The Gender of Kindergarten

The Gender of Kindergarten
by Raven Usher

Kindergarten [German] - English translation: garden of children.

Well, another school year has begun. I now have exactly one year until my empty nest syndrome advances from my heart and invades my house. With my middle child officially surpassing kindergarten with the beginning of first grade and my youngest perched upon the precipice of that first flight away from the nest, the ominous implications of kindergarten has engulfed my psyche.

Life before kindergarten is genderless. They are not “boys and girls.” They are just “children.” Prior to the precursor of the elementary school years the terms “boy” and “girl” are restricted to nursery decoration guides, child fashion and Happy Meal toys. They do not yet serve as social separators.

Pre-school kids do everything together. They eat together, nap together, play, get dirty and even bathe together. There is no division in which toys are acceptable for which child to play with. Barbie and G.I. Joe have equal unlimited access to all. Hot Wheels cars cruise freely through the Hello Kitty doll house neighborhood. On the playground, pig tails and crew cuts race across the same square of fenced yard sharing parts in the same flexi-rule game.
And then it happens... kindergarten!

With the onset of kindergarten comes the hammer fall of gender separation. It lands like the splitting crash of a Viking’s heavy sword and severs long standing cross-gendered childhood alliances. The game is no longer flexi-rule. The rules become hard and rigid. Any who dare challenge them are brow-beat into submission of the newly imposed gender barriers. Those who were once alike and inseparable are declared “different” and are torn apart.

“Boys over here, girls over there.” That command filled me with dread every time I heard it. I did not want to be “over here.” I wanted to be “over there.” All my friends were over there. The toys I wanted to play with were over there. The activities I wanted to be part of were over there. I did not know any of the kids over here. I did not like the games they played over here. I wanted to jump rope, not play kickball. Sweet Goddess, forgive me, but I freaking hate kickball to this day!

Six years old - that is when we start doing it to them. That is when the brain-washing begins. That is when the weeds of bias, prejudice and discrimination take root in our precious garden of children. Robert Fulghum wrote a poem that became a best-selling book. “All I ever really needed to know I learned in Kindergarten.” It is a good book. I burned my copy. (I had forgotten I did that.)

The lessons I took home from kindergarten are not as inspiring as Mr. Fulghum’s. The children who end up on the wrong sides of kindergarten’s gender barriers learn very different things: segregation, loss, forbiddance, separation, denial... cruelty. Segregation from the other children whose gender shares the same mental and emotional parameters. Loss of the freedom to express and explore themselves in a manner that feels right to them. The forbiddance to pursue their desires. Separation from the material objects and activities that draw their interests. The forcible denial of who they are inside. And the cruelty of others when their misplacement shows through.

In closing, let me cut the political alarmists off at the pass. No, I am not calling for a large scale overhaul of the kindergarten level educational system to institute sensitivity training for the teachers. At six years old, a child does not have the tools to determine any path in life, especially one that is as difficult as a gender transition. This year there are 3,816 kindergarten students comprising 173 classes in the 59 elementary schools of the Boise and Meridian school districts. The teachers who educate them should be aware that these kids are in the mix. They must not be discarded because they might choose a controversial path ten or twenty years down the road.
Blessed be.