salsa wrote:
My children went to a very ethnically mixed primary school where they seem to see themselves as equals. They may have made their pictures ignoring the skin colour whilst in reception. However, they became aware of race and religion later on when they were in year 5 and were discussing apartheid. The teacher separated the class and made two groups: white and non-white children. He then explained how the non-white group would be treated. After that lesson, one of my son's friends, who was of a mixed white and black heritage, was very distraught and started worrying about something he had not thought about before. The teacher was illustrating a point and full of good intentions, but I wonder if he knew the deep impact it had on this boy.
Salsa
In my opinion, Y5 is too late to 'become aware of race and religion', and far too young to have an Apartheid-style experience foisted on them. I imagine that most of the children - white or otherwise - would have found that upsetting and on the face of it it sounds inappropriate to me. I find it hard to believe though that a 9 year old had never thought about his skin colour before - the little ones I taught were very happy to have theirs recognised as it was at a time when there was a lot of tokenism in reading schemes etc and very few images in school materials which acknowledged difference. I believe that children should be comfortable with their own heritage from an early age, which does not mean 'whiting out' images they either see or create and does mean learning to accept difference without prejudice. I should add that my own children are mixed race, though not visibly so.