Reading Stories to Kids: Developing Critical Thinking Skills
Recently I came across a post by a mother concerned for her four year old girl. The concern was in relation to reading the kind of story books involving prince and princess and the idea that the prince is the rescuer … “he recues her” as she would say. She rightly indicates ‘a boy recuing a girl’ might not be fit in today’s world. I will try and explain as how such cases can be handled in a manner that would help both the child and the mother. These strategies can be used with primary through to high school kids. There are many books, including our own text books where gender role is explicitly divided. Man would be ploughing the field while woman would be cooking food. Man would be driving a tractor while woman would carry water from the well. Men praying in a mosque while women in the kitchen with deserts for Eid celebrations. There are many such examples and the question is, can we avoid them? Or to be more specific, should we avoid them? Can we control what our kids rea...