Rethinking Sex In the Classroom?
Newsweek recently had an article titled “Rethinking Race In the Classroom” by Allison Samuels.
It was about the idea that schools should stop teaching and having kids read books like “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Of Mice and Men”, etc. since those books use the “N word” and “portray African-Americans as inarticulate and unintelligent”.
I really don’t know what I think about this. I’m white and I don’t know if my opinion should really matter when it comes to issues of race like this or not.
But as a woman I got to thinking about how girls, and both young and adult women, are portrayed in much of the classical literature - even in those books that are aimed at girls.
Unfortunately I can’t think of too many specific examples. I do remember that in “Little Women” (because I re-read it recently since I didn’t finish it when I was younger; I quit after Beth died - it made me too sad) the only options women had were to be good little girls and wives and mothers.
I came to the conclusion that I don’t think I would want my daughter to even read the book. I don’t even want her to get it in her head that women - even at some time in the past - had that limited of opportunities. Maybe when she gets older, but not as a young girl still trying to find her place in the world.
Very few if any of the books I read as a kid had a female character that was strong and educated. And I do believe that even if girls today are not inundated with messages that they are fragile and not as smart, etc. (and that’s debatable - I think they still are on T.V., movies, etc.) - even getting that idea in their heads now and then, in subtle ways, can have an impact on their self esteem and on what they think their future as adult women might be like.
Those subtle messages can be the most insidious of all too. Just a little comment in a book about how proper girls and women should behave gets the message in their heads. A kid could grow up - whether they are black, female or any non-white male - with great self esteem and feeling really good about themselves. And then a story is read in class that could put the idea in their heads, as well as in their classmates heads, that maybe, just maybe they aren’t as good as the others.
I certainly wouldn’t want schools teaching from books that would send this message to my daughter. If people who are black think certain books are not a good idea to be taught in classrooms maybe we should respect that.
You can’t erase history and certainly mistakes of the past need to be learned about so they aren’t repeated. But it could wait until kids are a little older. Juniors and seniors in high school, or even better yet, college. By that time young people should have a strong, and hopefully, positive self-image.
Most of the planet’s population is already non-white males. Over time, even in this country, white males will be a minority. In the future almost every kid in a classroom will be part of one of the groups that were discriminated against in the past. Maybe sexism, racism, the holocaust and other atrocities can be taught and linked together as examples of how we must not ever treat any group of people as less than human.
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5 Responses to 'Rethinking Sex In the Classroom?'
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on March 28th, 2009 at 9:34 am
THe problem with censoring books from another age, for content objectionable to this age,is that that rules out just about all available literature from more than ten years ago.
Let’s face it. Women and minorities WERE viewed differently in the old days.
As a Jewish family, we can’t even read Shakespeare without pause.
And yet, I refuse to censor my kids’ reading. We can teach them proper values, and simply deal with poor role models from OLD BOOKS by reminding them that things were just different then.
on May 17th, 2009 at 8:39 am
I’m not a censoring proponent, and in fact, was an English major who had to read most of what you mentioned, plus much much more. The notion of having kids read literature of previous generations is to teach them the progression of human history and the struggles of each previous generation or civilization. Unless we know our history, we are doomed to repeat the previous failures. Additionally, whilst authors such as Twain and Steinbeck did use the “n” word, they were often commenting about social strife. Twain was NOT a racist, but was very much pro-abolition and women’s rights. What he wrote reflected the society of his day and was often sarcastic. He also paid for two black men’s college education (one to Yale law school and another to become a minister but I forget where). Studying literature is very much an in-depth study of history. Do not ever censor anything simply because of a word inside of the book, you must study the time and the author was well as his writings. Indeed, there are writings that are deeply offensive. However, we cannot sacrifice the freedom of the press or the idea that we teach through literature by providing a select few with the ability to censor or restrict how and what we learn!
on July 24th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Half of all teens in the United States are sexually active. There is clear evidence that comprehensive sex education prevents pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. But the Bush administration and its conservative allies are pushing critical facts about sex and its consequences out of the classroom, in favor of incomplete — but more politically palatable — sex education programs.
on July 30th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Does sex education program works? It seems like sex among teenagers are quite common nowadays and not a single sex education could really stop them.
on August 11th, 2009 at 8:41 am
In our country there are a lot of girls who get pregnant at a younger (and younger and younger…) age. I think the media and technology are somewhat responsible for this (sex is promoted in the ads, tv, movies and is easily accessed through the internet even by kids), so as our culture that made us always consider morality and being conservative. I mean girls (even boys) here would be very shy to buy contraceptives for fear of being discovered that she’s already having sex, thinking that she’ll be laughed at or be talked about, risking the fact that she might get pregnant or she might get a disease. But you can’t blame the girls because PMS is a big issue here esp. to the old fashioned people. In spite of this, the young still keep on doing “it” and get unwanted pregnancy, making our population bigger and our poverty rate worse. I think sex education will help the youth understand better their responsibilities and the consequences of having sex. The only problem is if it will ever be implemented in our ever conservative and ever religious country.
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