I think the sidetrack has ended on its own. But just to be clear.
mod instruction: no more posts about “nonplussed”
Yay for kids!!
Part of the problem is, there’s a lot of people out there whose livelihoods depend on getting lots of people riled up about shit that shouldn’t matter to anyone besides those directly affected.
With any luck, it’ll become a good deal less profitable as the median age of Fox News viewers continues to rise.
What this demonstrates though is that not only is prejudice learned so is matter of fact acceptance. Kudos to grand dad for raising a child who raised a son learning these things rather than the smaller mindedness that is too common. Yea kids but also yea to these adults!
The school sponsors camping trips? That’s neat! How long do they last? Are they academic (nature walks, mineral ID, etc) or just outdoor fun?
StG
Great story.
When I was in high school, a buddy of mine had a much younger sister – in nursery school (~ age 5 ?) at the time.
I was having dinner with their family and it was the little one’s turn to talk about her day.
The story she told was about the lunchroom/cafeteria. At the end of her story, she mentioned how “the big brown man” came to take away the lunch trays.
That sticks with me decades later. You don’t have to be color blind in order to not be a bigot. You just have to not be a bigot.
It was just the matter-of-fact observation of a very innocent little child.
Like your eleven year old: you just calls 'em as you sees 'em. No h8.
Yeah. You really do have to be ‘carefully taught.’
When my kids were young, maybe kindergarten or first grade, we were reading a book about Rosa Parks. Upon learning how segregated buses operated, their indignant reaction was “but then you couldn’t sit with your friends”.
“Traditionally”, of course, it was utterly verboten to allow a child to see another child naked, especially a child whose body parts were somewhat “different”. The ultimate horror scenario that every parent dreaded was having to answer a young child’s question about why another young person has some different body parts. (“When will I grow one of those, Mommy?”)
“Because that’s just the way some people are, kid. Now shut up and eat your peas and carrots.”
So, come to think of it, how does the modern enlightened parent address this question these days?
We saw same-sex kids naked all the time when we were young. Locker rooms at the Y or at school (starting in 5th grade for us) were the primary place, but also camping with the Scouts. Perhaps there were others. As far as seeing other-sex kids naked, that was certainly not something that would happen in this (US) culture after the age of 2 or 3.
Regardless, parents are going to have “that talk” with every kid sooner or later.
Except that this was a topic that a great many parents were (and still are?) profoundly uncomfortable with, with the result that “that talk” often simply didn’t (and still doesn’t?) happen, or else is heavily phrased in vague or euphemistic gobbledygook and double-talk, leaving the inquisitive child totally confused and thinking “Huh? Whut?”
Most (all?) schools in Australia run an annual camp event for kids starting around Yr 4 in primary school. Generally they run for 3-5 days, take place in rural and regional areas, sometimes in designated ‘camp’ places with cabins and the like, sometimes in tents, especially for older kids.
There are some organised activities like walks and stuff, but mostly it’s the outdoor fun of course.
That sounds like a great time. I wish our schools did something like that. I guess the closest we have are if you join the scouts and go on camping trips with your troop.
StG
Our kids’ middle school had something called outdoor ed, where students stayed in cabins for two nights and did outdoor stuff during the day. Somehow I ended up being a chaperone when both our kids went.
6th grade we went on a weekend trip Boy Scout camp? (Though both boys and girls were on this trip)There were classes on outdoorsy stuff, took turns at KP duty, and had a hide and seek contest (one person in each cabin hid, you got points for finding or if you cabin mate stayed hidden)
Our cabin chaperone played poker the other night so we could stay up late.
Brian
Eta it is a YMCA camp
Nope. What actually happened was people objected to you telling a homophobic joke.
He told a joke, people nitpicked that it was homophobic. Exactly!
There was discussion of the correct spelling of the word. Then there was a further digression on the correct name of sandwiches in various cities.
No, that is not remotely an accurate respresentation of what happened. You casually threw in a homophobic joke in your OP, then got butthurt and doubled down when you got called on it. You set up and then worsened the derailment of your own thread.
Rather than hijack this thread further with the fact that a month later you apparently still can’t let it go and concede that this kind of casually bigoted joke is something to remove from your repertoire, here’s the thread in question so anyone can judge for themselves. I would think this conversation should continue on that thread if you feel the need to do so.
Yeah that must be it.
and of course to complete the discussion of what you find to be an offensive homophobic joke we had,
So something along the lines of…
Hey, can we please stick to THIS topic. If you want to relitigate the homophobic joke in another thread, please do it there. (Or in a new pit thread, i suppose.)
Any more digressions of that sort will result in warnings and or thread closure.