The importance of queer education to Gen Alpha Kids!
Undoubtedly, Gen alpha remains the most transformative generation ever, especially with all the changes that have been taking place around the world since 2010 and the kids that are born after 2012 see the new normal as the real world, unlike Gen Z and Millennials who have experienced and witnessed way too many changes in the meantime. Strictly speaking, to most Gen alpha kids, the queer community became part of the present societal scenario. But, it completely depends on the people from earlier generations to impart essential queer knowledge in the minds of Gen alpha kids. And it's not that complex to make them understand, unlike boomers.
Gen alpha is the fastest learning generation and the kids are quite adaptive and can easily get along with changes but for that, they must be aware of the importance of identities and orientations in current society. It is a must because they shouldn't turn out to be judgmental, confined, restrictive, or narrow-minded which completely contradicts the current scenario around. Unlike our parents and grandparents, our kids and grandkids shouldn't face confusion in recognizing people from diverse orientations and identities and most importantly, they should open up themselves to various possibilities in terms of acceptance.
It doesn't imply the acceptance of others but also implies self-acceptance and being clear about one's personality from the childhood stage so that they won't face any kind of physical and psychological hurdles in the future. Kids are like blank pages and they grow up filling those pages with the lessons taught by parents, guardians, teachers, and elders respectively. They can grasp anything easily including homophobic and queerphobic attitudes. Hence, it is in the hands of the people who bring them up, who should consider the factor of inclusivity and normality regarding the queer people around to secure the future as the best place to live in.
It takes a few more years to include the queer education and sex education elements in the curriculum of schools so that teachers can discuss those topics without any hesitation but instead of waiting for others to teach your alpha kids, you must take initiation to make them understand the basic terminology of the queer community and how queer must be treated and recognized. Who knows one day your gen alpha may come out as a queer person? There's always a chance and it is good to see a kid coming out proud without hesitation of expressing one's feelings and suppressing one's emotions.
It is substantial to regulate the current world scenario with utmost normality instead of making a kid feel different and difficult to understand queer people, their behavioural patterns and their lifestyle choices. And in this modern era, parents have become quite forward-minded and some of them even appreciate same-sex love, genderless choices, genderfluid clothing and gender-neutral behaviour. So, if you remain that old-school parent who doesn't like to impart queer knowledge in the minds of your alpha kids, they surely feel left-out, odd, backward and even awkward when the other alpha kids speak about queer people with utmost inclusivity and normality. Don't you think your kid will be treated differently from other kids?
We have experienced various changes during the course time from the millennial era and then came gen z where they had to learn after some time to get along with the changes but, in the context of gen alpha, changes became transformations and are treated as new normal scenes. Hence, they need to comprehend, follow and perceive everything about queer community right from a significantly young age so that they no more see queer people as different. Because of that, they no more see themselves as different when they get to feel the changes in their personalities. It is crucial for their mental health indeed because no issues will be elevated if everything can be seen with clarity instead of confusion.
Parents from western countries have taken their initiations in imbibing queer knowledge in their gen alpha kids' minds and the recent pride month witnessed many kids who took active participation in pride parades. This shows everything that how normal the modern era is turning out to be by treating the queer community as the new normal with all the love and respect. So, don't you think it is important to teach the basic queer terminology?
