Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Just A Thought-- Book Awards
As a Special Education major and simply as a person who cares and advocates for the rights of those with special needs, I found it rather alarming that only one prominent award exists for the categories of special needs. It such a broad topic: It deals with issues of both physical, emotional, and academic disabilities, not to mention disorders which can range from schizophrenia, depression, eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorders, and so many more. Unless we create more book awards that strive for the things that we look for in a class such as authenticity and lack of generalization and stereotypes, how can we expect things to change? I also feel that it is time for publishers to step up and stop publishing material that is inaccurate and hurtful because kids, no people base so much of what they believe about the world and the people in it from different forms of media. We tell children to explore the world and read, but if what they are reading is filled with misconceptions, instead of bringing people together it only further alienates them.
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I really understand what you are saying about the media influence and lack of authenticity in children's books. I think that this goes even further than children's books about persons with disabilities and actually can be applied to all forms of under represented groups in multicultural literture. One thing that bothers me with the book award that you mentioned is that it is so broad. It seems like persons with disabilities are being lumped into one category when really there is such a range of differences between persons with disabilities. There are verying degrees of dissabilities and I dont feel there should be one broad generalization. I personally never knew the real distinction between persons with disabilities until we saw the movie in class which was about an autistic girl. I never knew that what was on the outside could be so different from what was on the inside and I know this sounds absolutely horrible and I am almost ashamed to admit this. This is why I think it is important to bring authentic materials to children not only regarding persons with disabilities but in terms of all multicultural literature. We need to start teaching children information they may not know instead of reinforcing negative stereotypes. In terms of disabilities, just think of how students might react to children with autism within their school if they saw the video that we saw in class or if they read a book that didnt make them feel sorry for and separated from the student. I think by bringing authentic multicultural literature to children it can help to reshape the way that people treat one another within a society. Maybe all I have is a far off, idealistic dream but maybe it can start somewhere.
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