Butch Cassidy

OK,

Define Obama. IE racial group.

saskia65

Good question. He is, from what I've read from a melting pot. White mother from Kansas, father a Kenyan scholar? Raised primarily in Hawaii and benefiting from private school/ivy league education by white extended family.

Butch Cassidy

Thanks for that Sas but I was hoping for Mandy to define.
BTW White is no longer classed as a racial group in some circles, equally Kenyans can be 'Black', Caucasian, of Indian Subcontinent Heritage or any other myriad combination\origin

saskia65

Oops, sorry I waded in. I find the whole Obama thing fascinating.

I stand corrected on the 'white' bit...I can't keep up with what is appropriate to say, or not to say.....

sinope

To me he doesn't have a particular racial group. He isn't really a 'politician' either imo. And I mean that in a very positive way - being called a 'politician' has become an insult in the Sinope household.

Harrypottermouse

Now admittedly I have only got to this point in the thread but one question I would pose straight away is that with MMCs statement highlighted.....Does this show that the workers in this area....(Teachers and Nursery/Early Years workers) are IN GENERAL...Far too young. They have a script to follow and if its not on the script they are not totally sure what to do, so this is when they rely on the governmental prairie oysters...(thanks Bazz I do like that phrase) to cover their own inadequacies.

I guess what I am saying in a nutshell is....are Children left to supervise Children without true and proper training and / or life experience to understand what common sense is? AND Dare I say all because it is cheaper?

sinope

Not all nurserys but a significant number do employ young girls with no true vocation or empathy for children. This is hearsay though, not my experience as my daughter doesn't attend nursery.

Coffeepot

Not true of the nursery where our son went, which was attached to the school, but very true of several nurseries i know in the area,

Having said that i was dragged up with one racist parent and one not and am not in the slightest racist,

My son is in a class with a dwarf if im allowed to say that ? they are just getting to the point at 7 where they are noticing he is smaller than the rest of them and comments have been made about it, not malicious, does that mean they are being racist ?

Harrypottermouse

No - neither have mine, nor will they. I have a good friend who is a registered child minder and a fellow home educator. I feel safe leaving the girls with her as she is a mature lady and has had some life experiences.

I do not plan to send the girls to school either. The eldest is due to attend from Sept/Jan (not even sure - never looked into it) because we believe we can offer a wider and broader curriculum and developer their own interests rather than following what the rest of the country are doing. But hey that is a whole other thread.

But, yes, it scares me that teachers today, can waltz through school, university, then straight back to school barely being older than the pupils they teach....without a flick of a text book - if you know what I mean. I find it staggering too that even at 21, they seem to have so little common sense in the main and probably have more in common with the 5th formers (what ever they are called now - is it Yr 11) than their colleagues....can you imagine the scenario....NQT standing doing playground duty (lets face it, most 30 or unders now live with parents due to current status of housing market which therefore means they will live close to the school they attended - possibly now working at...) how many taunts / pats on the back would they get having seen each other in the local night clubs.....OMG you can just see it as a recipe for disaster.....then they try to go to the staff room and talk about gardening and children and other grown up subjects....ahhh

I think there should be a minimum age of 25 for teachers....especially in the senior sector...Having trained in Bath to be a teacher - I have to say - I can see the schooling system has some benefits to offer, but I can find many more that it doesn't and that is why we are choosing to home educate our children....

Sorry this became a rant, but political correctness HAS gone mad....and this is just one of the ways we are trying to prevent the bureaucracy that is now our world creeping into our lives for now.

dbd33

In Ontario they can't be very young as they need an ECE, I think that typically takes four years after high school.

Tanah

methinks its now referred to as " vertically challenged"

and I cant help but laugh when i say it

Coffeepot

so when my 7 year old asks me " what does vertically challenged mean " i say ?

Jingsamichty

Midget.

Mrs Miggins

Talking about race I have to tell you all this for a laugh.....

My brother and I were lucky enough to be brought up by quite a radical thinking mum for her time, and by a traditional but accepting father. We had all sorts of people come in out of our house growing up, but somehow my brother has developed this opinion...... "Chinese people are aliens". Admittedly he now lives in NZ so this may have something to do with the demented thinking, but how can two peeps from the same house be so different in their views on race?????????????????????

Weird or what?

Mrs M x

Jingsamichty

I can't remember if I've already mentioned this, but a couple of months ago I watched a boxing match from Las Vagas on TV.

It was a black guy fighting a white guy, but the commentators said, "...and tonight it's XXX versus YYY. Since they're both wearing black trunks, XXX is they guy with a shaved head, while YYY has a full head of hair."

Ridiculous. Just because we adults are too fearful of causing offence to admit to noticing something as blindingly obvious as someone's skin colour, should children be conditioned into pretending they don't notice?

It's one thing to teach that it doesn't make any difference, but it's quite another to teach that it can't even be mentioned.

"People of colour" makes me want to retch. We're ALL "people of colour". Just different ones.