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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Gds is super liberal and talked about different family structure every year since pre-K. Is Sidwell similar or less liberal?[/quote]

Not sure I understand your question or accept your premise(s).  Are you asking about same-sex families?  If so, then yes.  My kid has been at Sidwell for several years, and the topic of same-sex families and gets raised often in books or assemblies or other discussions.  But at least as far as I've noticed, it's raised in just a passing way - for example one of the characters will have two moms.

I don't recall an assembly or intentional discussion in the younger grades that is focused on explicitly forcing children to acknowledge that same-sex relations are just as valid as others (and quite frankly, I think that would be a pretty awkward and ineffective teaching approach).  Is that the comparison point you're trying to drive ... whether there are elementary school assemblies designed to preach a particular viewpoint on same-sex relationships?

I'm not sure I follow whee you're going, so forgive me if I've missed your point.

Also, as an IMHO aside, i[b]f you think young children growing up in this area need education about the validity and normalcy of same-sex relationships, then I think you're maybe missing what's going on around us. [/b] My kids and their friend seem to accept same-sex relations with a shrug and a "whatever," as just another crayon in the box.  I think our generation as parents imbues them with a lot more context and significance (both positive and negative) than our kids do.[/quote]

You can't simply assume that just because something's around us, that the kids will as a matter of fact be OK with it. Nurtureshock and studies since then have shown that if we as parents and teachers don't talk about things like race *directly* and address concretely that racism is wrong, then young children actually may in fact harbor racist views. I think that the same may well be true for gay parents and relationships. Just because you think they're OK, it doesn't mean that your children fully accept or understand it if you haven't actually talked about it. Parenting culture is overwhelmingly heteronormative. This is what our kids pick up from the larger culture. If you and/or the school doesn't address the fact that families come in all sorts of configurations--and that this is OK--then your kids might not actually know what to make of same-sex relationships.

At GDS, there is an assembly every spring that celebrates all the different types of families that are found at GDS--most kids do have straight married parents, but also assembly also recognizes families with single parents, blended families, and same-sex families. It's extremely moving, actually, to see kids and families feel so welcomed in the school, given that the rest of the world can be so hostile to children and their parents in non-traditional family arrangements.[/quote]

This is so moving.  In our family, we encourage our children to pursue healthy sexual relationships (age appropriate!) across the full spectrum of gender, so they are not pigeon holed and also, so they don't have cisgender privilege or at least don't feel the power of it.

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Oh dear god.[/quote]

Different family, but we also allow our children to pick *their* gender each year. It's very freeing. [/quote]

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