NinjaDeathSlap said:
Isn't imposing on children the mantra of "YOU MUST BE ANYTHING OTHER THAN A STEREOTYPICAL BOY/GIRL!" just as bad as imposing on them "YOU MUST BE A STEREOTYPICAL BOY/GIRL!"
What? Seriously, what? Quote the part of the article where it says "We are going to make children be something they might not want to be". It is exactly what they're fighting against. Allowing children to choose for themselves and giving them the opportunity to grow up without societal gender norm imposed on them is something I'd hardly paraphrase as "YOU MUST BE ANYTHING OTHER THAN A STEREOTYPICAL BOY/GIRL!". Fact is, there is nothing wrong with being a "stereotypical" boy/girl; as long that was chosen by the said boy/girl himself/herself. They are giving children a choice; you don't have to be a genius to be able to comprehend which toys you like more. If a girl chooses a car, fine. If a girl chooses a Barbie doll, fine. She
chose that HERSELF. Which makes it perfectly fine. What is not fine are conventional preschools where they separate boys and girls and give boys only cars and give girls only kitchen utensils and encourage the social gender norms which removes the free will and choice of the child to be what he or she wants to be. There is a middle ground, people, and this might be the path to it. Stop demonizing the project by making it look like they're trying to go from one extreme into the other, Jesus. The article is perfectly clear to me and I honestly don't understand how can you think that they want to impose something on those kids. They are giving them a choice, something which current educational system is not doing.
Amizrael said:
This makes me want to go back and read those books I found detailing the differences between the male and female human brain. Then I could provide some useful insight into this conversation other than to say that males and females have very different neurochemistry an therefore very thought processes.
In any case, it is an interesting human experiment. I hope the children never suffer for it, and I hope the parents never forgive themselves if they do.
Differences in the brain do exist, but they are not responsible for someone's personality and interests. It's mostly things like "men have better orientation" and "women are better with colours", but that has never been and it never will be the deciding point in your personality and interests. And besides, there are exceptions, which are not even that rare. Humanity rose above all of our inefficiencies. If I'm poor at orientation, I'll buy a GPS. Problem fucking solved. Did that influence my hobbies and choice in toys? No. As a matter of fact, when I was a little girl, I didn't care about differences in the brain between a man and a woman; all I wondered about was why the hell are people looking at me weirdly if I play with swords instead of Barbies.
As for experiment thing, isn't everything we do an "experiment"? Because, something that we take for granted was an experiment once. How do you expect humanity to evolve and adapt to new situations if we do not experiment? The children won't suffer any more than they could "suffer" anyway if they went to ordinary preschool. I know I suffered for being pushed into something that wasn't my interest, and it was not the fault of some new experiment; it was the fault of a degraded and old system that does not apply to new generations.
Canid117 said:
So they decide to increase equality by including books and stories about gay couples single parents and orphans? Sounds fine to me. Wait they are also removing the stories about straight couples raising and nuclear families? Yay equality! [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SarcasmMode]
History of family and social norms will be taught in schools when the kid reaches high school and is able to make a difference between knowledge of the past and rules imposed on them. That's why we have Sociology classes in high school. We learned about multiple different cultures and norms throughout history and the cultural norms of today. About straight couples; most kids are in a straight couple family, they have that knowledge by experience. And no one said that they will not teach that too, they only mentioned that they included less "common" possible families.