Hon. AUGUSTUS F. HAWKINS,

WOMEN ON WORDS AND IMAGES,
Princeton, N.J., September 17, 1973.

Chairman, Congress of the United States, House of Representatives, Committee on Education and Labor, Subcommittee on Equal Opportunities, Washington, D.C.

DEAR CHAIRMAN HAWKINS: It was a pleasure to meet you and your committee last Thursday and to show you our slide show on sex role stereotyping in children's readers.

After reflecting on the testimony I heard, I would like to add some observations. The publishers' attitudes seem to be to be very relevant to your considerations on HR 208. On that day we heard some testimony from Ms. Anne Ladky of Scott Foresman & Co. about their efforts to eliminate sexism in their books. I want to point out that their new reading series for the earliest grades was already completed long before their guidelines for eliminating sexism were formulated. As a matter of fact, a number of our slides come from these new readers. Not only that, but statistics on these books (for the first 12 levels) were included from our first edition (published in January of 1972) on page 49 of DICK & JANE AS VICTIMS as you can seen from the enclosed marked copy. Therefore, even with the best of intentions, the new readers could only be fair to children in the upper grades and still would continue to expose children in the earliest grades to insidious sexism in their most vulnerable school years.

Since many school districts are short of funds, they are not so fast to replace older, still usable readers with new ones and the old sexist books tend to remain in use for years in the schools. As a matter of fact, we found that many books with a copyright date of 1961 are in constant use in our own school system in Princeton and the older books are used as supplementary materials. We found books as old as 1947 still being used! Although Scott Foresman would appear to be very sincere in wanting to change their books, it will be years before they are in wide use in the schools.

The elimination of racism in readers can in some ways be compared to the elimination of sexism there. In the case of the blacks, it took five to seven years from the first efforts to integrate the books in 1965 by hastily applying brown ink to faces (so hastily that sometimes hands were forgotten: the face was colored in and the hands were not colored in).

Thus, these earliest efforts to eliminate racism in readers simply colored in illustrations that were in reality, pictures of white middle-class people. However, in the latest books, I have seen realistic efforts to ethnically represent blacks. I certainly hope the process will be speedier than five to seven years in the case of sexism, but feel that sexism has many subtleties and nuances just below the surface. We urgently need HR 208 to help us deal effectively with these subtleties and nuances in order eliminate the biases now rampant in instructional materials. Sincerely,

Representative PATSY T. MINK,

PHYLLIS ALROY.

BALTIMORE, MD., September 6, 1973.

House Education and Labor Subcommittee on Equal Opportunities, Rayburn Building, Washington, D.C.

DEAR CONGRESSWOMAN MINK: In connection with the scheduled hearings on the Women's Educational Equity Act, H.R. 208, I am enclosing a copy of the Baltimore Feminist Project Report on Sexism and Racism in Elementary School Readers. This report was compiled over a one year period in conjunction with the Baltimore City Department of Education. All work on the report, to this point including even duplication, has been done without pay or reimbursement by members of the Baltimore Feminist Project.

We think that this report supports the contention that there are grave injustices being perpetrated in our schools through textbooks. We hope the report will help support your efforts to point out the need for equity for women in education. We will actively support your efforts in Congress, and would appreciate being kept up-to-date on future developments in this area.

Sincerely,

RITA J. BERNDT. Baltimore Feminist Project.

STATEMENT BY RITA BERNDT, BALTIMORE FEMINIST PROJECT REPORT ON SEXISM AND RACISM IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL READERS

ABSTRACT

An examination of a sample of selections from 5 series of readers widely in use in Baltimore City elementary schools reveals that females and racial minorities are underrepresented in central roles and that where they do appear their characterization reinforces traditional sexual and racial stereotypes. The readers fail in general to provide positive self-images for females and racial minorities, and they reflect and reinforce social injustices. Recommendations are made for use of the readers and development of teacher, parent and publisher awareness of the problems of sexual and racial stereotyping.

I. INTRODUCTION

A group of six feminists have undertaken to write this essay because we think it is important for people to learn about racial and sexual discrimination in textbooks in use in Baltimore City schools.

A. Socialization

The term socialization will be used here to identify the process by which the naive infant slowly develops a set of attitudes and values, likes and dislikes, goals and purposes, patterns of response and a deep, abiding concept of self. More formally, socialization is that process whereby one internalizes the norms and values of the dominant culture, and perhaps of various subgroups, so that a distinct self emerges, unique to this individual. The image of the self is arrived at through a gradual, complicated process which continues throughout life. It is generally believed that the individual's perceptions of the judgment of others (society) and the reactions which s/he experiences to these judgments, form the basis of the development of self image.1

The process of socialization, and consequently the formation of self-concept, takes place largely through the learning of a role, which for the individual is the set of behaviors "appropriate" to one's rank or position within a group. Role learning has three aspects: duties, status and temperament. One learns the duties connected with a role and claims its privileges; one also acquires the temperament attitudes, feelings and expectations-appropriate to that role.

Universally used bases for role ascription are sex and age. There are no known societies which do not in some way predicate "appropriate" behavior upon the sex and age of the individual. Very widely used determinants of "appropriate" behavior include race, nationality, social class and religion. In this study we will be centrally concerned with the implications for females, Blacks and other racial minorities of role learning through textbooks used in the Baltimore City School System.

B. Blacks and other racial/ethnic minorities

A large body of material is available which points to racial stereotyping in textbooks as one factor which perpetuates negative self-image for Blacks and other racial/ethnic minorities.

A basic finding of the Coleman report (1966) is that for Black children negative self-image contributes to failure in school performance. This negative selfimage is taught rather than innate. According to Dr. Ruth Landes, Blacks and other minority groups are “taught to despise their physical or other differences from the dominant group." In an essay in Harvard Educational Review, Charles Valentine insists that "mainstream Euro-American culture includes concepts, values and judgments which categorize Blacks as worthy only of fear, hatred, or contempt because of their supposedly innate characteristics." a

The mainstream imposes its system of values on Blacks, Indians, PolishAmericans, Spanish-Americans and other minority groups through a variety of

1 See, for example, Charles H. Cooley, The Nature of Human Nature, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1902), pp. 102-103; and George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self and Society, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934), pp. 140-141.

2 Culture in American Education: Anthropological Approaches to Minority and Dominant Groups in the Schools, (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1965), p. 44.

8 "Deficit, Difference, and Bicultural Models of Afro-American Behavior," Harvard Educational Review, 41 : 2 (May, 1971), 143.

methods-television, advertising, jokes, movies, books. Another obvious source of transmitting cultural values to children is in the school, where the curriculum is largely composed of reading primers, social studies readers, history books and other textbook materials. Both the dominance of White American values and the neglect of contributions of minority cultures have been observed in elementary school textbooks. The existence of racism in textbooks and trade books produced for children has been documented by Green, Larrick, Banks and others (see Bibliography). Several researchers have shown that school textbooks affect the racial concepts of children: see in particular Trager and Yarrow (1952); Intergroup Relations in Teaching Materials (1949); Marcus (1961); Landes (1965); Deutsch (1969).

The conscious and unconscious racial attitudes present in textbooks and in other areas of the public school program have caused considerable damage to all children. Samuel Yette, Charles Silberman, Kenneth Clark, Jim Haskins and others emphasize the ways in which Black children are injured by racial bias. In 1970 Dr. David Sanchez addressed the United States Senate on behalf of Spanish-American students: "The injuries of the Latin-American child have been inflicted by those who have claimed to teach and motivate him, who have, in reality, alienated him and destroyed his identity through the subtle rejection of his language, which nobody speaks, his culture, which nobody understands, and ultimately him, whom nobody values." Dr. Landes discusses the LatinAmerican child's alienation from the standard elementary school textbooks, where the names, skin colors, foods, clothing, and family structures fail to reflect the cultural values of Mexican, Negro, American Indian and other California minority groups included in her study. James Banks stresses that racial attitudes also damage White children: "The exclusive presentation of White achievements in textbooks perpetuates an ethnocentric chauvinism among White youngsters and develops in them a false and tenuous sense of racial superiority.""

Former United States Commissioner of Education Francis Keppel claims that in 1963 there was a "revolution in the textbook industry" to meet the needs of minority groups. He applauds the new textbooks in general for giving an “accurate interpretation" of the problems of minority groups in our society. Keppel seems overly optimistic. True, the racially diverse textbooks created in the Detroit experiment (1963) helped to improve the reading level of many Black students. Nevertheless, the Detroit series still leaves much to be desired, as do most of the new "integrated" primers. According to Charles Silberman, the Detroit primers simply show "a well-scrubbed Negro family in the same sort of antiseptic suburban environment that Dick, Jane and Sally play in . . ."" James Banks, in his important essay on "The Need for Positive Racial Attitudes in Textbooks," states clearly the direction which textbooks must take if they are to deal adequately with the racial complexities of our society: "Coloring White characters brown, or perpetuating a sterile middle class image of the Negro, will not meet the criteria of objective treatment of the Negro because such images are inconsistent with reality. The American child should be exposed to all types and classes of Negroes in American life, with the illustrations depicting the diversity of Negroid racial traits. Overemphasis on one type or the creation of an ideal type will not suffice.10

• Quoted by Annie Stein, "Strategies for Failure," Harvard Educational Review, 41: 2 (May, 1971), 181-82. 5 Landes, op. cit., pp. 120-124.

"The Need for Positive Racial Attitudes in Textbooks," Racial Crisis in American Education, Robert Green, ed. (Chicago: Follett Educational Corporation, 1969), p. 171.

7 The Necessary Revolution in American Education, (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), pp. 130-33.

Steven Deutsch, "Disadvantages of Culturally Deprived Children," Integration and Education, David W. Beggs and S. Kern Alexander, eds. (Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1969), pp. 31-32. Charles Silberman, Crisis in Black and White, (N.Y.: Vintage, 1964), 283.

10 Banks, op. cit., D. 176.

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C. Females

Sex-role socialization has been widely studied because it begins very early and because its effects are readily observable. Differential treatment of females and males usually starts at birth. Even before speech is established, female and male children are handled and touched, tickled and spoken to in terms of their sexual identity." Even as early as six months, girl babies are protected more than boy babies.13 By the time a native language is established (about 18 months) the child's idea of self is intricately involved with sexual identity." By kindergarten age, children can define the primary female and male roles 1 and express sex-role preferences.16 Textbooks become an important part of the socialization process when a child reaches school age. They reinforce role expectations and cultural values. Margaret Mead has commented that "a culture has to get its values across to its children in such simple terms that even a behavioral scientist can understand them."

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Children learn that the father works outside of the home, that he is the provider and that the mother works inside the home and takes care of them. Children also learn what temperamental attitudes are appropriate for their particular sex. Johan Cullberg, among others, has pointed out that: "The stereotyped sex roles in our Western culture mean that masculinity implies activity, strength, emotional restraint and dominance. Feminity is defined as passivity, weakness. and submission

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It is self evident that the development of such temperamental traits as passivity, weakness, and submission is crippling to a woman's ability to survive psychologically or economically as an independent person. They could be valued only by someone who is himself not possessed of them and who wishes to have power over someone who is.

Increasingly, scientific studies are documenting ways in which both women and men have been harmed by sex role conditioning.

Sex roles and impairment of intellectual achievement in females

...

1. Matina Horner offers an explanation of a well-known pattern of intellectual development in females: "The girl child matures early, levels off fast, and then slowly retrogresses. Thousands of females who are brilliant in grade school become merely bright in high school, simply very good in college, and finally, almost mediocre in graduate school." According to Horner the bright female gets a contradictory message from society: if she is too smart, too independent, and above all, too serious about her work, she is unfeminine and will therefore never get married. The result of the contradictory message is strong anxiety and, consequently, diminished ability to achieve.1

2. Lenore Weitzman observes that "training for a dependent passive role may inhibit a girl's chances for intellectual or creative success. It is likely that the

11 It is a basic assumption throughout this study that sex roles and temperamental attitudes are not innate, but are the products of conditioning. Margaret Mead's cross-cultural study, Male and Female, provides evidence that traditionally defined "masculine" and "feminine" traits are conditioned. In one of the tribes she studied, both males and females were gentle and nurturant; in another, the women are as aggressive as the men and neither sex is psychologically nurturant and supportive of their children; in yet another, the women work at fishing, marketing and managing daily life; the men do little all day but carve, paint and learn dance steps. Mead concludes from all this: "If these temperamental attitudes which we have traditionally regarded as feminine-such as passivity, responsiveness and a willingness to cherish children-can so easily be set up as the masculine pattern in one tribe, and in another to be outlawed for the majority of men, we no longer have any basis for regarding such aspects of culture as sex linked." (This discussion of Mead's findings is a condensed version of Dee Ann Pappas' discussion in "On Being Natural", Women: A Journal of Liberation, 1 (1969), 3-4.)

12 Jerome Kagin, "The Acquisition and Significance of Sex-Typing," in Review of Child Development Research, ed. M. Hoffman (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1964). 13 Goldberg and Lewis, Child Development, 40, (1969) 21-31.

14 John Money. "Psychosexual Differentiation," in Sex Research, New Developments (New York: Holt. 1965), p. 13.

15 Ruth Hartley. "Children's Concepts of Male and Female Roles," Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, (1960) 6. 83-91.

18 Daniel G. Brown, "Sex Role Preference in Young Children," Psychological Monographs, (1956) 70, No. 14.

17 As quoted in David C. McClelland's The Achieving Society (New York: 1961).

18 As quoted by Birgitta Linner in "What Does Equality Between the Sexes Imply?”, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 41:5 (1971), 748.

50.

19 See Vivian Gornick's article, "Why Women Fear Success," Ms., Preview Issue (1972):

excessive dependency encouraged in girls contributes to the decline in their achievement which becomes apparent as they grow older." She cites Maccoby's finding that "for both exes, there is a tendency for dependent children to perform poorly on a variety of intellectual tasks, and for independent children to excel." * 3. Phyllis Chesler finds social expectations regarding sex roles to be at the root of much of what we call "neurotic" and "psychotic" behavior."

Sex roles and harm to mothers and children

1. Weitzman cites Alice Rossi's observation that:

"If a woman's adult efforts are concentrated exclusively on her children, she is likely more to stifle than broaden her children's perspective and preparation for adult life . . . In myriad ways the mother binds the child to her, dampening his initiative, resenting his growing independence in adolescence, creating a subtle dependence which makes it difficult for the child to achieve full adult stature."

Weitzman continues:

"In addition to having a negative effect on children, this preoccupation with motherhood may also be harmful to the mother herself. Pauline Bart has reported extreme depression among middle-aged women who have been overinvolved with and have overidentified with their children." "

Sex roles and harm to males and to society as a whole

Hero behavior constitutes the core of male role conditioning. A boy must always be a hero. If he is unable to be one, he must pretend. Even if he feels on the defensive, he must act aggressively.

A boy who cries or expresses fear after the first few years of life is unacceptable. He is not behaving like a “little man." Open expression of other emotions is also discouraged. A little boy must learn to be "in control" of himself. These constraints are damaging to the development of a male child's full capacity to express emotions or even to experience them consciously. He becomes unable to recognize them in himself or others. His conditioning discourages the development of a capacity for responding sympathetically to another person's feelings.

On the other hand, little boys are encouraged to develop their capacity for objective observation of the world around them, a capacity all human beings have. In this way they learn to have control over that world. Because of this emphasis in their conditioning and because they have been free to express this capacity on a large scale, their achievements have been very great in areas like science. However, achievements in any area involving human relationships have been greatly curtailed by this control-oriented way of relating to the world.

Control-oriented behavior is very damaging in human relationships. If we are interested in controlling other persons we will look at them objectively to see if they are weaker or stronger than we are. We will not look at them from the "inside-out." We will not be concerned with understanding one another's fears or comforting on another's pain. We will not even be able to recognize our own fears and pain. We will only be concerned with winning or appearing to win.

We human beings have been driven to try to control one another in every kind of human relationship from interpersonal ones to international ones. We must learn to recognize and empathize with another person's pain. We must learn to let our own feelings show. We must not be afraid of "losing face" or not appearing to be heroes. We must rather be afraid of not understanding one another, of not empathizing with one another.

D. Sexual stereotyping in textbooks

Numerous studies have been done in the past few years which evaluate the role of textbooks in training boys and girls to accept predetermined patterns of behavior (see Bibliography). Among the most important are the Weitzman study (1971), Marjorie U'Ren's essay on "The Image of Women in Textbooks" (1971), Dick and Jane as Victims (1972) and the Scott, Foresman Guidelines for Improving the Image of Women in Textbooks. Generally, these studies conclude that girls and women are underrepresented in textbooks, that they are portrayed in stereotyped, passive situations and that they present severely limited role models for young readers.

20 Lenore Weitzman, "Sex-Role Socialization in Picture Books for Pre-school Children," American Journal of Sociology, 77 (1972), 1134.

21 Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness, (New York: 1972).

22 Weitzman, op. cit. 1143.