Google was invented in 1996, but in 1988, I gave my 9th- and 10th-grade classes a homework assignment to be Googled before Google existed. I asked them to be search engines of their grandparents’ minds, looking for a maxim or idiom their elders knew and used.
All teachers reach that moment when they think their students are bored and they fear their assignments are boring. For me, that moment was the beginning of school — and of my career as an English teacher — and already I desperately needed something to make English interesting to these kids.
Cross-curriculum teaching was the rage in the 1980s so I decided to try to combine art and English.
I knew, as 9th- and 10th-graders, they were too grown-up to condescend to do “coloring,” even though secretly they loved to draw and color, so I had to figure a way to smuggle coloring and drawing into a lesson plan designed to enhance the appreciation of words.
Maxims are “short, forceful sayings in common usage,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, such as “A stitch in time saves nine.” Idioms are just common phrases that mean more than their literal interpretation, such as, “You crack me up,” meaning you make me laugh, or, literally, you shatter my stuffy composure.
My freshman and sophomore students, probably two classes of 40 students total, browsed the Vermont-wide web of their grandparents’ memories and brought back a gold mine of sayings and expressions. (My other three classes were upperclassmen and I had zero chance of this assignment succeeding with those extremely “mature” folks.)
Now to the assignment: Choose a maxim or an idiom and make a poster illustrating the words. Yes, it can be comical and it can even ignore the larger meaning. For example, “You speak with forked tongue” was depicted by one student as silverware coming out of someone’s mouth, rather than as a snake’s tongue.
Artistic ability was not graded. The whole thing could be stick figures, but it had to use color to attract the eye to the words. What was graded were proper spelling and punctuation. (Phrases were allowed to have periods at the end even though they were not complete sentences — a good way to sneak in a lesson about verbs making a noun into a sentence.)
This was before the computer was used in classrooms. Crayons and construction paper were still the order of the day.
The assignment had to be completed before Parents Night (usually the fifth week of school), so posters could be on display in the classroom for parents to view. They all had to be the same size (9×12), so no one had an advantage. I would allow students to have the last 10 minutes of class every day to work on the posters.
Boredom fled my classroom.
The kids gleefully reported more and more maxims and idioms every day until we cut it off at 284.
To my own surprise there were three I had never heard before — and have never heard since.
“Like a rope of sand.”
“If you hitch a lazy horse with a hard-working horse, you’ll get two lazy horses.”
“Closer than a snake in a manure-pile.”
My impression after teaching English for 25 years in Vermont public schools is that the use of maxims is a dying art. Idioms, on the other hand, are still used by kids: “crack a joke,” “eat your heart out,” “out on a limb,” are expressions I have heard kids use. (You can imagine the crazy posters they created with them.)
But I have never heard a kid say, “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
Unsurprisingly, many of the maxims and idioms involved water and animals, especially birds, horses and, of course, chickens and eggs (all in one basket, and which came first).
The presence of animals may be a clue about why maxims have fallen out of use: They are artifacts from our passing agrarian society.
There were five items about death (from croaking to kicking the bucket) and several about body parts, legs, feet and especially hearts.
And guess what?
Once my junior classes saw the sophomore and freshman posters lining my classroom wall, they asked if they could create maxim or idiom posters — the only time in my high-school teaching career when I saw seniority voluntarily turned on its head.
Below is a partial list of the 284 maxims my students brought me and each other as a gift from their elders. (The full list can be read at pkmaximsidioms.blogspot.com/.) I used this assignment for 10 years with great pleasure.
My students taught me an important lesson — one which I never forgot: Honor your feelings. If you are bored, your students probably are too.
Go with the glee.
Paul Keane lives in Hartford.
A slow boat to China.
That’s the ticket!
You’re a hot ticket.
Burning the candle at both ends.
Breaking even.
Over the top.
Over the hill.
Mind your p’s and q’s.
The forwarder I go the behinder I get.
Mama needs a new pair of shoes.
Bawl him out.
Hold your tongue.
One more peep out of you …
Hit the road, Jack.
Hotter than the hinges of hell.
No dice!
He’s crackin’ up.
Crack me up!
She kicked the bucket!
He’s a big shot.
I searched with a fine-toothed comb.
Put your right foot forward.
Get off on the right foot.
Crack a joke.
From day one.
Give me a break!
He’s top dog.
I’ve got a warm spot in my heart for you.
Cat got your tongue?
I’ve got time on my hands.
Time is on my side.
She wears her heart on her sleeve.
She broke my heart.
It does my heart good.
Eat your heart out.
Shake a leg.
Love bites!
If looks could kill.
Knock ’em dead.
She croaked.
Take it or leave it.
Like a chicken with its head cut off.
Soaked to the bone.
Out on a limb.
Paint yourself into a corner.
Save face.
Turn the tables.
You read my mind.
Silence is golden.
He talked my head off.
Hang in there.
Hang it up.
Let’s brainstorm ideas.
Love is blind.
Start off on the right foot.
Turn over a new leaf.
Who told you to put your two cents in?
I’m ready to roll.
Take a coffee break.
He pulls his own weight.
She’s a pistol-packin mama.
We’re working at cross-purposes.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
One man’s meat is another man’s poison.
That tickled my funny bone.
Like a bridge over troubled waters.
That packs a wallop!
Like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon.
A new broom sweeps clean.
Like a rope of sand.
He ran to beat the band.
She’s worth her salt.
If wishes were horses then beggars would ride.
Lie down with dogs; wake up with fleas.
Don’t jump the gun.
You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
Don’t stab me in the back.
Don’t let the cat out of the bag.
We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Don’t cry crocodile tears.
He speaks with forked tongue.
Freeze in your tracks.
It’s water over the dam.
It’s water off a duck’s back.
If I were in your shoes.
Don’t cry over spilt milk.
Get down to brass tacks.
Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.
A stitch in time saves nine.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
Birds of a feather flock together.
His bark is worse than his bite.
You can kill two birds with one stone.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
Time flies when you’re having fun.
Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?
Don’t judge a book by its cover.
Wake up and smell the coffee.