Lessons in equality start early

STOCKHOLM - At a preschool in Stockholm's Old Town, the teachers avoid the pronouns "him" and "her," instead calling their 115 toddlers "friends". Masculine and feminine references are taboo, often replaced by the pronoun "hen," an artificial and genderless word that most Swedes avoid but is popular in some gay and feminist circles.

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In the library, there are few classic fairy tales, like "Cinderella" or "Snow White," with their male and female stereotypes, but there are many stories that deal with single parents, adopted children or same-sex couples.

Girls are not urged to play with toy kitchens, and blocks are not considered toys for boys. When boys hurt themselves, teachers are taught to give them as much comforting as they would girls. Everyone gets to play with dolls.

Sweden is renowned for an egalitarian mind-set. But this taxpayer-financed preschool, known as the Nicolaigarden for a saint whose chapel was once in the building that houses it, is perhaps one of the more compelling examples of the country's efforts to blur gender lines.

What the children are taught, said Malin Engleson, an art gallery employee, as she fetched her daughter from school, "shows that girls can cry, but boys too."

"That's why we chose it," she said. "It's so important to start at an early age."

The model has been so successful that two years ago three of its teachers opened an offshoot, which now has almost 40 children. That school, named Egalia to suggest equality, is in the Sodermalm neighborhood.

What has become a passionate undertaking for its teachers began with a nudge from Swedish legislators, who in 1998 passed a bill requiring that schools assure equal opportunities for girls and boys.

A persistent critic has been Tanja Bergkvist, a mathematician at Uppsala University whose blog consistently attacks Sweden's "gender madness." In an article for the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, she questioned whether children were not being "brainwashed by our parents already at the age of 3 months." On outings, she mocked, "what do they do when a girl is picking flowers, while a boy collects rocks?"

Such criticism, said Carl-Johan Norrman, 36, who has worked at Nicolaigarden for 18 months, "starts from misconceptions: we want to turn little boys into little girls. It's a whispering game that snowballs."

At Stockholm's town hall, the moderate-conservative government supports the gender policy. "The important thing is that children, regardless of their sex, have the same opportunities," said Lotta Edholm, the deputy mayor responsible for schools. "It's a question of freedom."

On the other hand, she said, parents will always play a larger role in children's development than day care or school.

"Preschool is a couple of hours a day," said Ms. Edholm. "Most of the time, children are with their parents, and the values parents impart to their children tend to be the values they adopt."

The New York Times