The Other: Orientalism, Colonialism, and Children’s Literature
How can you speak for a group without being biased? In this article, the author compares how adults “colonize” children through literature is like how Europe colonized Asia. Historically, Europe wrote narratives of the “Orient,” and often their narratives were false or exaggerated. And writers never fact-checked what they wrote with these countries’ approvals. By writing about “the Orient” without validating their writing it took away many Asian countries’ voices. In the past and currently, Adults writing about and for children, inadvertently also take away children’s voices. Since most children are still learning how to write (but some children can write their own stories) I think it is important to know that the children’s books that catered to children are mostly, if not all, written by adults and so these narratives may not be realistic. With that in mind, I think that I had to be more attentive to the books used in a classroom
Teaching About Gender Diversity
There were two key points I gathered from the article, “The Other.” 1) School Climate Chart and 2) Teacher Readiness. The School Climate Chart is an evaluation of a school’s readiness to teach gender-diverse lessons. It is used to gauge what “starting point” the school is at with teaching gender diversity. There are four categories in the Chart. From Colum, I the least ready and hostile to Colum IV the readiest and accepting. I think that the School Climate Chart is a very practical way to evaluate how a school might respond to gender diverse lessons or if they are even open to gender diverse lessons. Additionally, Teacher Readiness is how an educator is comfortable/uncomfortable is in teaching gender diverse lessons. There are structure and individual factors that contribute to a teacher’s readiness. I think that teacher readiness is very personal and an educator has to do a lot of self-reflecting in order to adequately teach gender diversity.
Works cited
Richelle's Education Blog 