Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Secret Education
In Christiansen's piece they discuss "secret education" in children's story books and movies. I absolutely agree with this. Even if it was unintentional by the author almost every disney book and movie have stereotypes in the entire thing. These stereotypes influence kids to believe that everything in the books is true. So when an author makes all the black kids in the cafeteria sit together it gives kids the idea that when they are in school and go to lunch that if they are white they shouldn't sit with the black kids. Teachers and parents would suggest the kid is racist, when he or she isn't racist at all, at least not yet. The kid is just living by the examples in the stories they read. In most disney movies there is a naive, girly, helpless princess who gets rescued by a big, strong, handsome prince. Also until recently there was no black disney princess. That does not mean that in real life black girls aren't princesses, but when little girls read and see things like that they live by example. Maybe children's authors should think more about the values they are teaching children.
Mariam
Asghar and Asghar article swayed me in two directions on what to write this entry about. First I was going to go into Xenophobia, but then I remember how annoyed I was after reading in the beginning of the article how her father and uncle, while talking about football said, they are afraid Mariam is becoming dainty and passive because she likes disney princesses. Just because a little girl likes disney princesses doesn't mean she is some naive, unassertive nobody. She could easily grow up to be something great and it's those kinds of stereotypes that ruin how people look upon others. They were saying at the end of the article that Mariam will be different than most people because she sees hope and doesn't limit how opening and welcoming America is. If that is all true about Mariam than her liking princesses as a little girl shouldn't change that.
Language
So after reading Meier's piece about language I started to think about people in my schools that I have attended that spoke differently. So many people in my life have spoken differently than I have, but I never thought of it as different, I just thought of it as wrong. Speaking differently isn't wrong though, it's just different. The only reason I think it's wrong is because that's the way I was raised and when i was taught proper English I was influenced by my teachers and parent's that anything besides proper english is wrong. It's funny though, because thinking about how I speak and how it's different from other people, I bet those other people who speak differently think I am in the wrong. After reading this I don't really consider any speech "wrong", just different in their own ways. People are raised in different settings, in different societies and cultures and nationalities so of course their speech or mannerisms or style or anything will be different. That is just the way it is. No reason to judge, it's just a way of life and a mindset.
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
The Father's Plea
This letter written by the father was very heart warming. If i was the father i would have been so angry with the teacher but instead of yelling at the teacher he just simply was asking why the teacher thinks his son is slow and shared all the good things about his son. This is a complicated situation though because the boy is so young and coming from a completely different culture than all of the other students. He wants to fit in but he also doesn't want to change himself so it is pretty much an impossible task. It saddened me that he cut his hair to try and fit in but he had a lot of pressure on him. The teacher also could've helped more to make his situation better. The teacher could've taught the class about wind wolf's culture so they better understand why he is the way he is. Just because he is from a different culture and has had a different up-bringing doesn't make him a slow learner, just different.
The link above is a scene from the color of friendship it's a disney movie that i watched when i was little and this article kind of made me think of it
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