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

[sdafdfhrye3245]

Chances are if a kid is going to preschool their parents are not so dumb as to allow their child to grow up to be sexist, and most certainly a child will not even learn about this subject matter until later in their life.

 

[Griffolion]

This is incredibly similar to neglecting to teach young adults sex education in the hope that if they don't know what it is, they won't do it. They'll still do it but won't have the means to do it safely.

There are gender stereotypes, they are part of a psychological phenomenon called schemas. By denying stereotypes, you deny our very way of thinking about things. Teach that differences exist and teach to tolerate them.

 

[The Funslinger]

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.

I'm not saying constantly separate the two, I'm saying don't shy away from it. Yeah, in a multiracial class you'd just generalize and say "kids", but if it became necessary, you'd use it as a descriptive factor. They shouldn't actively stamp out gender specific words, and actually inventing a gender neutral way of saying him or her is over the top. If necessary to talk to the whole class, you could talk to the boys and the girls by saying "kids" or "children". words like "him/her" are for specific people, though and there's no point in generalizing the gender of one person. (and no, I'm not saying if you were talking to one kid, you'd specify race, that's different.)

 

[Avistew]

I'm not saying constantly separate the two, I'm saying don't shy away from it.

Well in some languages you have to actively create words in order not to constantly separate the two. In English you can say "I'm going to talk to my friend", and nobody knows if it's a male or a female, and there is no reason for it to matter or be relevant, right? But in a lot of languages the word for "friend" is different and there isn't a neutral one.
Actively creating neutral words and encouraging using them in combination with gendered words when they are relevant isn't the same thing as pretending everyone is the same. They're saying that in most context, when saying "go get X, I need to talk to them", using "him" or "her" specifically isn't something that should be required because it's not important. Requiring it makes it sound like it's important, and they want the kids to grow up knowing that it isn't.

In the giraffe story, they did say both giraffes were male. So obviously they use gendered words sometimes. Just not constantly.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

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.

...

You want to overthrow 8000+ years of evolution of language, identity, politics, biology and genetics in a generation?

Please. Do it somewhere else. Then when your society collapses because it has no functioning peer group, come back and we'll try and give you the tools to learn.

 

[LITE992]

In my opinion, they're programming the children. It's ok to love equality and all that, but teach them about that when they're older and when they actually understand. At this age, all kids want to do is live, not fight evil.

 

[Dark Knifer]

This has gone too far I think. They don't seem to be accepting the difference between male and female but ignoring it. These 'gender roles' of guys playing with trucks and girls with make-up etc didn't happen just because someone wanted it to. It's just what they lean to and at that age it doesn't really matter to much.

I'm fine with being open minded but this is more ignorance and not appropriate to be preparing kids for with life because it'll only end badly. Also...

Cinderella: Girl performs housework and endures abuse all her life and is unable to do anything else. Something completely apart from her life, a Fairy Godmother, magically whisks her away to fall in love. Upon not marrying, she then resumes backbreaking housework and abuse endurance until a man, a prince, who happened to be the one she fell in love with, marries her, and she lives happily ever after.

Have I left out any significant plot points?

Cinderella is pretty much the epitome of the ancient female stereotype. All a woman is good for is cooking and cleaning, and the best thing she can aspire to do is to get married to the richest guy possible.

If you ignore the fact that she was being oppressed by other females and rescued more by the fairy god mother then the prince then I could see you interpreting this like that.

 

[Snowy Rainbow]

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.

...

You want to overthrow 8000+ years of evolution of language, identity, politics, biology and genetics in a generation?

Please. Do it somewhere else. Then when your society collapses because it has no functioning peer group, come back and we'll try and give you the tools to learn.

You need to know someone fits neatly into a box for you to function? If you don't know what gender someone calls themselves, your relations with them will degrade into chaos? If someone's mind and genitals are dissimilar they can't form normal, healthy bonds with others? Well, considering transsexuals, the intersexed, transgenders and men and women born with the "wrong" chromosomes have existed since the dawn of our species, many of whom you've probably met and never noticed, I'm gonna go ahead and guess we can function perfectly fine without your outdated concept of sex.

Good luck treating people as their genitals. I'm gonna go ahead and continue to treat the individual as their personality dictates.

 

[HalfTangible]

They moved the legos next to the kitchen. WHY IS THERE A KITCHEN? These are PRESCHOOLERS.

These people are not removing stereotypes directed towards homosexuals, they're just changing which kind of relationship is stereotyped...

Cinderella: Girl performs housework and endures abuse all her life and is unable to do anything else. Something completely apart from her life, a Fairy Godmother, magically whisks her away to fall in love. Upon not marrying, she then resumes backbreaking housework and abuse endurance until a man, a prince, who happened to be the one she fell in love with, marries her, and she lives happily ever after.

Have I left out any significant plot points?

Cinderella is pretty much the epitome of the ancient female stereotype. All a woman is good for is cooking and cleaning, and the best thing she can aspire to do is to get married to the richest guy possible.

Alternatively, 'true love sets you free', 'abusive (step)parents should be disobeyed', 'be home by midnight' and 'a man shouldn't judge their love by their home life, but by their shoe size.'

...Ok that last one is a joke

...

Shrek posed a good point, why IS it always midnight?

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.

...

You want to overthrow 8000+ years of evolution of language, identity, politics, biology and genetics in a generation?

Please. Do it somewhere else. Then when your society collapses because it has no functioning peer group, come back and we'll try and give you the tools to learn.

You need to know someone fits neatly into a box for you to function? If you don't know what gender someone calls themselves, your relations with them will degrade into chaos? If someone's mind and genitals are dissimilar they can't form normal, healthy bonds with others? Well, considering transsexuals, the intersexed, transgenders and men and women born with the "wrong" chromosomes have existed since the dawn of our species, many of whom you've probably met and never noticed, I'm gonna go ahead and guess we can function perfectly fine without your outdated concept of sex.

Good luck treating people as their genitals. I'm gonna go ahead and continue to treat the individual as their personality dictates.

And you think the best course of action is to utterly ignore the words 'him' and 'her' entirely? -.- Sorry, but that's total bull, and I think you're just LOOKING for a reason to take the school's side. Physical gender (which 'he' and 'her' are supposed to refer to) is not the same thing as mental (ie, how one acts). They are two different things defined two different ways. Get over it

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I'm gonna go ahead and guess we can function perfectly fine without your outdated concept of sex.

You make me laugh. Without any knowledge of who I am, who I know or my thoughts on gender, you automatically fit me into your "ENEMY" box. Pray tell me how you're going to deal with biological attraction and the power games inherent within your new society. Regardless of gender. Which you've just censored.

Good luck treating people as their genitals. I'm gonna go ahead and continue to treat the individual as their personality dictates.

Which is as poisonous as by genetalia - because your vision is already jaundiced. Create your own little dollhouse if you want, we're the people who'll have to clear up the mess afterwards.

 

[Ickorus]

*snip*

*snip*

I don't really seperate the usage of the two words as in most cases they tick the same boxes. To clarify though, I think people should be allowed to be themselves, personality is what matters, not gender.

For instance I once knew a guy who had a very feminine personality but to me that was just who he was, his gender and personality were parts of who he was and to me that was just that.

Oh, I like baking and cooking and im a straight man, gender stereotypes be damned!

This post has taken me insane amounts of time to write and yet I still feel like I haven't quite articulated my feelings on the matter correctly.

 

[Seneschal]

I don't see how this is "force-feeding", and what preschools usually do isn't. It's not like preschools let them develop "naturally". And yes, decrepit fairytales aren't exactly the best children's fiction can come up with.

The usage of "friend" is a little weird, though. Reminds me of ex-Yugoslavia, where everyone was a "drug" (pronounced as "droog", essentially meaning friend/comrade). It never sounded very earnest to me.

 

[Arkhangelsk]

Since when is 'him' or 'her' a stereotype? Calling a person by his/her gender isn't discriminating.

"Excuse me, miss."
"HOW DARE YOU CALL ME MISS!?"
"...Because you're a woman?"
"You insensitive pig, I'm suing you for sexual harassment!"

People today refuse to accept the fact that there are biological differences between men and women, which has bred the social differences. Sure, some social differences are bad, but some are part of our nature. To try and remove all differences is like, to quote Yahtzee, "scraping off a piece of mud from a cake with a shovel".

 

[Flauros]

Parents always make things worse.
>_>

There was nothing wrong with the way things were taught.
For reference I played with Lego and Barbie's

Since there are just some story's I can't tell with Lego.
And I like story's.

Im confused. So you played with Lego and Barbie......so youre fucked up forever, but youre fine with it, but youre still against that school anyway?

 

[Snowy Rainbow]

Pray tell me how you're going to deal with biological attraction and the power games inherent within your new society. Regardless of gender. Which you've just censored.

Oh I'm sorry, I forgot who your're attracted to defines your gender and that being attracted to certain physical appearances dictates your personality. Oh wait... It doesn't... Oppsies for you I guess.

And power games? What?? Someone wants to assert their perceived superiority over someone else and that relates to gender... how?

 

[Plurralbles]

well isn't this A little Brave.

pretty New.

what a World we would live in if this caught on.

i'll go on the side of the fence that says this is too far.

 

[HalfTangible]

I don't see how this is "force-feeding", and what preschools usually do isn't. It's not like preschools let them develop "naturally". And yes, decrepit fairytales aren't exactly the best children's fiction can come up with.

The usage of "friend" is a little weird, though. Reminds me of ex-Yugoslavia, where everyone was a "drug" (pronounced as "droog", essentially meaning friend/comrade). It never sounded very earnest to me.

The problem is that they CLAIM to be teaching the kids to be tolerant, when they're doing exactly what 'intolerant' schools are doing, except in reverse. (ie, completely removing the mention of heterosexuality, removing even mention of gender) What about the fact that boys and girls at that age (or a few years later) tend to dislike and avoid each other? Am i the only one who remembers that?

 

[RachaelIsaacHill]

Ehh, I'm a bit on the fence with this one. While I do think breaking down gender stereotypes is good, and it makes me happy to see stories like Cinderella (and quite frankly, most other old fairytales) being put to the wayside in favor of more equal-gender-biased stuff, they shouldn't just ignore the good ol' fashioned nuclear family archetype completely. Overcompensation is still overcompensation, and it's easy to get carried away with this kind of stuff.

As for the him/her debacle, you have no idea how much I wish there was a gender-neutral word in English. Most people assume (wrongly, but understandably) that all people are either one or the other. Most trans-gendered folk out there are simply the opposite gender of what they were born. However there are cases where people are technically both genders equally

This is pretty much a moot point in the end for this discussion, though. It's been said before that these kids are in preschool, so while I think it is good that we're beginning to actually take things like gender roles into account with how our children are raised, there's only so much we can (and should) really do with kids so young.

 

[Flauros]

Why are people becomming increasingly forceful in insisting differences don't exist? They do. All they are doing to these kids is coddling them; what will happen when they grow up and enter the world of work?

Why the fuck can't we just have winners and losers, girls and boys, and let kids be kids nowadays? Why are parents so obsessed with protecting kids in this way?

I can see it now.

Sabrina enters the world of work from college. A coworker warns her that boys have cooties. Not having the proper training when she was in Preschool, shes unafraid of shaking the mans hand. Suddenly, paralyzing waves of pain race through her body. Eating her bone structure and nervous system, the cooties turn her body into poopoo and peepee. Her bones crumble like gingerbread sticks and falls into a puddle of flesh on the floor.

If only she went to the right preshool.

If only she learned about.......COOTIES.....