I found this wonderfully-colored, but shockingly out-of-date, pedagogical theory book from the 1950s in a college library give-away box. As I leafed through it, I found dreadful gems like “…programs should be available for girls interested in developing skills that can be used in the marketplace such as typing, stenography, the use of clerical machines, home economics, or a specialized branch of home economics which through further work in college might lead to the profession of dietitian.”
As a professor, I love it when a student takes hold of his or her own learning process and begins to metamorphose into a curious critical thinker.
In plenty of learning environments, though, this transformation has to occur against the limits placed on students by racist, classist, and/or sexist teaching philosophies. To honor this kind of perseverance, I cut out the center text of the book and used some of it to build a chrysalis for the emerging butterfly.
