Be Excellent To Each Other

My 4-year old daughter started primary school in September. Last week the school announced that they are doing a month of teaching the kids about Black History throughout the whole school, including the reception year. My daughter brought home homework whereby she had to go back in after the weekend and talk about a famous black person to the class.

Now, myself and Rosie's mum are both white, from white families. We've never brought up the subject of race with her even once so far and she has, as far as I can see, always accepted people as being just people. We had a bit of a mission on our hands even explaining to her what a black person even is - she couldn't comprehend why different colour skin made anyone any different from anyone else. Which is exactly the kind of attitude we've always wanted to instill in her. We both rather took exception to these lessons at her age because race and skin colour have always been complete non-issues for her.

Since all this at school, she's pushed her (brown) hair all over her face and told us that she now looks like a black girl and has told us about how her teacher says it's rude if she refuses to sit next to a black person (which it is, but I'd argue it's rude to refuse to sit next to anyone). She's also been telling us all about how in the past white people hated black people and would torture and kill them. Basically, she's suddenly noticing that black people are somehow different to other people, whereas before this she just saw people as being people and never even considered skin colour making any difference. It's made an issue where there was none before.

Now we think all these lessons are very important... just not to kids who are 4-5 years old and are only just being taught the very basics of reading and writing. Clearly we're not the only parents either, as we received a massively condescending letter from the school affectively telling us that unless our child is taught all this at the earliest possible age, she'll end up growing up to be some kind of massive, Nazi-loving racist.

I'm thinking of writing a letter of my own to the school to complain about this. Am I being horrifically white and middle-classed to think this way?

I think you've made some really good points there that I hadn't thought of before. Why not take them up with the head? It's your daughter and you're not being an arse by pointing these issues out, you're just a concerned parent.

No, I agree with you 100% there, Zio. Letter away.

It's also massively inappropriate to be teaching kids that age about stuff like torture and slavery. In Year 1 First Born got taught about how in the "olden days" kids died young and were beaten by their teachers, and then about WW1 and the trenches. First Born then started worrying about dying and asked how old we would be when we died and how old he would be when he died. He then started asking about heaven (as they taught him about that too), and I explained that it's something that some people believe in (despite being staunchly atheist I'm not going to make my kid believe one way or the other) and he then announced he believed in heaven, which isn't surprising given that now he knew about death the alternative was keeping him up every night.

They're just not equipped for that stuff at that age. And moreoever I wanted to be the one who explained to him about death at a time of my choosing. Not by a borderline autistic incompetent witch.

I was livid. Thankfully we managed to get the teacher fired for various reasons, which was great, so Second Born didn't have to deal with her.

No. We had the same thing with the Grimlet, and I wasn't impressed.

I remember having similar lessons in 6th form. Quite a difference in age there...

I mainly remember having to name a person of different race than me, and being rather embarrassed that I couldn't. Until I realised that my friend sitting next to me qualified. Basically unless you go drawing attention to it, I'm unlikely to notice.

Certainly seems to work better than shoving it in peoples faces as they are here.

Yeah, totally agree with everyone else, Zio. Just yet another example of well meaning but *totally* misguided (and actually likely harmful, 'right on') PC claptrap - as doubtless freshly harvested from The Guardian's Guide to Parenting and Teaching or some NUT bullshit.

Four year old child...? Who are these bloody people, and what, exactly, are they on?

I could say more, most especially about society/teaching in particular; probably best I don't.

I also find it weird and completely counterproductive and I would also take it up with the school

...You had a tracker fitted to her car, didn't you.
DIDN'T YOU.

We're all great people though. What about children with racist parents? Surely it is better to have some kind of affirmative action that allows the child to question what they've been told growing up than to be allowed to take things their parents have said as read.

Whilst I agree with you in sentiment, is school supposed to be inculcating children with political opinions?

Not being racist is a political opinion now? I thought it was just common decency.

Well, yes, it is common decency as far as I'm concerned, but then that's really just a matter of opinion too. Given what can get defined as racist (anti-immigration etc) it's a slippery slope. It's not the school's position to correct whatever opinions the parents have passed on to their children, which is what your "affirmative action" is about. Where do you stop? What about religion?

Not being racist is a political thing?

I'm on the fence about this because I can see how this potentially causes problem for people who're already colour-blind (in the right way) but myp's right in that it's probably aimed at kids who have asshole parents. Fuckwit parents indoctrinating kids before they get to the age of being able to reason things out for themselves is pretty much the reason racist people end up racist so, on the face of it, trying to undo that bullshit before it becomes permanent is a good thing to do and school is the obvious place. Which is also the response to Cavey's outrage at them talking to kids early about this kind of thing: if you leave it too late it going to be much less successful. Surely educating kids in good social values as well as academic ones is a worthy aim?

I do get the whole point about taking action against arsehole parents, but I still think reception infants year is too young. And like I say, it's had the opposite to desired effect for us as Rosie now thinks there's something weird and different about black people, when prior to all this she just saw people as being people.

"Sorry about Granny. She's not really racist"
"Yes I bloody well am!"

plz see response to myp. x


Define "social values". I'm fairly sure that starts straying into areas that aren't really the school's remit, and would give plenty of ammunition to Daily Mail-esque accusations of leftist teachers indoctrinating the kids.

And see zio's example of how easily the school can balls this sort of thing up, even with the best intentions.

Whichever way you cut it, trying to teach kids this type of stuff at 4 years of age, in this manner, is surely wholly inappropriate (and counterproductive as Zio describes from daughter's reaction).

Fundamentally, kids need to be old enough to understand what it is they're being taught - even if their parents *are* arseholes.

Of course, there's nothing to stop 4 year olds being taught that black and white people are equal, but "a month on black history", homework to research famous black people and being told how white people "hated black people" - at four years of age?? It's ridiculous, likely counter-productive and may even give a phobic-type reaction as alluded to in Zio's post.

When did teaching 4 year olds how to read, write and count become unfashionable, and just precisely what "homework" are we expecting children of this age, who cannot yet even read, to do anyway?

Gnnngh. It's all just so much bullshit.

All this excellent chatter shouldn't be buried in b&b

You keep talking about 'straying into areas' and 'slippery slopes' but if and until something does go too far I'm not sure what kind of conversation can be had? If anyone anywhere thinks 'don't be racist' is a contentious lesson the fuck those people and that's all we're talking about here. If they started in on religion or whatever then fine, but no one has so .



I realise that which is why I said I was on the fence about it all. There's a difference between 'bad idea' and 'good idea clumsily implemented' though and I think this is the latter rather than the former. Assuming it can be done without any negative impact on academic education which should always be the first and foremost mission of a school of course.

If it's as simple as "everyone's equal regardless of skin colour" then fine, but given that people who are anti-immigration get labelled as racist (which I do to my dad regularly, the big racist), I can see teachers weighing in on that one as well under the heading of "racism is bad m'kay".

I dunno, I'm just profoundly uncomfortable with kids being taught what to think about society and other people and values and lifestyles and whatnot. That's my job.

Well, that's what comes under the "social values" you were suggesting, so yes, someone has.

I've heard it said in the past that it's around 4-5 years of age when kids first start noticing differences in skin colour, but never found any proper studies in this. The activity could be an attempt to pre-empt this stage, if it exists, to make kids think that racism, even inadvertant, is wrong.

But frankly, I think infants are way to young to learn about race, torture, slavery, or anything of that sort. Save that for when they're older.

Black history month in 1977 was ENTIRELY different

That actually happened the year before I was born. The BBC didn't even axe the show until the following year!

[shakes head]

They must have known somethin' to keep it runnin'

Depends. You need to do it early enough not only so that they'll understand it but also so that it stands a chance of counteracting the learned bullshit they'll pick up from their parents. Whether four is too early or not I really don't know, and I suspect neither do you, as you'd presumably need to be a developmental psychologist or whatever to have a good idea.



Indeed, and maybe the general lesson of 'there's nothing wrong with black people no matter what anyone else has told you' is enough of a general point to make it through to kids who're hearing the opposite shite bandied about in their home environment. You're looking at it as them needing to appreciate the subtleties and nuances of it all but maybe it doesn't have too; maybe the broad strokes of the material would have a positive enough impact to set them up to question the negativity they hear from other sources, even if that actual questioning only happens later when they're a bit more mature.



Talking about white people hating black people does seem like it might be a step too far at that age; something that would required a bit too much subtle understanding to really work here. I can understand how they could end up their ("How do you inoculate someone against racist thinking without describing to them what it is?") but yeah, I agree with you on that.

What I don't agree with is the idea that a kid could go from no opinion at all to being racist (I assume that's what you mean by 'phobic'?) by being taught about racism. That's just utter nonsense man.



Eh? What's fashion got to do with it? And when did anyone say that schools were teaching more abstract stuff instead of core skills? Seriously, where are you getting this from?



I dunno, ask Zio what exactly they wanted the kids to do. It's pretty unclear here though what you're railing against though as your rhetorical question there isn't very illuminating.

Assuming your child would have noticed the difference in a year or so anyway, surely it's better for them to know that they're different but it doesn't matter?



Anyway, the idea of a Black History month in the UK is a bit odd to me. It's not like we had a black slave culture here in the UK or kept black people segregated until the 50s or 90s like other countries, which has caused those countries to have massive social friction regarding black-white relations. Does a UK black history month talk about the large influx of post-war migrants from the West Indies or Ska or something?

@Bamba

I was going to reply in greater depth (esp. as regards your complete and total misunderstanding of what I meant by "phobic reaction" which most certainly was NOT an induced, counterproductive racism or anything like it) - but then I saw your closing comments?

Frankly, I'd have thought it as clear as day what it is I am railing against here, man. It's really very straightforward and innocuous; you don't need to join the dots...? If you seriously don't get what I'm saying to this great extent, then in the nicest possible way there isn't much more that I *can* say. Also, I really can't be arsed arguing just for the sake of it.

The more I think of it, the more complicated it gets, and way too hard for a 4 year old. For every city built on the slave trade, there's things like Somersett's Case, the postwar immigration boom, Windrush, the RN's suppression of the slave trade during the 19th Century after empire-wide abolition in the 1830s, probably one or other of Queen Victoria's favourites etc etc.

Well, precisely, the bottom line - as surely anyone who knows *anything* about children of such a young age knows. It really does boil down to this, as I've said.

I had this with the twins when they were just out of reception. They went to a school in Brent and were the only two white children in the year group, so being so young and having been told in the class about the history of how white people abused black people and all of the historical divisions caused a lot of confusion in a class of children that hadn't yet learned to comprehend each other as being from different races. They were just friends, and skin colour was not an issue. I remember the first time Paul came home confused about what they were being told and asked why one of his friends didn't have any colour on his face (as he had dark skin in comparison to Paul's 'pink' skin'.)

It wasn't until the first year of secondary school that my sister studied black history, which was a much better age to both comprehend and challenge some of the ideas that people might have. Unfortunately it was very badly handled as one of the areas that the teacher concentrated on was the apology for historic wrongs. Being (again) the only white child in the class Rachel was challenged with the task of writing and presenting to the class a speech that apologised for her ancestral mis-treatment of black people. This so far missed the mark that what might have mean to be teasing manifested itself as quite a prolonged process of bullying and it became so bad that she eventually refused to go to school.

Anyway, I think you will find that a lot of the other parents will very much be in line with what you have said and would very much think that you would be doing to right thing by raising the points with the head-teacher.

The first name mentioned there is Mrs Grim...'s great-great-great-(repeat as needed)-grandfather, and is where her family got their money from. Surprisingly, he the family tree back to him is fairly small. The crest ring her father wears depicts a man bound in chains

Not interested in stopping there, he also introduced tobacco to the UK

It seems to me to be more sensible to ask the children what THEY think about this subject and then IF any of them respond with bigoted remarks respond to that and question it in an age appropriate way (both the teacher and the other kids), rather then just broadcasting a bunch of subject matter regardless of whether/how it is received which is what this looks like.
"You should not treat white and black people differently" "huh what?" "see these people - they are white and those are black" "aaah I see what you mean now" "ok now from now on you shouldn't see them as different"

However well meant, lobbing stuff at children without first knowing where they are can do so much harm.
When I was 14 my mother came to me and said "I would totally understand if you would like to have a breast reduction in the future" Fabulously understanding of her ... except until then I had never thought of my breasts as too big and from that moment on it was burned in my brain (yes yes, cue jokes about breasts never too big etc )

As to whether schools should teach this stuff, I don't know. they should certainly teach the history of it at some point and apart from that I feel they should respond to children being hateful and racist, in the same way as they should respond to other bullying for instance.

I have no idea if this could happen in NL, children go to school the day after their 4th birthday. That's group 1 and the following september they either progress to group 2 or stay in group 1 again depending on if they're ready and how their birthday falls. Teaching reading doesn't start until group 3. Group 1 is strictly playing and painting, learning group skills and motor skills etc.

Jokes?

I'm not claiming there was never a single black slave in the UK, but that there wasn't a black slave culture. The US was practically founded on the labour of slaves. There was a whole civial war about the issue of something they saw as a fundamental part of their culture. Similar circumstances were found in South Africa, though it wasn't a direct-ownership sort of slavery and more of a "we've got he guns" sort. Not even comparable to what happened inside the UK (even if the people doing the trading were from the UK). The wikipedia bit you linked to ever says:



How many black slaves were there in the UK? It'd be interesting to see the numbers, but I doubt there were any more than a single US plantation had. (Complete hyperbole : I have no idea. But really, there never was a black slave culture).

I think the Italians should apologise for their ancestral guilt over slavery in Roman times. And once they're done, we can move on to every other civilisations. Depressing, across the whole scope of human history, it's the absence of slavery in a civilisation which is exceptional, not its presence.

And even worse, it still exists.

I think what's really annoying me is that there are excellent stories about black people from history that I'd love kids of that age to learn about, but which should be taught to that group as an inspirational part of the general human experience rather than just because of the colour of their skin.

My closing comment was aimed specifically and only at the bit in the quote right above it i.e. I wasn't sure what you were railing about in your comment about kids having homework. Homework seems like potentially good thing to me regardless what age the kid in question is and you didn't give any detail about what your problem with it was thus I said I didn't know what you were getting at there.

You seem to then have taken that one comment of mine and assumed I meant I didn't know what you were getting at all during this entire conversation. A reading of my post that's so bonkers and bizarre that it would seem to be completely willful. I broke out everything from you I was replying to and responded to it part by part; how could you not see that?

So I've spent time responding to you (and even agreeing with you at one point!) only to have you seemingly go out of your way to misinterpret one part and use that as an excuse not to address anything I said. Not only that but you finish off by saying you won't argue for the sake of it, thus implying that's all I'm doing (rather than, y'know, giving my honest opinion on a discussion board which is what I thought we were all here for). Frankly Cavey that's all pretty shitty of you. Obviously you don't ever need to reply to anything I've said and that's absolutely fine, but you've bothered to type up a post that only serves to blow me off in a pretty insulting way. Not cool. At all.

Most of the slaves didn't make it to the British Isles, aye, but the wealth & goods from both the slave trade and working them in the colonies did. Keeping it at arms length doesn't mean there wasn't a black slave culture in Britain. Our cities were built upon it.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/glasgow-s- ... t-1-691912
EDIT: I didnae know that it was fashionable to have a slave http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/art ... ture.shtml

Scales fall from eyes.

Hang on, who did a lot of the invasion of the northern Americas, again?

I'm going to trust Neal Stephenson and suggest that a large part of the reason Americans did slavery and had access to slaves was, you know, their progenitors.

The whole thing Zio talks about strikes me as insane. Deal with racist kids by dealing with their parents, not by making all kids everywhere aware of race and putting mis-told pieces of history in their heads for Chinese whispering to work on.

Chinese whispering, ho ho - I haven't even the faintest idea of the etymology there. BETTER EXPLAIN IT TO ALL THE 4 YEAR OLDS TOMORROW.

Just sit the kids down to a weeks worth of instalments of Tarantinos Django unchained.
They'll fill in the blanks themselves.

The British owned a huge number of slaves, both in the US before independence and in the various Caribbean islands, and did an awful lot of the slave trading that got them there in the first place. However, it was all at a considerable distance from the vast majority of the population and we certainly don't have the level of historical fall-out from it that the USA does.

The way Mimi described her family going through this sort of thing is really daft, and I don't know how any teacher would think that it would help. Presumably any Turkish or Arabic students had to do the same thing - the Middle Eastern / East African slave trade being easily as large as the Trans-Atlantic one.

Political Correct Bollocks

A 4 year old in a class of mixed race kids will just see them all as people, they will like and dislike some kids but not due to skin colour.

Now thanks to the PC wankers your kid has doubts etc about a black face.

This sort of lesson should be for 10-12 year olds

I would have taken my kid out of school

Don't you think by 10 years old their parents will have instilled a large amount of rave related views in them anyway?

Prejudice against glow sticks and whistles?

Not in my case they all look the same to me

Everytime I read this thread I start humming 'Everyone's a little bit racist' from 'Avenue Q'. They should teach the kids that song.

You lot are unbelievably niggardly.








...when it comes to spending money on new games.

I think there is a halfway point. It's far too long to tackle the history and problems of history where people have treated others wrongly due to race. However it canbe made part of school and classroom understanding that all people, all children are equal. It doesn't matter what colour your skin is, what colour your eyes are, what colour your hair is, how tall you are... Children will at around five or six start to notice physical differences, but the task here is to teach just how wrong and stupid it is to discriminate based on hair length/skin colour/toe length... If the child then does hear racist views for family members it will at least give them a basis to realise how stupid this is.

Bloody hell - homework in the first year of primary school? Are schools really that draconian these days? I didn't get homework until year 5 at least, and rarely regularly. And small kids giving presentations in front of a class, after needing to do research? I found that difficult enough to do as an undergraduate student, let alone if I was just starting to learn to read. That's just massively ridiculous on behalf of the school, at that age they should be just learning the basics, reading and writing, and above all being children, not expected to do a mini-dissertation on a topic they'd barely understand if they were twice their chronological age. I've got no problems with schools being anti-racist, but what you are describing is a spectacularly bizarre and counterproductive way of going about it.


It is the same in my experience, young children pretty much automatically 'accept' people for who they are without prejudice, whether they are of a different ethnic minority, or nationality, or both. It's only when adults make an issue of it that the kids react differently to those individuals.