In my Today show spot this morning, one of the news stories we discussed was the plan to introduce a program designed to help pre-school teachers about some social and ethical issues like reconciliation and racism. According to reports today:
…the guidelines focused strongly on
play-based learning, the importance of communication and language, the
role of family in children's lives and social and emotional development.
Critics of the initiative, which claimed to make children socially
responsibly for a "future world", yesterday said youngsters should be
left alone to play."It is unnecessary and will cause enormous angst in the community,"
Opposition community services spokeswoman Pru Goward said yesterday."Let children be children. I have never heard of racism or discrimination (at a childcare centre). For goodness sake, they are three and four years old."
Perhaps Pru hasn't been to a kindy for a while. Because kids become aware of differences VERY early and even if they're not aware, what better time to begin to promote lessons about tolerance than when they're young? Is it ever too early to teach kids to be nice to each other? Is it that much different to teaching kids how to share?
I find the hysteria from some sections about this rather surprising. No-one is suggesting that playtime be replaced with strict lectures about genocide or a PowerPoint presentation on current anti-discrimination legislation.This is simply about guidelines for childcare workers to help introduce concepts about tolerance and kindness to others. That's a lesson I'm happy for my child to learn any day. Obviously, we talk about that kind of stuff at home – many interesting conversations have sprung from the fact that Coco goes to school with a little girl who has cerebral palsy – but what's the harm in it being backed up by similar discussions at kindy?
OBVIOUSLY it's going to be age-appropriate – they're KIDS. And the people who have come up with the program are specialists in early childhood education.
The whole idea that it's 'political correctness gone too far' doesn't wash with me. In this case, 'political correctness' simply means the promotion of empathy and understanding of people who are different to you.Isn't that what we want for our kids?
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I had an interesting experience with my youngest child. We live in a part of Sydney that is pretty monocultural and my daughter, who suffered from terrible anxiety issues, was terrified of anyone who seemed "different" in her eyes. I have friends who are disabled and yet she was frightened of them.
I will never forget the day her lovely pre-school teacher pulled me aside for a chat. They had an Aboriginal story teller coming to the kindy and had shown the kids photos of him. My daughter had blurted out "I don't like that man, he's got dark brown skin".
Fortunately the teacher knew me very well and said she realised that this attitude hadn't come from home -so perhaps our little one might be afraid of differences? (This in turn lead to a referal to a child psychologist and we were able to help our daughter manage her anxiety - but that is another story).
So, the "moral" of this? Not all "racism" is racism, children who may appear racist may not have learnt that attitude from their parents.
Her pre-school did a wonderful job helping her learn about the world - she had friends with disabilities, met people from many backgrounds, knew the Aboriginal and Australian flags etc.
So, I say, bring it on - lets have more of it.
My contribution to this conversation is that one of my earliest memories is being at kindi and having sultanas thrown at me by the only other 5 girls in my school.
"You can have these because you're brown!" Not really having experienced bullying before and not knowing how to retaliate, I responded by spraying them with my Just Juice and was the one who got into trouble. (Not my proudest moment!)
Although the story is a little amusing, I spent the rest of that year isolated from the girls and playing on my own. I am now 25 and still remember this vividly.
I have definitely moved on from this and have virtually no problems when it comes to racism but I would rather my kids have some more positive memories of their early childhood and human interaction than I did.