I think that, as with any topic, it's imperative to equitably represent the societally underrepresented. Living in the world we do, there is so much out there as far as literature. Every topic from care bears to controversial. Incorporating literature regarding gender stereotypes, misconceptions, dispositions is kind of a common sense way to address it. Literature pulls the topic away from the students and makes it about someone else in order to gain the outside perspective for the students. It also allows them to look more closely at a "case study" (fictional included) and possibly relate to it or the characters, allowing for a sense of understanding or connectedness. Another fantastic aspect of including literature is that you can use it to kill two birds with one stone: You can address a topic that needs to be while simultaneously gaining participation in a content area lesson. Having certain books on the topic be done as a class while leaving others on a shelf for independent/choice reading, you can give the students some agency and enable them to further pursue the topic. My mother recently dug out a couple books from her childhood. These are the golden books classics. The date in them says 1957. The titles are Nurse Nancy and Doctor Dan. Nancy loves to cook with her mother in the kitchen for when her father comes home, play with her baby dolls, and play dress up but, when her brother Dan scrapes his knee from playing soldiers or baseball too rough, Nurse Nancy comes to his aid. I'll let you figure out just what type of activities entertain Dan's time... Can you imagine if someone tried to put those books on the shelves today?!? Luckily, we now have books such as Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman where the protagonist is the antithesis of Nurse Nancy. Hurray for books!
I agree with Justine. I think that by exposing children to literature that defies the normal stereotypes and prejudices, we can show them that it is okay not to fit into these ideas of what girls and boys are "supposed to be."
Well I would say that choosing stories with non-stereotyped characters would be a start, but obviously that did not work for the girls that want to be like Barbie. These girls were only 8 years old yet they played into the damsel in distress, beautiful princess genre so well. Wason-Ellam described the attention paid to her selections but they were still interpreted under the lens of the Disney princesses.
Could she have picked a better, more suitable book? I don't know. Do they exist?
I think Wason-Ellam's article is a good example of how we can expose and deconstruct out student's ideas of gender. In that article, the girls were provided with books that had strong female characters who did not necessarily perform in the same way we would normally expect to see girls acting. This provided the female readers with someone they could identify with and take risks with. The girls were able to explore new ideas and roles that the had not associated with "femaleness" before.
As teachers, we can provid our students with books like this, that challenge what they would normally assume to be true. Through engaging with these books, our students will be given an avenue to consider, discuss, and even try out new roles that break them out of the discourses they have been cast into because of the regime of truth that surrounds them.
I think that even if our students do not follow in the footsteps of the nonsterotyped characters in the books we present, they are still getting the idea that all girls or all boys do not have to be or act a certain way. A typical role for girls is demonstrated by the whole Disney Princess thing, but just because that is typical, does that mean that no little girl should want to be a princess? I don't think so. I just don't want the little Disney princesses to be afraid to climb a tree or touch a bug or become a scientist, because they think that those are things that boys do.
There is a tv show on Disney channel which is also a childrens picture book series called "Higly Town Heroes" Thsis a perfect example of what others are talking about when they talk about showing characters holding jobs traditionally held by a certain gender. In this show, the kids get into jams and have to call on a Higly Town Hero. WWhat you see is a female police women, a male nurse, a female construction worker, a male secratary. It plays to the fact that people are people and can do the job, no matter the gender. I imagine that there are many more jobs out there where gender barriers were broken because a little girl read about a female astronaut or a male day care teacher. Literature is Effecting people and the jobs they choose.
After reading these comments it got me thinking about the Disney Princesses and what would happen if the next "Disney Princess" was a male prince. Would society take to that? Would they be willing to accept this as part of the Disney series? I know we are not talking about the Disney characters in this blog per se but I feel that this can also tie in the homosexual aspect. In my opinion, society would not accept a male prince taking on feminine roles because they would automatically assume that this prince was gay. Does anyone agree with that?
Which ties into the activities that take place in the classroom and the literature read in the classroom. Students are not willing to accept males taking part in female roles without their sexual preference being discussed. Which is why many children miss that concept of a gender engaging in opposite roles if it is discussed in literature, as seen in "If only I was like Barbie." Does it seem that tom boys are more accepted then the other way around. What do you guys think?
It's very important to expose students to literature that shows children not acting in their genered stereotypes.
Unfortunately, there are not enough pieces of literature that show children acting outside of their stereotypes.
One book that demonstrates a male character acting outside of the male stereotype is "Oliver Button is a Sissy" by Tomie dePaola. In the book, Oliver is not interested in "boy" activities like sports. He is instead interested in dancing. The boys pick on him and write on the bathroom wall "Oliver Button is a sissy!" The girls stick up for Oliver, and the bullies stop picking on him. This would be a great book to disrupt the geneder stereotpyes in elementary schools.
It's funny that Tory asked if there were books that didn't have gender stereotyping. I tried to think of some, but all I came up with was Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. Even in that book, Stargirl is eccentric. She is an outsider and eventually leaves the school. How many characters can we think of who win over the "other side"? I think it's much more important to present students with questions to ponder and propose other ways of being. I have found shorter pieces that speak to gender (male and female) and other social issues, but they're poetry and non-fiction works. I've used a book titled "Mondo Barbie" by Lucinda Ebersole and Richard Peabody. It contains many pieces (prose and poetry) about Barbie. It's an eye-opener but not appropriate for grades 9 and below. I have often read the following on the first day of school in 11 Honors:
Barbie Doll
This girlchild was born as usual and presented dolls that did pee-pee and miniature GE stoves and irons and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy. Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said: You have a great big nose and fat legs.
She was healthy, tested intelligent, possessed strong arms and back, abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity. She went to and fro apologizing. Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs.
She was advised to play coy, exhorted to come on hearty, exercise, diet, smile and wheedle. Her good nature wore out like a fan belt. So she cut off her nose and her legs and offered them up.
In the casket displayed on satin she lay with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on, a turned-up putty nose, dressed in a pink and white nightie. Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said. Consummation at last. To every woman a happy ending.
by Marge Piercy
I've also used excerpts from "Real Boys' Voices" by by William S. Pollack and Todd Shuster. You can probably come up with a ton more, but those have worked for me.
The Blackburn piece addressed the issue of teaching and gender. Blackburn worked at a youth center with kids of various backgrounds (racial, ethnic, gendered) and started a "story time" during which they could share readings, writings, and their thoughts. One of her challenges was leaving her teacherly ways outside of this environment where the kids were responsible for running the program. Blackburn concluded that her job was to provide a space where youths could "engage in significant literacy performances and identity work" (p.323). Our time with our students is limited as is the space we share with them; therefore we can only given them opportunities to explore safely in ways that perhaps are not possible elsewhere.
9 comments:
I think that, as with any topic, it's imperative to equitably represent the societally underrepresented. Living in the world we do, there is so much out there as far as literature. Every topic from care bears to controversial. Incorporating literature regarding gender stereotypes, misconceptions, dispositions is kind of a common sense way to address it. Literature pulls the topic away from the students and makes it about someone else in order to gain the outside perspective for the students. It also allows them to look more closely at a "case study" (fictional included) and possibly relate to it or the characters, allowing for a sense of understanding or connectedness. Another fantastic aspect of including literature is that you can use it to kill two birds with one stone: You can address a topic that needs to be while simultaneously gaining participation in a content area lesson. Having certain books on the topic be done as a class while leaving others on a shelf for independent/choice reading, you can give the students some agency and enable them to further pursue the topic. My mother recently dug out a couple books from her childhood. These are the golden books classics. The date in them says 1957. The titles are Nurse Nancy and Doctor Dan. Nancy loves to cook with her mother in the kitchen for when her father comes home, play with her baby dolls, and play dress up but, when her brother Dan scrapes his knee from playing soldiers or baseball too rough, Nurse Nancy comes to his aid. I'll let you figure out just what type of activities entertain Dan's time... Can you imagine if someone tried to put those books on the shelves today?!? Luckily, we now have books such as Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman where the protagonist is the antithesis of Nurse Nancy. Hurray for books!
I agree with Justine. I think that by exposing children to literature that defies the normal stereotypes and prejudices, we can show them that it is okay not to fit into these ideas of what girls and boys are "supposed to be."
Well I would say that choosing stories with non-stereotyped characters would be a start, but obviously that did not work for the girls that want to be like Barbie. These girls were only 8 years old yet they played into the damsel in distress, beautiful princess genre so well. Wason-Ellam described the attention paid to her selections but they were still interpreted under the lens of the Disney princesses.
Could she have picked a better, more suitable book? I don't know. Do they exist?
I think Wason-Ellam's article is a good example of how we can expose and deconstruct out student's ideas of gender. In that article, the girls were provided with books that had strong female characters who did not necessarily perform in the same way we would normally expect to see girls acting. This provided the female readers with someone they could identify with and take risks with. The girls were able to explore new ideas and roles that the had not associated with "femaleness" before.
As teachers, we can provid our students with books like this, that challenge what they would normally assume to be true. Through engaging with these books, our students will be given an avenue to consider, discuss, and even try out new roles that break them out of the discourses they have been cast into because of the regime of truth that surrounds them.
I think that even if our students do not follow in the footsteps of the nonsterotyped characters in the books we present, they are still getting the idea that all girls or all boys do not have to be or act a certain way. A typical role for girls is demonstrated by the whole Disney Princess thing, but just because that is typical, does that mean that no little girl should want to be a princess? I don't think so. I just don't want the little Disney princesses to be afraid to climb a tree or touch a bug or become a scientist, because they think that those are things that boys do.
There is a tv show on Disney channel which is also a childrens picture book series called "Higly Town Heroes" Thsis a perfect example of what others are talking about when they talk about showing characters holding jobs traditionally held by a certain gender. In this show, the kids get into jams and have to call on a Higly Town Hero. WWhat you see is a female police women, a male nurse, a female construction worker, a male secratary. It plays to the fact that people are people and can do the job, no matter the gender. I imagine that there are many more jobs out there where gender barriers were broken because a little girl read about a female astronaut or a male day care teacher. Literature is Effecting people and the jobs they choose.
After reading these comments it got me thinking about the Disney Princesses and what would happen if the next "Disney Princess" was a male prince. Would society take to that? Would they be willing to accept this as part of the Disney series? I know we are not talking about the Disney characters in this blog per se but I feel that this can also tie in the homosexual aspect. In my opinion, society would not accept a male prince taking on feminine roles because they would automatically assume that this prince was gay. Does anyone agree with that?
Which ties into the activities that take place in the classroom and the literature read in the classroom. Students are not willing to accept males taking part in female roles without their sexual preference being discussed. Which is why many children miss that concept of a gender engaging in opposite roles if it is discussed in literature, as seen in "If only I was like Barbie." Does it seem that tom boys are more accepted then the other way around. What do you guys think?
It's very important to expose students to literature that shows children not acting in their genered stereotypes.
Unfortunately, there are not enough pieces of literature that show children acting outside of their stereotypes.
One book that demonstrates a male character acting outside of the male stereotype is "Oliver Button is a Sissy" by Tomie dePaola. In the book, Oliver is not interested in "boy" activities like sports. He is instead interested in dancing. The boys pick on him and write on the bathroom wall "Oliver Button is a sissy!" The girls stick up for Oliver, and the bullies stop picking on him. This would be a great book to disrupt the geneder stereotpyes in elementary schools.
It's funny that Tory asked if there were books that didn't have gender stereotyping. I tried to think of some, but all I came up with was Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. Even in that book, Stargirl is eccentric. She is an outsider and eventually leaves the school. How many characters can we think of who win over the "other side"? I think it's much more important to present students with questions to ponder and propose other ways of being. I have found shorter pieces that speak to gender (male and female) and other social issues, but they're poetry and non-fiction works. I've used a book titled "Mondo Barbie" by Lucinda Ebersole and Richard Peabody. It contains many pieces (prose and poetry) about Barbie. It's an eye-opener but not appropriate for grades 9 and below. I have often read the following on the first day of school in 11 Honors:
Barbie Doll
This girlchild was born as usual
and presented dolls that did pee-pee
and miniature GE stoves and irons
and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.
Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:
You have a great big nose and fat legs.
She was healthy, tested intelligent,
possessed strong arms and back,
abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.
She went to and fro apologizing.
Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs.
She was advised to play coy,
exhorted to come on hearty,
exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.
Her good nature wore out
like a fan belt.
So she cut off her nose and her legs
and offered them up.
In the casket displayed on satin she lay
with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on,
a turned-up putty nose,
dressed in a pink and white nightie.
Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said.
Consummation at last.
To every woman a happy ending.
by Marge Piercy
I've also used excerpts from "Real Boys' Voices" by by William S. Pollack and Todd Shuster. You can probably come up with a ton more, but those have worked for me.
The Blackburn piece addressed the issue of teaching and gender. Blackburn worked at a youth center with kids of various backgrounds (racial, ethnic, gendered) and started a "story time" during which they could share readings, writings, and their thoughts. One of her challenges was leaving her teacherly ways outside of this environment where the kids were responsible for running the program. Blackburn concluded that her job was to provide a space where youths could "engage in significant literacy performances and identity work" (p.323). Our time with our students is limited as is the space we share with them; therefore we can only given them opportunities to explore safely in ways that perhaps are not possible elsewhere.
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