Joan, by "black and brown" children, I simply meant non-white American children, of all socioeconomic classes, not disadvantaged children. I think it is really unfair when most of their reading is from white European writers, and while in my own daughter's reading lists I see a more multicultural approach beginning to take hold, it is exactly this kind of curriculum that is usually referred to as "trendy". Of course there is classical Asian writing, but it is certainly not taught to elementary school children, which is the age at which children either learn to love reading, or do not.
I also disagree that exposing children to materials that may create a love of reading is teaching down to them, even if those materials are comic books. I wonder if all the people here who espouse this approach have been in a public elementary school classroom recently. Children now typically have shortened attention spans due to overexposure to television and video, parents who are too tired and stressed to read them very much of anything, or read themselves, and thirty percent of the children in California live in poverty, with the attendant lack of good nutrition, and are often tired and hungry in class. This is not an ideal environment for teaching the classics of a culture many of these children do not even share.
I would agree that exposing children only to the Saturday Evening Post is cruel, but that is anecdotal and is surely an aberration. I have never heard of anything at all like that. |
