Ranan Lurie has interviewed the top heads of state of the world’s major powers, lived in different cultures, served as an Israeli Army paratrooper, invented a patented auto brake system, and is a respected portrait artist and perhaps the globe’s most widely known political cartoonist.
So what’s he doing for an encore?
Call it Operation Cartoon Trojan Horse.
The not-ready-to-retire Lurie, 64, has launched an intellectual stealth mission–aimed at youth.
His commanders are teachers. His weapons are editorial cartoons, compiled in an educational magazine called Cartoon News. The first issue is being distributed to middle and high schools nationwide.
Lurie’s goal is to inspire kids to learn more about current events. He and other cartoonists featured in the magazine want young people to think and carefully analyze international politics, to be more curious about the world–and to read more.
Lurie said a school survey he conducted showed that 96 percent of the teachers responding considered current events an important area of study, yet they lacked specific tools to teach them.
The magazine has drawn praise from some educators who have seen it.
Cost of the color magazine, currently bimonthly, is $2.95 per copy. Lurie said part of the syndication cost goes to royalties paid to contributing cartoonists.
So far the publication has been distributed only to private middle and high schools. Lurie said his Cartoonews International Syndicate, based in Greenwich, Conn., is considering a licensing agreement for public schools, particularly those in urban inner cities, to make the magazine more widely accessible. Under the agreement, schools could photocopy the copyrighted cartoons for a reduced fee.
Bob Klarsch, headmaster at the Annie Wright School in Tacoma, Wash., said he had “a really positive reaction to the magazine” and that the cost “would not be a problem.”
Klarsch said the cartoons “were sophisticated enough that they could be taught at multiple levels”–late middle school through high school. He said he viewed the magazine as a “stimulator” not only of reading but “giving kids something to react to and write about.”
He added: “One of the things I liked about it was it was real balanced. I was looking for a bias, but I didn’t see one. It took equal shots at the liberals and the conservatives. (Which is) important when you’re trying to teach young people how to think, not what to think.”
But Jackie Yellin, library assistant and media coordinator for Lakeside Upper School in Seattle, said she “did not give the magazine much attention.” She threw it away because it “didn’t seem like anything that would fit into our curriculum.”
Because of Lakeside’s “huge emphasis on reading,” Yellin said, current-events teachers prefer that students study and read newspapers directly rather than editorialized or “digested” versions of the news.
“The expectation is that students read straight from the source,” Yellin said.
Ultimately Lurie, who self-syndicates his work internationally, hopes the magazine will help teach more respect for democracy and creativity–endeavors of the human spirit he considers inseparable.
Lurie said his mission is necessary because people, particularly youths, “aren’t reading enough.”
Lurie said that despite talk about the information age, far too many people lack sophisticated knowledge of contemporary world events–what he calls “instant history.”
“If we can’t enter the brain of a teenager through the door of long, gray text, then we’ll jump in through the window of political cartooning, and stimulate further study through clever and quickly understood graphics,” said Lurie, who considers himself “a political commentator who happens to draw.”
“The political cartoon becomes an intellectual Trojan Horse,” he said, “imparting the knowledge and analysis of current events in an illustrated method so appreciated by the young generation, especially since this vital information comes wrapped in vivid humor.”
Unlike the legendary Trojan Horse deployed to sneak troops inside the city of Troy’s gates, Cartoon News will disgorge information, not avenging warriors. And the prize is not Helen of Troy, but open minds.
Says Lurie: “The political cartoon really is like the last knight in a fight for winning the reader’s brain.”
Cartoonists say when editorial cartoons operate at full tilt, they deliver powerful informational blows. They enlighten readers and knock off balance those with entrenched opinions. Lurie said the best editorial cartoons condense and deliver complex information in a seemingly simple drawing that is “absolutely stunning in humor, wisdom and visual impact.”
While some political cartoonists joke that the inventive Lurie has a genius for self-promotion equal to his talent in caricature, his colleagues wish him well on his latest venture.
The New York Times Syndicate plans to distribute a weekly Cartoon News educational package to its 400 U.S. subscribers and likely those overseas, said John Brewer, syndicate president and editor-in-chief. The package probably will include a single cartoon with text, based on an event that occurred that week. It’s expected to be launched early next year.
“We’re very bullish about it,” Brewer said. “We think it’s a great project, one that will go over well.”
Lurie’s magazine format is straightforward, with cartoons on national and international issues ranging from “life on Mars” to uncompromising opinions about terrorism. The cartoons zero in on treaties and tax cuts, war crimes and racism, presidential elections and welfare and health care reform.
All are accompanied by a brief paragraph explaining the cartoon, and four or five questions meant to stimulate analysis, discussion and understanding.
For example, a cartoon by Wayne Stayskal of the Tampa Tribune, shows a doctor looking at two graphs at the foot of a patient’s bed. Says the doctor, “I see by your chart you’re not ready to go home. But I see by the HMO’s chart, you are!”
Kevin Kallaugher, immediate past president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, agreed with Lurie that cartoons are “windows to literacy.”
Using cartoons in the classroom “is a fantastic opportunity” for kids to enjoy themselves yet “pick up valuable information that will help turn them into good citizens,” Kallaugher said.
Other cartoonists said Lurie’s work reflects his own international background, forceful personality and a penchant for going straight to the source.
Lurie, whose mother was Australian and who can claim Russian and German heritage, lived most of his life in Israel before becoming a U.S. citizen in 1974. While his birthplace in “Who’s Who” is listed as Port Said, Egypt, Lurie said his Israeli parents spent one day in Port Said–the day he was born–and returned to Tel Aviv.
Growing up Israeli informed his political sensibilities.
“Politics,” Lurie said, “run in our veins.”
Lurie self-syndicates his cartoons in 102 countries and 1,098 newspapers through his Cartoonews International Syndicate, based in New York City. According to the 1996 Guinness Book of World Records, he is the most widely syndicated political cartoonist in the world.
