Listening to:Black Star
track: "Children's Story"
As I'm sure I've mentioned once or thrice, I work with kids during most of my waking hours. At our learning center, we often use short stories to test our students' comprehension, pronunciation, and vocabulary. For the most part, it's a very straightforward and time-tested teaching method, but that doesn't mean that there aren't hiccups along the way. The younger students will usually receive a reading packet consisting of various children's stories, all of which they are expected to read aloud and fully comprehend before advancing to the next learning level. Just as one might expect, all the tales enclosed within the packet are done in simple and innocent fashion...with the exception of one story: The Three Little Pigs. As presented in the packet, the story never fails to evoke a snicker or two out of yours truly. Now, I pride myself on being a total professional while on the clock, but there are certain things about the presentation of this story that are just plain wrong. Towards the end of the tale, during the climatic brick house scene, the Big Bad Wolf shows up at the third pig's house, totally devoid of any clothing below his waist. If that weren't bad enough, the wolf, with hands planted firmly on his hips, declares, "Open up pigs!" Naturally, the three pigs, wearing shocked and appalled expressions totally befitting of their situation, firmly refuse the wolf entry. Common logic would suggest that they were simply wary of being eaten by one of their natural predators, but with the contextual aid of the accompanying picture, one can only deduce that the pigs were clearly disgusted by the ambiguity of the wolf's demand that they "open up," not to mention his apparent disdain for pants.
It's probably one of the most unintentionally funny things that I've come across in years, but I'd managed to convince myself that the story was only bizarre because I'm a 24-year old with a somewhat less than pristine mind. Eventually, I found a way to sweep all those strange connotations under the rug, and I felt a bit more mature as a result. That was until today, when one of the 4-year olds changed my mind, and in emphatic fashion. This particular student once came to me with a joke of sorts, claiming that she had eaten a caterpillar for lunch and burped out a butterfly. I was legitimately amused by this, which unfortunately led to her revisiting the same joke every day for two weeks. I eventually had to put a stop to it, because her apparent comedic aspirations were becoming a huge distraction to her lessons. Anyway, I was reading the aforementioned story with this same little girl today, and we had the following exchange:
Me: What did the mama pig say?
Girl: Be careful of danger. Ohhhh, I'm scared of danger! It might sneak up on you!
Me: Right, danger. Like the wolf?
Girl: Yes, the wolf. He doesn't have any shorts.
Me: ...What?
Girl: The wolf doesn't wear any shorts.
Me: ...This is true.
I didn't know what else to say to that. I guess the reasoning is that really young pre-K children will simply overlook that type of detail, but that's a huge misconception. You can't give all three pigs a full set of gear and have the wolf running around in nothing but a t-shirt. Kids these days are way too perceptive. If the idea is to teach our children that all predators go on the prowl without a set of shorts, I'd say that that's a potentially hazardous bit of misinformation. On the other hand, if you see a dude huffing and puffing on the street without any jeans on, I guess it's likely that he's a sexual deviant of sorts. So there you go.
No comments:
Post a Comment