In our Living and Learning session this week, we learnt all about how we respect ourselves and other people. We started by studying this quote:
‘No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite’ – Nelson Mandela.
We discussed what it meant and the children were brilliant at understanding the message Nelson Mandela was trying to get across – we also had an interesting discussion about apartheid. Ask your child what they understand by this quote.
Next, we thought about all the different types of discrimination that might be prevalent in society: racism, homophobia, sexism and ageism to name a few. After reflecting on how lucky we were to be part of a school were these things are not an issue, we discussed what society can do to overcome these terrible prejudices.
We learnt about the Stonewall campaign to kick homophobia out of sport – Rainbow Laces. We discussed that charities and other organisations can rasie awareness of discrimination or raise money to help victims. However, as individuals in Year 5, what can we do? We made this (brief) list of things we can do to overcome discrimination:
After, we each took a moment to reflect and decided on one thing we could do to be respectful of everyone in our community and help to overcome discrimination.
- ‘I will see if I can put some rainbow laces in my boots for my next football match.‘ Josh
- ‘I will make sure I don’t look at someone’s appearance but focus on their personality instead.’ Noorpreet
- ‘I will bake some cupcakes and decorate them with rainbow coloured icing. Then, I’ll sell them and donate my money to the Stonewall charity.’ Grace