RE_5539

As much as I enjoyed reading and rereading the third chapter, I struggled through this chapter, not because it was a difficult read but because I found the message sad, almost disturbing. Laurie's story was one that parallels the story of many young female students who must deal with conflicting messages at home, at school and within society. Quite often, young female students are expected to be nurturing, a positive and unselfish characteristic, to the extent that they abandon other characteristics such as competetive impluses which are interpreted as selfish. In our society, the female student has traditionally been encouraged to develop self-denying traits even as the male student has been allowed the freedom to pursue a more self-fulfilling/selfish behavior. Laurie was allowed the freedom to be "bossy" only because it was in the context of "mothering." Hicks stresses that Laurie's behavior became more and more compliant, due partly to the ADD medication but also because of expectations for "good girl" behavior. As Hicks points out, being good was the acceptable means to gaining power for a girl. This discussion brought back memories of my own elementary experiences. In particular, I recall a disappointing experience in 5th grade; my teacher announced that we would have math teams and the two top math students would be the captains. She then proceeded to state that even though I had one of the top scores in math, I wouldn't be a captain because the two next best scores were boys who would more appropriately be captains!!!

I was saddened by the unfolding tale of Laurie's search for identity as a romantic object, first with Nicholas and then with Steven. Obviously she was repeating the social expectations communicated to her by her mother, expectations that finding, securing, a "prince" was the ultimate life goal. Even though her mother was attending college, Laurie was influenced more significantly by the social view of femininity than by the importance of education. Laurie's value system reflected her upbringing and her home experience but they also reflected a set of social expectations that still exist. Today, as I worked on cum folders in my classroom, the granddaughter of a co-worker watched SNOW WHITE on my television and I was reminded that many little girls still hear the refrain from "Some Day My Prince Will Come" and dream of being rescued from the need to find their own professional identify. I was struck by Walkerdine's statement that "many young girls do not understand high attainment and femininity as antithetical."

Laurie sought to belong and her academic struggles impeded that sense of belonging in the classroom. Through writing, Laurie was able to attempt to find her voice but her story was not one of success. Although Hicks strives to include many of the factors that contributed to Laurie's lack of academic success, she admits that her history does include 'being disabled by a system of institutional practices" similar to our current obsession with standardized methodologies and assessments. I continue to worry that my students are discouraged by the emphasis upon mandated standards to the exclusion of creativity and spontaneity in the classroom. Hicks encourages us, as educators, to seek to know our students, to understand their realities so that we can "respond in ways that extend from those contextualized understandings." Hicks points to the vastly different social/educational expectations that existed between Laure and herself; she suggests that through building a sense of trust, she was able to meet Laurie "halfway" in developing a sense of literacy. I found the story of their final exchange, the trip to Borders, to be a sad, almost meaningless, experience. I was saddened that though they obviously had formed a bond (student to tutor), their actions did not reveal much intimacy, Laurie did state that she "loved" Hicks but the descriptions of the interchange between student and tutor didn't reveal much depth of feeling. I was discouraged by the chapter because I feared that the message was that we are not only shaped by our histories but limited by them. I hope that my students (and my own children) can work beyond the limitations of their own histories.
Betsy Baldwin