One topic we'll be discussing this week in class is the importance of using quality children's literature in teaching social studies. One of your readings for this week, "10 Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism," points out that teachers also need to be aware of bias and stereotypes in children's books, and that they should avoid books that present distorted perceptions of women or people of color.
What do you think of the guidelines for analyzing children's literature that are laid out in the article? Is this good advice, or "political correctness" run amuk? Should teachers put this much thought into what books they choose, or is it asking too much? How important is it for different social groups to be fairly represented on the classroom bookshelves?
11 comments:
I feel that the guidelines contained in "10 Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism" should definitely be kept in mind as we choose books to read aloud and books to be kept in our classroom library. It is important to display the different views contained in literature. Students need to be exposed to books that demonstrate: various cultural views, girl/boy protagonists, non-stereotypical characters, etc. As future teachers, we must be ever mindful of the themes and views that we are displaying through the literature that we choose to make available to our students. I also do not think that it is too much to ask for teachers to put a great deal of thought into the books that they choose. We, as beginning teachers, have the ability to consciously make good book choices before we even have a classroom library. I do not want to speak for every intern in this program; however, I do not have a substantial amount of literature for my future classroom library. I feel that it is my responsibility to have those guidelines in mind as I am choosing classroom books.
To reiterate what many of us said today, I believe that it is worthwhile to go through your classroom library to check and make sure that you have children's literature that fits most of these categories. Of course, this may not be done all at once, but since we will be new teachers, like Jillian stated, maybe it will be easier for us to get a head start on an amazing, multicultural library. :) Children do need to see literature that is discussed in "10 Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism" so that they do not become racist or stereotypical themselves.
When talking about analyzing children's books, we spoke in class about whether or not a person can or should write about a race or culture other than their own. In the article "Caught between Invisibility and Stereotyping: Teaching the Novel "Shabanu," author Margaret Smith Crocco states: "A number of issues come into play here, including knowledge, social location, and the biases inherent in any social location, whether insider or outsider. In the end, it would seem that the insider's status- even though it, too, may be limited in certain ways- must prevail" (180). So, are the observations of the journalist who wrote "Shabanu," who lived in Pakistan for three years to be completely dismissed, simply on the basis that she is not Muslim nor Pakistani? Absolutely not.
First of all, minorities continually seek recognition for their accomplishements alone, to erase racial and cultural boundaries. This "rule" that a person can only write about people like themselves only perpetuates the separation of people who are different from themself.
Moreover, no storybook will ever be able to capture the culture of a nation through the eyes of one nonfiction character. As we learn to provide our students a multi-cultural education, we are taught to emphasize the fact that every person in a culture is not exactly alike. A nonfiction novel desribing my life certainly does not apply to every American, and in many ways cannot even compare to the lives of my peers. The author of Shabanu was writing about one girl in Pakistan, who like each of us, is different from people of her nation. Crocco agrees that there is bias within the insider's perspective, so why is an educated outsider's perspective to be taken less seriously?
I think that the article, "10 Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism," had a lot of guidelines to look at for every book in your classroom. I feel that it is almost impossible to pick out all the books that have racism in your classroom. You can try though to avoid books that have racism as a theme of main idea of the book. You can try to read as many books as you can but as a teacher we should let our students know what they should look for in books. This way they can learn what would be considered racist on their own. You should as a teacher however really pay attention to any forms of racism in a book that you will be reading and teaching togther as a class. If you find racism, you can either choose to not teach the book or stop and explain the racism when you come to it or after the book. As long as students are aware of the different types of racism and that it is not ok, then I think it is ok for students to read the books and learn how some people may think. As a teacher you should, however, make sure to have books from many different perspectives, cultures and view points. You want to try to make your students well-rounded and able to read all types of materials.
Like many other of the students in our class, I feel that the guidelines in "10 Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism" should be something that teachers consistently use when choosing books for the students in the class. I do not think that it is too much to ask. These guidelines can be completed in a few minutes. I plan on taking the time to make sure that the books I choose to be in the classroom and used in lessons will be appropriate and no offend anyone. Literature can affect a child's life tremendously and I would never want anyone to feel bad about themselves after reading. I also want my students to be represented in reading. If the students are represented, they will be able to make connections to the reading and hopefully come to like it more! It is so important to include/represent different groups of people in the literature in a classroom!
I don’t think that many books are perfect and many will not meet the guidelines in “10 Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism.” But, I will try my best to include the “perfect” books. If I do have books that do not meet the guide lines, I will explain the stereotypes of wrongness to the class. This would be a good opportunity to include the theme of acceptance in a class, teach students to critically read, and try to prevent stereotypes.
Alot has been said about this topic. I agree that as teachers we should use these guidelines when selecting books. I also feel that it would be good to get the students to look at books this way as well. If we educate the students on stereotypes and injustices in literature, then the students will become the critcial readers. This should be a goal of all teachers and we can set this process in motion through example. I think that comparing different types of literature would be a great way to open our students to new and interesting literature.
All really great comments. Beth, when you talk about whether or not a person can or should write about a race or culture other than their own. In some ways, I do agree. I believe that anyone and everyone has the right to voice their own opinions and even write it in a book. However, in other ways, I do believe that culture and race can have an impact in writing. For example, Suzanne Fisher Staples, the author of Shabunu, lived in Pakistan for three years. I am sure Staples gained an abundance of information about this culture, but how much? My question is what did Staples do during those three years? Did she observe, take notes, partake in any traditions? Did she really know what it felt like to be Pakistani? It all really depends. My point here is that you can gain so much information from observing (once again I am not definite on what Staples did in those three years)from being that reporter or journalist, but can you actually tell how it feels to be in a position of that particular race? In relation to student teaching, many of us can say that we are just observing during this first phase. Others can say that they are teaching. How much information can you gain as an observer rather than a teacher? This goes along with other perspectives. In relation to race and culture, my example would be about slavery. We can read all the books containing statistics of how many slaves died and details of how slaves were tortured in order to get an effect of slavery. However, does this perspective of the writer, historian, or journalist describe how a slave felt when taken away from his family and lashed a hundred times a day? No, but my point is that race and culture do have an impact in writing/reading. If someone were to judge an African American or Native American based upon their physical characteristics...could someone such as a journalist or writer of neither African American or Native American decent truly feel or understand how an African American or Native American may feel based upon these judgments or stereotypes? I am half Filipino and I have been called chinc and hispanic. In many ways, I felt hurt by these discriminating words, but now, I just think of how were these people who stereotyped against me brought up and educated? Have they been experienced to a range of diversity?
These ideas can connect to why the Pakistani American students felt that the novel, Shaburu, was offensive. In a way, any book can be offensive because such books as Shaburu cannot have all the information about one culture/race and it cannot satisfy all readers' perspectives. Every book has its own perspective and so does every person. I believe that anyone can write about anything, but I do strongly think that race and culture can have more of an impact in the writing/reading. As future educators, I think it would be beneficial to show different perspectives in books such as Columbus (a perspective of a Native American and a perspective of Columbus). It is up to us to expand the knowledge of ourselves and our students through thinking universally.
Like many of you, I feel that I will follow the guidelines mentioned in "10 quick ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism." I feel that students should be provided with texts that are accurate as well as give them the opportunity to compare these texts with those that may be stereotypical. Students will be able to analyze the text and take on from different perspectives. Children will begin to question and draw their own conclusions provided with a variety of resources. Looking back at the library in my classroom, I feel that the books lack in accuracy and in diversity. Personally, I would like to include many multicultural pieces in my classroom so that students have some sort of exposure to it.
I also feel that I will need to address stereotypes depicted in many of the books. I feel that if I begin early, there might be a possibility that children will be less biased towards other cultures. I'm definitely a big advocate when it comes to addressing diversity. So far I have not seen my cooperating teacher address this. Which is a shame because about 75 percent of my students speak two or more languages.
Although I agree that the guidelines described in "10 Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism" is something that we as educators should pay attention to when picking out books for classroom use, especially read-aloud, I don't think that it is possible to find a book that is "perfect" and meets all the guidelines mentioned to a “T.” If you look hard enough, just about any and every book has its faults in one way or another – whether that be stereotypical character roles or just poor quality writing. When selecting reading materials for the classroom, I think that what is most important is having a balance and variety in the literary materials that are offered. By keeping the article’s guidelines in the back of our minds, that goal can be accomplished.
At the same time, I also believe that there is a lot of great literature out there that students will enjoy and gain knowledge from, but that doesn't fit in with the criteria outlined in the article. One example is The Time Warp Trio series of short novels. Although the main characters (and heroes) of the stories are boys and according to the article, that should be frowned upon, I think that these books would be a great addition to a 2nd-4th grade classroom library as it engages young boys in reading.
Above all, the children in our classroom should be able to relate to the characters and their experiences in the books and stories that they read. Sometimes, that means that books are going to have “stereotypical” character roles and plots where boys are the heroes and the girls are the damsels in distress or an Asian girl has a panda teddy bear, but that’s okay! As long as the entire classroom library does not consist of such books, then I don’t see it as too big of a problem.
In my experience, throughout my education in the Curriculum and Instruction department at ISU, literacy professors have constantly been saying that as educators, we want to provide “windows and mirrors” for our students. In other words, we want our students to be able to see themselves reflected in the literature used in classrooms, but also be able to see how other people deal with a variety of issues that can be presented through literature. It’s hard for me to believe that always being completely politically correct and trying to battle stereotypes in books is going to help us achieve that goal. I have always believed that certain stereotypes exist for a reason because sometimes they are true – in whole or in part. Certain stereotypes – such as white people love country music – are true for at least some of the population that they are applied to. Stereotypes become problematic when they are over-generalized to apply to an entire group of people. Is it true that white people love country music? Yes, some white people do love country music, but that doesn’t mean that they all do and it doesn’t mean that individuals of other ethnicities don’t love country music as well. What is most important is that students are able to relate to the characters stories and experiences in the books that they read; and that sometimes means that there will be stereotypical elements to the stories. The points in the article really should be used just as guidelines and something for us to keep in mind as we begin to build up our classroom library. I don’t think that they are meant to be the guide to the end-all, be-all components of a perfect classroom library.
I agree that it is very important that we analyze the books we have in our classrooms, but it would be extremely difficult to be that thorough with every single book. I think teachers should at least pick out a couple very important guidelines and at least skim through books for those. I think the most important thing to use these guidelines for is read-alouds. Something that will be shared with the whole class by the teacher should definitely be checked with all these guidelines. As far as a classroom library goes, I feel that it is definitely important to make sure you have a very diverse library, and include books that speak to all races, genders, and issues, and that as a teacher you should make sure that there are no books that are really bad about showing racism or sexism, but I don't think that every single book needs to cover all ten guidelines.
Post a Comment