This week in my cultural diversity class we are talking about issues of gender in society and classrooms. We read a classic children's story "The Giving Tree" about a tree (portrayed as a female) and a young boy. If you are not familiar with the story when the boy is young he always plays with the tree and they enjoy each others company but as the boy grows up their relationship begins to dwindle. The older the boy gets the less he hangs around the tree and only comes over to her when he needs something, the tree gives and gives until she is nothing but a stump. Half of the class was given the original story and the other was given the same story but with the roles reversed the tree a man and then a girl instead of a boy. As a class we analyzed how both the female and male roles in each story align with our beliefs about gender in society.
A link to t he story if you'd like to read it: http://the-giving-tree.info/
Here are some of the words that the class came up with to describe each:
It was really interesting to see how we automatically associated these characteristics according to gender. In my class we agreed that this is how we portray gender in our own lives, many of the students described the young boy as a "typical guy". It was also eye opening to recognize that a famous children's book could somewhat be to blame for who children grow up to be. Our professor encouraged us to choose the books we give our students wisely and to try and remain gender neutral in our choices.
What do you think?
Here is a link to an article I discovered about terrible lessons within children's books and "The Giving Tree" was on there.
http://voices.yahoo.com/4-beloved-childrens-books-terrifying-7998294.html?cat=25
I also took this class and did this activity. I thought it was interesting. It is sad how children grow up thinking certain things about people based on gender. It makes it worse by having students read books like "The Giving Tree" to emphasize this. It is important as you said for teachers to be careful when choosing books for their students to read.
ReplyDeleteHi Christy! I am actually taking this class now and I wonder if I will read the same story. I learned in other classes that gender roles are prescribed to us at birth. From the very beginning of our lives, we are put into discreet categories in which to follow. Girls are supposed to like pink and play with dolls, while boys are supposed to like blue and play with cars, trucks or blocks. I think it is interesting to look at gender roles in the classroom because teachers actually reinforce certain stereotypes. It has been researched that teachers typically tend to call on boys more and ask higher-order questions. From this, we can see why males tend to grow up being more dominant than woman.
ReplyDeleteKrissy, It is important to get gender neutral books but it's also really difficult. I guess you just have to do your homework!
ReplyDeleteMichele, In my undergrad degree I took sociology of woman and men which taught us so much about how we are given this role to fulfill from birth and it was really interesting. I also learned about boys dominating the classroom and it's something you don't normally think about but when all this information is given to you it clicks.
I wish I would have done this activity in my ICD class. I'm going to have to say that the ICD class I took is one of the best classes I have taken at Rutgers, because it addresses so many issues we tend to overlook nowadays, such as racism, genderism and sexuality. It is indeed interesting how people view the characters of the books when their genders are reversed. It is sad, but our minds are embedded to think this way because our society sets up these norms to what's supposed to be feminine and masculine.
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