No more girls and boys; can our children go gender free? BBC 2 tonight

[Ekphrasis]

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09202lp

I heard PM in radio 4 discussing this research, it seems to hugely benefit girls in terms of their views on their own achievements and the achievements of women in general.

Will listen with interest.

What surprised me (as we have had this language banned in my place of work, with children) is that the teacher, pre experiment, called girls sweetie and petal, and boys buddy etc.

The BBC really are a bit of a joke aren't they? How much longer must we be forced to pay for their constant bullshit agenda?

Um, it sounded good

It's about treating boys and girls equally and seeing how this affects their self esteem or sense of self (positively) as well as achievement, especially girls. As well as how they view the opposite sex.

Sounds good to me. Doesn't sound like a bullshit agenda

I think it is good. I read a review.

Unfortunately, he also tried to get them to use the same loo. And there was outrage, on both sides. Boys and girls. Apparently he's going to 'have a think'.

I'm all for removing the gender bias from teaching. But not removing the privacy boundaries due to biology.

He is working on a feminist plane in terms of gender. But hasn't quite grasped the reason why gender exists in the first place.

So he is tackling the symptoms, without tackling the reasons behind them.

I saw some highlights of it on BBC breakfast yesterday and it does look very interesting.

I heard PM too. I must say I wouldn't be as blase as that mum was if my child thought this kind of stuff - she's almost certainly getting it from home, surely, at age 7/8. As for the male teacher calling the boys 'mate' and the girls 'sweetpea' - I can't imagine DD's male teacher using language like that. I'd be bloody furious if he did.

I think the guy was wrong to say boys and girls were the same - obviously they're not.

I'm all for having a gender-free learning environment so long as that doesn't default to "treat them all like boys". A gender-free uniform shouldn't be particularly masculine for example.

It's fine to have gender-neutral loos so long as all cubicles have floor-to-ceiling partitions and doors so that everyone gets privacy.

Obviously would need individual changing cubicles for sports.

Otherwise it's got potential to be a good idea. Gender is a social construct and it doesn't have to be this way.

Yes, the teacher saying sweatpea/mate is a bit eyebrow raising.

Funny my son has just spent the day replacing the garden fence. He's a strong lad and found it hard work banging fencing posts into chalk. The social construct of gender isn't entirely without basis - however much we think we'd like a unisex world. No way on earth any of my girls would be able to have done the same job today. Boys and girls are simply different to each other. It's about their anatomy and physiology. One is not superior but they are different.

I don't think he does treat them all like boys. Got the boys to take up ballet, for instance.

Personally, I don't think I can watch it. Because although I will probably agree with most of it, the bit I disagree with will be so profound it will set my blood pressure soaring.

There's an interesting article on this on purplesagefemme. Sounds good and rage inducing in equal measure.

Maybe this was inspired by attempts at gender-neutral schooling in Sweden. There are various reports online:
phys.org/news/2017-05-children-swedish-gender-neutral-preschools-gender-stereotype.html

Crumbs, I don't know how old your son is, but I can assure you that girls are quite as able to replace garden fences as boys. Whether they'd want to, in this socially constructed society we live in, is another matter.
I was a girl and doing "manly" jobs, working on a farm, repairing and constructing fences, doing jobs that are seen as typically male, and in no way did my lady brain or vagina prevent me from doing so.
I'm not sure you're doing your daughters any favours by bringing them up to think they're not able to do the same jobs as your son.

Sorry, probably not the thread for that rant.

"in no way did my lady brain or vagina prevent me from doing so. "

I just laughed out loud at that Cloud. I think this is exactly the right thread for this rant.

I spent a lot of my teen years kicking about stables and jeez, if a 12 year old girl is strong and canny enough to control a half tonne animal with metal dinner plates on its feet and a brain the size of a walnut and shovel wheel barrows of shit around acres of fields and drag feed sacks around and god knows what else, they can definitely manage a fence post or two.

It was about height and physical strength lifting heavy fencing posts 8 feet high. It would be very few girls who could manage that. Good for those that can - but they are few. My girls are all tiny and could in no way manage to do the same physical work as their 6' 4" brother. It's not their vagina that prevents them (oddly they never lift anything with their reproductive organs). It is the muscle bulk and male physiology does rather predispose to increased physical strength. My sons on the other hand couldn't breastfeed however much they wanted to. They can't sing soprano either. Men and women are simply different. Of course, both sexes can do majority of tasks but raising children to think their is no difference does them a huge disservice. It's not about the way they choose to dress, the sports they choose to participate in, their housekeeping abilities. It is about recognising the two sexes are not the same.

That looks great. I love a BBC documentary so i'm definitely the target audience for the liberal lefty pc bullshit agenda that they constantly push

I'm 5‘4", not overly strong, but the more I did these sorts of jobs the easier they got.
Of course boys will never breastfeed, that would be physiologically impossible, or singing soprano, that too would be impossible, same as the vast majority of women will never sing bass, but you are doing them a disservice if you tell them they're not physically capable of building fences when, if that's what they want to do, they will be able to do it.
Also interesting to note that at our local agricultural merchants, the "yard boy" (the strong lad hired to lift heavy bags of feed around) is actually a teenage girl, average height, average size. Her lack of male muscle bulk has not affected her doing the job at all.
It's about time we stopped expecting less of our girls.

Crumbs, you're describing differences between the sexes - secondary sexual characteristics, which sometimes will change the way a person can do something or can't. This is about gender differences, which is social in origin.

Though I did meet a young woman who is 6'4" working at a local farm zoo this Tuesday. (She answered a query about her height after repeatedly banging her head on a beam while trying to catch a chinchilla to weigh.)

Treating children as children and not tiny men or women could certainly work.
Allow people to play with what they want without judgement and the world will be a better place.
I imagine this will be difficult for some though, who see gender differences as natural and encourage their girls to play with Barbie's and wear pink, and their boys to play with cars and wear blue, as this seems to be the current norm, and gender neutral largely seen as attention seeking bollocks.

It seems they need to be gender neutral not for the children's benefit, but because the adults can't manage to treat them the same otherwise.

Sweetpea

I don't really understand why this is an experiment. Surely schools shouldn't be treating boys and girls differently to start with? I don't have a huge amount of experience with primary schools but I've done a bit of volunteering and didn't notice anything in particular.

Can someone who has watched the programme enlighten me about the types of things that were changed?

I am indeed describing a difference in sex making a difference to,what people can sometimes do. Gender was until very recently synonymous with sex. Interestingly, the world over there are very, very few societies that come anywhere close to 'gender neutral'. Has the whole world been wrong all through time?
I have no issue with children being children but do strongly believe that as they grow they need to identify with an adult gender/sex to remain mentally healthy as adults. Unclear sexual identity creates real problems for youngsters as they grow. That doesn't mean boys shouldn't cook or girls shouldn't be encouraged to become engineers. It does mean they need teaching to become healthy adults who are confident in their own sexuality just as much as they potty training and to be taught how read. Pretending there are more than two genders/sexes is more than a touch of 'emporers new clothes' and the result of a powerful lobbying minority.

My youngest is in primary, whilst in general boys and girls are treated the same, there are differences, but it comes from other children as well.
My son is 6, he's recently coming home saying that girls can't run, girls can't throw or catch, girls don't need wellies in school because they don't like getting muddy - it's easy to assure him that this isn't true, but these insidious messages come from their peers, and their parents.
It's also the case that boys are steered towards rough, tough play and (in his old school where he was in reception in a boy heavy year), topics were very traditionally boy oriented, with fluffier options if the girls wanted to choose them.
Gender stereotyping will be difficult to escape from.

There's a difference between gender equally and gender denial.