to find her. No charges were filed against her. D.Y. required medical attention as a result of the assault."
Note that the story is told in chronological and logical order, and specific details ("threw her down and pinned her to the ground", "sat handcuffed at a desk") are used to paint a mental picture of what's going on. That's the kind of thing your book needs to be full of—you need to write just like that, and not in any other way. That's how you build a case for a problem with your district and with districts around the country. Tell stories, show a pattern, then get into some of the legal mumbo-jumbo and recommendations for change. When you can quote from newspaper articles or court documents, quote from the narrative bits, not the jargon.
As you can see, I'm suggesting some pretty serious revisions here. Basically, you'll need to start from page one and work all the way to the end again, using the same information but concentrating on actual concrete experiences with plenty of details. That's what will make your argument for you, not all the legal and policy claims about monopolization and what the Supreme Court should be saying. I hope this helps, and would be pleased to look at any rewritten chapters you care to send me via [sister]. Take care, Cousin Nick.