Global Breaking News - Monday, December 23, 2024

Green Eggs and Politics
The American Academy of Pediatrics recently recommended that doctors tell parents to read aloud to their infants starting from birth. And there is plenty of material to choose from. Along with books about numbers and colors and how to say please and thank you, there are an increasing number that address politics, race, gender, sexual orientation and other issues. Should they?
* pediatrics = 소아과(학)/ read aloud = 소리내어 읽다/ infant = 유아/ sexual orientation = 성적 기호(취향)

 아이들에게 정치, 인종, 성, 그 외 많은 이슈들을 다루는 책을 유아들에게 읽어 주어야 하나요?

1. Don’t Shy Away From Tough Issues
Books that address complicated subjects, like race and gender, should be made available for parents like me, who want to expose their children to tough issues early in their lives.

2. Grown-Ups Need the Moral Lessons
Children don't need political literature; they naturally understand how to be kind and accepting. It's the parents who need it.

3. Important Subjects to Be Addressed
Human rights education produces positive outcomes for children’s sense of self-worth, increase empathy and reduce bullying and harmful behaviors among peers in classrooms.

4. The Value of Picture Books
Picture books, arguably the most democratic of all art forms, have value in that they let children experience art and reading.

5. Children Need a Political Primer
Books for young readers should strive to instill political literacy, exposing children to an array of controversial subjects and an array of perspectives.

6. Beware of Propaganda
Politically charged literature for children becomes problematic when it advances a political agenda in a way that neglects the story.


Sample Essay

Don’t Shy Away From Tough Issues

When the film “Sarafina!” was released years ago, a well-intentioned friend advised me not to take my sons to see it. The scenes of violent racial oppression in apartheid South Africa would be too much for a 5-year-old and a 9-year-old, he warned. I thanked him for his concerns — and promptly headed to the cinema with my sons.

The scenes he’d mentioned were indeed disturbing, but I knew my boys could take it. What’s more, I regarded bearing witness to them as a necessary part of their education. To be responsible citizens, they needed to know about injustice and how people struggled against it in the United States, as well as other parts of the world. The same is true of books.

Some parents may decide that books that address complicated subjects, like race and gender, are better suited for teenagers and young adults. I respect their choice. But those kinds of books should also be made available for parents like me, who prefer to expose their children to tough issues early in their lives. The sooner my children and grandchildren — all African-American — can learn about what it means to be black in a society still riven by racist attitudes and the uneven application of justice, the better equipped they’ll be to navigate it.

Of course, it is entirely possible for children to develop general knowledge of the world without seeing themselves reflected in the books they read. After all, I did and so did many readers of color in my generation. But that doesn’t make it right. Opportunities to encounter storybook characters that even faintly resembled me were so rare that I remember those discoveries to this day. If not for books like “Two Is A Team” by Lorraine and Jerrold Beim and “Oh, Lord, I Wish I Was A Buzzard” by Polly Greenberg, my first-grade experiences would have been dishearteningly monochromatic. Instead of just becoming a reader, I became someone who loved reading. The difference can be substantial and have far-reaching consequences in our increasingly multicultural society.