Texts taught in school and sexism

I hate to say it but generally girls/women are not as physically strong as boys /men.

No, children before puberty aren't different.

With adults, yes, but only if you judge strength in certain terms. Women have to be bloody strong to give birth and have a lot of endurance. We don't typically have as much upper-body strength.

When people say 'it's a fact' that men are stronger, they usually have an unspoken subtext 'well, in the ways that matter, you know.' Like ... oh ... wait ... maybe giving birth matters? Or how many small children do you know where boys and stronger than girls? That's what bugs me about stuff like Blyton - it's so ingrained, we forget it makes no sense whatsoever, because she's describing children.

Sorry ... it's silly o'clock here so posting slightly pedantically. I just think it's interesting, that one. I loved it when someone first told me how much force women exert with their uterine muscles. It's a funny way to think about strenght, but pretty crucial too.

It's all in the structure of the text.

He leads the reader through to a developed understanding of CW by showing her through the eyes of other characters & not giving her a voice until chapter 5. We see her through the eyes of Candy/George/Lennie/Whit/Crooks. Her voice is suppressed. That's the point.

Likewise, Crooks gets chapter 4 to himself - symbolising his isolation.

Steinbeck's not my favourite author, but when it comes to 'show, not tell', & allowing the intelligent reader to do some of the work for themselves, he's in a class of his own.

Which is precisely what the Eng Lit exam tests. If you can't distinguish between the surface narrative & authorial intention, you can't achieve the highest grades.

I'm gobsmacked that an English teacher could fail to understand this, to the extent of saying 'mostly I have found kids just accept it [the derogatory, sexist & racist language used]'. Well, no. It's the teacher's job to analyse that language in context.

The tricky aspect of the text is Steinbeck's third person objective narrative style, which means that he never intrudes into the narrative to tell us that this language is wrong. That doesn't mean he is condoning such language. I would look at Steinbeck's letter to Claire Luce, the first woman to play Curley's wife on stage, which shows that he actually regarded her as a sympathetic character. Crooks is undoubtedly presented with dignity and evokes pathos, even if Steinbeck's writing never directly condemns racism I think it is clear he is presenting a racist society in a naturalistic style, rather than being racist himself.

English teacher, long-time OMAM teacher here too...yep, you've missed the point. Bottom-set boys who laugh when they call Curley's wife a tart at the beginning of the book find compassion and understanding for her by the end when we find out her story. They learn about not dismissing someone out of hand by their appearance. They would not learn that if the other characters had been respectful to her all the way through.

These are real, three-dimensional characters. None of them are heroes. None of them are wholly likeable. You're refusing to teach Steinbeck because he told it like it was?

Oh and one of the Higher paper questions on TKAM about 10 years ago was 'critics have said that Atticus Finch is not a realistic character. Discuss'. Although I'd marry that dude like a shot, sadly that is a very valid question.

Completely agree with fairphylissabout TKAMB.....I was surprised that the OP said they replaced one with TKAMB.

I hate to say it but generally girls/women are not as physically strong as boys /men. That's not to say women can't do the jobs of men but its a fact that women are usually physically weaker than men.

I loved reading the MFT as a child and then reading it to my two. Now, they love reading it on their own and I have always explained that at the time of writing, women and men had vey defined separate roles in society.

It is fairly essential yes!

Eng Lit markscheme for last June.

If you look at pages 26-27, they're the ones specific to OM&M.

I marked that essay x500 this time last year .

I'm a bit bemused by the fact that you think it's any better to teach TKAM in place of OMAM. Aren't you aware of the critique of TKAM that it itself is insidiously racist? That, in the way it is normally taught, it also encourages us to think that racism is something in the past?

I would have thought that distinguishing narrator's voice and the voice of a character were pretty essential skills for English Lit - why do you see it as such a big problem?

'I'm sorry but you have completely misunderstood OMAM, completely misunderstood Steinbeck and completely misunderstood how to be an English teacher.'

This.

Sorry - you've completely missed the point. OM&M is a fantastic novel to use to discuss sexism. I use it for the extended reading CA too, & the task we do is to analyse Curley's Wife's role in the novel.

I won't pretend I'm not a tad bored with it after teaching it for 14 years (I'd prefer to do LOTF) but you really have fundamentally misunderstood the text.

I hate to be so negative towards a fellow English teacher, but bloody hell....

I wasn't rude to you but I was very blunt. I was blunt because I feel very strongly that pupils should not be taught English by those who do not understand how texts work and who do not understand how to teach pupils to analyse the texts critically. I know that you did not call Steinbeck an ignoramus but by saying that he casually uses sexist and racist language, you imply that he is ignorant and you have misunderstood that, in fact, it is the opposite, that he uses this language on purpose to make a point - and this point is the main theme of the novel.

I did not say that you are a terrible English teacher but you are not an English teacher that has a good understanding of your subject.

I don't like the terms used to describe women but sadly they are still used. When I teach the text I point out how this is wrong, how the men speak about and treat women is wrong. How the only women in of mice and men are either viewed aswhores or mother figures, and how they only see women in these two ways. This is deliberate on Steinbeck's part, they ate the characters' beliefs not his. I think students can get a lot out of the text but sadly some sexist attitudes do still need to be challenged.

Erm, I'm an English teacher and have taught OMAM
More times than I care to remember. One of the main themes I, (and the vast majority of my colleagues) discuss is the treatment of women. It is my understanding that Steinbeck wants the reader to empathise with Curley's wife, the whole importance of her having no name and that she is Curley's property is again a point for discussion. I'm sorry, you just seem to be missing the point of the novel and I find it strange that you don't seem to be able to teach this novel in tge same way as I have for the past 12 years. What do other members of your department think?

I'm sorry but you have completely misunderstood OMAM, completely misunderstood Steinbeck and completely misunderstood how to be an English teacher.

OMAM, yes it is about loneliness and the depression - loneliness caused by racism, sexism and economic injustice.

Steinbeck didn't use words like "bitches" and "nigger" because he was an ignoramus who didn't think about things too deeply! He was an extremely intelligent, left-wing intellectual, one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century, and he was using these words to make a point!!

If you don't have time to discuss the major themes of the novel, then you are not teaching properly.

FWIW I agree with the poster who said that it's the implicit and casual sexism that makes a book doubly worth teaching. Many women today don't face explicit sexism - in fact that is even illegal(!!) sometimes. But it's the implicit sexism that is so insidious and disempowering (is that even a word?). Teach OMAM!

I remember being really pissed off with the book i had to study for GCSE English at high school in the 80s And so were the other girls in the class.
It was Lord of the Flies. Not one female character in the book. Not one.
Its a pity that i wasnt aware of the existence of Savages by Shirley Conran at that point.
I could have brought that into school and said "Can i study this instead"

But what does this have to do with Of Mice and Men?

Isn't this more blurring history into one big mass?

I'm not nit-picking for the sake of it, I'm trying to explain that if you say the OP should teach her class what was good in the society described in the book, then it needs to be concrete. Otherwise ... what is the point of it?

I don't think Steinbeck is thinking of women who stayed in bed for three weeks after the birth while everyone else helped out. If you taught that to a class and they went on to read Grapes of Wrath they would feel - justifiably - that you had lied to them about how bad things were in this era. I am aware you are talking more generally, about some aspects of the past that may have been good. And I don't disagree that some aspects of the past were good, and I never did disagree.

What I have an issue with, is giving children a misrepresentation of the past that whitewashes over the struggled women genuinely had to face. It is dishonest.

I think I'm explaining really badly why this bothers me. Basically, I think that we're conditioned to think that historical 'facts' are things like names of kings and dates of battles. In effect, it's male-dominated history. And we're also conditioned to look for 'women's history' in social history. And it is obvious why we do that. But then, we have a responsibility to treat social history as facts too, or we're starting off a process where children will associate male-dominated history with fact, and history of women (and minorities) with subjective opinions, with vague blurry suggestions that seem to apply indiscriminately to all sorts of different periods.

I suppose, any time before something changed - I don't know when the 'new' phenomenon of measuring, comparing etc started - but before that IYSWIM, would be the same in regard to that one thing. FWIW, the generation of women before us were encouraged to spend longer in hospital probably resulting in getting more rest (not much access to hospitals in the 20s of course) than women are now and in my granny's time, women were encouraged to spend most of their time in bed for about three weeks after having their babies - a sister/mum/neighbour would look after the washing, cooking, change nappies, pace the floor with the baby and 'bring it to the breast'.
I'd imagine that 1920s women would have had similar support - assuming they survived childbirth - there's the rub.

I suppose it would be great if the OP's pupils could have a visit from someone who was alive in the depression or from someone who has experienced segregation in a history or PSE class.

Sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I do see that you're not being uncritically positive in the sense that you're not glad of our choices today.

I agree no culture is completely bad or immoral compared to our own and it'd be arrogant to think so.

I'm sure there are bad things about today and good things about the past - I was never saying anything different.

But which things? It matters. Otherwise we are lying about the past for no good reason, and that is disrespectful to people who lived then, and it lulls us into a false sense of security too, by making us stop examining what really happens in different cultures and societies.

Doesn't comparing your mum's feeling about her children with 1920s America sort of blur the past into one indiscriminate mass?

I'm not being "uncritically positive". I'm really glad I have the choices and freedom I have now. And often think how awful it must have been to have to endure the attitude that women are 'the weaker sex'. Or to be denied an education or access to books.

My point is really that no culture is completely 'bad'/wrong or more difficult/less moral than the one we live in now.

My point about parenting today is a comment on how in some ways it's more difficult than it used to be. Eg, my mother used to be amazed at the amount of measuring/testing/comparing of our babies, compared to when she had babies and thought it produces anxiety and pressure on mums. I was using it as an example of a way in which our culture of today is (probably) not better than in the times before it - therefore of 1920s America. FWIW, I can see no justification in poverty ever, but that doesn't mean that an economically well-off society is without its problems. People, usually females starve to death in our society too - as a result of eating disorders.

I just always feel uneasy at thinking we're superior to people in times gone by on the grounds that we're more enlightened. I think that can lead to being uncritical of our own society.

Less pressure to look amazing - to show a lot of flesh if you're female, spend a lot of time on personal grooming, be muscular and smooth if you're a man.

Judging by Curley's wife and by the descriptions of men and women, I don't think this is true. I don't think it's true of the 1920s more generally, either.

Less pressure to achieve in all areas of life.

In the middle of the Great Depression? Less pressure to achieve?!

An unrealistically high expectation on men to have a stiff upper-lip.

Yep, I'll grant you that, possibly ... is this 'better'?

Less pressure to be a perfect parent; to provide extra-curricular activities for our children, to be endlessly patient, to label them and measure them.

I don't see how you get that from this book and I certainly don't see how you get it from 1920s America.

I get that I am talking about a book you've said you don't remember much about, but I do think it matters. You're assuming (I think?) that something in the past must be better than today and that we must be able to point fairly to positives and negatives. But that falsifies the past, and constructs a fake image of a time that never existed. It's this sort of image of the past that people trot out time and again when they're justifying how, back in the day, sure, we didn't have equal opportunities but wasn't everyone happy?

I think it is deeply irresponsible to say that if you don't know it's true and if you can't point to specific examples.

I find it particularly difficult to swallow about the Great Depression. My overwhelming impression is that it was an incredibly difficult time to live in. People were dying - actually starving to death - in what should have been some of the richest countries in the world. The pressure to achieve must have been appalling. I simply don't believe there was less pressure on physical appearance, either - this is the era when women bound their breasts to make themselves look flat chested, dieted and ruined their health, and when vaginal douces that burned them were being put on the market. This is when black women were being sold 'skin-lighteners' that were toxic (and yes, I know this still happens but it shocks me).

I'm not denying it's good to look at the past and not be uncritically negative but why be uncritically positive?