Speech-language physician says she is anxious to suggest loud reading to children.
A system that provides free books to children from conception until the age of five supports “heteronormativity”, “ableism”, and” sexism”, according to a doctoral dissertation.
Jennifer Stone analyzed the Dolly Parton Imagination Library’s collection of 60 publications through a critical race theory glass. The country singer’s basis collaborates with books to give away one book per month.
Stone, a 25-year-old speech-language doctor, launched her own first studying initiative. This spring, she received her degree in speech and hearing disciplines. The conclusions of her research led her to make the decision to stop giving children loud books.
According to Stone ( pictured ),” the analyses revealed diverse racial representation that disrupts the history of White dominance in children’s literature and perpetuates multiple hegemonic cultural stereotypes.”
” Figures with dis/abilities, non- ethical female personalities, or non- ethical family structures were erased”, she wrote in her intangible. ” Also, uneven communication regarding books and reading was conveyed”.
” No obvious links to intimate personality were found in the corpus”, she even complained.
This is a system for children, it must be noted.
She later wrote in the paper that” Characters ‘ relationships were subject to social domination, first by mothers as child abuse, then by society through ableism and sexism.” No models of same-sex relationships or cooperative mothers challenged the characters ‘ interpersonal relationships ‘ ubiquity of heteronormativity or parental protection.
” Three inferential derived themes: reading to succeed, living the American dream, and perfecting parenting revealed difficult intersections of discourses of power that resulted in harsh childism, which operated to subjugate children and to privilege a White, center- class, cis- sexist, heteronormative, able- bodied American norm”, she wrote.
In her essay, Stone outlined how many of the novels were problematic.
Eterornormativity” [ Has ] eterornormativity ] functioned as the implicit norm against which other family structures were compared,” Stone wrote. In other words, the children’s books preached a mother and a father in the home to frequently.
Each publication is coded with “family construction”, “race”, and” class”, an amazing feat given that some characters are not human. For instance, in” Beauty and the Three Bears”, the family is considered “white”. But they are not arctic animals.
Books received criticism for making advances that did n’t have disabilities. The thesis further emphasized the importance of personal ready bodies and actions as a desired ideal through the themes that celebrated the value of work.
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A text titled” Little Excavator”, is criticized for promoting the benefits of labor.
The guide “centered the story of a fresh excavator, emulating the adult excavators but that he could eventually visit the large, older excavators ‘ workforce”, Stone lamented. This exemplified the widely accepted social convention that children are expected to choose a career path and pursue it gladly throughout their entire lives.
She gave some additional examples of work-centered books, all of which” situated tale activity in workplaces characterized by adherence to power and day-to-day participation in a job as a form of democracy and as a way to personal and financial achievement.”
Dolly Parton’s personal publication,” Coat of Some Colors”, took criticism from Stone for promoting the” National dream”, or the idea people can achieve through hard work. Furthermore, the book was criticized for having Spanish translations in the text.
Another book, which Stone criticized, promoted a “gender normative role” and had a cross on the wall.
” Brick by brick used a first- person narrative, told in the voice of Luis, a young bilingual boy, to describe a Latinx family’s achievement of the American dream”, Stone wrote. ” It was written and illustrated by a White woman, who used photographs, digital painting, and collage”. The book’s fictional family has a dream to own a home.
The book honors the family’s “labors moved them to that goal, and the sequence of illustrations conveyed the movement through time and place for each stage of the dream accomplishment.”
The mom was in a “housecoat and slippers”, as Luis and Papi let, thus implying a “gender normative role by staying home to clean while ]her husband and son ] when out to work and school”.
A cross hung on the wall, implying Christian family heritage,” Stone writes”. This family’s first language, which was implied as Spanish, would start with these images, which set the stage for a metaphorical rags beginning.
Stone also praised the depiction of a non-white father supporting his child in this book.
Parton’s free book program did a good job, according to Stone, of including” racially diverse characters at a rate that could be transformative in the ongoing effort to increase racial diversity in children’s literature.”
However, Stone worries, the characters advance harmful narratives”. However, the [family literary theory ]- informed appreciation of racial representation in the corpus co-exists with the CRT- informed analysis that points to these inclusive images as potential locations for oppressive power, she wrote.
Some books used” melting pot,” characters, showing a variety of ethnicities. So this can be good, Stone writes. But it can also promote the dangerous idea, in her opinion, of” equal opportunity.”
” When melting pot imagery is included without cultural authenticity, it can reinscribe equal opportunity ideologies,” she wrote”. Equality ideologies conceal structural contradictions and give people responsibility for their successes and failures. melting pot representations in this corpus gave the impression that everyone, regardless of race, can participate in everything society has to offer.
However, according to Stone”, systemic racism that obstructs access to American educational, health, and employment resources for people of color, “makes these depictions” dangerous fictions.”
According to Stone, the findings led to a reconsideration of the advantages of aloud reading for children as a general practice. She will still read to kids, but will be careful not to promote” white saviorism,” and other ills.
I believe there is a chance that the ever-expanding practice of daily read alouds and book ownership as important parenting factors may be causing literacy inequities through majoritarian storytelling and colonization of families ‘ primary literacies with dominators ‘ cultural values, she writes. Any risk warrants a pause in action and a careful review of accepted discourses because literacy’s power and the pervasive inequities in it are so pervasive.
” For me, pausing and reconsidering has led to new understandings of literacy and literacy interventions,” she wrote.
I now see literacy intervention as potentially dangerous and white saviorism, and literacy as multiple, dynamic, and dynamic.
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IMAGES: University of North Carolina, Anna Dewdney/Viking Books for Young Leaders
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