Diversity

[Kmahdi09]

Hi. My name is Kenia. I am African American. I want to start off by saying how excellent your program is. It is very effective and easy to use. I have only one complaint. It is not as diverse as it should be. I think it is very important, psychologically as well as statistically, to have more faces of color. I personally would like to see more black people; whether they're from America, Africa, Europe, Australia, the islands or wherever.

If there is any way I can contribute please feel free to contact me. I would love to assist any way I can.

[Mandabplus3]

In little musician there is a large number of different cultures represented, so many that I often end up discussing cultures with my kids. Possibly in little reader the count is more skewed to white...I havnt really ever counted but since it is clearly important to you, I would recommend you change out some of the images. It is recommended that we change out the pictures of family to include our child's own family photographs and this is a great place to start. It isn't difficult to do.
In a multicultural world it is important to represent all cultures but personally I don't think equally is the key. More in quantity percentage with the majority of users so that the product remains relevant to the children. Perhaps a future update could include more of certain races. It's a great to suggest it here to ensure it is considered. Thanks.

[akalori]

I think it is a great point.  I have seen Asian faces but not faces that would be considered "black."  It is good for babies/children to be able to identify with the characters in the software including babies with darker skin.  Also it is good for all babies to see "black faces" in early learning materials to offset any developing prejudice regarding intellect and skin color.  I hate to admit it but this is a big issue in America.  Even if you raise your kids to be color blind to race, at school or on the playground, they will eventually get a subtle message that it is superior to be white.  The world would be a better place if people had equal access to opportunity based on their own merits.  We would have more people in positions of power because of their skill not their connections.  We would have less disenfranchised people; maybe even less war.  People might believe that one little change won't make a difference but "a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step."  The accumulation of lots of tiny little changes could cause a cultural shift towards equality.

Lori

[MamaOfWill]

I know this doesn't quite "fix things" but our Little Reader country course has lots of diversity!

[lzp11]

I think this is a really important point to raise and I do agree.  I wish I'd made the point myself some years back! We are a mixed race Afro-Caribbean / white UK family and I did notice the lack of diversity as you mention. I had to add a lot of images but it was time consuming.

Loving the country course though - thanks to mamaofwill and the team :-) !!

[Tamsyn]

I think the rich diversity my kids have seen on-screen has really helped them.  We moved from a predominantly white community to Southern California where there is a very rich diversity of people.  I wondered how my kids would respond, if at all, and they haven't batted an eye, asked about color, or anything.  It was a major victory for us.  Phew!  I remember feeling shocked as a kid the first time I saw a black person, so I'm glad they didn't have the same experience.  Hey, we didn't have TV and it wasn't really something my parents thought to tell me about.  They handled it well that evening, it was just the initial surprise that could have been avoided.  I'm loving the racial diversity in our new area. 

[Corinne2011]

Kmahdi09 , I agree with you. And the people I've shared the program with (all different races) have actually commented as well about the lack of diversity. I don't know if the animations have been updated already or not.  But it would be really nice to see a little brown girl in the hand clapping portion of Little Musician or a black man playing the guitar, or in Little Reader to see a black boy jump or run once in a while.  Just a few clips would be greatly appreciated.
What I do is add pictures and (when I can find it or film it myself) video to the lessons but its time consuming and I tend to lose it all when updating LR software.  (That's why I don't know if there have been any changes because I'm too afraid to update! )
Other than the glaring lack of diversity I absolutely LOVE all the programs (and continue to recommend them to everyone I know).  So much better than cards alone. Good luck in your EL journey!

[MamaOfWill]

I must say, the animations in Little Reader and Little Musician being all white is not something I see as a diversity problem because we've always thought of them as "the brill kids family" bothers, sister, father, mother etc. and having the same characters shown over and over gives a feeling of familiarity, which is something I like in any product.  There are a few non-white pictures, but the video clips are indeed all white kids.  As far as I know, most of the children in the clips and photos are from the original BrillKids users, not specifically chosen because they are white, but coincidentally so.  Again, I also like that we see the same kids repeatedly, I know many of their names and call them by their names when we're watching the lessons.

Fortunately, the media is not 100% white, one of the stories have a black boy animation and there are images of Asians and Africans here and there.  The black boy animation was new with version 3 which gives me the impression that the BK team are working (ever so slowly) towards including greater diversity.  Viewing the product as a whole, it's really only the body parts and action categories that have this diversity issue, this is 30% of the basic course and not at all included in the additional packs, so about 20% over all.  What I'm trying to say is that 80% of the BrillKids media do not include people at all, so maybe conciser deleting the categories you dislike and rebuilding a course with what's left, you could even include some stuff from the library to fill up the 20% gap.

I've been searching the internet for images quite a bit over the last 2 years and I've found that for any vocabulary item I search, I'm more likely to find white people in the pictures unless I specifically search for "a black boy flying a kite" for instance.  This might have to do with world marketing etc, but again, this should be kept in mind when looking at the media used in the BK products, white pictures are just more readily available.  (I'm not saying this is how it should be, I'm saying this is how it is.)

I'm 100% with you when you talk about diversity in the BK programs, but something else to keep in mind is that black people can look very different depending on where in the world they come from, and adding diversity is by all means not limited to adding black people.  I think the BrillKids team will have a very tough time if they didn't want anybody to feel left out. 

Another point that I want to make is that English, Spanish and French, has it's origins in Europe.  To me it wasn't at all strange to see white faces that goes along with my English curriculum.  Then when I translated it all to Afrikaans, I added some South African images here and there, but when it came to my Zulu curriculum, it felt so strange to have these majority white images and videos go along with my Zulu words, but then I left it as is, because it's as you say, adding images and videos is very time consuming.  Again, with the Chinese curriculum, I was expecting to see Chinese children, but to my disappointment it was more or less the same images from the English curriculum.  Knowing that replacing the white images with Chinese ones would have cost time and money, I can understand why this was not done and I would rather have a product with the original white pictures than having no product at all.

This is a very good point to raise and I'm sure BK will work on this some time in the future, but I like that their main focus at this time is adding more language packages and don't really mind them using the same images over and over, somehow this familiarity makes the subsequent courses more enjoyable and the meanings of words clearer to my boy.

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