WANT FAIR-MINDED CHILDREN? START AT HOME!

By DR VICKI BISMILLA

American writer Melinda Wenner Moyer has published a book, How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes (Putnam and Sons, July 2021).

The title is not something you would share with young children, but the advice she gives is good.

The impetus for her book came from her frustration at seeing the grotesque behaviour of politicians in her country who spewed hatred, empowered hate groups, grabbed women in sexually exploitative ways and openly encouraged and sanctioned dangerous behaviour.

She was concerned that children and youth were imitating these kinds of behaviours. Data showed that bullying, racism and hate crimes among youth and adults were increasing all around the country, especially during the presidential campaign of 2016 and thereafter. School data showed that even students in elementary and middle school were bullying children of colour and engaging in dangerous racist behaviours. She and other fair-minded parents were becoming increasingly alarmed and worried that their children might become unwittingly influenced to join white supremacist rallies like those in Charlottesville in 2017. She wanted her children to grow up fighting injustice instead of becoming influenced by hate-filled mobs.

As an educator, I know that children do not come into our kindergarten classrooms spewing hate.

They come in childhood innocence ready to accept all classmates as friends regardless of race, ethnicity, skin colour, language, religion, economic status, gender or parents’ sexual orientation. We watch with joy as they play with one another, help their peers, laugh, sing, hold hands and skip along.

Hatred is a learned behaviour, learned from youth, from adults, from media, films, online, gangs and from hate-filled, self-proclaimed leaders who are given media-voice. If adults in a child’s life display hate-filled behaviour, their children learn that behaviour; if adults are prejudiced against any group, those attitudes are absorbed by their children; if anyone in the family or circle of friends uses disrespectful words to describe others, children soak up those words like sponges; and if physical violence is part of a household or regular circles or gatherings, then children will believe that it is normal to beat up on peers because that is what people do in their lived environment.

How do parents who raise respectful, kind, caring, thoughtful children do it? First and foremost, they raise compassionate, empathetic children by modelling respectful behaviour. They do not use swear words, prejudicial expressions, put-downs or other behaviours that minimalize any group of people.

Moyer goes further and more in-depth in analyzing conundrums like, should children be taught to be “colour-blind?”.

She examines research that shows it is not appropriate to teach children to be “colour blind”.

Children see with innocent eyes, they see colour and ethnicity, they touch one another’s hair as they play, they hear accents and they enjoy playing together.

School children need to be taught early about the beauty of diversity, the richness of communities made up of different cultures, the achievements, skills and strengths of people from all cultures around the world.

As they grow through the primary and junior grades it is important for parents to teach their children that no ethnicity is superior to another, that no language is better, that all people are created equal.

Parents can use library resources to teach children about world history, about important inventions like numerals and their origins, and engage in intercultural experiences at museums, libraries or even among other parents in the community.

It is also important for parents to talk about the injustices perpetrated on innocent populations even right here in North America like slavery, colonialism and the evil of residential schools; and around the world like Nazism, the caste system, and apartheid.

Children have an innate sense of right and wrong and easily grasp the strength of diversity when taught with care.

They readily see that people of different ethnicities achieve wonderful accomplishments that they already know about and admire. They most certainly would be confused if asked to be “colour-blind”.

Even I as an adult do not want people to see me through “colour-blind” eyes. I am proud to be brown and resourceful, as I know millions of us are. Furthermore, it is a disservice to children not to talk to them about diversity, thus letting them believe that the race that media highlights most, must be the superior race and therefore it is okay that they occupy all the halls of power and access all societal privileges. And the same goes for gender. As they grow through elementary and high school, students need to be engaged in discussions about gender, the diversity of gender and that no one gender has power over another, or is smarter than another, or should earn more than another.

Moyer believes that if we can have these discussions with children, then we help them to be insightful and analytical, we give them intellectual tools to handle situations down the road and we help them to learn how to process situations as they grow into adulthood.