Yesterday Graham Grant of The Daily Mail asked me to comment on the latest gem from the Care Inspectorate – the government body that inspects schools and nurseries. Here are some guidelines that they have just issued.
There is so much that one could say about this – some of which is incorporated in this article in The Daily Mail. The Care Inspectorate have become a primary means of ‘liberal’ indoctrination in our culture. They are also typical of the elites in our culture in being so out of touch. What genius in the Care Inspectorate thinks that 3-4 year olds know what synthetic means?! Since when did nursery staff teach their children about ‘the common man’ or ‘man’s achievements’? Why are the Care Inspectorate so gender stereotypical, assuming that boys get angry and girls get scared?! That girls skip!
Here is the full text of the article:
Have they gone nuts? Nurseries are told not to call children ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ and to use ‘humanity’ instead of ‘mankind’ in bid to stamp out gender discrimination (and even stories about Mr Squirrel are banned!)
New guidelines urge childcare providers to introduce ‘gender-equal play’ so that boys are encouraged to play girls’ games, and vice versaThe guidance from the Care Inspectorate (CI) also cautions against telling stories about ‘Mr Squirrel’ to break down masculine stereotypes. Children should also be shown images of same-sex parents in educational materials
By GRAHAM GRANT HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR FOR THE SCOTTISH DAILY MAIL
Nursery staff have been told not to call children ‘boys and girls’ – or tell them stories about male characters – in an attempt to stamp out gender discrimination. New guidelines urge childcare providers to introduce ‘gender-equal play’ so that boys are encouraged to play girls’ games, and vice versa. But the guidance from the Care Inspectorate (CI) also cautions against telling stories about ‘Mr Squirrel’ to break down masculine stereotypes – or even using the word ‘mankind’ instead of ‘humanity’.
Children should also be shown images of same-sex parents in educational materials, while posters displaying male ballet dancers are encouraged to break down gender divisions.
The Rev David Robertson, former Moderator of the Free Church of Scotland, criticised the CI last night, saying: ‘Have they gone nuts? They’ve lost a degree of sanity and moved out of touch with the real world – they are living in a parallel universe.
‘The Care Inspectorate are no longer about inspecting care standards, they’re about inspecting doctrine.’
The taxpayer-funded body, which inspects registered childcare providers, said the initiative has been brought in because ‘childhood and play is becoming more gendered and polarised between girls and boys’. It has joined forces with campaigners at Zero Tolerance – which works to eradicate male violence against women – to produce the guide, which aims to promote the benefits of children of both sexes playing with a range of toys.
Guidelines advise that nursery staff should ‘try greeting children with “hello everyone” or “children” instead of “hello boys and girls”.’
The guidance from the Care Inspectorate (CI) also cautions against telling stories about Mr Squirrel (pictured) to break down masculine stereotypes
They should also use ‘more inclusive pronouns’ such as ‘they’ or ‘them’ or ‘theirs’, instead of ‘she’ or ‘him’ or ‘hers’, while girls should be complimented because they have ‘achieved something’ and not because of their appearance.
‘Man-made’ becomes ‘synthetic’, ‘manufactured’ or ‘machine-made’, while ‘the common man’ becomes ‘the average person’ or ‘ordinary people’ – and ‘Mr Squirrel’ in stories told to children should be referred to as ‘squirrel’.
Scottish Tory early years spokesman Alison Harris said: ‘This seems like political correctness gone mad. These recommendations appear to be patronising in the extreme.‘Many parents will be concerned that this political correctness is replacing common sense.’
Richard Lucas of the Scottish Family Party said: ‘Pushing this sort of feminist extremism is an attempt at social engineering and indoctrination, starting with the very youngest. ‘Why can’t they just accept that boys and girls are different?’
Gordon Weir, interim chief executive of the Care Inspectorate, said: ‘The role that early learning and childcare can have in promoting gender equality can’t be overstated. That’s why we’ve produced this resource with our partners.
‘This is about asking everyone to think about how they approach gender equality in play and early learning, and how we can support and promote it.’
I note that they seem entirely comfortable with the use of the word ‘manufactured’, rather than ‘man-made’.
That’s not going to cause any confusion, then?
So, not just clinically insane, but logically inconsistent as well.
“Manufactured” does not derive from or link to “man”, any more than “history” derives from “his” or even “Tory”!
Perhaps if we hadn’t decided Latin was “a dead language”, rather than one as live and present in today’s speech as our parents’ DNA is in our bodies, we’d have less of such, er, manufactured concerns.
Personally I rather admire “inclusive” neologisms when they are elegant, more accurate and actively reduce the risk of ambiguity – “firefighter” is particularly brilliant, where the old “fireman” could also be a stoker on a ship or a crew member on a train. I’ll give a personal award to whoever comes up with a similar improvement on “cameraman”, which so far has resisted all attempts to find anything that isn’t clumsy or worse.
Perhaps if English had retained its old Germanic grammar with every object or person having one of three genders – which needn’t relate to any relevant biological sex – the whole issue might have never attracted such acrimony.
Truth, indeed. I was, I have to say, being just a tad tongue-in-cheek. I do not think that the politically-correct enforcement police are especially attuned to the niceties of etymology. Ban the man!
The root is manus meaning hand, but man comes from the same root I suppose.
It’s easy to see these word changes as ridiculous (I do) if you aren’t a woman and it doesn’t impact you (I’m not and it doesn’t)
“Man” isn’t Latin at all – it’s German, and quite unrelated to “manus” in Latin. With a single “n” it still means “one” as in “one does this” and is similarly ungendered: with a double “n” it means a male human – “ein mann”.
“Substitute sexist language for inclusive synonyms”
means the exact opposite of what is (almost certainly) intended.
Teachers should hurry to put it into practice before someone points it out and the guideline is amended.
Out with all the inclusive synonyms, and substitute good old-fashioned sexist language.
Thank you very much, Care Inspectorate, for your friendly advice. As a result of that friendly advice I will from now on make deliberate use of the words ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ as often as possible in the hearing of my grandchildren (One girl, two boys). Furthermore, I will use ‘she’, ‘him’ and ‘hers’ as frequently as possible. Next time I see my granddaughter I will tell her how lovely she looks and I will comment favourably on the ball-handling skills of my two grandsons (One attends a football class and the other attends a rugby class). The word ‘man’ in all its permutations and combinations will be used frequently in their hearing and ‘Mr’ will be appended to as many fictional characters as possible. Incidentally, what format do the Care Inspectorate suggest should now be used when playing ‘Happy Families’? Silly question. That discriminates against non-family settings and should be avoided. And it’s very offensive to people who live outside a family setting as it implies that they cannot be happy. Finally, perhaps I should find out the names of the members of the Care Inspectorate and send each one a Christmas card, addressed to Mr So-and-So or Ms So-and-So. Bah, humbug.
I’ve just come across a reference to the word hangman on another website. The commenter suggests that that word will have to be substituted by the word ‘executioner’. I don’t see that catching on in the playground. ‘Let’s have a game of ‘Executioner’. No way. But as the more usual name contains the word ‘man’ maybe I should teach it to my grandchildren.
You could usefully teach them at the same time that we don’t hang people any more.
Concerning our country , the word “Handcart” springs to mind !
My goodness – there’s a tory who doesn’t agree with the re-appraisal of gender normatives? Shurely shome mishtake.
I think Scotland is about a decade ahead of Australia. Which is why I’m glad you’re coming to Australia!
Unfortunately our Great Southern Land is catching up quickly – it won’t take us a decade to attain the same level of madness as Scotland. I never thought I’d be thinking about where I could emigrate from Australia. But I am!
This shows the extent to which our political elites are willing to go with this social engineering experiment. The Children are the target for indoctrination because they do not yet have the intalectual ability to recognise and critique the levels of madness they are being exposed to.
Insidious, coercion embedded into our Governments vareious departments in order to oversee the ideological indoctrination of the most vulnerable and defenceless.
It’s like something out of fictional movie where the ailiens like the Borg are assimilating all before them!!!
At what point do Men & Women across our land say enough is enough of this madness?
Only this year I discovered that the reason the girls in my class at school gave up sports was because societal pressure told them it would make their bodies unattractive to men.
It’s now more than forty years (I think?) since it became illegal to pay women less than men and yet my organisation is still struggling to pay women the same as men for the same jobs. It’s legal-ish because men are at the top of a pay scale and women at the bottom.
My view is that women are the equals of men and girls the equals of boys. We should treat them like it.