Gender Neutral Kindergarten in Sweden
 

I came across this article and thought it was fantastic that Sweden is liberal enough to allow this school to exist, and that the children are free to exist in a non-gendered environment. Just curious what you all think about this.

Full article text here:

http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle...rls_equal.html

I have to agree (somewhat) with the last sentence. While the concept itself is quite lovely, in order for a gender neutral theme to remain consistent it needs to be actively engaged in a child's life for longer than 9 months to a year of kindergarten. If gender classifications were nullified for say grades K-3 the impact could have a much grander and long-lasting effect. I love it, none the less!

Where do I live?

I can't remember.

Who am I?

Thanks, that's ten seconds of my life I will never get back.

This is goofy.

The Swedes are confusing sex with gender. (A common mistake these days.)

This is erasure, not correction. There is nothing wrong with the terms "her" or "him". The problem resides in gender constructs.

Words can be manufactured, manipulated, misapplied and misappropriated, but bias resides in the heart not on the tongue.

Nixing traditional gender roles, as applicable to small children, is what they are getting at. At least that is how I read it. The language is being adapted to read as "friends" rather than "him/her, etc" so as to accommodate the small people. The theoretical concept of creating a gender neutral space for children to experience life is fascinating to me. The logistics would be a bit tricky, but it looks like they are doing a great job!

I'm not sure I completely understand what you're saying, so before I disagree with you I wonder if you would be so kind as to clarify that for me a bit? My interpretation was that they were eschewing traditional gender roles by placing toys associated with those roles with each other (among other things, such as gender neutral pronouns and suggesting non-traditional family structures during playtime) so as not to reinforce the separation of behaviors.

"Words can be manufactured, manipulated, misapplied and misappropriated, but bias resides in the heart not on the tongue."

Beautiful statement, truly...but try to keep in mind that at this age children are not biased. Biases come a bit later in life after (as you stated) language has been misappropriated and gendered.

Well, there are differing schools of thought as to "gender roles, as applicable to small children" and adults.

Some argue that gender roles are innate regardless of sex; others that they are largely conditioned. This is largely a political debate as science has not, yet, spoken definitively on the matter. (The Swedes seem to be leaning towards the "conditioned" side of the debate.)

In any event, I'm discussing grammar, not politics.

I'll stick with non-erasure and changing gender constructs over wordplay, albeit, even on a part time basis.

Sex = male and female
Gender = masculine and feminine
Male = he, him
Female = she, her
(RE: The World Health Organization)

Okay, so wouldn't toy placement and encouragement of alternative family structures be considered changing gender constructs? If we're looking at masculine and feminine in terms of behaviors, that is.

unsure
 

I think by the time they start school they are between ages 4-6. What they have experienced at home is already ingrained. Not to mention the fact they return home daily. I like the idea of not pressuring a child into a gender role so to speak. It gives them more freedom to choose what they truely prefer. But I don't think it will have too much of an impact. I'd be interested to see the outcome. Just my humble opinion.

Sure kids are "biased" at a young age - as young as 3-5 years old.

My EX's 4 year old called me, "Mr. Chazz", from day one. :)

Although the following excerpt is about race, not gender constructs, it makes the case for how children are, in fact, biased at a very young age.



Children Are Not Colorblind: How Young Children Learn Race

"Toddlers as young as two years use racial categories to reason about people’s behaviors (Hirschfeld, 2008), and numerous studies show that three-to five-year-olds not only categorize people by race, but express bias based on race (Aboud, 2008; Hirschfeld, 2008; Katz, 2003; Patterson & Bigler, 2006). In a yearlong study, Van Ausdale & Feagin (2001) found that three- to five-year-olds in a racially and ethnically diverse day care center used racial categories to identify themselves and others, to include or exclude children from activities, and to negotiate power in their own social/play networks."(Erin N. Winkler, Ph.D. - University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)


http://www4.uwm.edu/letsci/africolog...colorblind.pdf

Correct you are. I was getting pre-school and kindergarten confused in my wee brain. :)

I agree 100% with you, especially the part I underlined. Behavior is learned at home, with the first people who teach it. Whether it is intentionally taught or taught from neglect, it is learned and the early ages are the times when the mind is most able to saturate information.

Now, one thing that I am hopeful about-if parents are sending their children to this school, then surely, they are teaching the proper values at home to support the lessons learned at the school.

I would have gladly sent my children to this school had an option like this been available during those years in their lives-or in my area for that matter. I think they all would have fit in wonderfully. But there again, they were taught, at home, to accept and embrace the differences of others.

:sparklyheart:

Nope.

Moving toys around a room from one set of hands to another isn't change - it's a reconfiguration of the same constructs. The constructs have to change.

If by "alternative family structures" you mean, LGBTQs "making" a nuclear family, no to that, too.

Novelafemme, it never occurred to me to think of you as "wee brained". :flowers:

Sweden is extremely progressive. This is the country that allows a massive amount of time for post-partum mothers to remain home from work with their newborns...fathers as well. I believe in some sectors it is as much as 16 months. The gender equity is extremely balanced and fair. Children are valued and parenting (especially during the formative years) is regarded as a blessing - even to the extent of spanking being prohibited by the law. Social democracy prevails and children not only have rights but are advocated for by a highly regarded child welfare system. Nonviolence is practiced both inside the home and in society at large and is modeled by fathers who participate actively in parenting and typically don't model aggressive values. Compared to how individualistic and selfish Americans can be, Sweds demonstrate how working together benefits not only the individual but the populous as a whole...from the children up.

Not to mention the playground, TV, and video games. :|

This gave me a chuckle. In one of my spring classes the professor used the term "social construct" SO much that when it came time for me to give my oral presentation and she asked everyone to gather in a circle around me, I told her I felt the placement of the chairs was a social construct. hehehehe

What if you removed the TV and video games...

....and replaced them with what? Tonka toys and footballs for girls, dolls, crinoline and lace for boys. :|

Shifting around gender specific toys, clothing, play activities, pronouns, etc. doesn't resolve the false duality of gender constructs.

....coulda been a testament about snoozers and schmoozers.

Perhaps the focus needs to shift more towards attachment parenting and/or a model reflective of Waldorf philosophies on education/pedagogy.

"false duality of gender constructs"

how is this representative of what this school in Sweden is hoping to achieve? Where is the false duality you speak of in that environment? Certainly not in their language/toy choices...

I'm confused.

Some confusion here I think...

You attend Kindergarten, or Pre-school, as it's called in Sweden, from the age of 1 year to the age of 6, not 9 months.

Then you would have my house. My kids have TV, video games etc but they rarely use them. Their Wii was the hit of the living room-for less than a month after they got it. Now, they might remember to use once a month, if that. They love to be outside. We were without cable for almost a year and the kids never complained or even mentioned it. I watch TV more than they do, I tend to sink into movies combined with household chores/hobbies when they are away.

We used to have a "family movie night" ritual that I let slide when the school year became so hectic. We would all pile up in the living room, share popcorn and M & Ms and watch either a new family movie or an old fave. In typing that, I decided that I am going to revive that tradition---tonight. Thanks Novelafemme for "reminding" me of something I enjoyed.

:sparklyheart:

Try and get that passed by the Republicans, why doncha. :readfineprint:

There needs to be a cultural/spiritual shift in consciousness. Assuming that ever happens, the rest will follow.

I use to be hopeful, now, not so much.

I think Novelafemme said that it's the time in school, not when it's started.

They acctually never say that there is something wrong with the terms "her or "him", they mean that it's not ok to presume that, for example the plumber, is a man, and therefore they use the term "hen".

Furthermore we call the kids friend or other terms like it because it's not up to us/me to decide what the kids feel like.

I had a kid some time ago asking me if I was a boy or a girl and I asked in return "Does it really matter?" The kid answered "No, you Can be what ever you want."

/Cane, gender pedagogue in Sweden

Sweden is trying to chip away at the monolith of gender constructs by altering pronouns. That's like trying to eradicate racism by electing an African-American president.

But to your question....

I could give you the TAOist version: "Don’t confuse the linguistic meta-levels. Deny false dichotomies (binary fascism, dualistic absolutism) by uniting all opposites."

Or, the Omar Khayyam versions: "Peace is the reconciliation of opposites.

Or, I could just say: Gender is something we construct because we are lost to ourselves.

...and so what would be your offering? my feeling is that you have to start somewhere and often that begins with language.

No one said they did.

Adults rear kids, children don't rear themselves.

Would that it was that simple.

I believe you misinterpret my point, here.

In the article the caregivers/teachers at the school encourage family structures with multiple moms/dads to break the assumption that families can only have one mom and one dad.

Construction toys and kitchen toys in the same area, to me, imply that there is not any reason to differentiate between both things as "toys". Are you saying that simply by having these toys the idea that male gender = construction and female gender = kitchen are being reinforced?

Please explain false duality of gender constructs. I think we may be getting at the same thing here, but I don't want to assume.

You do understand, I hope, that there is an entire curriculum that this is based upon, they didn't just change a couple of words. What's the alternative..? Doing nothing..? Or maybe just write about it...

/Cane, gender pedagogue in Sweden

I've never gotten the worry that some parents express over their girls playing with "girls' toys," or their boys with "boys' toys." (The former being more usual, presumably because women's roles are seen as less valuable."

In my view, toy choice stems naturally from evolutionary development. The primary goal of the organism is to survive and reproduce. Since girls are going to be birthing the babies, they play with... baby dolls!

Meanwhile, guys do that other stuff like protecting the group's survival, supplying food and shelter. Takes a village, and specifically it takes a village of males and females at its barest.

Now that men and women's societal roles are melding more, there may be more of a natural physical departure from those child-gender-purpose-toy associations. Long long time in the future, maybe our bodies even change to accommodate the new physical order. Maybe we're not male/female, but, you know, butch/femme, regardless of gender.


I don't know-- I just tried to say all that while my little boy is trying to interest me in some warlike game here. Which I kind of like, myself, of course. >;-)

"WE" could throw the false duality of gender-speak (in all its incarnations) out the window. "WE" could stop speaking of ourselves as "masculine" and "feminine". "WE" could stop gendering toys, clothes, hair styles, sex, and swagger....

"We" could ditch all the How Do You Identify? stuff and just be....

I forgot to get to the point. I don't predict much efficacy or value in trying to engineer or accelerate such change, as in the Swedish experiment.

Yes, I realize....

The alternative isn't doing "nothing" - it's doing something entirely different. Metachromatism, not metagenesis.

If I, Chazz, can't articulate the details of how that might look with exacting intricacy, it doesn't mean that it isn't a worthy thing to imagine.

Just to clear up my position on this entire thing:

I believe that in America we have firmly constructed rigid gender classifications based on post-war nuclear family structure. Men are assumed to be bigger, stronger, breadwinners, take out the trash, lift the heavy things, fix the lawnmower, less concerned about appearance/clothing, encouraged to participate in rough/competitive activities, and anything that falls into this arena is considered masculine, associated with male gendered behavior. Women are assumed to be smaller, weaker, child-rearing caregivers, food preparers, clean the house, more concerned about appearance/clothing, and prefer gentler, softer clothing/activities, anything that falls under that umbrella is considered feminine, associated with female gendered behavior.

I agree that parents should be the forefront of change and should actively seek to discourage classification of things such as "boy's toys" and "girl's games", however, I think this behavior absolutely must be reinforced outside of the home as well. I believe that the only way we can destroy this gendered sorting of human beings is by aggressively obliterating that type of judgment from our society. I think what this school is doing is a first step in that direction, which is why I support it.


ETA: I believe children should learn all behaviors without the stigma of gender, and ESPECIALLY not with the threat of being punished for enjoying activities that do not fit into the box of traits that are supposed to correspond to their biological sex, which, as has been stated previously, is not the same as gender.