My class is Children's Literature.
the question is: How should we deal with Children's Literature in order to avoid stereotyping, especially gender characteristics, and make it acceptable to different times and cultures?
Need help.
Please.
put that many children get along great, no matter their color. they may be blue, green, black, purple, yellow, white, polka dotted, etc. and children, because they are so young and innocent, will not know the difference unless raised to.
One important way to deal with it is to choose books that are not ridiculously stereotypical.
Another way is to point out stereotypes when you present the books to the class, and engage students in discussion.
Some of the older children's literature is very bad for this reason. It is not good to have little girls read stories about helpless females who need to be rescued by males.
As for culture it is very difficult to avoid stereotypes; how can we teach something about a culture without making a big generalization?
Choosing the right literature seems most important. What do you think? To get started, google this:
children's literature stereotype gender culture
I would think that in the arena of any literature, stereotyping would be impossible to avoid completely with just one book. To properly demonstrate a balanced viewpoint of the world for children, it may take multiple perspectives and multiple stories to show that the world isn't one dimensional and biased.
it may take multiple perspectives
That is a great point! How can we teach anything about, for example, Japanese culture, without making ridiculous generalizations? The only way I could think of in the past was to teach in a superficial way about traditions and lore, etc. But how do we SAY something about a culture without reducing it? A great way, as Rod Farva mentions, is to give more than one perspective.
I guess that means an anthology of literature is great for teaching social studies.
