To see things in the seed, that is genius. Lao-Tzu
Did you know that The Cat in the Hat was written in 1954 using the reading vocabulary of the average 6-7 year old?
It was mainly written in an attempt to create something interesting for children that might attract them to read.
Theodor Geisel – aka Dr. Seuss – was supplied with a list of 348 words – he used 238 words (13 not on the list). And he definitely succeeded in the interesting part.
Just in case that wasn’t good enough – four years later in 1960, Theodor Geisel wrote a book using only 50 words –
a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you.
I’m sure you’ve recognised Green Eggs and Ham from that list. It is still one of the best selling children’s books of all time.
This may not seem much like the FUNDAEC rural university* at first glance but it uses the same logic. Rather than forcing people to meet the needs of the existing systems, it had a go at adapting the systems (in this case reading systems) to better fulfill the needs.
Clever Dr. Seuss…
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*https://creatingreciprocity.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/3501/
In film and media, a trope is a common pattern in a story or a recognizable attribute in a character that conveys information to the audience.
In a New York Times article she wrote in 1991, the poet, Katha Pollit, identified a common problem with the portrayal of women in film and TV – there aren’t enough of them. Pollit pointed out that even though women (obviously) make up half the population of the world, works of fiction with an ensemble cast – TV and film in particular but also books to some extent – very rarely have a 50/50 balance. Indeed most often there is just one female added to the mix.
She named this The Smurfette Principle.
So what are the possible consequences of this scarcity of female characters in popular culture? Pollit suggests that this tendency has a huge impact on both boys and girls –
Little girls learn to split their consciousness, filtering their dreams and ambitions through boy characters while admiring the clothes of the princess. The more privileged and daring can dream of becoming exceptional women in a man’s world — Smurfettes. The others are being taught to accept the more usual fate, which is to be a passenger car drawn through life by a masculine train engine. Boys, who are rarely confronted with stories in which males play only minor roles, learn a simpler lesson: girls just don’t matter much. (1)
The Smurfette Principle holds true across the board, from Sesame Street and the Muppets to movies and TV programmes aimed at adults.
The message is clear. Boys are the norm, girls the variation; boys are central, girls peripheral; boys are individuals, girls types. Boys define the group, its story and its code of values. Girls exist only in relation to boys…”Let’s play weddings,” says my little niece. We grownups roll our eyes, but face it: it’s still the one scenario in which the girl is the central figure. (2)
There are exceptions to this (I knew there was a reason I loved Buffy!) but they’re rare.
Now that I know about the Smurfette Principle I can see it everywhere – awareness is powerful.
It really makes you think…
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(1) Katha Pollit, Hers; The Smurfette Principle, New York Times, April, 07, 1991
(2) ibid
Image by Sem Vandekerckhove via FlickI think, therefore I am...
If our social reality and education are the factors outside of us that shape our view of reality, what factors inside us contribute to the decisions we make? Education definitely influences our decisions and ignorance can contribute to prejudice. However, if information and exposure were enough to correct prejudice, then men would never have been prejudiced against women and all colonizers would soon see that the natives were just like them.
In order to benefit from information about, and exposure to, other cultures and traditions, we need conceptual frameworks in which diversity is seen as a good thing and everybody is seen as equal and valuable. Otherwise the differences can simply be seen as proof of inequality or inferiority or well, proof of pretty much anything we want to prove. Because one of the first ‘facts’ that we really do need to carry with us as we learn to think for ourselves is that as human beings, we don’t believe what we see but on the contrary we actually see what we already believe.
Tomorrow – Talking to your Hat
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