I just went through my shelves searching for something to read in my rhizome analyzis, and was distracted by a few photocopied pages from a Laurie Langbauer article. Langbauer was a favourite when I read Victorian novels, and this particular piece was on ethics in children's books. I must certainly add a little something about ethics in my thesis. Possibly linked to the part about political agendas in teaching?

Many of the language training texts are nostalgic pieces that have been part of either the English children's culture or (the Norwegian) foreign language culture for generations, featuring nice and clean children. Some are politically correct pieces written the last decades, featuring wild, Longstocking-like characters making a stand in questions of gender and race discrimination. For now, I am guessing that all books contain some texts from each category. But it might be really interesting to explore this further, and try to understand how young readers' ethics are manipulated.

Gender studies

I was working on a disposition of the theoretical foundation for my thesis, when I noticed that most of my references were to men. At first I simply shrugged my shoulders and accepted it as a result of much of my literature dating back a few decades.

But it triggered my interest, and made me follow a link to the Montessori school and Maria Montessory when it came up in an article. From there I surfed on to Helen Pankhursts bibliography, and ignored a link to the philosopher Ayn Rand. I made a mental note of the names Erica Moretti and Nancy Shute, and I quickly decided against checking if Marion O'Donnel is the author whose first name is George. This time around I am content to believe all my sources female.