Sunday, October 5, 2014
Why Can't She Remember That? by Terry Meier
Reading this text reminds me of when I taught a French lesson once a week to pre-schoolers last year. Pre-schoolers have very short attention spans and it is not always easy to keep them interested in the lesson. It is definitely true in that keeping the children engaged will keep their attention. Some of the ideas in this article to keep children's attention spans are useful! Using puppets and dolls to interact with the story keep story time from being a teacher talking at you, but it is also important to choose books that represent different children's culture and identity. "Books are not meaningful to children who do not see themselves represented in them", states Meier, on page 247. I recently read about a girl whose little sister of Indian descent did not see herself as beautiful because so many "princess" portrayals in children's media do not represent her cultural group. This alarmed her older sister, who was concerned about her sister's lowered self-esteem at such a young age. Below, I have added a book of words from a vintage Golden Book. As you can see, all of the children in the illustration are white, and there are very stereotypical gender roles as well. The girls, are doing the more delicate tasks, dancing, reading, playing, while the boys are doing more traditionally masculine and physical tasks, building, working, and running. Some food for thought about how diversity is portrayed not only in books, but in all children's media. I have also added a link to an NPR article called "As Demographics Shift, Kid's Books Stay Stubbornly White." http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/06/25/193174358/as-demographics-shift-kids-books-stay-stubbornly-white
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I liked how you connected to the text with an experience and the picture relating to stereotypical images in children's books. Children can't be expected to relate to books if they can't connect with the characters or their experiences. I also liked the article showing the lack of diversity of books in classrooms and how that makes the students feel.
ReplyDeleteReally good connection with your past experience. Also, the picture you posted is a great example of, like you said, both gender stereotypes and the racial indifference within literature. The link the the NPR was awesome! So relevant to this article and what we're discussing in class. That was a really good find and great to share with the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteI liked the connection you made. Sometimes it's very hard to try to keep children engaged I think it's important to try to use different strategies
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