Cover Story:
Marketing American Girlhood
American Girl Inc., and the commercialization of American history

Illustration: Katherine Streeter

At first glance, the dolls of American Girl appear to be a parent's dream. American Girl isn't as vacuous as Barbie or as vile as Bratz.

Better, still, dolls come with books that weave fictional narratives of plucky girls making their way through important moments in U.S. history.

However, as Simon Fraser University education professor Elizabeth Marshall points out, in the cover story in the current issue of Rethinking Schools, we shouldn't be sucked in by the ersatz feminism—the real deal is consumption and lots of it. Marshall contends that the American Girl collection isn't about strong girls, diversity, and history than it about "hooking girls, their parents and grandparents into buying American Girl products and experience."

Also in this issue:

Teaching's Revolving Door, by Barbara Miner. New teachers leave the profession at an alarming rate—and there's no single reason or easy solution. Miner, a former managing editor of Rethinking Schools, spent time in Chicago finding out how one post-college residency program could be a model to stem to the tide of teacher flight. This is the first in a series of articles on retaining teachers that will appear in the magazine through a Ford Foundation grant.

Hunger, Academic Success, and the Hard Bigotry of Indifference, by Gerald Coles. The Bush administration may not have wanted to admit it, but hunger and food insecurity are a serious threat to children's lives. "Certainly many poor children manage to succeed academically, but they do so while facing onerous forces that, but for the cruelty of policy makers in this rich nation, they should never have to confront in the first place," Coles writes.

More from the winter 08/09 issue

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Special Article Collections
Rethinking Schools special collections on critical education issues, including:

• War, Terrorism and Our Classrooms
• School Vouchers
• Bilingual Education
• Bush's No Child Left Behind Act
• The Return to Separate and Unequal -- How Minority Students are Being Shortchanged
• Teacher Unions
• Creationism in Public Schools
• Let's Talk About Sex