On the Mary Blalock reading, p. 138-139, Rethinking Our Classrooms, Volume 2
I notice that the writer of
“A Bill of Rights for Girls,” Mary Blalock, was a high school senior and
intended the piece as “a pamphlet to distribute to middle-school girls.” I
would love to know if they did distribute it to middle-school girls and if
those girls had a class discussion or wrote about it. A magazine collage
response would be great too. (I did a search on the piece and got nothing.)
Part of what I like about “A
Bill of Rights for Girls” is the conversational tone. She says, “I wish that I
had known about this when I was younger, but I had to go through a lot before
getting on the right track again.” To middle school girls, she would definitely
seem older, maybe just enough to be a good person to talk with about these issues.
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I would love it if
the cohort gave ideas to expand on some of the in-school projects we are
reading and hearing about this quarter, such as this one.
I also saw that the writer was a high schooler, and I thought that much of her points were quite insightful. I feel like there are so many of these assignments in junior high and high school where you're supposed to write advise to a younger person, but many of them never get used for their purpose. It seems like it's much more aimed by the teacher to be a reflection for the individual writing the piece.
ReplyDeleteI agree it would be great to hear reactions from middle-school girls on Blalock's piece. Blalock presents issues that girls in general need to experience on their own and discover these lessons in their own way, but I think it would be helpful for middle school girls to be presented with these issues to at least cause awareness of these issues and consciously think about what it could mean for the choices they are beginning to make in their lives. When I was in middle school and high school, I was adamant with my parents about my need to learn my own lessons, but who know what I would have taken from this and how the advice of someone closer to my age would have stuck in my brain.