Beyond Pink and Blue

We read three articles for our first week regarding social issues in relation to education. The first being “Seventeen, Self-Image and Stereotypes” which discusses the effects that advertising has on high school students and their perceptions of themselves. We also read “Human Beings are not Mascots” which introduced the controversy of Cultural Appropriation and the Native American culture being used for school mascots.

One specific reading was “Beyond Pink and Blue.” This reading was about a teacher’s classroom in which students defied the beliefs that pink and blue are gender-specific colors. After opening a Pottery Barn catalog, one of the girl students was upset because there was depiction of a room that was completely pink and intended for “girls,” but she did not associate herself with the color pink and actually hated the color. Another male student was upset because the “boy” room only had two books and many trophies and he enjoyed reading. He felt as if the picture was suggesting that girls are smart and boys are athletic which is not general. The students decided to write letters to Pottery Barn and express their grievances. The president of Pottery Barn wrote the students back, thanking them for the suggestions and made adjustments in the next publication of Pottery Barn. Also, the King and King picture book that was discussed in class was mentioned in this section of the reading showing that the teacher enforced a curriculum in which gender roles were broken as well as societal “norms.”

The Seventeen article related to HInchey’s article because advertising plays a large role in pushing social norms on students which makes it harder for teachers to stray away from those norms. Hinchey has the belief that teachers should make decisions on their curriculum based on the context of the classroom. This was true for the teacher in this reading as well. She related her curriculum to what her students were being affected by, socially, at that time. These readings went along with our mission statement and even further enhanced it: Our goal is to learn more about pop culture and media portrayal and its effect on us as individuals and our students.