This lesson encourages children to explore the differences between their real families and TV families by imagining how their own families might be portrayed on a television show.
Stereotyping
In this lesson, students learn how shapes are used in character design in comics and animation and look at how male and female characters are depicted in comic books. Using a Comic Book Analysis sheet, students will record the attributes of male and female comic book characters. As a class, students will record common patterns and discuss what messages about men and women are communicated. Students then design a comic book character that uses shapes to communicate what they think a real hero is.
In this lesson, students learn how the media construct reality by studying the families portrayed on television, and comparing them to the real-life families they know: their own, and those of their peers.
This lesson lets students take a good look at our society's pressures to conform to standards of beauty - particularly to be thin - and the related prejudice against being "overweight".
These lessons are an adaptation of Grade 8 lessons from the Curriculum Healthy Relationships, by Men For Change, Halifax, Nova Scotia, a 53-activity, three-year curriculum designed for teens.
Racial stereotypes abound on television, and children's programming is no exception. The turban-wearing bad guy, the brainy Asian, and the Black basketball whiz are just a few of the stereotypes reinforced in children's cartoons, films and TV shows. Spotting these stereotypes is often difficult for children; to them, the tomahawk-wielding Indian or the Asian karate expert is a familiar, easily-understood and often funny character. So how do you help children understand these images for what they are – oversimplified, generalizations?
Images of men and women in the media are often based on stereotypical roles of males and females in our society. Because stereotyping can affect how children feel about themselves and how they relate to others, it's important that they learn to recognize and understand gender stereotypes in different media.
Although many concerns remain about how gender represented in media, there are signs that things are changing. Roles for women on television, in particular, have become much more varied and complex in the last decade, ranging from the conflicted Star Wars hero Ahsoka to Marvel characters such as Echo and Ms. Marvel to more realistic characters like Never Have I Ever’s Devi, while a growing number of movies and TV shows are questioning narrow definitions of masculinity.
Since the 1960s, feminists have argued that "it matters who makes it." When it comes to the mass media, "who makes it" continues to be men.
They have ads of how you should dress and what you should look like and this and that, and then they say, 'but respect people for what they choose to be like.' Okay, so which do we do first?"
Kelsey, 16, quoted in Girl Talk