Radio Netherlands reports that Noordhoff, the country's largest publisher of school textbooks, is planning to feature gay and lesbian couples in the assignments, questions and examples it uses in its teaching material.
Radio Netherlands:
In a radio interview, the firm's publishing director Frans Grijzenhout explained that while children have been taught about homosexuality in subjects such as biology and history for some time, the family situations presented in general teaching materials have always focused on mothers and fathers. He says it could now soon be same-sex couples doing the shopping in the examples presented to arithmetic pupils.
Mr Grijzenhout compares the development to the introduction of people from different ethnic backgrounds in school textbooks. The publisher argues that it is very important for school materials to reflect all aspects of Dutch society and to present homosexuality to children in a way that is natural and recognisable.
It will be a few years before gay and lesbian couples make their print debut, but they will be introduced more quickly in electronic material. The publisher notes that while teaching materials in the Netherlands are subject to government supervision, publishers have a relatively high degree of freedom in determining the content of their books.
The German Press Agency (DPA) (via the Deccan Herald) quoted Frans Grijzenhout, director of the Noordhof Uitgeverij publishing house as saying: "At the moment schoolbooks do not reflect life here."
"When a textbook deals with a family going on holiday, for example, the accompanying drawing will show a father, a mother and children. But there are other types of families."
DPA also reported:
In future, Noordhof's books will reflect the existence of same-sex parents in Holland. The country's schoolbooks already deal with Holland's multicultural society with depictions of Muslim girls wearing headscarves, says Grijzenhout. "In the same way we intend to bring homosexuality to children's attention."
Holland's association for the Integration of homosexuals has welcomed the move. It says the "hetero-normality in schoolbooks" should have been done away with long ago. For a long time the association has been observing a "decline in tolerance towards homosexuals" in Holland.
Homosexuality has a high profile in Holland but the number of attacks on gay men and women is on the rise. Even in Amsterdam homosexual couples have reported they feel less safe than in the past.
Many of the attackers are young men with Muslim immigrant backgrounds. The association for the Integration of Homosexuals says that makes it all the more important for schoolbooks to "show male couples and female couples as completely normal."
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I find this extremely difficult to tolerate in a country which is trying to be forward thinking. I wonder if any Dutch people have gone to the Middle East and beaten up people with head scarfs on....?
I will definitely get these school books for my little nieces and nephews.
how cute!!!!
I don't know whether this is a really positive move, or should we be rather waiting for the society to teach the culture first than to lay everything down already in print.
Nonetheless, this wouldn't work in my country for sure. Needless to ask why.
Doesn't this barbaric religion attack anything that moves faster than them?
The answer to your question is that the Dutch know how to think for themselves, whereas.......
I honestly believe that Asia and the Americas will definitely be slow in trying to discuss this because it's considered taboo should people find out.
It's hard enough to get acceptance for the public to accept homosexuality. Having it taught in schools will be a bigger challenge.
In the US it would be independent in regards to each area's education board. In Asia, with all of it being federalised, we would have to have an entire nation open to the idea.
My country is being destroyed from the inside by all the muslim arab immigrants who destroy our principles!!!!!!
Muslim men in holland roam the streets, vandalize everything in sight - they destroy bus stops, graffiti trains and walls, harass bus drivers - throw bricks through car windows - trick teenage girls into prostitution (seriously WTF) and WORST OF ALL they terrorize homosexuals and jews!
In textbooks in my country you only see names like 'mohammed' and 'fatima' and 'abdullah' WTF i REALLY hope this new thing will work for the better :(
De Groeten, :) (lol dutch for regards ;)
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/ezra_levant/2010/10/08/15630946.html
No worries, not everyone in Asia is brainwashed...some of us see right through our politicians who think they're in control ;-)
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