Upon reading this chapter I realized that adolscence and puberty are very complicated events that happen in our society and that they are in a way a reflection of our society. Not every child in the world experiences these changes the same as the difference between industrialized and pre-industrialized nations is very pronounced. I never experienced fake deaths or ritualistic scarring and others did not have to sit though sexual education class. It is clear to me that not a lot of information exists on this topic partly because of the difficulty in trying to understand how children react to their developmental changes. A lot of it depends on where they live and how they were raised. In the classroom teachers have to be able to adapt to these differences as we teach because it is impossible and foolhardy to try and lump every child's experiences together.
On a side note I wanted to mention the fact that when our book talks about dealing with sexual arousal and attraction to members of the same sex that I found the choice of wordage very interesting. In some of my other classes we talk about the impact that textbooks have and how they further steryotpes and how they often do not discuss the "real" issues and events. I find the emphasis given to "opposite sex" to be midly offensive to me and I also am dissapointed that it is included in a college textbook. I realize that not everyone can agree on homosexuality but I still think that statements like that can cause harm. As someone who is going to be an educator these are items where we need to see just how great of an impact a statment liek that can have on ourselves and our students. By accepting a statement like that as a teacher we are lumping all experiences that children have as adolescence into a heterosexual category and that is unfair to those who do not fit into that category. The impact that a statement like that can have on a child who already is dealing with the difficulties of puberty and then having to sit through those awkward classes in middle school is great. It can lead to a child feeling that there is something wrong with them for having an attractrion to members of the same sex and this can have adverse effects on their learning and motivation.
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I completely agree with you about them using opposite sex. I also noticed that and was surprised as well. In a way this book is supposed to help us understand what students at this age are going through and they have clearly described who these students are. Now they have eliminated students at this age who are not interested in the opposite sex. I thought it was inappropriate but also says something about the society we live in.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad I wasn't the only one who was also offended at the usage of terms like "sexual arousal" and "opposite sex". Adolescents are discovering so much about themselves that it is unfair to generalize under the category of heterosexual along with everything else they are experiencing about their life. At least we are in a time where, despite Prob 8 and like issues, homosexuality is more out in the open, therefore more people are becomming comfortable and less judgemental of those that have a different lifestyle. But despite that, there are still prejudices, and we as future teachers have a responsibility to not only stop those misguided judgements, but to also make this society a safer and more accepting place to live and grow for our future students, and ourselves.
ReplyDeletehere here. I also noticed the assumption that children going through puberty would only be dealing with opposite-sex attraction. This seems to be the final frontier of sexual education in schools. It is not surprising that a lack of any discussion of same-sex attraction in sex education combined with this being a time of peers using the term "fag" to keep the masculinity of male peers in check contributes to a disproportionate suicide rate in adolescents who identify as queer. I understand that some parents of children in public schools would critique the discussion of queer sexual orientations in school sex ed classes. However, I think that if the discussion can save lives (much like introducing a discussion of HIV starting in the 80s in sex ed classes) it should be done.
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