Once a year at the Institute for Humane Education, our M.Ed. and Humane Education Certificate Program students come for a week to our beautiful facility in coastal Maine for the residency component of their otherwise distance-learning program. During residency week, the students each do a 15 minute presentation on a humane education topic of their choice. Two weeks ago, Chrissy Bevens brought the concept of language, and specifically, the pronouns we choose, to our attention in a way that was both funny and educational.

Chrissy began by exploring sexist language — that is, the use of words, such as the pronoun “he,” to describe the gender of an undetermined human. Then she entertained us with a Mad Libs story that called upon us, her audience, to fill in a variety of words. In the context of her lesson, the most important word was naming an animal, and we chose “anteater.” At the end of the Mad Libs, the story unfolded (humorous as is always the case with Mad Libs), and nothing seemed amiss.

But then Chrissy asked us to change “anteater” to “humane educator,” and suddenly the story read very wrong because the humane educator was referred to as “it” in the beginning of a new sentence. When the story was about an anteater the word “it”didn’t seem wrong to most, even though anteaters are comprised of males and females and certainly are not things, but rather beings.

For years I’ve talked about sexist and speciesist language and have written in the margins of students’ papers when such language has been used — raising the questions that Chrissy raised — but without the “Aha” moment her excellent, fun, and amusing approach elicited.

Learning this way – through “Aha” moments and humor – sticks. I’ll be using Chrissy’s activity in the future.

~ Zoe

Image courtesy of di_the_huntress via Creative Commons.

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Filed under: humane education, Institute for Humane Education, language, speciesism | Tagged: creativity, humane education, humane education activities, humor, IHE students, language, Mad Libs, power of words, pronouns, sexism, speciesism | Comments Off