At Egalia, a gender neutral pre-school in Sweden (ages 1-6) the students are referred to as "friends" instead of pronouns like "him" and "her." To avoid using these masculine and feminine pronouns, the gender less word "hen" is used. (Keep in mind that this is in Swedish, not English.) It is interesting to note that the word "hen" seems to be a newly created word that isn't officially in the Swedish language yet.
The goal is to raise the children in a neutral setting to allow them to become whatever they want to be.
Does anyone else feel like this is more of an experiment than actual progress? Gender roles are a natural part of human behavior, as a result of millennia of evolution. If some people don't want to follow them that's perfectly fine, but treating them like a problem that needs to be solved hardly makes sense.
A teacher at the school, Jenny Johnnson, had this to say: "Society expects girls to be girlie, nice and pretty and boys to be manly, rough and outgoing, Egalia gives them a fantastic opportunity to be whoever they want to be."
I fully believe you can still be whoever you want to be without ignoring the truth about your biological gender. I also worry that children raised like this will be even more confused about their bodies than normal teens when puberty comes around.
Again, I can't shake the feeling that this is more of an experiment than a progressive idea. An interesting experiment for sure, but not one with ideals I can agree with.
Original article:
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/26/no-boys-and-girls-at-gender-neutral-preschool-in-sweden/?iref=obinsite
More of my thoughts on equality:
http://commonlyrational.blogspot.com/2011/05/small-essay-on-equal-rights.html
1 comment:
Agree completely, OP. It's an excellent experiment, and there's is nothing wrong with experimenting. It is absolutely necessary for improvement. I do not think this will end will either as men and women are obviously different. Treating them as the same seems like it would create some identity issues. But who knows, maybe it will bear fruit.
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