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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (31443)	2/21/1999 12:35:00 PM
From: Edwarda	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Get a grip, Christine, there's smoke coming out of your ears! Yes, I have read the book, the same one, for very small children. That's part of my difficulty. It's a nice and well-meaning book, but it is a bit more than tolerant in part because of the age group for which it is written. On the one hand, small children tend to be very primitive--ritualistic and judgemental. There's a "right" and a "wrong" way for everything. So one has the argument that teaching tolerance, even in a heavyhanded fashion, should be a good ideal On the other hand, they also seem to accept, far more easily than their parents, nontraditional households. Children of divorced parents, widowed parents, single parents seemed to find acceptance among their peers long before the adults stopped treating their divorcee mothers as a stereotyped problem. (We tend to forget that it was not all that long ago that a divorcee was surrounded by all sorts of nervousness by wives and snickering leers by their husbands.) The children didn't do that. It is as they get older than Heather's audience that the problems start as they begin to assimilate their parents' beliefs. What I'm suggesting is that because the book is coming too early in development, it inadvertently crosses the line. BTW, I do think that teaching tolerance is a form of indoctrination. It is one that a society needs as much as it needs indoctrination into respect for the law and other people's rights, that a society needs as much as toilet training. I am not being flip in that last sentence; what I am saying is that there are basics that are absolutely for any society to function effectively.