Another staple of the classroom - white paper - has also been questioned by Anne O'Connor, an early years consultant who advises local authorities on equality and diversity. Children should be provided with paper other than white to drawn on and paints and crayons should come in "the full range of flesh tones", reflecting the diversity of the human race, according to the former teacher.
Finally, staff should be prepared to be economical with the truth when asked by pupils what their favourite colour is and, in the interests of good race relations, answer "black" or "brown". The measures, outlined in a series of guides in Nursery World magazine, are aimed at avoiding racial bias in toddlers as young as two. According to the guides, very young children may begin to express negative and discriminatory views about skin colour and appearance that nursery staff must help them "unlearn".
If children develop positive associations with dark colours, the greater the likelihood that the attitude will be generalised to people, it says. The advice is based on an “anti-bias” approach to education which developed in the United States as part of multiculturalism. It challenges prejudices such as racism, sexism and ageism through the whole curriculum and teaches children about tolerance and respect and to critically analyse what they are taught and think.
Full story here.
5 comments:
Surely they are joking ?
Get rid of white paper ?
White paper works well with black ink.
What is wrong with these people ?
I've always found it so odd that people associate the color black with people who have a dark skin tone. I never look at a dark-skinned person and think, "Ah-ha! He's dark, like the color of EVIL!"
More PC hogwash! (Pink pigs, obviously)
One actually good piece of advice is buried in here among all the nonsense, and that's the one about "flesh tones."
When I was a kid, there was a colour the crayon companies called "flesh," but which we kids called "skin colour." It was a very pale, pinkish-beige colour. Somehow, none of us ever questioned calling it "skin colour," despite the fact that nearly 1/3 of the kids in our class would have been shades of brown. In retrospect, that seems kind of awful. And, yeah, encouraging kids to call one particular crayon "skin colour" kind of reinforces a worldview in which being Caucasian -- having "skin-coloured" skin -- is normal, and being brown-skinned is marked, or abnormal somehow.
I don't think that crayon has been called "flesh" for a long time now (I think it's now called "peach" or something), and I don't know if kids are still calling it "skin colour." But I agree kids shouldn't be encouraged to do so and should, as the report says, have access to crayons "in the full range of flesh tones."
I think the rest of this stuff is hogwash. I do, however, think it might be good for the kids' creativity to have access to paper in colours other than white (in addition to white). And it might be good for the environment to just use unbleached paper, which is kind of beige. But I don't think that's a race thing.
This is ridiculous. I agree with Cath about the "flesh" crayons, but kids simply do not make these distinctions. Grown-ups do. My artist daughter, in kindergarten, drew a self-portrait all in red, her favorite color. She drew a family picture, and we were all purple, her second-favorite color. Her teacher was upset, because, "people are not red or purple". She missed the whole intent of the artist.
Post a Comment