Vignette: Colours are for everyone

Student A was a six-year-old first grader who came from Germany two years ago. He attended a teacher cooperative school in the city of Buenos Aires. That means that not only is a school but it is also a worker cooperative where all its workers take decisions through assemblies, vote and an administrative council. The cooperative structure as an organization and institution pervades the school's daily life, decisions, policies and classroom management. One of the school’s policies was and still is that students shouldn't bring pencil cases to school. Instead, learners are asked to take care of a box of materials as a group, cooperatively.

One day, student A was colouring when he noticed the pink pencil in his table was missing. As a result, he resorted to asking another classmate sitting in another table if they could lend him the pink coloured pencil. Next, student B told student A to wait since a girl was colouring with the pink pencil and another girl was waiting to use it. Then, Student B questioned student A why he wanted pink if that was a girl’s colour and told him that he should choose another pencil since boys did not like pink. The two other boys at the same table nodded, supporting this idea. Student A responded that he liked pink as much as he liked other colours and that he really needed pink to complete his work. Immediately, children started laughing or commenting on this as other students listened to the conversation. Student A kept waiting for the pencil. He did not cry or look sad. He looked puzzled and frustrated since he did not understand the problem involving the colour pink. 

After having listened to the discussion, the teacher approached the group and opened the debate by asking the whole class if there were colours for girls and colours for boys. They had mixed opinions. Some students said that girls liked pink. Some girls said that they didn’t like pink. Finally, this incident triggered a project proposed by the English teacher with activities such as “Show and Tell” moments, reading “The Day the Crayons Quit” by Oliver Jeffers,  watching ads and videos to discuss stereotypes, and creating a collaborative poster.

Silvana Accardo - Laura Herrera - Rosario Vintoñuke

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