iamguiltybyassociation:

linelei:

taliaitscoldoutside:

Tips for respecting children’s spaces, competence, and general existence from a preschool teacher:

  • Listen to them
  • Ask them, “Do you want to say hi to your auntie/grandma/cousin/dad/whatevs” (Hint: they will be honest and this can result in a simple hello or a hug or a silly “No!” depending how comfortable they feel)
  • If they don’t want to hug you realize it’s not that they don’t love you it’s that they don’t know you/don’t feel like hugging.
  • Just like every other person who doesn’t want a hug
  • In the event that you need to move a child EXPLAIN TO THEM WHY and WHAT YOU ARE DOING don’t just move them like PROPS they are CHILDREN and NOT props
  • For instance, “I’m going to move your chair over so we have room at the table for everyone!”
  • Or  “Sorry there was a person running by I didn’t want you to get smushed so I had to pick you up!”
  • Remind them that they are people not objects using your actions
  • Asking children to do something they don’t want to do but NEED to do often doesn’t work, instead give them a choice, “Do you want to eat bok choy or yams?”
  • NOT “Do you want to eat your vegetables?”
  • “Do you want to brush your teeth in the bathroom or the kitchen”
  • This exercises their ever-growing free will and is especially useful during TERRIFIC TWOS okay TERRIFIC not TERRIBLE they’re TERRIFIC
  • Children will copy you, MODEL FOR THEM
  • Being over enthusiastic IS beneficial for them understanding emotional and social competence
  • “I hung this picture uneven, that makes me sad, hmmm! Oh goodie, I found my mistake! Now I can fix it, I’ll feel much happier when I’ve fixed it!”
  • You think it sounds ridic yeah well hearing you do that children around you just learned to not get so discouraged by their mistakes and that it’s okay to try to fix them
  • ADULTS CAN APOLOGIZE TO CHILDREN
  • You make a mistake that hurt a child, APOLOGIZE and show them how to do it properly and genuinely
  • Realize children are fully competent and are capable of making meanings from YOUR implications about race, culture, gender, ability, sexuality, EVERYTHING
  • Many three year olds know what the N-word is, what gay means, can identify which children are visably disabled, and YOUR REACTIONS of their answers of questions about their culture
  • Children like to talk about themselves so do not ever dismiss what they say about themselves as illegitimate just because it sounds silly or unlikely sometimes it’s true
  • Stop talking about how you hate children, just leave them alone if you don’t understand them you don’t have to be complete jerks to PEOPLE you’ve never met
  • I will post more and if people have question PLS ASK ME I WOULD LOVE TO ANSWER WHAT I KNOW

This is spot on. 10 years as a nanny and this is pretty much what I did. Also guiding them with questions to help develop critical thinking skills:

  • “Yes, it does look like fun to climb on top of your cozy coupe, but what do you think might happen if you climb on something with wheels?”
  • “And if it rolls away with you on top, where do you think you might go?” 
  • “What do you think it would feel like to fall off and hit your head?” 

It might sound patronizing but children’s prefrontal cortices develop last, and this portion of the brain allows us to think critically, plan, and exercise self control. You can’t expect them to understand the consequences of their actions right off the bat, but using questions helps them to move through, step by step, potential outcomes of their behaviors. 

Oh, and praising good behaviors instead of just applying labels:

  • In addition to “you’re a great climber!” try “Great job figuring out how to climb to the top of that wall! You saw that your arm couldn’t reach the next handhold so you used your legs to push yourself up instead!”
  • or in addition to “you’re a talented singer” try “I’m proud of how hard you’ve worked to learn that song. You stuck with it and kept trying until you memorized it and could do it exactly how you wanted.”

Don’t just reward kids for doing well, teach kids how to do well by praising the behaviors that worked for them.

I love this.

And finally, what if Marat were to return today? What would he think of the state of our planet in the second decade of the twenty-first century? He could read in the history books that the Great French Revolution—his Revolution—is recognized as the watershed event in the making of the modern world.
“But what did it accomplish?” he might ask.
“It rid France of a parasitic class whose right to rule was based upon aristocratic birthright and traditional privilege.”
“Is that all?”
“It established legal and political equality, which then spread throughout much of Europe and the world.”
“Legal and political equality? What about economic and social equality?”
“No, the situation in that regard is even worse than you remember it. Today, despite two centuries of mind-boggling technological progress, a handful of billionaires control most of the Earth’s resources while billions of people remain mired in hunger, disease, oppression, and grinding poverty.”
Marat would surely be shocked and dismayed to learn that after more than 200 years his struggle for social revolution had lost none of its relevance and urgency. Where is the People’s Friend now, when we need him?

Jean Paul Marat: Tribune of the French Revolution (Clifford D. Conner)

romaniantelevision:

squeeful:

yahtzee63:

spockyourmind:

The first on-screen kiss between two men.

“Wings”, 1927

This doesn’t show exactly what the caption suggests it shows. 

In this scene, the lower pilot is dying. He had been captured, managed to escape, and stole a German plane to fly back. The upper pilot–his best friend and rival for the love of Clara Bow*–shot him down, believing he was the enemy. This is him kissing his friend goodbye.

“But that’s still slashy!” you can say. Yep, it is. “You can read this as homoerotic!” Yes, you can. “Why are you denying this? Is it because you think being gay or bi is shameful?” A thousand times no. I am pointing this out because I think this is an important piece of evidence about what homophobia has done to our society and to male expressions of emotion. 

In 1927, the obvious reading of this scene, for audiences, was not that this was a romantic kiss. Audiences primarily understood this as an expression of friendship and love, because of course it was perfectly natural for non-romantically involved men to embrace or even kiss, particularly at highly emotional moments. Of course a dying man would want to be held during his last breaths. Of course a guilt- and grief-stricken man would want to kiss his friend goodbye. 

However, not very long after this, the commercialization and commodification of homophobia became a powerful force. The market (including Hollywood) began drawing lines and graphs and boxes, declaring which emotions, expressions, habits, and even colors “belonged” to men and to women. This kind of touch, which would not necessarily have been sexualized during many eras or in many cultures, became forbidden to men in the US, Britain and Canada (and many other places, too) within the decade–and is still lost to them today. This scene–a far more honest expression of grief and affection than anything we’re used to seeing in today’s action films–became gay. 

Now, if you strongly wish to write “Wings” slash, you can still do so–and not entirely by putting on your goggles! University culture of the 1900s-1920s definitely allowed for a far wider range of sexual behavior than frats do now, etc. I don’t want to police what anybody can and does find in “Wings.” But I think we should acknowledge what we lost when capitalism decided that, for men, kisses could only be sexual. 


*You may recognize Clara Bow from that goddamned photo that keeps making the rounds of the internet captioned, “A sex ed class in the 1920s!” so everyone can hoot with derision at the shocked girls in their desks. The photo is actually a still from a movie, and the star, Ms. Bow, is front and center. 

Very much this.

Thanks Yahtzee for the film lesson! 🙂