Week 8 Readings

It is important for teachers to choose textbooks that will be helpful for children's learning.

In Taylor-Mendes' article, it talks about the racial stereotypes that are seen in Foreign Language Textbooks. I find it interesting that so many of the books that students read include images that have stereotypes of different races. The images in this study showed Americans as clean and nonviolent; war was seen in other countries such as Afghanistan. There are many famous people in power that were recognized from America and business people were also portrayed in images with Americans. There were not as many minorities shown in the images, and if there were, Blacks in particular, they were represented as powerless or poor. What was seen overall in this study was that the images only reinforced the previous thoughts or stereotypes of those countries that does not exist (because there was no multiculturalism shown).

In Giaschi's article, we see gender differences in the images. Men were seen in the majority of the images as having the principal role. They had the active roles. They were in most of the business images, but women had the principal role in the fashion images. Men were given higher status in these images and if a woman didn't look straight in the eye at them, the men were seen as sort of angry; whereas if the man looked away it was perfectly fine and the women would be looking up at them.

In Hinkel's chapter 11, it says that a textbook can be a teacher, a map, a resource, a trainer, an authority, a de-skiller, or an ideology. This is very true.

It is important for teachers to be aware of the books they are choosing for their children to learn. Stereotypes and gender inequality should not be portrayed that much in books for children. If students rely too much on these books and images without no one really explaining, they might develop the wrong ideas and thoughts about certain people or countries. Teachers should inform their students about all of this in order for them to not develop these stereotypes and continue believing them. Students should not be judging people or countries based on the wrong textbooks they have.