"The Three Little Pigs"

Who knew that "The Three Little Pigs" fostered disdain for ethnic groups in the majority world? It's getting harder and harder to raise children who are free of ethnocentric prejudice. One would have hoped that by now we would have made more progress. Kyle Olson:

.... Ellen Wolpert, a longtime “early childhood educator” in Massachusetts, penned an article entitled, “Rethinking ‘The Three Little Pigs.’”

You’re probably familiar with the story: a big, bad wolf threatens to destroy the homes of three individual pigs. There’s a lot of huffing and puffing on the wolf’s part, but he can only blow over the two homes that were constructed with straw and sticks.

The house left standing is made of brick, leaving readers to conclude that careful planning and hard work (as represented by the brick house) leads to success. The pigs’ definition of success, of course, is to avoid being eaten by the wolf. ....

Having been properly “sensitized by the movement for a multicultural curriculum,” Wolpert began to realize that:

“ …one of the most fundamental messages of ‘The Three Little Pigs’ is that it belittles straw and stick homes and the ‘lazy types’ who build them. On the other hand, the story extols the virtues of brick homes, suggesting that they are built by serious, hardworking people and are strong enough to withstand adversity.

“Is there any coincidence that brick homes tend to be built by people in Western countries, often by those with more money? That straw homes are more common in non-European cultures, particularly Africa and Asia?”

Who knew the story had such a hateful, Eurocentric message? .... (more)

I'm doubtful about the advisability of identifying non-Western peoples with pigs. And, of course the villain of the piece is a wolf, an endangered species (although perhaps not in northern Wisconsin), portrayed in a distinctly unfavorable light.

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