Humanising Language Teaching
Year 2; Issue 6; November 2000

Dear Editor,

I was browsing through some of the early issues of HLT and came across this, to my mind, scurrilous joke which went something like this:

Pedro had been carefully prepared by his parents to be ready for the arrival of the new baby.
The great day came and his father came rushing into his room:
" Pedro, the stork has come and brought you a little sister, do you want to come and see her?"
" Can I see the stork instead, Dad?

The name " Pedro" clearly summons up visions of Spanish or Portuguese speaking cultures and the implicit attack on these cultures for constantly having babies is very evident in this so-called joke. This is a clear example of a First World, White Anglo-Saxon attack on the larger families in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking lands.

The caricature of these cultures is evident in the choice of a phrase like " came rushing.." Here Iberian-derived cultures are being stigmatised as comically over-emotional.

The little boy is shown to prefer the stork to his little sister. Another example of running down women which is so much part of the fibre of of Western societies. Why print jokes that insidiously perpetuate this kind of attitude?

Finally your so-called joke implies that storks have nothing better to do than fly around with the babies of other species hanging from their beaks. I find this typical of the human disrespect for other species.

Yours sincerely

Maria-Estela Ciguenia.