Sunday mornings are best spent doing something one loves.
This Sunday, it was taking a session on bias for our young journalists.
Usually, participants enter the bias session sleepy eyed (Sunday morning and all that) and leave rather wide-eyed.
But on this particular Sunday, it was the kids who made my day.
Our children, dear peers, have far less bias and stereotyping in their heads than we do.
On the gender stereotyping questions, for the first time, the kids did NOT imagine that a nurse is necessarily female, nor that a person who has to leave office to pick up kids is necessarily a woman.
But it gets even better. One of the games in class is Bias Bingo - in which we read out common biases among children - like favouring a tall person as the group leader, etc. There were 24 entries, and the children had to mark their Bingo ticket for each bias that they have demonstrated. The top score in class was 10/24, and the average score was 7/24!
Let me explain the importance of this - these children have NOT felt that they would be friends with someone because they are a celebrity, or that they would think that a fat friend is lazy, or that a tall person should be the group leader, or is smarter than others, without any evidence to back that perception.
These 24 biases are well established global perception biases. Our usual scores are about 18-20, and the kids end this game with sheepish grins, realising how much bias they demonstrate in their daily lives.
This is the first time we have experienced such a low level of inherent bias.
I think, in a very small way, I witnessed something big yesterday.
