No 'Him' or 'Her' in Preschool. Wait, what?

[Xaio30]

For fucks sake, we ARE two different genders. There is no need to hide it from the kids.

 

[Ickorus]

I find the way they're going about it is a bit ridiculous but the idea behind it is commendable.

For instance with the book I would say it would make far more sense to have the Giraffes not given a gender, that way they're saying it isn't important what gender the Giraffes are, just that they can't have chldren, I agree totally with the Crocodile bit though, which may enforce some sort of racial equality and teach kids that it doesn't matter what people look like.

About the placing of toys too, i'd say just put them all in one place, perhaps to teach kids organisational skills and the alphabet organise them alphabetially instead of by wat toys are for boys and what are for girls.

And finally the him/her thing, I think that's a bit silly and won't really achieve anything. I do however believe that all languages should have a gender neutral tag as most are sorely lacking one, but that is a bit off the topic.

 

[The Funslinger]

Equality and tolerance should be achieved through education, not ignorance.

Exactly. With what they want to do, by essentially eliminating all explanation of difference there's going to be some severe confusion come the sex education years. "did 'hen' (seriously, what's up with that?) chop off his willy? What's a vagina?'

Seems like rather than teach that people should accept differences, people are taking the easy route by trying phase them out and thus mess with the child's basic understanding of the world.

 

[Ickorus]

"What happened to your pee-pee?"

That is all.

What? I don't get it...

Little boy notices little girl is different. Coz I'm assuming they either have different gendered toilets or they all go together.

What does gender have to do with sex organ?

I might be stating the obvious but one gender has dangly bits and the other doesn't.

What he's getting at as far as I can tell is that kids are going to notice their differences pretty fast, they aren't stupid.

EDIT: Fixed a grammatical error as at the time of typing I changed a word which required the alteration of some grammar.

Also:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.297101-No-Him-or-Her-in-Preschool-Wait-what?page=5#11759007

Look up, Im not your enemies so don't make me out to be it, cheers.

 

[cerealnmuffin]

Leagues better than when I was in preschool. I was tied up with jump rope and locked in a closet for playing with girl toys (I was viewed as a boy at the time - I'm tg). Also got ridiculed for going into girl line for bathroom. (I saw myself as a girl until the world literally beat it into me that I was different). So I'm all for breaking down gender stereotypes.

 

[Snowy Rainbow]

"What happened to your pee-pee?"

That is all.

What? I don't get it...

Little boy notices little girl is different. Coz I'm assuming they either have different gendered toilets or they all go together.

What does gender have to do with sex organ?

No offence but read what you just said, it's fairly self-explanatory.

What he's getting at as far as I can tell is that kids are going to notice they're difference pretty fast, they aren't stupid.

Sex =/= gender.

Sex organ =/= sex.

And yes, the kids are different. Everyone is. Got a penis? You can be a girl. You can be a boy. You can be neither. Both. No one but you know. Forgive me for wanting children to grow up free to decide for themselves what they are, not having titles thrust upon them and told what they are and aren't based on our idiotic understanding of sex. "Oh, you have a penis. You are a boy." No. Screw that. Not only do some men (men with a functioning penis, testes, typical male levels of hormones and a "male brain") have two X chromosomes, some men have ovaries inside them that they never even know is there.

Adult humans struggle with sexuality and gender as it is. We (human science) can't even say for certain what sex someone is, even if we see their DNA and genitals. The whole thing is a sham.

 

[Davey Woo]

I really don't agree with the way children (in many countries) are educated nowadays.
The kids at my school get taught their alphabet 'phonetically', this means that they are taught the sound that the letter makes, not the 'name' of the letter. (For example the letter C is not pronounced 'see' it is proonounced 'ka'.

I have no idea why they do this, when I was in primary school, I was taught the alphabet normally, and I've turned out fine (in before: no you haven't lolololo) so why do kids have to be taught a different alphabet that will not serve them any purpose outside of primary school.

 

[Avistew]

What does gender have to do with sex organ?

No offence but read what you just said, it's fairly self-explanatory.

What they mean is that sex and gender aren't the same. Your gender can be male and your sex female, or vice-versa, or you can have no gender and have one sex, or you can be intersex, etc.

Anyways, I think neutral pronouns are interesting but banning the non-neutral ones seems silly. I do like that they let kids play with whatever they want, provided they don't tell a boy who's playing with cars to go play in the kitchen instead. Some kids will have their favourite toys, sometimes they will match the stereotypes, sometimes they won't.

I thought the story about the giraffe was nice, but I agree it wouldn't matter what sex the giraffes are. This being said I didn't get the impression that the school writes the story, just that they picked them.

I would say having some stories that perpetuate gender stereotypes would be good too so they have the whole spectrum, however I do understand that the reasoning there is that the kids already get these at home when watching TV, or see them everywhere, so the school is only there to balance it out.

I think it's nice. I was raised with 3 brothers and we all had similar toys, and nobody told me I wasn't allowed to play with the cars or that my little brother wasn't allowed to play with the dolls. They weren't girl toys and boy toys, they were just toys.

I have to say, it boggles my mind that anyone would wonder why Cinderella enforces stereotypes. A girl is forced to cook and clean because her father (a man) isn't there to protect her, until she marries a rich guy. Of course it's stereotypical. There aren't many fairy tales that aren't, they were taught to kids for a reason.

 

[cobra_ky]

Equality and tolerance should be achieved through education, not ignorance.

Exactly. With what they want to do, by essentially eliminating all explanation of difference there's going to be some severe confusion come the sex education years. "did 'hen' (seriously, what's up with that?) chop off his willy? What's a vagina?'

Seems like rather than teach that people should accept differences, people are taking the easy route by trying phase them out and thus mess with the child's basic understanding of the world.

"Egalia doesn't deny the biological differences between boys and girls ? the dolls the children play with are anatomically correct."

it's almost like some people don't read the article before they respond to it.

 

[The Funslinger]

Equality and tolerance should be achieved through education, not ignorance.

Exactly. With what they want to do, by essentially eliminating all explanation of difference there's going to be some severe confusion come the sex education years. "did 'hen' (seriously, what's up with that?) chop off his willy? What's a vagina?'

Seems like rather than teach that people should accept differences, people are taking the easy route by trying phase them out and thus mess with the child's basic understanding of the world.

"Egalia doesn't deny the biological differences between boys and girls ? the dolls the children play with are anatomically correct."

it's almost like some people don't read the article before they respond to it.

That's not what I meant. I just mean the whole gender eliminating words thing. What's the point of that? You need description to differentiate. It's like people who are giving a description of someone and are afraid to explain that that person is of a racial minority.

 

[Kakujin]

This slightly makes my brain hurt. Yes it might be a good thing to widen the perspective on gender roles, or on any role for that matter.

However, if this is not done on a larger scale, ie entire city or country, this will in all likelihood be very confusing for these children when they reach school age, and interact with children with a different upbringing.

I am not saying that this is right, in fact it is very sad, but it is equally sadly the truth that anyone who behaves differently, in school, will probably be bullied silly. Not that this means that we cannot change things, or should not, but it does mean that radical things like this, needs to be done on a much larger scale or else its effects will be ruined within a few years.

Also, more specific to the program itself, it has some good ideas, but as usual, takes it too far. What is wrong with saying "him or her", why invent a word that has no practical use? Why only homosexual and single parent books, isn't heterosexuality an equally valid sexuality?

I would also love to see the gender diversity among those who work there. Not to be prejudiced but I seriously doubt that it is a fifty-fifty divide between men and women there.

 

[Kanlic]

Ahh the pussification of our society knows no borders. I hate it when people fail to realize that there are differences in gender, thinking that men and women are the same in every sense but biologically. In terms of legal rights, I'm ok with that idea, but socially the differences are on par with cats and dogs. Guys gravitate to different things than girls, and react differently to situations.

Case and point. One time I was particularly over-served at a friends house. I was sitting on one of those high chairs, the ones that you can put your feet up on, and my friend said I looked a bit pale. On cue I threw up, falling forward off the chair and smacking my head on the pool table in front of me before landing on my face. The boys laughed and the girls screamed.

 

[cobra_ky]

Equality and tolerance should be achieved through education, not ignorance.

Exactly. With what they want to do, by essentially eliminating all explanation of difference there's going to be some severe confusion come the sex education years. "did 'hen' (seriously, what's up with that?) chop off his willy? What's a vagina?'

Seems like rather than teach that people should accept differences, people are taking the easy route by trying phase them out and thus mess with the child's basic understanding of the world.

"Egalia doesn't deny the biological differences between boys and girls ? the dolls the children play with are anatomically correct."

it's almost like some people don't read the article before they respond to it.

That's not what I meant. I just mean the whole gender eliminating words thing. What's the point of that? You need description to differentiate. It's like people who are giving a description of someone and are afraid to explain that that person is of a racial minority.

the thing is that in most cases, you don't need to differentiate. most of the time it doesn't really matter if someone's a racial minority or not, and gender usually doesn't matter either. These kids are going to understand the difference between willies and vaginas, and that's really the only thing that comes close to being a consistent difference between men and women. Beyond that, many adults get confused over what the differences are.

 

[The Funslinger]

Equality and tolerance should be achieved through education, not ignorance.

Exactly. With what they want to do, by essentially eliminating all explanation of difference there's going to be some severe confusion come the sex education years. "did 'hen' (seriously, what's up with that?) chop off his willy? What's a vagina?'

Seems like rather than teach that people should accept differences, people are taking the easy route by trying phase them out and thus mess with the child's basic understanding of the world.

"Egalia doesn't deny the biological differences between boys and girls ? the dolls the children play with are anatomically correct."

it's almost like some people don't read the article before they respond to it.

That's not what I meant. I just mean the whole gender eliminating words thing. What's the point of that? You need description to differentiate. It's like people who are giving a description of someone and are afraid to explain that that person is of a racial minority.

the thing is that in most cases, you don't need to differentiate. most of the time it doesn't really matter if someone's a racial minority or not, and gender usually doesn't matter either. These kids are going to understand the difference between willies and vaginas, and that's really the only thing that comes close to being a consistent difference between men and women. Beyond that, many adults get confused over what the differences are.

Understanding the differences is always better than ignoring them, however. The sooner they're actually taught to live with the differences rather than just ignore them, the easier the kids can cope with them when they become important. As for the race thing, if you were giving someone's description for whatever reason, their skin color would be a key fact in making them recognizable, as would gender.

 

[Avistew]

That's not what I meant. I just mean the whole gender eliminating words thing. What's the point of that? You need description to differentiate. It's like people who are giving a description of someone and are afraid to explain that that person is of a racial minority.

Well, imagine if instead of calling the kids "kids" they constantly said "white kids" and "black kids". There are differences, they can see them, they know them, but there is no point in using different words constantly. They probably do use different words when it's required, but otherwise they refer to them as "kids" rather than "boys" and "girls" and as a result they use gender-neutral pronouns at least some of the time.

 

[William Dickbringer]

I like the idea but don't like the practice there's just something about that just doesn't right
for one thing why get rid of 'him' and 'her' I don't see how that affects anything
and another why only have books that are mostly homosexual single parents or orphans why not have heterosexual ones too I mean we are teaching them equality
I agree with teaching equality I don't agree with teaching political correctness

 

[martin's a madman]

And they wonder why kids are acting worse and worse. They are PRESCHOOLERS! They shouldn't be taught about homesexuality and adoption or anything like that until they start asking questions about it which probably won't be for years. Let kids be kids for heavens sake!

Kids aren't getting worse and worse, what makes you think they are? I've hear people say this frequently, but they never actually say what about kids is getting worse; they usually quote some personal experience story, but they can't support these claims.

There isn't anything wrong with teaching kids about homosexuality or adoption, these are things that exist. Teaching them that homosexuality exists won't somehow take away their childhood innocence. If they can handle the mental strain that knowing about heterosexual relationships exist, they can handle knowing homosexual ones exist too.

Being straight is normal being gay is not. Nothing wrong with being gay it just aint normal and we shouldn't pretend it is.

I know of a 'gay district' in Toronto where there is a very high percentage population of homosexuals, it's certainly normal there. It just depends on the population you're sampling.

 

[William MacKay]

i saw another article about two parents who named their baby Storm and arent telling anyone, not even the grandparents, the gender.

Things don't bode well when you try to seriously incorporate a made-up word.

All words are made up. If the creation of a new word will be beneficial why not create a new word? Language is flexible and should be adapted to our needs. That said the change would have to occur on a much larger scale than one school to do much more than cause confusion.

but the made up word describes something that does not exist. there is nothing that is completely genderless in humanity (to my knowledge). this isnt describing something both male and female, its describing something thats neither.

 

[Zantos]

I find this video to be somewhat relevant. Sorry about the shocking vid quality and if someone already posted it, I couldn't see it but only skimmed through.