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From: riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle)
Newsgroups: net.kids
Subject: Re: Non-Sexist Upbringing
Message-ID: <255@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 23-May-84 11:53:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.255
Posted: Wed May 23 11:53:45 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 26-May-84 11:09:50 EDT
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Organization: U. of Tx. at Houston-in-the-Hills
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While I don't agree with Andy Tannenbaum's assertion that trying to
give your children a non-sexist upbringing would necessarily be a
"fascist experiment", I do think that there is a kernel of truth to his
advice:

>> Don't teach your children what to think, teach them to think.

To which I might add that the best way to raise non-sexist kids might
be to be non-sexist yourself.

Children learn some amazing things from their parents, both good and
bad, without anyone realizing that there is any overt teaching going
on.  Consider the case of my father: he was born in 1936 and grew up in
a very small town in northern Louisiana, a place and time where the
accepted norm was a deep and terrible racism.  His parents were shocked
when he came back from college believing in integration and racial
equality.  When they asked him where on earth he could have gotten such
absurd ideas, they couldn't understand his reply: he had learned not to
be a racist from  t h e m .  You see, racists though his parents were,
they had at least been kind to the blacks they came in contact with and
treated them with some basic dignity; as a child, my father had picked
up the kindness but not all of the racism.

Most of what your kids learn from you will be by example, not by
conscious instruction.  If you want to raise good kids, maybe you
should start by doing what you can to clean up your own act; leave it
to their good sense to take it from there.

--- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.")
--- {ihnp4,seismo,gatech,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle