Some of the things that come out of seven-year-olds’ mouths are shocking.
“Men are better at being in charge,” a small girl with a ponytail suggests.
“Boys are cleverer because they get into president easily, don’t they?” declares a solid-looking little boy.
These two children are part of a social experiment carried out for the BBC. In a documentary called No More Boys And Girls: Can Our Kids Go Gender Free?, a Year Three class on the Isle of Wight is turned gender-neutral for six weeks.
Books featuring princesses and superheroes are cleared from the classroom. Signs saying “girls are strong” and “boys are sensitive” go up on the walls. The teacher is told to stop calling the girls “sweet pea” and the boys “mate”. The toilets become unisex. Parents are told to bag up their kids’ toy guns and tiaras.
Before the experiment begins, the children are tested on behaviour and psychological traits, to see what differences exist between the genders.
It’s then that some shocking 1950s attitudes are exposed. Kids of both genders see boys as being stronger, smarter and more successful, while girls are good at “being pretty”. All the girls except one say they think boys are “better” than them.
The aim of the experiment is to reduce the differences between the boys and girls in the class in the space of six weeks.