I read an article recently about Egalia, a Swedish preschool that refuses to use gender identifiers when referring to the children enrolled in their program. Instead, children are referred to as "friend" and visitors, such as a firefighter who recently visited as part of a series on careers, are referred to by the made-up pronoun, "hen", instead of the Swedish "han" and "hon" (the equivalent of "he" and "she" in English).
On first thought, I found it kinda weird, but not necessarily a bad idea. The underlying theory is the children are released from the standards and expectations placed on them by society because of their gender. Girls are pretty and boys are strong. Girls wear dresses and boys wear pants. Girls play with dolls and boys play with trucks. These rules do not apply to children at Egalia preschool.
