Check Out My Daughter’s Sexist Homework

SRA/McGraw-Hill

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

One day last week, our five-year-old brought home the evening’s first-grade homework—”decodables” books 29 and 30 from the Open Court Reading series—and my wife and I were like, huh?

Had the textbook publishers failed to make progress on gender roles since the Dick and Jane books of our childhood? Open Court is a phonics program published by SRA/McGraw-Hill and used to teach reading in elementary schools across America, including California, where we send our kids to the Oakland public schools.

To be fair, it’s possible we may encounter instances of women in the workplace and men doing housework elsewhere in the series. But having these two books come home simultaneously brought me back to the days of feathered hair, puka shells, and John Travolta in a white disco suit.

Just look at these pages from “Best Mom” and “Jeff’s Job.”

 

 

And now, we learn what Jeff does with his days…

I mean, just sayin’.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate