<i>Broken promises</i> – A novel’s impact on shaping youth identity

Abstract

In many emerging economies worldwide, and in South Africa in particular, sizeable investments have been made in education with the hope of increasing literacy rates and hence producing a workforce that will fit into the job market. Thus it is important to understand the context and literacy materials within South African classrooms and their impact. This article looks at the novel Broken promises by Roz Haden, which is read in many South African classrooms. From a post-structural feminist theory and functional language theory, we analyse how the portrayal of characters and storyline can have an impact on young readers' identity construction in relation to the novel's predominant discourses. The findings show that men are still portrayed as dominant in their own right within society whereas women are defined in relation to men. Unchallenged, this portrayal can continue to perpetuate gendered stereotypes, which would affect young people's functionality in society. We therefore argue that while novels are good for improving literacy among young people, the messages they contain should be deconstructed and challenged so that young people can make informed decisions regarding their gender identities.

Character Education Values of The Main Character in The Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games (2008)”

“…The research involve d 35 students of the result was most students were able to identify virtue that contained in the story and relate it with their actual event in life (Novianti, 2017). The research found that the literature that used already contain character education value (Lundgren & Khau, 2015;Putrayasa, 2017). The explanations above interest the writer to use The Hunger Games' main character, Katniss Everdeen as the model for teaching character education to the students.…”

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“…High fallow deer population density in agricultural areas potentially results in reduced production levels, through animals feeding on the crop at different stages of plant growth. However, unbiased estimates of crop losses in areas with known ungulate densities are rare, often inconsistent, and often limited to grey literature [19–21] or to self-evaluation qualitative surveys of farmers reported in non-peer-reviewed sources [22]. This lack of data is particularly severe at the field scale with spatial characterization, despite that interactions between human interventions and herbivore diet are well known [23,24].…”