To Sum It Up: Cliff’s Notes Have Limitations

It’s late at night, you’re exhausted, and you have an exam on a big novel first thing tomorrow. And you haven’t read the book!

So you reach for what you think is the next best thing: Cliff’s Notes.

Students have been playing out this scenario since 1958, when Cliff’s Notes Inc. started publishing guides to the world’s foremost novels, plays and epic poems.

Savvy students and teachers alike, from junior high school through college, instantly recognize the black-and-yellow booklets, each covering one of more than 200 titles.

They all have some standard features: background information about the author and story’s origin, a list of characters, a character analysis, critical commentaries, essay questions, some plot summary and a selected bibliography.

Newer editions also include two-page spreads of characters’ genealogy, maps of settings and end-of-chapter glossaries.

I recently talked to some of my colleagues at Santa Monica High School about the value of Cliff’s Notes. Not surprisingly, their views are as varied as their educational philosophies.

“I discourage using them because I have found that they are at best shallow and at worst inaccurate,” Rob Thais said.

Thais especially dislikes what he says are basic and misleading errors in the plot summaries, which he points out to his students when the class reads Charles Dickens’ novel “Hard Times.”

“I have them read certain parts of the novel and then I show them how the Cliff’s Notes are wrong.”

Diana Garcia finds the Cliff’s Notes treatment of literature too limited.

“The problem is that it only represents one viewpoint, one interpretation. (Students) have to understand that there are many different ways of viewing a piece of literature.”

Carol Jago, English department chairwoman, agreed. “It says to a reader, ‘There are right answers and there are wrong answers,’ and there really aren’t in literature.”

Jago also thinks that the white upper-middle-class viewpoint of many Cliff’s Notes writers may no longer suit today’s ethnic variety of students.

“Think of how that marginalizes readers of other colors who come with very different sensibilities to a piece of literature,” he said. “The Cliff’s Notes essentially tell them they’re wrong, and what they read and what they saw (in the literature) is not true.”

That, Jago added, “is dangerously close to racism.”

A more traditional concern about students using Cliff’s Notes is that it invites them to cheat by plagiarizing writing assignments.

Thais has caught several students who apparently did so.

But Garcia thinks cheating is preventable. “I will look at the Cliff’s Notes too, to see what they’re reading,” she said.

“For essays,” she added, “I try to stay away from using a topic that I know exists in the Cliff’s Notes.”

All of my colleagues expressed concern about students who read Cliff’s Notes plot summaries instead of the books.

Cliff’s Notes editor Gary Carey contends, however, that this is becoming harder to do because “the summaries have gotten progressively shorter and shorter, and the commentaries much longer.”

Carey also answered some other complaints commonly voiced by teachers.

Contrary to popular belief, for example, Cliff’s Notes are not written hurriedly by starving graduate students, he said.

“They’re all written by real, honest-to-God teachers,” Carey said.”(They) have taught at least from 10 to 15 years, and have taught that particular novel for five or six years at least.”

And Cliff’s Notes are not as archaic as many people think: Carey said they’re revised every seven to 10 years.

Along with the criticism, there was also praise for Cliff’s Notes from a couple of my colleagues.

They’re helpful when “you have 40 kids in a classroom and five of them are reading way below grade level, and you’re obligated to get through a classic,” Sheila Goldstein said.

She recommends Cliff’s Notes to some students but monitors their use.

By reading the plot summaries, “the kids who are ‘low’ readers can at least know what’s going on,” Goldstein said. “They can follow along with discussions and participate with the rest of the class.”

Garcia agreed. “I think they’re (most helpful) for the average and below-average students who have difficulty with vocabulary and advanced writing styles,” he said.

I too see some benefits.

They expose students to the basics of analyzing characters and events in literature. They present questions to guide and expand students’ understanding of the story. They also can serve as a concise review of key events before an exam--but only if the story has been read thoroughly first.

As Carey himself said, Cliff’s Notes are intended (and should be used) only as a supplement to legitimate reading.