As I have posted before, I have been getting really into
vlogs. I finally started watching some
teacher vlogs. They are great to watch
while you are cooking or walking on a treadmill. On one of the vlogs I watched, this teacher
was talking about how kids are not getting good male role models in their lives
and on television. The vlog was from A Cozy Classroom. She talked about how
many of her students are growing up with a single-parent raising them and most times it’s
a woman.
As a male first grade teacher, this perked my interest. She got a lot of slack from her comments. However, I completely agree with
most of what she said. She went on to
talk about how many single-parent families use the television as a
babysitter. She was not judging but just
stating what she has noticed. As these
students are watching cartoons like, Fairly Odd Parents, the dad and the God
father are complete morons. They say and
do dumb things. However, thankfully
there is a woman there to save them and have all the smarts.
Not only have these types of male role models been seen in
cartoons but also in commercials. The
men cannot do anything and a woman has to do the work because the men are too
dumb. It is so frustrating that kids are
seeing this as the norm... men are dumb
and women know it all.
This touched me because I, too, work in a school were many
of my students are being raised by a single mother and their father is not
really in the picture. Some are lucky and have an awesome grandpa or uncle who is providing that model for the kids. However, that is not always the case. So, the student
is seeing these stereotypes of a father/husband and start to think that that’s how
men should act. We need to stop this
kind of man shaming and stop the gender stereotypes. Television needs to provide more positive
male role models in children’s programming.
