Week 8

This article was about a study done in Brazil to see how the various images in EFL textbooks can shape the way students and even teachers portrayed their thoughts about foreign language culture. These texts had a heavy content of predominantly white people portraying the dominant society, whereas minorities would be represented in a way that makes them look inferior or just not that well off as white people. Furthermore, the textbooks mostly represent the men being more dominant than women.

After looking at a picture, Marcio, one of the participants, said “This picture where there is a man and a woman, a couple ... probably they have a lot of money or a good position because it's a kind of picture that only who has money want to have, okay: the man standing behind the woman and using a suit and tie. And I don’t like this kind of picture, really. Probably one day if I will be very, very rich I will not take one of these pictures. But I think they represent power; money and status,” (Taylor 74).

In the study, participants voiced their opinion on how these pictures helped them construct a view of how America was like. “More specifically, the images equated American culture with economic and social success by including pictures of popular or successful social, business, or political figures that the students had labeled as American, although in, a few cases, the person(s) in the image weren’t always American,” (Taylor 73). Furthermore, Fatima, one of the participants, stated that the textbooks made it seem as if the United States was a places where everything is beautiful. She continued by saying that she had never read a text that mentioned violence in America. “When the books want to show violence, they show Afghanistan, show the war for example ... to me, it's ridiculous, this,” (Taylor 73).

I think that this article brought up awareness of the fact that the images and even some of the content within textbooks can be stereotypical and can construct certain views in the minds of the readers. Children start reading and watching movies at a young age and they learn what they see. If everything they see in the media and within their books has a constant pattern of, for example, white people are rich and minorities are mostly poor or not that well off then, then students will grow up having that same mentality. It is up to parents and teachers to discuss race and gender with children from the get go so that they do not grow up believing in these stereotypes. As a future teacher I will make sure to explain and discuss race in my classroom. I would try to find multicultural books that step outside of the ordinary, along with movies that do not always portray white people as the dominant culture, rather find ones that do have minorities in the lead dominant role. Another reason I think that this is important to do is because students that are not white could possibly feel left out or automatically placed into a stereotypical group because of the color of their skin or what they look like. I would stress to my students that everyone is equal regardless of color and that everyone has the same right to be a dominant role figure and live a “rich” lifestyle. I would do this by giving them examples of key leaders that are minorities and that have made a difference locally within the community and globally.