Just came across this article and thought I would share. I’m going to guess that TC’s book probably isn’t in their library!
http://beta.news.yahoo.com/no-him-her-preschool-fights-gender-bias-122541829.html
Then you get boys (teenagers) who feel out of place, confused and with a strong lack of identity like it’s happening in Norway.
WHY? What’s so wrong with boys being boys and girls being girls. I really don’t understand it. If a boy feels he’s a girl, he’ll eventually get to it with time, like it happens with transexuals and similar. This is ridiculous. I’m glad it’s still a minority and the rest of the people think it’s retarded.
EDIT : You should change the title. Give it a tabloid-like touch “Gender banned in Swedish preschool” would attract more attention.
I knew this would be posted here.
- Who cares.
- Let’s see what happens. I think it’s interesting.
[quote]jasmincar wrote:
I knew this would be posted here.
- Who cares.
- Let’s see what happens. I think it’s interesting.
[/quote]
Yay! let’s experiment with the welfare of children!
The truth is that FORCING kids to be genderless is the worst kind of gender discrimination.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]jasmincar wrote:
I knew this would be posted here.
- Who cares.
- Let’s see what happens. I think it’s interesting.
[/quote]
Yay! let’s experiment with the welfare of children!
The truth is that FORCING kids to be genderless is the worst kind of gender discrimination.[/quote]
I basically agree with this.
Confusion about gender roles in young kids isn’t uncommon. Sissy boys often grow out of it, and as adults you’d never know they were sissy boys. But encouraging certain behaviors in kids, (or discouraging others) is where the problem lies.
Nowhere in this article it is mentionned of forcing kids of anything. They do stuff such as not splitting the room in 2 colours, blue and pink, and such as not putting the little cars and building blocks in one half, and the dolls and plastic kitchen in the other half.
The thing that comes the closer to this is the speculation of an not even related American child psychologist who says that “they are
going to prevent boys of playing with swords and emasculate them” which is not what it is about. This was only included by the journalist who is probably again this project to skew the neutrality of this article. This article is filled with snippets an keywords that suggest it is a bad thing.
Find where they are forcing kids to be genderless in this article.
Find where they are encouraging or discouraging certain behavior
[quote]Edevus wrote:
You should change the title. Give it a tabloid-like touch “Gender banned in Swedish preschool” would attract more attention.
[/quote]
That is the thing to do since there is nothing wrong with what they are doing and given our guts don’t like it.
[quote]jasmincar wrote:
Nowhere in this article it is mentionned of forcing kids of anything. They do stuff such as not splitting the room in 2 colours, blue and pink, and such as not putting the little cars and building blocks in one half, and the dolls and plastic kitchen in the other half.
The thing that comes the closer to this is the speculation of an not even related American child psychologist who says that “they are
going to prevent boys of playing with swords and emasculate them” which is not what it is about. This was only included by the journalist who is probably again this project to skew the neutrality of this article. This article is filled with snippets an keywords that suggest it is a bad thing.
Find where they are forcing kids to be genderless in this article.
Find where they are encouraging or discouraging certain behavior[/quote]
Not calling a him him or a her her to the point of teaching the children a word for non-gender that doesn’t even exist.
The situating of toys, they are forcing a predetermined mixture of what they determine to be boys and girls toys. Where common sense would either allow for randomization or groupings based on the likeness of toys.
Choosing material specifically devised to reinforce less masculine male behavior, and less feminine female behavior. Note this is not random or unbiased, it is material chosen for specific gender roles.
Encouraging children to act out home scenarios with same sex parents instead of allowing the children to naturally decide roles.
This is all an attempt to force a certain gender perspective on kids, rather than just letting them be.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]jasmincar wrote:
Find where they are forcing kids to be genderless in this article.
Find where they are encouraging or discouraging certain behavior[/quote]
-
Not calling a him him or a her her to the point of teaching the children a word for non-gender that doesn’t even exist.
-
The situating of toys, they are forcing a predetermined mixture of what they determine to be boys and girls toys. Where common sense would either allow for randomization or groupings based on the likeness of toys.
3.Choosing material specifically devised to reinforce less masculine male behavior, and less feminine female behavior. Note this is not random or unbiased, it is material chosen for specific gender roles.
4.Encouraging children to act out home scenarios with same sex parents instead of allowing the children to naturally decide roles.
This is all an attempt to force a certain gender perspective on kids, rather than just letting them be.[/quote]
- That is not forcing to be genderless. Nowhere it is written that they prevent kids to call themselves boys or girl if they are. If the boy want to call himself a girl…they dont prevent him either. Hence the “hen” for boy or girl.
2.It is not written that they prevent kids to group and play with their toys how they want. They don’t force anything by not separating boys and girls toys, or by not labeling them this way. This is equivalent to randomization and even if it werent it is hardly forcing any kid of anything.
3.Where did you see that?
4.They said they are only suggesting not encouraging. It is not written that they prevent traditionnal
gender role. I dont see any forcing in this. The normal thing that happens is preventing boys of playing with girls and vice versa. This is forcing.
Cool fact: when I was a kid the sister of my neighbor wanted to play basketball with us the boys but her mother forbid her (I remember her mother was saying she shouldnt play with me). Now she is a lesbian.
[quote]jasmincar wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]jasmincar wrote:
Find where they are forcing kids to be genderless in this article.
Find where they are encouraging or discouraging certain behavior[/quote]
-
Not calling a him him or a her her to the point of teaching the children a word for non-gender that doesn’t even exist.
-
The situating of toys, they are forcing a predetermined mixture of what they determine to be boys and girls toys. Where common sense would either allow for randomization or groupings based on the likeness of toys.
3.Choosing material specifically devised to reinforce less masculine male behavior, and less feminine female behavior. Note this is not random or unbiased, it is material chosen for specific gender roles.
4.Encouraging children to act out home scenarios with same sex parents instead of allowing the children to naturally decide roles.
This is all an attempt to force a certain gender perspective on kids, rather than just letting them be.[/quote]
- That is not forcing to be genderless. Nowhere it is written that they prevent kids to call themselves boys or girl if they are. If the boy want to call himself a girl…they dont prevent him either. Hence the “hen” for boy or girl.
[/quote]
Which is wrong. Factually. If they avoided calling an oak tree an oak tree and allowed kids to call oak trees pine trees, it would be a bias against an oak being an oak.
They attempt to put toys in locations based on the “gender” of toys. This is purposely shading a child’s natural ideas about gender. You do understand that placing toys according to specific notion of gender is the opposite of being unbiased, right?
Reading children books about homosexual giraffes raising a crocodile. If it were a factual, unbiased story about nature, the crock would still eat the giraffes when he got older, because a crock is a crock and a giraffe is it’s food, even if it isn’t PC.
Boys and girls are different. They are wired differently. It is in their genes. Teaching and encouraging them that there is no difference is bias and goes against logic and reason.
They are teaching and encouraging factually wrong beliefs. Period. It is not necessary to force (physically) a child to do something in order for a classroom to have bias. I don’t know how you arrived at that conclusion.
Cool fact: It is a parents right to raise a child the way they think best and to tell them what they can and can’t do. It’s called parenting.
And are you insinuating that if she had played with boys growing up she wouldn’t be lesbian?
Are you also insinuating that sexual orientation is in some way associated with masculinity or femininity? Are you suggesting that a lesbian is necessarily less feminine than a straight woman?
You are the one that appears to have preconceived notions and bias.
Very interesting, as long as my kids wont be the first ones to go through the system… (Not that I have kids now…)
I think it is actually a very good experiment. Things you learn at that age stay with you forever, even if they have been told to you just once. I can trace a number of things I do to what I was told by someone at that age.
Maybe it will create a “true” equality…
I’d like to read about this in 20 years if I remember it then.
[quote]Fat Bastard. wrote:
Very interesting, as long as my kids wont be the first ones to go through the system… (Not that I have kids now…)
I think it is actually a very good experiment. Things you learn at that age stay with you forever, even if they have been told to you just once. I can trace a number of things I do to what I was told by someone at that age.
Maybe it will create a “true” equality…
I’d like to read about this in 20 years if I remember it then.[/quote]
What true equality? That men are women will think and act the same way? That won’t take just suggestions at age of 5, but brain surgery.
What about that jew boy who was raised as a girl? He was crazy all his life. He had his testicles removed, yet he acted like a man.
I agree with the other part. When I was 3 I was at the kindergarden and the teachers forced me to eat mashed potatoes and it took 24 years until I could eat it again.
[quote]Edevus wrote:
[quote]Fat Bastard. wrote:
Very interesting, as long as my kids wont be the first ones to go through the system… (Not that I have kids now…)
I think it is actually a very good experiment. Things you learn at that age stay with you forever, even if they have been told to you just once. I can trace a number of things I do to what I was told by someone at that age.
Maybe it will create a “true” equality…
I’d like to read about this in 20 years if I remember it then.[/quote]
What true equality? That men are women will think and act the same way? That won’t take just suggestions at age of 5, but brain surgery.
What about that jew boy who was raised as a girl? He was crazy all his life. He had his testicles removed, yet he acted like a man.
I agree with the other part. When I was 3 I was at the kindergarden and the teachers forced me to eat mashed potatoes and it took 24 years until I could eat it again.
[/quote]
Hmm… I see how my statements can be easily misconstrued. By true equality, I meant actually not having an issue believing that the other sex is just as capable as them, say at the workplace. A lot of people claim that they believe so, but deep inside, the males have a feeling that they are somehow better. Or think that the women need to “go make a sandwich” even if they don’t explicitly state that. That is a product of upbringing. You can bring a 10 year old who grew up in the Taliban regime and teach him all you want - deep inside, he will still keep his notion that women are somehow inferior, because that’s what his religious teachers and dad impressed upon him.
About the jew boy you mentioned, I am in no way propelling that theory. That is BS, and anyone who thinks of shit like that need to be committed to an institution for a very long time.
[quote]Fat Bastard. wrote:
[quote]Edevus wrote:
[quote]Fat Bastard. wrote:
Very interesting, as long as my kids wont be the first ones to go through the system… (Not that I have kids now…)
I think it is actually a very good experiment. Things you learn at that age stay with you forever, even if they have been told to you just once. I can trace a number of things I do to what I was told by someone at that age.
Maybe it will create a “true” equality…
I’d like to read about this in 20 years if I remember it then.[/quote]
What true equality? That men are women will think and act the same way? That won’t take just suggestions at age of 5, but brain surgery.
What about that jew boy who was raised as a girl? He was crazy all his life. He had his testicles removed, yet he acted like a man.
I agree with the other part. When I was 3 I was at the kindergarden and the teachers forced me to eat mashed potatoes and it took 24 years until I could eat it again.
[/quote]
Hmm… I see how my statements can be easily misconstrued. By true equality, I meant actually not having an issue believing that the other sex is just as capable as them, say at the workplace. A lot of people claim that they believe so, but deep inside, the males have a feeling that they are somehow better. Or think that the women need to “go make a sandwich” even if they don’t explicitly state that. That is a product of upbringing. You can bring a 10 year old who grew up in the Taliban regime and teach him all you want - deep inside, he will still keep his notion that women are somehow inferior, because that’s what his religious teachers and dad impressed upon him.
About the jew boy you mentioned, I am in no way propelling that theory. That is BS, and anyone who thinks of shit like that need to be committed to an institution for a very long time.[/quote]
Ok, got you now.
But that true equality…am I sexist for saying that male sport is much more interesting (and better) than female sport? Or that men make, in general, better leaders?
[quote]Fat Bastard. wrote:
[quote]Edevus wrote:
[quote]Fat Bastard. wrote:
Very interesting, as long as my kids wont be the first ones to go through the system… (Not that I have kids now…)
I think it is actually a very good experiment. Things you learn at that age stay with you forever, even if they have been told to you just once. I can trace a number of things I do to what I was told by someone at that age.
Maybe it will create a “true” equality…
I’d like to read about this in 20 years if I remember it then.[/quote]
What true equality? That men are women will think and act the same way? That won’t take just suggestions at age of 5, but brain surgery.
What about that jew boy who was raised as a girl? He was crazy all his life. He had his testicles removed, yet he acted like a man.
I agree with the other part. When I was 3 I was at the kindergarden and the teachers forced me to eat mashed potatoes and it took 24 years until I could eat it again.
[/quote]
Hmm… I see how my statements can be easily misconstrued. By true equality, I meant actually not having an issue believing that the other sex is just as capable as them, say at the workplace. A lot of people claim that they believe so, but deep inside, the males have a feeling that they are somehow better. Or think that the women need to “go make a sandwich” even if they don’t explicitly state that. That is a product of upbringing. You can bring a 10 year old who grew up in the Taliban regime and teach him all you want - deep inside, he will still keep his notion that women are somehow inferior, because that’s what his religious teachers and dad impressed upon him.
About the jew boy you mentioned, I am in no way propelling that theory. That is BS, and anyone who thinks of shit like that need to be committed to an institution for a very long time.[/quote]
Doing away with a basic understanding of being a boy or a girl is not necessary in any way in order to have that kind of equality.
You do not need to brainwash kids into losing all rational concepts of gender to have equality.
Same and equal are 2 different things.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]jasmincar wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]jasmincar wrote:
Find where they are forcing kids to be genderless in this article.
Find where they are encouraging or discouraging certain behavior[/quote]
-
Not calling a him him or a her her to the point of teaching the children a word for non-gender that doesn’t even exist.
-
The situating of toys, they are forcing a predetermined mixture of what they determine to be boys and girls toys. Where common sense would either allow for randomization or groupings based on the likeness of toys.
3.Choosing material specifically devised to reinforce less masculine male behavior, and less feminine female behavior. Note this is not random or unbiased, it is material chosen for specific gender roles.
4.Encouraging children to act out home scenarios with same sex parents instead of allowing the children to naturally decide roles.
This is all an attempt to force a certain gender perspective on kids, rather than just letting them be.[/quote] -
That is not forcing to be genderless. Nowhere it is written that they prevent kids to call themselves boys or girl if they are. If the boy want to call himself a girl…they dont prevent him either. Hence the “hen” for boy or girl.[/quote]
Which is wrong. Factually. If they avoided calling an oak tree an oak tree and allowed kids to call oak trees pine trees, it would be a bias against an oak being an oak.[/quote]
No. There is no bias if I call a girl or a boy a kid. There no forcing and encouraging of anything. Go read my first post in this.
[quote]Jasmincar wrote:
2.It is not written that they prevent kids to group and play with their toys how they want. They don’t force anything by not separating boys and girls toys, or by not labeling them this way. This is equivalent to randomization and even if it werent it is hardly forcing any kid of anything.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
They attempt to put toys in locations based on the “gender” of toys. This is purposely shading a child’s natural ideas about gender. You do understand that placing toys according to specific notion of gender is the opposite of being unbiased, right?[/quote][/quote]
Prove that there is a natural idea about gender. Prove that if I don’t put forward a traditionnal idea about gender and if I don’t put forward any idea this is forcing or encouraging a kid of something. You last sentence makes no sense given that they are purposely NOT placing toys according to gender. What you write is twisted
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]Jasmincar wrote:
3.Where did you see that?[/quote]
Reading children books about homosexual giraffes raising a crocodile. If it were a factual, unbiased story about nature, the crock would still eat the giraffes when he got older, because a crock is a crock and a giraffe is it’s food, even if it isn’t PC. [/quote]
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote: Boys and girls are different. They are wired differently. It is in their genes. Teaching and encouraging them that there is no difference is bias and goes against logic and reason.
[/quote]
So we should change every kids book with animals story in them?They don’t teach that there is a difference or that there is no difference about gender.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]jasmincar wrote:
4.They said they are only suggesting not encouraging. It is not written that they prevent traditionnal gender role. I dont see any forcing in this. The normal thing that happens is preventing boys of playing with girls and vice versa. This is forcing. [/quote]
They are teaching and encouraging factually wrong beliefs. Period. It is not necessary to force (physically) a child to do something in order for a classroom to have bias. I don’t know how you arrived at that conclusion.[/quote]
They are not teaching anything.
They are not teaching anything.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]jasmincar wrote:
Cool fact: when I was a kid the sister of my neighbor wanted to play basketball with us the boys but her mother forbid her (I remember her mother was saying she shouldnt play with me). Now she is a lesbian.
[/quote]
Cool fact: It is a parents right to raise a child the way they think best and to tell them what they can and can’t do. It’s called parenting.
And are you insinuating that if she had played with boys growing up she wouldn’t be lesbian?
Are you also insinuating that sexual orientation is in some way associated with masculinity or femininity? Are you suggesting that a lesbian is necessarily less feminine than a straight woman?
You are the one that appears to have preconceived notions and bias.[/quote]
-No.
Don’t try to put words in my mouth. It sure didn’t prevent her to become a lesbian so in retrospect why prevent her to play with the boys? . Maybe nature is not as clear as you want it to be? Anyway I am done with your logic.
Wow people here don’t understand that it’s about erasing a bias and not brainwashing or transforming boys into girls.
Here is the original text for people here that are pulling stuff out of their ass. We’ll start from this. That will prevent some people of straying away with bs claims.
[quote] STOCKHOLM (AP) â?? At the “Egalia” preschool, staff avoid using words like “him” or “her” and address the 33 kids as “friends” rather than girls and boys.
From the color and placement of toys to the choice of books, every detail has been carefully planned to make sure the children don’t fall into gender stereotypes.
“Society expects girls to be girlie, nice and pretty and boys to be manly, rough and outgoing,” says Jenny Johnsson, a 31-year-old teacher. “Egalia gives them a fantastic opportunity to be whoever they want to be.”
The taxpayer-funded preschool which opened last year in the liberal Sodermalm district of Stockholm for kids aged 1 to 6 is among the most radical examples of Sweden’s efforts to engineer equality between the sexes from childhood onward.
Breaking down gender roles is a core mission in the national curriculum for preschools, underpinned by the theory that even in highly egalitarian-minded Sweden, society gives boys an unfair edge.
To even things out, many preschools have hired “gender pedagogues” to help staff identify language and behavior that risk reinforcing stereotypes.
Some parents worry things have gone too far. An obsession with obliterating gender roles, they say, could make the children confused and ill-prepared to face the world outside kindergarten.
“Different gender roles aren’t problematic as long as they are equally valued,” says Tanja Bergkvist, a 37-year-old blogger and a leading voice against what she calls “gender madness” in Sweden.
Those bent on shattering gender roles “say there’s a hierarchy where everything that boys do is given higher value, but I wonder who decides that it has higher value,” she says. “Why is there higher value in playing with cars?”
At Egalia â?? the title connotes “equality” â?? boys and girls play together with a toy kitchen, waving plastic utensils and pretending to cook. One boy hides inside the toy stove, his head popping out through a hole.
Lego bricks and other building blocks are intentionally placed next to the kitchen, to make sure the children draw no mental barriers between cooking and construction.
Director Lotta Rajalin notes that Egalia places a special emphasis on fostering an environment tolerant of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. From a bookcase she pulls out a story about two male giraffes who are sad to be childless â?? until they come across an abandoned crocodile egg.
Nearly all the children’s books deal with homosexual couples, single parents or adopted children. There are no “Snow White,” ''Cinderella" or other classic fairy tales seen as cementing stereotypes.
Rajalin, 52, says the staff also try to help the children discover new ideas when they play.
“A concrete example could be when they’re playing ‘house’ and the role of the mom already is taken and they start to squabble,” she says. “Then we suggest two moms or three moms and so on.”
Egalia’s methods are controversial; some say they amount to mind control. Rajalin says the staff have received threats from racists apparently upset about the preschool’s use of black dolls.
But she says that there’s a long waiting list for admission to Egalia, and that only one couple has pulled a child out of the school.
Jukka Korpi, 44, says he and his wife chose Egalia “to give our children all the possibilities based on who they are and not on their gender.”
Sweden has promoted women’s rights for decades, and more recently was a pioneer among European countries in allowing gay and lesbian couples to legalize their partnerships and adopt children.
Gender studies permeate academic life in Sweden. Bergkvist noted on her blog that the state-funded Swedish Science Council had granted $80,000 for a postdoctoral fellowship aimed at analyzing “the trumpet as a symbol of gender.”
Jay Belsky, a child psychologist at the University of California, Davis, said he’s not aware of any other school like Egalia, and he questioned whether it was the right way to go.
“The kind of things that boys like to do â?? run around and turn sticks into swords â?? will soon be disapproved of,” he said. “So gender neutrality at its worst is emasculating maleness.”
Egalia is unusual even for Sweden. Staff try to shed masculine and feminine references from their speech, including the pronouns him or her â?? “han” or “hon” in Swedish. Instead, they’ve have adopted the genderless “hen,” a word that doesn’t exist in Swedish but is used in some feminist and gay circles.
“We use the word “Hen” for example when a doctor, police, electrician or plumber or such is coming to the kindergarten,” Rajalin says. “We don’t know if it’s a he or a she so we just say ‘Hen is coming around 2 p.m.’ Then the children can imagine both a man or a woman. This widens their view.”
Egalia doesn’t deny the biological differences between boys and girls â?? the dolls the children play with are anatomically correct.
What matters is that children understand that their biological differences “don’t mean boys and girls have different interests and abilities,” Rajalin says. “This is about democracy. About human equality.”[/quote]
^^I’ll fix this later. I am pretty bad at this.
Jasmincar, how often do you deal with 3-5 years old kids?
Can you “suggest” them stuff? They “suggest there can be three moms”.
I’m trying to write a post about it, but I can’t find the right words or ways to explain it, but if you suggest a little boy to play with dolls, he’s most likely to do it. In most cases, they have learned that these teachers are the authority and they will somewhat obeey. If the teachers, with really good intentions, “suggest” that the boy can play with dolls or play the “kitchen”, he will do it. But is it what he really wants?
When I was 5 I started at school and we had like, few lessons to learn to write properly and all that, then also playtime. I remember quite clearly how I was playing with construction tools and with cars and there were some other boys besides me and one girl. I’m sure that we picked what we wanted, without anyone giving “suggestions”. But what if the teacher had “suggested” that boys go play with dolls and girls with cars? Most would have taken that route, since we were obedient.
Then, I can’t remember how old I was (9 probably), but I was at my uncle’s place (Norway, so you know, gender equality at its finest) and his wife suggested that I could play with her little daughter’s Barbies and stuff. And so I did. Dressing them up and stuff…but I eventually brought one of my monster toys and played to scare and undress the barbies.
I really remember this because they are some early memories. In kindergarden I picked a police car to play with and I always wanted the same car. I remember going to this big shop with my parents and some relatives to find a similar one to buy me…but we couldn’t find. It was like this : http://www.movievehicles.co.uk/car%20pics%20for%20new%20website/DSCF5809.JPG
So, I don’t believe in “suggesting” kids what to play or that there could be three moms.