I was over at Jessica's page and saw her post about these lovely markers. Am I wrong to find this a little ridiculous.
I mean, when I was in school, all my stick figures were drawn with black crayon--which I guess means they were black. Except for the face, of course, which was whatever color the paper was.
The truth is, I didn't really care about drawing people--I liked to draw things like cats, trees, houses, suns, clouds, fish, etc. And, frankly, none of these multicultural colors would have done me a lick of good.
BUT...let's say I was a politically correct grade schooler and wanted to draw "multicultural" people. The thing is, I'm pretty sure all these colors are included in the 64-color box of crayons, so why have them? And, no, the color that most matched my skin was not called "caucasian." (Actually, I can't remember what it was called, but I my guess is it was something like pale peach or some other non-offensive name like that).
I think the intent of teaching multiculturalism in the schools is to show kids that all people deserve respect--and I don't think these markers are doing that.
Stepping off the soap box....
2 comments:
I guess it would be fine if it were for art students that were old enough to use it properly. Since it's marketed as washable, I'm guessing that isn't the target audience.
Problem is some parents will buy things like this that distinguish race. What some parents are missing is that we teach our young how to differentiate race, and I'm not sure teaching young ones to pay attention to that earlier in life is a good thing. Drawing all people in one color whether it's black or white, or green is a way to reinforce that skin color doesn't matter.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought those were stupid!
I tell you one thing, respect has nothing to do with color, religion, or anything else. I don't respect someone for their ethnicity, I respect them because of their values and how they treat people and living creatures in general.
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