The Portrayal of Teachers in Children's Popular Fiction

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The Portrayal of Teachers in Children's Popular Fiction The Portrayal of Teachers in Children's Popular Fiction

Nancy Niemi

University of New Haven

, [email protected]

Julia B. Smith

Oakland University

Nancy Brown

Oakland University

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Niemi, Nancy S., Brown, Nancy & Smith, Julia B. (2014). The portrayal of teachers in children's popular

9ction. Journal of Research in Education Vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 58-80.

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Posted by express permission of the journal editors. The article is also available via a free link here.

Journal of Research in Education Volume 21, Number 2

The portrayal of teachers in children’s popular fiction

Nancy S. Niemi

University of New Haven

Julia B. Smith

Oakland University

Nancy Brown

Oakland University

Abstract

This study explores cultural messages about teachers and teaching, as delivered by

current children's literature. Our findings confirmed that teachers are still portrayed, in

text and picture, as White, kind, conservative, women who teach for the love of children.

More surprisingly, we also found that: 1) the stories conveyed strong themes of students

acting as agents of teachers’ identity work, 2) that students often position teachers as sex

objects, and 3) that teachers’ social class is characterized as working class. The results

imply ambivalence about teachers’ identities and suggest that the teaching profession

keeps women in a powerless and objectified job.

Since its re-emergence after WWII as a popular medium of entertainment in the United

States (Meigs, 1953) researchers have analyzed children‘s fiction as a possible tool for

cultural dissemination (Adams, 1953; Fraser, 1978; Jan, 1974; Kohl, 1995; Sadker &

Sadker, 1977). Apart from general inquiries about the nature and content of these stories,

researchers have looked at how the disabled are portrayed (Baskin & Harris, 1977), how

race and ethnic diversity are represented (Fox, 1993), and frequently, how gender is

portrayed in children‘s fiction (Creany, 1995; Diekman & Murnen, 2004; Fox, 1993;

Heintz, 1987; Lehr, 2001; Narahara, 1998; Singh, 1998; Temple, 1993; Turner, 1998;

Weitzmann et al., 1972).

Investigating the school story as conveyed in children‘s popular fiction has also been a

subject of inquiry (Barone, Meyerson & Mallette, 1995; Sandefur & Moore, 2004;

Triplett & Ash, 2000), although often as a subset of gender investigations of the literature

(e.g. Fox, 1993; Sadker & Sadker, 1977). Because almost everyone has a ready-made

image of a classroom, children‘s popular fiction draws on a common mental template,

creating school scenarios that draw from a near-universal Western experience. Authors

have successfully capitalized on the telling and retelling of the school story and its

various elements – the lunchroom, homework, friendships – with one character almost

always a constant: the teacher.

Journal of Research in Education Volume 21, Number 2

Interestingly, few studies investigate the portrayal of teachers in children‘s fiction. Those

studies that do exist have so far focused on picture images (Barone, Meyerson &

Mallette, 1995; Sandefur & Moore, 2004; Turner, 1998), relationships with students

(Triplett & Ash, 2000), or as part of a discussion of women‘s occupational

representations (Creany, 1995; Heintz, 1987). As with broader analyses of school stories,

research on the portrayal of teachers in children‘s fiction focuses on the child as the

recipient of the authors‘ messages. That is, the analyses call into question the effects of

literature on children‘s socialization, moral development, gender identity, and attitudes

about school. There is ample evidence that children‘s literature transmits cultural

attitudes and morals (Baskin & Harris, 1977; Lehr, 2001), and acts as one of many

cultural conveyors to children about expected social, emotional, and intellectual behavior

(Diekman & Mumen, 2004; Kohl, 1995). However, to focus mostly on children‘s

reactions to literature omits a significant point in the inquisition of popular media and its

effect on society: how the portrayal of teachers in children‘s popular fiction reflects

adults’ relationships to and thoughts about schooling and teachers in contemporary

culture.

In this study, we investigate the portrayal of teachers in children‘s popular fiction.

Specifically, we investigate how authors write about teachers and how illustrators

visually conceive them in their stories. This study explores common characteristics

presented about teachers, as well as the cultural messages about teachers and teaching

delivered by children's literature authors and illustrators. Overall, we examine what these

stories imply about adults‘ social relationships to schooling: are the stories reflections of

past experiences and/or are they current opinions of what school should be? Since books

are significant vehicles for social messages, shaped by and shapers of readers‘ beliefs, it

is vital that we who are teachers ask, ―How are we portrayed?‖ and eventually, ―How

does this portrayal affect the way in which society regards our work?‖

We relate the authors‘ and illustrators‘ portrayals of teachers to cultural practices and the

power relations that structure them (Weedon, 1997). We frame our study using critical

theory as we investigate the portrayal of teachers through the socio-cultural artifact of

children‘s fiction. Denzin & Lincoln (1994) note the evolution of critical theory to

include discourse; textual analysis, we feel, is representative of one kind of discourse

between writers and society. And, as Kohl states, ―power relationships in literature reveal

the politics of both the story and, frequently, the author‖ (1995, p. 4). We suggest that the

analysis of text as part of the larger context of writing and consuming children‘s fiction

carries with it significant, ongoing questions about societies‘ conflicting conceptions of

teachers and ultimately education.

Journal of Research in Education Volume 21, Number 2

Methods

Data sources/evidence

The initial inquiry phase consisted of an exhaustive search for children‘s fiction in which

teachers are a main or significant supporting character. Using the Children's Literature

Comprehensive Database (an on-line source whose mission it is to ―provide reliable one

search access to all important and relevant information about Pre K-12 media of all types

… [and] to connect…[to] subscribers with information about books, authors and

illustrators around the world…‖ (www.childrenslit.com)), we first selected books for

ages 13 or younger, and then selected fiction books that contained the word "teacher" in

any field - title, description, or review. This process established a list of 4,098 books.

We then crossed this list against both the library standard Children’s Catalog (2001) and

the sales rankings of children‘s fiction about teachers from Amazon.com to establish a

"popularity" metric. Combining these, we used a random number generator to sample a

representative but manageable list of books. Finally, we cross-selected titles that

appeared in either the A to zoo: Subject access to children’s picture books (Lima & Lima,

2006) index of children's literature under the section identifying a focus on teachers or on

schools, or the Norton Anthology of Children's Literature (Zipes et al., 2005), again

focusing on school or teacher stories. These final selection cuts eliminated books which

appeared on the list because of a reference to the book as a "teaching tool" or a "valuable

resource for teachers," but contained no teacher as either a central or peripheral character.

As a result, we were able to establish a list of 74 titles that represent the available

children's books that include teachers as a character in the story, with an emphasis

towards those to which children have the greatest access (as reflected by library and

purchase popularity).

Analytic Perspective

In this study, we used critical narrative analysis as the analytic framework of the study.

The unit of analysis is the narrative (story) of the teacher. Narrative analysis has been

used in a number of different analytic forms (Manning & Cullum-Swan, 1994) and this

study combines critical theory‘s focus on power relations with textual analysis. Using

critical narrative analysis as an analytic framework allows us to take multiple contexts of

text into account in a way that content analyses do not (Manning & Cullum-Swan, 1994,

p. 464).

By treating the narrative of the teacher – as created by authors – as the unit of analysis,

we analyze it through several lenses. First, we analyze it as a cultural artifact, namely, a

book in which the teacher is the main character or theme. The majority of studies of

children‘s literature have followed this line of thought, using content analyses of books as

a way to indicate quantitatively what images appear in which books (e.g. Narahara, 1998;

Sandefur & Moore, 2004; Weitzman et al., 1972). While some of our analyses initially

Journal of Research in Education Volume 21, Number 2

compared content of the books, the focus was on the story of the teacher, which we

believed could have had little to do with the content of the books themselves.

The second lens through which we have analyzed these data is through the socio-cultural

contexts in which these teacher stories are situated. ―Texts never exist separately from

context,‖ states Dalton (2004). ―When a reader engages … a text, the act is never

separated from that reader‘s own lived experience….‖ (p. 10). Popular texts require a

―double [analytic] focus‖ according to Fiske (1992), meaning that we must look at deeper

structures of texts as well as the meanings that people already bring to those structures.

In this analysis, we defined context as the underlying meanings and subtexts that the

authors and illustrators bring with them to the writing of the teacher story, as well as the

readers‘ individual contexts.

This focus on authors‘ and illustrators‘ contexts as well as on the words and pictures

themselves was necessary for several reasons: writers‘ contexts and influences are under-

examined in children‘s literature analyses, and, doing so more thoroughly investigates

the possible origins of the Western teacher narrative. ―Literature is only part of the

cultural media available to our children, but …they learn to read in close relationships

with adults, we teachers, parents, and writers …‖ (Fox, 1993, p. 88). Children,

particularly young children, are at the mercy of adults‘ guidance and they quickly learn

what adult culture wants them to know. ―Books provide role models; from books,

children learn what behavior is acceptable for them, for their peers, and for adults around

them…‖ (Kohl, 1995, p. 4). Surely authors and illustrators understand more than most

cultural arbiters that language is power, and that it can be used to influence children.

What we want to understand, then, is what messages authors and illustrators want

children to receive about teachers.

Louie (2001), in one of the few articles that partly addresses children‘s literature authors,

writes that, ―Authors have an undeniable responsibility in creating gender balance since

they are the creators of images in text‖ (p. 143). She postulates that some of the reasons

children‘s authors use stereotypes include: motivating male readers by using archetypal

characters, the easy availability of male historical figures about which to write, and the

sheer difficulty of eliminating gender stereotypes (pp. 143 – 145). Only the last of these

reasons seems a plausible explanation for the portrayal of teachers in children‘s fiction.

Nonetheless, the lack of study surrounding authors‘ and illustrators‘ socio-cultural

contexts is one of the compelling reasons to investigate the contexts in which the stories

of teachers are situated.

After collecting the representative texts, we searched for common themes in teacher

characterization, depiction, story line, and in pictures where appropriate. We gathered

and sorted these themes according to commonality and difference, as well as by other

emerging similarities. While we expected to find distinctions in teacher portrayal

according to teachers‘ gender, ethnicity, and race, we also left ample room for completely

unexpected teacher portrayals.

Journal of Research in Education Volume 21, Number 2

Initial orientation. We originally suspected that our findings regarding content of

children‘s fiction about teachers would echo those findings of Sandefur & Moore (2004)

and Dalton (2004), as well as the more general findings of Weitzman et al. (1972) and

Diekman & Murnen (2004). Specifically, we expected to find that:

Gender/sex is an important organizing category in children‘s fiction about

teachers;

There would be significantly more women than men depicted as teachers in

books; most of the teachers would be white; most would embody middle class

characteristics;

Teachers would be portrayed as women who do not reflect the characteristics

of ―normal‖ women: they would not have outside lives, they would be

considered ‗strange‘ by their colleagues and students, they would be

uncharacteristically (for American society) independent;

Male teachers would be portrayed as effeminate;

There would be a great deal of emphasis on discipline and behavior;

An idealistic and conservative view of schooling and schools would be

realized.

However, we did not maintain these findings as pre-existing conceptions concerning what

the contexts of these narratives might imply about writers, teachers, and parents‘ beliefs

about schooling. We allowed the texts to reveal a contested and conflicted view of

schooling, reflecting, we suspected, both adults‘ idealized memories and long-held

resentments of their own childhoods, as well as their hopes for their own and future

children‘s experiences in school.

Emergent coding. In addition to the teacher characteristics portrayed in the

literature, we also coded for ways in which the act of teaching or the actions of teachers

were characterized. These codes included the nature and type of interactions

described/depicted between the teacher and other adults (teachers or parents) as well as

between teachers and students; the instructional activity described/depicted; non-

instructional activity (including discipline as well as support or nurturing); and finally

any evidence of the teacher's knowledge or skills (content knowledge as well as

pedagogical evidence).

Findings

Our findings about teachers‘ physical characteristics, as we initially suspected, reflect

prior content analyses of children‘s fiction (e.g. Dalton, 2004; Sandefur & Moore, 2004)

and, as well as the more general findings of Weitzman et al. (1972) and Diekman &

Murnen (2004). Specifically, we found that:

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Gender/sex is a central theme in children‘s fiction about teachers;

There were significantly more women than men depicted as teachers in books;

in our sample of 74 books, 56 were women, 18 were men.

Most of the teachers in our sample were white (70% identifiable as white);

Most of the teachers were human (10 out of 74 were animals or aliens).

Additionally, we found that

None of the teachers were portrayed in either text or picture as disabled;

Teachers‘ general appearances were characterized as young and beautiful, old

and ugly, or inhuman;

Teachers‘ clothing was portrayed consistently across many of the texts; males

were dressed in child-friendly clothing (i.e. soccer ball ties, brightly colored

striped shirts) while females were dressed conservatively (drab dresses, hair in

buns). The majority of the young, pretty female teachers were blond.

In the 32 texts in which a principal is named (either in passing or as a

character), most (80%) were male.

These findings are consistent with the content analyses of previous studies, including the

most recent study by Hamilton et al. (2006), which found that occupational stereotyping

in children‘s books ―has not gone underground [and that] men were seen in more than

nine times as many traditional as nontraditional jobs, and women were portrayed in

traditional jobs over ten times as often as they were portrayed in nontraditional jobs‖ (p.

764).

Yet as we originally believed, we found that the texts in our sample – the descriptive and

spoken language used by the characters and narrators of these stories in which teachers

figure prominently – communicated messages about teachers not found in content

analyses. Specifically, we found:

These stories conveyed strong themes of students acting as agents in teachers‘

identity work. We found that in the texts of children‘s literature, it is the

children‘s objective to reveal or ―unmask‖ teachers, to see who they ―really are.‖

In some of the stories in our sample, children position teachers as objects of

heterosexual desire. The result of this process is that teachers‘ and students‘

power becomes equalized, or that teachers‘ adult power is diminished.

Evidence that teachers‘ social class, as reflected in the texts‘ descriptions of

teachers‘ actions in and outside the school, is characterized as working class, and

not professional or white collar.

We elaborate on each of these findings in the following section.

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The unmasking of teachers, or, who teachers really are

In 18% of the books in our sample, teachers are literally or figuratively ―unmasked;‖ that

is, through the course of the story, someone, almost always a student, tries to discover the

―true identity‖ of the teacher. This process is displayed with several variations:

A student (or students), suspicious of the teacher‘s unorthodox behavior,

investigates the teacher‘s outside-of-school life and discovers that the teacher is

really an alien, masquerading as a teacher;

A student sees evidence that his/her teacher interacts with the outside-of-school

world (see her in a store or other public place), and tries to reconcile his/her belief

that the teacher lived in the school all the time;

A student, or students, greatly dislikes her/his teacher. Something happens in the

course of the story to the student, the teacher, or both (in interaction with each

other or separately), the result of which is that the student likes or even admires

the teacher.

In 13 of the 74 books in our sample, the students discover throughout the course of the

study that their teacher is an alien, and by the end of each story, they literally ―unmask‖

him or her. In all of these cases, the children encounter disbelief from the human adults,

both in and out of school, when they reveal that their teacher is an alien; in Troll Teacher

(Vande Velde, 2000), the student Elizabeth even expects the adults‘ reactions: ―Elizabeth

could see right away that her new teacher was a troll….But her parents didn‘t see.

Parents never do‖ (p. 5). The students in each story, regardless of age or grade level,

work to unmask their teacher and when they do, at the end of each book, the alien teacher

leaves the school, in some cases replaced by a new human teacher and in others by

another alien teacher.

Also common to all of the ―alien‖ teachers in these stories are their unorthodox teaching

methods. In approximately two-thirds of the ―alien‖ teacher stories, the alien‘s

unorthodox teaching methods are portrayed as significantly better than the regular

teacher‘s methods; in about one-third of the cases, the teaching methods are portrayed as

bad, wrong, or menacing.

In the stories where the alien teacher uses teaching methods that are better than the

original teacher‘s methods, the alien teacher almost always requires the students to think,

and this requirement is presented clearly as not what the students are used to doing for

themselves. For example, in Mister Fred (Pinkwater, 1994), Mr. Fred gives the students

a five-question test:

1. Why do you, personally, come to school every day?

2. If you didn‘t come to school, what would you do with your time?

3. If you could go anywhere in the world, or out of it, where would you be?

Why?

Journal of Research in Education Volume 21, Number 2

4. If you could be anything in the world, what would you be? Why?

5. If you had a choice between Miss Cintron coming back to school to please

you or staying in South America to do what she has always wanted to do,

which would you choose? Why? (pp. 43- 44).

One of the students, upon seeing the questions, complains, ―What kind of test is this?

You don‘t have to know anything.‖ Mr. Fred replies, ―On the contrary, you have to know

yourselves‖ (p. 44). Alien teachers are also invoked to teach ―proper‖ behavior. In three

of the stories, it required an alien to instill ―appropriate‖ behavior (usually meant as

discipline) in students who are overstepping the bounds of what regular teachers can

possibly handle. Miss Swamp, teaches students to behave using fear, rude remarks, and

physical threats in the popular ―Miss Nelson‖ series.

In approximately one-third of the alien teacher stories, though, the teacher is simply

teaching incorrect information. In Troll Teacher (Vande Velde, 2000), Miss Turtledove

says, ―2+2=17, except on Tuesdays‖ and in Mister Fred (Pinkwater, 1994), Mr. Fred

alphabetizes the students‘ names by their first names. In Apple Island, or the Truth about

Teachers (Evans, 1998), Mrs. Gross explains that,

Teachers have made spelling easier for you. Dictionaries are incorrect. All those

nasty silent letters in words are preposterous! From now on you can leave off the

silly e at the end of come, give, and have. Forget that idiotic i in the middle of

friend. Why bother putting the dumb b at the end of climb? And never write

phone with a ph or laugh with a gh again. Enough already! If you hear and f, just

put an f! (pp. 17 – 18).

The alien teachers in Apple Island are dictatorial as well, displaying classroom rules as a

long list of ―no‖ rules.

The second kind of unmasking story is that of a figurative revelation – the student

attempts to discover where his/her teacher ―really‖ lives, thereby unmasking the identity

of teacher as someone who exists only in school to reveal a teacher who lives in the

―real‖ world. The young student in My teacher’s secret life (Krensky, 1996) is

―suspicious‖ of his teacher, Mrs. Isabelle, when he sees her both in the store and in roller

skating in the park. After seeing her ―hold hands with a man,‖ he decides to watch her

―extra carefully‖ to see if her behavior continues. In Miss Malarkey doesn’t live in room

10 (Finchler, 1995), the boy is alarmed when he sees his teacher in the student's own

apartment building; he spies on her as she takes out the garbage, paints her toenails red,

and has dinner parties. In neither case is the student happy about these revelations; both

books end with the student‘s ambivalence about his teacher‘s ―new‖ life and his vow to

watch the teacher very carefully. Both stories describe male students who are convinced

that their female teachers live in their schools with all the other teachers. In each case,

the student accidentally sees his teacher outside the school – in his apartment building, or

in the park, roller skating – and begins to question his belief.

Journal of Research in Education Volume 21, Number 2

The third way in which a teacher is ―unmasked‖ is when a student discovers or reveals a

different, and almost always nicer or more human (oddly enough) part of her personality.

The most direct way authors achieve this revelation is through the device of the ―mean

teacher‖ becoming nicer as the result of a traumatic event and/or from the help of an

understanding student. In The incredible shrinking teacher (Passen, 2002) and The

abominable snow teacher (Passen, 2004), author Passen characterizes the gray-haired,

portly, Miss Irma Birnbaum as the ―toughest teacher in town.‖ In both books, her class

dislikes her and considers her very mean; when she is accidentally shrunken in the first

book and turned into a snow person in the second, Miss Birnbaum gains perspective on

what it is like to be small or to have fun as a small child, and when she returns to her

regular appearance, she becomes, at least for the day, a ―nice‖ teacher.

In The Landry News (Clements, 1999), Mr. Larson is the ―kind of teacher parents write

letters to the principal about, letters like, ‗Dear Dr. Barnes, We know our child is only in

second grade this year, but please be sure that he [or she] is NOT put into Mr. Larson‘s

class for fifth grade‘‖ [original italics and caps] (pp. 2 -3). Cara Landry, as a new

student, challenges Mr. Larson‘s neglectful teaching and, though initially angering him,

ends up reinvigorating him and helping him to restore himself to the excellent teacher he

once was. Jerome Brooks‘ Knee Holes (1992) mirrors this theme: Hope Gallagher

believes that her teacher, Dr. Everett Rogers, can do no wrong, while her teacher Dr.

Bialek is, to Hope, unjustifiably mean. Through the course of a school year, and the

actions of a special group of students, Hope realizes that Dr. Rogers is not perfect and

that Dr. Bialek has reasons for being so angry.

In another story entitled The Library Dragon (Deedy, 1994), a little girl is the change

agent in turning the mean librarian dragon into a warm, beautiful, young blonde woman.

We learn through the little girl in The Library Dragon that the teacher is lonely. The little

girl disregards the dragon‘s tough exterior, disobeys the library rules, and crawls into the

dragon/librarian‘s lap. The little girl connects emotionally to the librarian, and her scales

melt away revealing the beautiful, young, blonde teacher. However, the librarian keeps

her tail; we speculate that the author intended this as an implication that a certain amount

of discipline is needed when one is an authority figure in school.

A teacher can also be ―unmasked‖ by having her/his humanity revealed, as is the case

with 12 books in our sample. Finchler & O‘Malley (2004) illustrate a teacher‘s limits in

Miss Malarkey’s Field Trip, wherein the first person narrator/student notices that his

teacher ―holds her head a lot‖ during their class trip to the science museum. Mel Glenn

unmasks Mr. Chippendale posthumously in his novel, Who killed Mr. Chippendale?

(1996) by providing multiple students‘ first-person perspectives on their now-dead

teacher, essentially revealing numerous identities and yet no complete picture.

In Keep Mrs. Sugarman in the fourth grade (Levy, 1992), Jackie comes to like, respect,

and trust her teacher, Mrs. Sugarman, though Mrs. Sugarman, as with Mr. Larson (from

The Landry News, 1999), does not have a good reputation among the school children.

Journal of Research in Education Volume 21, Number 2

In the story I remember Miss Perry (2006), Pat Brisson and illustrator Stephanie Jorich

unmask the feelings and memories of a well-loved teacher as seen through one little boy's

eyes. The brilliant Miss Perry is in an accident on the way to school and dies. The little

boy portrays for the reader that his teacher is a professional, in every aspect of the word.

He comments on the how Miss Perry was loved by the other teachers and parents. The

African-American female principal (one of two in our sample) cries as she explains to the

children that their beloved teacher is gone forever. It seems that one way that ―good‖

human teachers get unmasked is by leaving the class by transfer or death.

Students positioning teachers as objects of heterosexual desire

Prior content analyses (e.g. Fox, 1993; Sadker & Sadker, 1977) suggested that most of

the teachers portrayed in our sample would be women (76%); this statistic alone makes

the data gendered in the most basic sense. But we were surprised to find that in part of

our sample (about 20%), interactions between students and teachers were also gendered

in that the expected power differentials that rightly occur between student and teacher

were, in many cases, negated by the students‘ positioning of their opposite-sexed teacher

as an object of heterosexual gaze.

Students in our sample accomplished this interaction largely through language, through

students‘ third person descriptions of teachers‘ actions or through one-to-one

conversations between teacher and student. Young boys, for example, were able to

position their female teachers as objects of their gaze by using language of control in

their descriptions of their teachers‘ actions. In My teacher’s secret life (Krensky, 1996),

the elementary school boy of the story is determined to find out what the teacher‘s

―secret‖ life is. He describes Mrs. Isabelle Quirk‘s actions as ―suspicious‖ and, when he

learns that she ―likes‖ a man, by watching his teacher hold the man‘s hand, he vows to

―watch her extra carefully‖ in the future. Likewise in Miss Malarkey doesn’t live in

room 10 (Finchler, 1995), the first grade boy in Miss Malarkey‘s class decides to spy on

her when he sees her in his apartment building. By secretly following her, he finds that

she also goes to parties, paints her toenails red, and goes shopping.

Marvin, the third grade protagonist in Marvin Redpost: Alone in his teacher’s house

(Sachar, 1994), actually spends time in his teacher‘s house alone, as the title indicates,

because Mrs. North asks him to watch her dog while she is away. While in her house, his

friends urge him to snoop through her things and are vicariously thrilled when Marvin

tells them he used her bathroom. Cases where the student is female and the teacher is

male happened less frequently in our sample (n = 4), but occur primarily in books written

for older children. In these cases, the female student clearly notices that her teacher is

male and that this awareness has a sexual component; the students in these books also

position the teacher as being watched or under surveillance. For example, in My teacher

is an alien (Coville, 1989), sixth grader Susan describes the human face of her teacher as

―handsome – a strong, lean face, long nose, and cheekbones to die for‖ (p. 6). But, as

Journal of Research in Education Volume 21, Number 2

with the young boy characters who want to find out who their female teachers really are,

so too, do the female characters position their male teachers as objects of suspicion;

Susan suspects that her teacher is not who he pretends to be, and follows him home,

breaks into his house, and spies on him in his bedroom. Anya, the sixth grade student in

Mister Fred (Pinkwater, 1994), also surreptitiously follows her teacher, Mr. Fred, as he

does errands after school, hoping to discover where he goes and if he has other aliens

with him.

In both The Landry News (Clements, 1999) and Knee Holes (Brooks, 1992), the main

female characters do not follow their male teachers, but in both cases develop deep

feelings for them and subsequently turn their gazes on them as a way of being close to

their objects of affection:

His voice reaches out to me over my shoulder and snares me with this. ―Hold on

there, won‘t you? I‘ve got a question.‖ I‘ve stepped only two or three feet

toward the door.

My heart fibrillates. But I turn anyway.

Since I‘m a good head shorter than he, I focus on the blue and red rhombohedrons

lying tip to tip on his tie. They are like stained-glass church windows shot

through by golden sunlight on a summer day (Brooks, pp. 6 – 7).

Since neither girl can admit that she has romantic or sexual feelings for her teacher, both

achieve nearness by constantly talking about their teacher, or by putting themselves

physically near them while possible, positioning them with internal monologue and

external dialogue as objects of their desire.

Teachers as “pink” collar workers

Knapp and Woolverton (2004) define social class as more than just economic wealth;

they also include in their definition the less tangible components of political power, status

prestige, and cultural power (p. 658). Acknowledging social classes as social

constructions, they state that social class in relation to schooling is ―an attribute of all

individuals engaged in the enterprise of schooling, of educators as well as learners‖ (p.

658). Yet educators‘ social class is rarely a topic of research on schooling. Not

surprisingly, then, its existence is not often found in studies of children‘s literature:

researchers cannot see what they do not acknowledge is there. In our study, however, we

found that teachers are portrayed as having a social class. As reflected in descriptions of

teachers‘ actions in and outside of school, we found evidence that authors characterize

teachers as working class, and not, as we had expected, as professional or white collar.

We used several different measures to define social class as it is portrayed in teachers.

Knapp and Woolverton (2004) define teachers‘ social class as partly deriving from their

class of origin, partly from the professional lives, and partly from their patterns of

association outside of school (p. 665). Metz (1990) adds to this definition: ―While

Journal of Research in Education Volume 21, Number 2

teachers have formally similar educational credentials, … they not only come from a

range of social class backgrounds but participate as adults in networks that vary

significantly in their social class‖ (p. 94). While teachers might do the same job, they are

not all of the same social class.

The authors of children‘s books, then, are free to color their characters‘ social class as

they decide. Given the freedom to characterize their teachers as professionals or as

workers, we found that the authors in our sample colored their teachers pink – female

education workers. As social class in teaching is as much a gendered issue as it is an

economic one (e.g. Weiler, 1988), noting the components of these stories that indicate

teachers‘ socio-economic statuses reveals how subtle messages about teachers may go

undetected in children‘s fiction. We found the following working class aspects of many

of the teachers in our study to include:

Limited access to power within the school (almost always a male principal who

tells the teacher what to do, even if the principal is characterized as not very

smart)

Modest indicators of economic wealth – teachers have small homes or apartments

Teachers find wealth meaningless when measured against their job fulfillment.

Students‘ economic means are modest or limited (indicative of school

community). For example, in My great aunt Arizona, the student does not have

the money to travel. However she does not mind; she travels in her imagination.

Teachers‘ linguistic patterns are consistent with working class speech – use of

commands in classroom, slang, limited academic vocabulary

Clothing is modest and conservative; the teachers‘ collars are high on their necks,

their dresses are below the knee, and their jewelry is small

Teaching responsibilities are conscientiously completed and superiors obeyed

Nature of teaching and learning is narrow; knowledge is held by the teacher, to be

given out to the students.

There were notable exceptions to this theme – some teachers in our study defied the

expectations of their superiors and the culture of the school. When this exception

happened, though, they were cast as radical and more often than not, were literally

written out of the classroom.

Not surprisingly, the nature of the job of teaching is represented differently for male and

female teachers. With the exception of one text, female teachers do not interact with

subject matter. If they are described/depicted as young and beautiful, then they are

described as patient, kind, helpful, and liking children, but not described in the act of

teaching. Even in stories where male teachers are teaching, this pattern is consistent. In

Sparks, a chapter book about a fifth grader with learning difficulties, the special

education teacher is a pretty white female. The boy describes her as kind, patient and fun.

This description is contrasted to the students' new general education classroom teacher,

Journal of Research in Education Volume 21, Number 2

an African American male, who works with mathematics, discusses Charlotte’s Web,

explains equations, and is academically challenging. The boy learns from the male

teacher, while he only has fun with and is helped by the female.

In each portrayal of male teachers, they are shown as actively engaged in making

academics accessible to children. This depiction was done in warm, wonderful, creative

ways, but always in the context of the act of teaching. Males were depicted as doing the

real work of teachers with both strong, affective demeanors and strong cognitive abilities,

while the vast majority of females were shown only performing the affective qualities of

teachers. For example, in Thank you, Mr. Falker (Polacco, 2001), the male teacher

promises ―We‘re going to change all that, girl. You‘re going to read—I promise you

that.‖ We are privy to the best practice methods Mr. Falker employs to teach the young

student to read. This instruction is done after school on Mr. Falker‘s own time. The male

teacher described in the text I don’t want to go back to school (Russo, 1994) teaches a

geography lesson as a small group activity, reads stories in a ―good story voice,‖ and

introduces the students to the class pets. The pattern indicates an underlying message of

the work of teachers -- male teachers provide instruction, female teachers provide

nurturance and support. The gender divide of the work corresponds with work

conceptions underlying a ‗pink collar‘ divide in social status.

Discussion

The surface content of the books in our sample reveals nothing new about the portrayal of

teachers in current children‘s fiction: as it has for over 50 years in the United States and

the United Kingdom, children‘s fiction characterizes teachers as female, White, straight,

and non-disabled. These findings reflect other researchers‘ conclusions about the content

of children‘s fiction regarding teachers (Sandefur & Moore, 2004; Weber & Mitchell,

1995; Weitzman et al., 1972) and we have not found any significant differences in even

the most recent books about teachers.

Whether this literal picture of teachers is due to authors‘ desire to reflect the reality of

Western teaching forces – teachers are in fact overwhelming White, female, straight, and

non-disabled – or whether it reflects authors‘ childhood reminiscences or even their

hopes that the teaching force will stay as it is, we cannot say. Yet we know children‘s

literature transmits cultural attitudes and morals (Baskin & Harris, 1977), and acts as a

conveyor of messages to children about social behavior (Kohl, 1995), and so what we can

say about the unchanged demographic content is that it cannot yet be considered a source

to help children to imagine teachers differently.

Although our findings regarding the typical demographic profile of teachers were not a

surprise, our data did reveal that authors of children‘s fiction display deep ambivalence

about whom and even what teachers are. On the surface we can say that teachers are

literally what authors say and draw them to be: White women. But the overwhelming

evidence from our study -- teachers‘ identities are something to be uncovered, teachers

Journal of Research in Education Volume 21, Number 2

are objects to be watched, and they are workers to be controlled -- suggests that the ―real‖

identities of teachers are to be denied, hidden, and even feared.

Most striking was the overwhelming number of works that dealt with revealing teachers‘

identities. Whether the teachers were aliens in teacher-masquerade, or whether their non-

school lives or personalities were in question, students in most of the texts were

tremendously concerned with finding out who their teachers ―really‖ were. This theme

was by far the most compelling of those we discovered. What is so taboo, we wonder,

about teachers revealing their real selves to their students?

Dalton (2004), studying teachers‘ portrayal in commercial films, notes this bifurcation

between school and private life, stating that, ―undercutting all of the other categories [of

women as teachers] are the divided lives that are imposed on female teachers….We must

consider the ways in which female teachers are asked to deny their experience as women

in their teaching‖ (p. 97). If the teachers in children‘s fiction are not supposed to have

other lives, why then are students written as anxious to discover them?

A reason may be that students fear losing an authority figure whom they have constructed

as ideal. The main teacher character from The Landry News (Clements, 1999) suggests

that the fear of the loss of a ―perfect‖ teacher may be, in fact, damaging to a student:

Mr. Larson remembered his own fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Spellman. She had

been perfect. Her clothes and hair and lipstick were always just so. Her

classroom was always quiet and orderly. She never raised her voice – she never

had to. She wrote in that flawless cursive, and a little gold star from Mrs.

Spellman was like a treasure, even for the toughest boys.

Then young Karl Larson saw Mrs. Spellman at the beach on Memorial Day with

her family. She was sitting under an umbrella, and she wore a black swimsuit that

did not hide any of her midriff bulges or the purple veins on her legs. Her hair

was all straggly from swimming, and without any makeup or lipstick she looked

washed out, tired. She had two kids, a girl and a boy, and she yelled at them as

they wrestled and got sand all over the beach towels. Her husband lay flat on his

back in the sun , a large man with lots of hair on his stomach, and it wasn‘t a

small stomach. As Karl stood there staring, Mrs, Spellman‘s husband lifted his

head off the sand, turned toward his wife, pointed at the cooler, and said, ‗Hey

Mabel, hand me another cold one, would you?‘ (pp. 20-21).

It is the now-adult teacher‘s reaction to his ideal childhood teacher that offers insight as

to what authors imagine students may feel when they see their teacher as real:

Karl was thunderstruck, and he turned and stumbled back to where his own family

had set up their picnic on the beach. This big, hairy guy had looked at his Mrs.

Spellman and said, ‗Hey Mabel.‘ At that moment, Karl Larson realized that the

Mrs. Spellman he knew at school was mostly a fictional character, partly created

Journal of Research in Education Volume 21, Number 2

by him, and partly created by Mrs. Spellman herself. The students and …and

Mabel created Mrs. Spellman together in order to do the job of schooling

[Original italics.] (p. 21).

Clements does not allow Mr. Larson the teacher to explain what it is about ―the job of

schooling,‖ though, that requires teachers to be fictional characters. What can ―perfect‖

teachers do that imperfect – real – teachers cannot? What is gained – by students,

teachers, and society – by having ―perfect‖ teachers? According to Clements‘ little-boy-

turned-teacher, teachers are socially constructed fictions who exist to do what real

women apparently are not allowed or able to do.

Moreover, the sexual overtone in Mr. Larson‘s fifth grade reflection suggests that only a

made-up, perfectly-coiffed woman can be a teacher and that ugly teachers cannot really

exist. Such reasoning might explain the preponderance of aliens, trolls, and vampires

masquerading as teachers – students are immediately suspicious of such teachers‘

humanness for the simple reason that they are ugly.

It may also be that it is somehow dangerous for students to acknowledge that female

teachers are ―real‖ women. ―[Teachers] negotiating between their public and private

selves amid the constraints imposed upon them from their supervisors and their

communities has historically been a balancing act for women teachers‖ writes Dalton

(2004, p. 93). If students, particularly elementary and middle school aged children, are

supposed to see their teachers as transitional objects between mother and outside worlds

as Grumet (1988) suggests, then to see their teachers as something other than ―substitute

mother‖ is to be subject to the realities of the outside world. If students gain the

knowledge that their teachers are not perfect, all-knowing, beautiful, nurturing creatures,

then perhaps their mothers are not perfect either. For teachers and mothers to be human

means that they have economic, sexual, intellectual, and social needs that neither children

nor Western culture may be ready to acknowledge.

The student gaze that positions teachers as objects of students‘ heterosexual desire can be

read on the surface as merely school crushes – students‘ transfer of affection from parent

to teacher, the nascent development of human sexual desire. Yet the number of instances

within the sample texts where the student, through his discourse with the teacher,

positions her as powerless – calls into question any simple reading of these relationships.

Walkerdine (1990) cautions against reading any interchange as ‗simple,‘ noting that ―a

particular individual has the potential to be ‗read‘ within a variety of discourses‖ (p. 5).

In the cases of these texts, many students hold simultaneous dual positions as powerless

student and powerful male; ―an individual can be powerful or powerless, depending on

the terms in which her/his subjectivity is constituted‖ (Walkerdine, 1990, p. 5).

Most of the young boy students in our sample who engage in direct or third person

positioning of their teachers do so in an adult context; they are young boys (as young as

first grade, in some cases) and yet they are spying on their teachers who are painting their

Journal of Research in Education Volume 21, Number 2

toenails, shopping, having dinner parties, and holding hands with others; they are writing

to nominate their teacher for president, taking care of their pets in absence of a husband

or partner, and critiquing their face make-up or lack thereof. As individuals are

produced, in the process of discourse, into relations of power (Walkerdine, 1990), it is

possible to see these boys as both powerless (students) and powerful (male). The boys‘

power is gained when they refuse the powerless student role and recast the teachers as

powerless in their discourse, even if that discourse is a third person narrative.

There are a few instances in our sample where girl students position male teachers as

well, but in these cases the power differential remains in place – male teachers, though

objects of girl students‘ desire, remain adults, likely because the girl students accept the

student (powerless) role even as they also position their male teacher as an object of

desire:

―Please forgive me,‖ he [Dr. Rogers] suddenly blurts out. ―I shouldn‘t have let

this go so far, forcing you to have to bring it to my -- ‖

Damn, but I‘d like to kick myself! Now I‘m beginning to churn in the old

direction wildly. His blasted pain‘s completely mine again.

Italics original (Brooks, 1992, p. 106)

Reaffirmed in our data analysis is Grumet‘s (1988) assertion that even in a profession

where women dominate, the teaching profession brings little power to women.

Lastly, our findings of teachers portrayed as working class suggest that current children‘s

fiction may reflect the existing push to ―teacher-proof‖ school curricula and routines, to

make education a collection of common beliefs and rituals, as opposed to a place where

teachers and children are free to think for themselves. The teachers in our study who

leave their regular positions – the aliens, those who leave and are replaced by aliens or

other substitutes, those who are threatened with being fired or being ostracized by their

peers – are those teachers who challenge the thinking of their students. The teachers who

stay are those who do not challenge the system, the ones who do what they are told and

do a good job within the confines of the job. Casey & Apple (1989) note this trend in

non-fictional teaching positions, explaining how ―jobs filled by women are structured so

that there are greater attempts to control the content of the job and how that job is

performed‖ (pp. 179 – 180).

The class position of teachers is also infused with gender in the way that fictional teacher

characters, mostly female, are told what to do by almost exclusively male principals. The

schools within these stories, as with real schools, exist in communities where teachers are

further controlled, and caught, between the expectations of families, (mostly left to

mothers) and expectations of the state (mostly left to men, in the form of patriarchal

expectations). It seems no wonder that even little boys in the stories we analyzed felt

empowered to tell their teachers what to do. ―Helpless to raise our own class status

through our work,‖ Grumet (1988) writes, ―female teachers may be the least-equipped

Journal of Research in Education Volume 21, Number 2

persons in our society to show students how to bridge the distance between effort and

social class status‖ (pp. 56 - 57). The sheer numbers of women in the profession are

contradicted ironically by the lack of power that the teachers in these texts display –

teaching is a feminized profession displaying few indicators of feminism.

We began this study investigating the portrayal of teachers in children‘s popular fiction

suspecting that there was more to be found than demographics reflective of the current

Western teaching force. What we found surprised us though perhaps it should not have:

these stories imply that the cultural aesthetic surrounding teachers and teaching remains

as unchanged in fiction as it does in reality. Ambivalent and hopeless about our

contradictory positions as women, teachers, and professionals, children‘s fiction tells us

that we teachers are female workers who should take care of children, do what we‘re told,

and keep the masks of teacher identity intact. Quinn (1996) states that ―real secrets can

be kept by publishing them on billboards‖ (p. 188). In the case of how Western society

regards teachers‘ work, perhaps we should say that if we want to hide society‘s feelings

about teachers, we should publish the message in children‘s storybooks.

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Appendix

List of Books Included in Content Analysis

Allard, Harry, (1977) Miss Nelson is missing!

Allard, Harry (1986) Miss Nelson is Back

Allard, Harry (1988) Miss Nelson Has a Field Day

Ames, Mildred (1985) Cassandra-Jamie

Borden, Louise (1999) Good luck, Mrs. K.!

Bosse, Malcomb (1996) The Examination

Brandt, Amy (2000) When Katie was our teacher

Brenner, Emily (2004) On the first day of grade school

Brillhart, Julie (1990) Anna’s Goodbye Apron

Brisson, Pat (2006) I Remember Miss Perry

Brooks, Jerome (1992) Knee holes

Brown, Marc Tolon (2000) Arthur's teacher moves in

Bunting, Eve (1992) Our teacher's having a baby

Calmenson, Stephanie(1998) The Teeny tiny teacher

Chardiet, Bernice (1990) The Best teacher in the world

Choi, Sook Nyul & Dugan, Karen (1993) Halmoni and the Picnic

Clavell, James (1998) The Children’s Story

Clements, Andrew (2002) Jake Drake. class clown

Clements, Andrew (1999) The Landry News

Clements, Andrew (2001) Jake Drake, teacher's pet

Clements, Andrew (2004) The Last holiday concert

Codell, Esme Raji (2003) Sahara Special

Cohen, Barbara (1998) Molly’s Pilgrim

Coville, Bruce (1989) My teacher is an alien

Coville, Bruce (1991) My teacher fried my brains

Coville, Bruce (1991) My teacher glows in the dark

Creech, Sharon (2001) Love that dog

Crews, Donald (1993) School Bus

Dahl, Roald (1988) Matilda

Danneberg, Julie (2003) First year letters

Danziger, Paula (1974) The Cat ate my gymsuit

Deedy, Carmen (1994) The Library Dragon

Evans, Douglas (1998) Apple Island, or, the truth about teachers

Evans, Douglas (1997) So what do you do?

Finchler, Judy (1995) Miss Malarkey doesn't live in room 10

Finchler, Judy (1998) Miss Malarkey won't be in today

Gelman, Rita Golden (2004) Doodler doodling

Getz, David (2000) Floating Home

Glenn, Mel (1996) Who Killed Mr. Chippendale?

Glenn, Mel (1997) The Taking of Room 114

Granger, Michele (1995) Fifth grade fever

Journal of Research in Education Volume 21, Number 2

Greenburg, Dan (2002) My teacher ate my homework

Greene, Stephanie (1998) Show and tell

Guest, Elissa Haden (2004) Iris and Walter and the substitute teacher

Gutman, Dan (2004) Ms. Hannah is Bananas

Gutman, Dan (2004) Ms. Small is off the Wall

Hahn, Mary Downing (1990) December Stillness

Havill, Juanita (1999) Jamaica and the substitute teacher

Henkes, Kevin (1996) Lilly's purple plastic purse

Houston, Gloria (1997) My Great Aunt Arizona

Hurwitz, Johanna (1988) Teacher's pet

Howe, James (2003) The Misfits

James, Simon (1991) Dear Mr. Blueberry

Johnson, Doug (2002) Substitute teacher plans

Johnston, Janet (1991) Ellie Brader hates Mr. G

Kiesel, Stanley (1980) The War between the pitiful teachers and the splendid kids

Kinerk, Robert (2005) Timothy Cox will not Change His Socks

Klass, Sheila Solomon (1991) Kool Ada

Krensky, Stephen (1996) My teacher's secret life

Laminack, Lester (2006) Jake’s 100

Day of School

Langreuter, Jutta (1997) Little Bear goes to Kindergarten

Levy, Elizabeth (1992) Keep Ms. Sugarman in the fourth grade

MacDonald, Amy (2001) No more nasty

McCully, Emily Arnold (1996) The Bobbin Girl

McNamee, Graham (2003) Sparks

Meyer, Carolyn (2007) White Lilacs

Mills, Claudia (2005) Makeovers by Marcia

Morgenstern, Susie (2001) A Book of coupons

Murphy, Jim (2001) My face to the wind: the diary of Sarah Jane Price. a prairie teacher

Nastick, Sharon (1981) Mr. Radadast makes an unexpected journey

Nikola-Lisa, W.(2004) MY teacher can teach--anyone!

Passen, Lisa (2004) The Abominable snow teacher

Passen, Lisa (2000) Attack of the fifty-foot teacher

Passen, Lisa(2002) The Incredible shrinking teacher

Pinkwater, Jill (1994) Mister Fred

Plourde, Lynn(2003) Teacher Appreciation Day

Polacco, Patricia (1998) Thank you. Mr. Falker

Polacco, Patricia (2001) Thank You, Mr. Falker

Priceman, Marjorie (1999) Emeline at the circus

Reynolds, Peter (2003) The Dot

Russo, Marisabina (1994) I Don’t Want to Go Back to School

Sachar, Louis (1993) Marvin Redpost: alone in his teacher's house

Sachar, Louis (1995) Wayside School gets a little stranger

Smothers, Ethel Footman (2003) The Hard-Times Jar

Spiller, Robert (2006) The Witch of Agnesi

Journal of Research in Education Volume 21, Number 2

Tada,Joni Eareckson (2001) The Meanest teacher

Thaler, Mike (1994) The Gym teacher from the Black Lagoon.

Vande Velde, Vivian( 2000) Troll teacher

Viorst, Judith (1987) Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Wardlaw, Lee (2004) 101 ways to bug your teacher

Willner-Pardo, Gina (1997) Spider Storch's teacher torture

Winters, Kay (2004) Mv teacher for President

Wood, Douglas (2002) What teachers can't do