Unlearning the Myths...

I must say that this article fit incredibly well with the education I received at DePauw through my Education Studies degree.  Much of the Ed. Studies degree includes discussions of the importance of diversity, deconstructing stereotypes, defying gender norms, etc.  This article encouraged all of these things as the author examined past and present fairy tales and the way in which they often encourage children to conform to society's expectations of gender, sexuality, and race.

I took a particular interest in this article because my senior thesis was a study of violence in children's literature and how these instances of violence could be used to create a curriculum about resisting domestic violence.  While Christensen does not specifically talk about violence, I found this article to be closely related in that the themes and motifs that our children read in literature are what they mimic in their own lives.  Whether the character is depicted as strong because he is a man or the character is being abused because she is female, both of these ideas teach our children that this is how society should be.  I even included gender prejudice as a form of violence in my study because the two are closely related.  I think Christensen's points are valid, and while I do not agree with everything in the article, she reiterates the idea that what children read in their stories becomes very real to them, and if these stories are so real, why wouldn't they mimic what they see?  It should make us as adults hold ourselves accountable in how we discuss and read these books to our children, if we choose to at all.