Children love to write about what they know. Spend any amount of time with children and it will become obvious that many of them are veritable experts on the toys and characters in popular children's media. When children want to write about popular media themes such as toys or characters from films and television, many teachers tend to react negatively. They may fear that the children will simply be recreating familiar story lines with little creativity on their part. Dr. Karen Wohlwend's research on this topic may alleviate these fears.
Wohlwend found that popular toys and media themes serve as ways to get children writing about things that they are personally interested and invest in. Popular media items can ultimately serve as a useful tool in literacy development. While children may sometimes be reenacting story lines, they are often doing so in a flexible and innovative way, adapting and appropriating them into their own stories. Popular media is an important piece of children's literary repertoires and it may be a mistake to prevent them from using it creatively.
There is certainly room to criticize how toys and other popular media items serve to perpetuate stereotypes of race, class, and gender and the effects these stereotypes may have on children. As Wohlwend suggests, if teachers ban these popular media items from the classroom they have effectively removed themselves the conversation.
No comments:
Post a Comment