You've Got to be Carefully Taught

You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught

That’s a line from the old musical, South Pacific.  The rest of it is… “to hate and fear, it’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear, to hate all the people your relatives hate, you’ve got to be carefully taught.”   Turns out we aren’t teaching enough of anything and what kids are learning by omission because we aren’t teaching is that difference is bad, that is why we don’t talk about it.

Sesame Workshop did a broad range survey of over 6,000 parents of children ages three through twelve and over 1,000 teachers from pre-school to fifth grade.  Parents aren’t talking and kids are noticing.  They notice that people with certain skin tones live in places that are the same or different from their own.  They notice how people like them are featured in social media, the movies or TV.   They see lots of advertising.

The findings of the survey were interesting.  Only 10% of families discuss race with their children.  Does that mean if we don’t talk about something it won’t impact us?   Minority parents seem to be more on the job than majority families, but still not enough.   Twenty-two percent of black parents discuss race with their children but only 6% of white families do; and nearly 35% of all families say they never talk about race or social class with their children.  Fifty-seven percent of families say they never or rarely talk about gender with their kids.

These conversations aren’t happening in school either.  Although the majority of teachers say they would be comfortable talking about these topics, less than half think it is appropriate for them to be doing so!

We used to think we couldn’t do sex ed in schools because that would make kids sexually active.  Then we realized that hormones more than talk made kids sexually active and that failing to discuss sex just made it more intriguing.

Now families and teachers are saying talking about race will make kids more race conscious and even racist.   Turns out that is wrong too.  Research shows that by 3 months of age, babies begin to show preference for their own racial group.  I would be interested in knowing if that is the racial group of the caregiver and what happens when the caregiver is of a different racial group than the child or if the parents are of two different races.

Researchers recommend that we start early discussing differences in skin tone and that normal is really a statistical word meaning most prevalent not necessarily preferred.  Families should be open about privilege both racial and socio economic.  Failure to show diversity in ads, on TV or in movies should be pointed out to children and kids should be told that these depictions do not represent reality.

When we demonstrate by our behavior that certain topics are taboo, we are sending a clear message that these topics need to be hidden.  Turns out there are many ways to carefully teach kids to hate and fear.