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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am with you, OP - I hate it.  It is inauthentic and insulting.  Something from the 1950s.  I would simply tell the Director that unless the children are learning about one specific tribe from one specific time period that the making of a generic, Hollywood "Indian" headdress is demeaning.  [/quote]

Your mistake is to think that what's Politically Correct for adults is appropriate for young children. It's not.

It's preschool, people. The kids are going to remember a handful of images, and whether you lectured them on the customs of a specific tribe or not, they will only remember a hairband with feathers.
And they will remember it was FUN! And later they'll want to know more about it and they'll read up on it, and go the museum of the American Indian (my kids love that place) and understand that our world can be cruel and complicated.

Keep that spark of fun, otherwise they won't love learning. Keep it so simple that it IS CARICATURE. This is what's developmentally appropriate for preschoolers. There will be a lifetime of progressively more subtle and restrictive language and posturing for them later on.

[/quote]

An entire culture should not be reduced to a caricature because it is fun for preschoolers.  Glue feathers on a headband and be a bird.  Teaching culturally insensitive and FAKE culture is not a "spark of fun".  And it NOT developmentally appropriate for any preschooler to even begin to understand the complexities of the Native American culture and what European settlers did to them.  Preschoolers should be learning about animals - not a tortured and murdered people.  [/quote]

Everything a preschooler learns is simplified down to caricature, don't you get it? Science, history, everything except reading and math. 
It truly does not matter, because they are only going to retain that learning is fun.

You probably don't have older children, because this continues until the end of their academic career. They learn a little bit more about tribe lifestyles in 4th grade, and AGAIN, it's simplified. Which is as it should be! In middle school they learn about ancient civilizations, Old Europe and empire-building, and do they gloss over massacres, colonization effects and perverted customs? You bet they do. In high school some teachers can get more reflective and have the students think more about the implication of culture loss and forced integration across history, but it's really if you choose specific college courses that you can really get into it.

Don't be so ignorant with your pearl-clutching, it's clear you really have no clue what you're talking about, either on the history front or the child development front.
Otherwise you will spend their entire childhood feeling offended and attempting to suppress a perfectly normal learning process. [/quote]

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