Posted on 03/07/2006 1:50:58 PM PST by mathprof
TRADITIONAL nursery rhymes are being rewritten at nursery schools to avoid causing offence to children.
Instead of singing “Baa baa, black sheep” as generations of children have learnt to do, toddlers in Oxfordshire are being taught to sing “Baa baa, rainbow sheep”.
The move, which critics will seize on as an example of political correctness, was made after the nurseries decided to re-evaluate their approach to equal opportunities.
Stuart Chamberlain, manager of the Family Centre in Abingdon and the Sure Start centre in Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire, told the local Courier Journal newspaper: “We have taken the equal opportunities approach to everything we do.
“This is fairly standard across nurseries. We are following stringent equal opportunities rules. No one should feel pointed out because of their race, gender or anything else.”
In keeping with the new approach, teachers at the nurseries have reportedly also changed the ending of Humpty Dumpty so as not to upset the children and dropped the seven dwarfs from the title of Snow White.
A spokesman for Ofsted, the watchdog which inspects Sure Start centres, confirmed that centres are expected to “have regard to anti-discrimination good practice” and that staff should “actively promote equality of opportunity”.
Gervase Duffield, a Conservative district councillor representing Sutton Courtenay and Appleford, denounced the ban as ridiculous.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Not to mention the inconvenient biological fact that there actually ARE black sheep, but I have never seen a "rainbow" sheep or, with all respect, a "diversity" sheep!
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