Gender Neutral Pre-schools in Sweden

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/28/health/sweden-gender-neutral-preschool/index.html

The other day, I read about two preschools in Sweden (Egalia and Nicolaigarden) that work to free children from traditional gender roles by emphasizing gender-neutrality. In these schools, there are no gender-divided classrooms or play areas (legos and baking toys might be grouped together instead of separated, etc.), and teachers tend to refer to students and their parents by their names or gender-neutral pronouns (saying "hen" – meaning "they" – instead of "hon" or "han" – meaning "she" or "he"). In this way, children play games that spark their sense of interest and curiosity instead of playing games that divide along specific gender lines. As a result, boys can be found pushing strollers and playing with dolls just as often as girls can be found playing with trucks and robots. Lotta Rajalin, the director of Egalia, hopes that these gender neutral preschools will free students from the limitations of gender norms and give them more freedom and choice to be whoever they want to be.

After reading several articles that peaked my interest in this subject, I watched a TedTalk by Lotta Rajalin (the director of Egalia), in which she describes how her school is focused on the cultural/societal gender, not the biological one. She described how, from a young age, girls can be influenced into thinking they like lighter colors (like pink, pastels, etc.) and boys into thinking they like darker ones (blue, black, etc.). She gave an example scenario of how these societal gender norms influence us, which started with a parent walking into a bike shop and saying that they want to buy a bike for their 9-year-old child. Rajalin said that normally the shop attendant's first question would be "is it a boy or a girl?" in order to tailor which type of bike they recommend for the child (usually changing the color of the bike depending on whether or not the child is a boy or a girl).

I was interested in seeing what other people thought about this subject, so I looked at the comments section. I was quickly bombarded with comments like:

"Maybe it's time to burn the witch?"

"How did this delusional person get on a TED stage?"

"Swedish women need to be locked up"

"this is beyond crazy! I hope she and everyone like her be imprisoned!"

"No wonder we are seeing an increasingly emotionally unstable generation of children and young adults with a massive push with purely subjective social sciences theory instead of objective REALITY! Educate and prepare children for the REAL world for christ's sake stop brainwashing and confusing them, they are the future not for inadequate narcissistic fools to perform social experiment's on like in a laboratory Petri dish! These Marxist theory "educator's" are incapable of doing the right thing by children now and boy are we going to pay a high price for this unadulterated B.S.!!"

"Can't we all just accept stereotypes? They exist. Get over it xD stereotypes will never go away. There's no use trying, and there's no need trying. The brain organize people and things into groups. That's how the brain works!"

"Mentally ill person exposes her insanity to the public. I think that such people should be kept closed in mental hospitals. And keep them AWAY from our children !!!"

I acknowledge that many people in comments sections can write incendiary and/or vicious comments, but I was surprised by how close-minded this seemed for a TedX comment section since a lot of the comments were critical/negative in some way (also, I directly copy and pasted each comment, so don't blame me for the grammar errors, etc.). I was interested, nevertheless, in these comments because I was very interested in why the idea of gender-neutral schools triggers people so much. Moreover, I was fascinated by how some critics were arguing against these schools because the critics believed that these schools were teaching girls to be boys and boys to be girls and that the schools were hypocritical by forcing children into the narrative of being gender neutral. However, I believe that many of these critiques stem from a place of misunderstanding and/or ignorance. From what I understand, these schools are not trying to force children into being gender neutral; they are just trying to allow children the choice to be whoever they want to be. For example, a girl playing with dolls will not be discouraged from playing with dolls; she will just be given the option to choose between a variety of different toys, which might include dolls, dinosaurs, jump-ropes, and trucks. In this way, children have the chance to choose what they are genuinely interested in over what society is influencing them into thinking.

The idea of children pursuing their interests by removing as much of society's influence/gender stereotypes as possible really struck a chord with me. In elementary school, I was definitely way more of a tomboy and would run around during recess playing sports. However, once I entered middle school and reached an age where I was generally more susceptible to society's influence (I got a phone in 7th grade, had more access to social media, etc.), I began to conform to the more typical standards of what a girl should look/act like. I would sit to the side during lunch with a bunch of other girls gossiping instead of running around on the field kicking a soccer ball with the guys. There was a clear gender divide (not saying there were no exceptions, just that the majority of the guys were doing one thing while the majority of the girls were doing another). Now that I am in high school, I've generally gained more of the self-confidence to do what I want to do and reject/push back against these gender stereotypes/norms, but even now, it can be difficult for me (I still tend to sit to the side chatting during lunch instead of shooting hoops, etc.). As a result, I believe these gender-neutral schools in Sweden might be on to something special (if they truly have been working the way they were designed to). I hope that little children in the future do not have to choose to be any one thing or alter their desires to fit what they think society expects them to be. And, if these gender neutral schools in Sweden help free kids from these gender norms/expectations, then I am all for them.

Sites to look at if interested in learning more about the subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1G1K7-kJxY
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-14038419
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jpy3pd/pushing-prams-with-boys-at-stockholms-first-gender-neutral-pre-school
https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/28/health/sweden-gender-neutral-preschool/index.html