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This year, the Respectful Relationships curriculum was rolled out in Victorian schools.
As part of it, children are taught to think critically about traditional fairy tales by looking at the gender roles they contain.
But not everyone likes the idea. When we asked our readers to give their thoughts, many felt that fairy tales should be left alone:
"They are cliched romantic tales for children, meant to be taken as fantasy."
"If we start mucking around and changing stories to make them politically correct we will destroy the joy of reading."
"PC gone mad. How bout the Government concentrate on real things, not damn fairy tales."
"Give us a break. They are beautiful fairy tales. Let kids be kids and have their childhood memories."
What exactly does the Respectful Relationships curriculum teach?
The curriculum was devised to address gender-based violence.
According to the teaching materials, gender norms "influence beliefs about how girls and boys should act, speak, dress and express themselves", and are often "reinforced through popular television shows and story books".
"Analyses of popular books have found that central characters are more likely to be male, female characters are more often in nurturing roles, and occupations are gender stereotyped," the teaching materials state.
To get primary school children thinking about this, the program gets them to look at traditional fairy tales and identify their "gendered messages".
Students are asked to take on the role of a "fairy tale detective" and consider, for instance, what would happen if the characters swapped roles — "if the girl had the sword and the boy waited for her to rescue him".
They are then asked to look at more modern fairy tales to see how they compare.
If you're curious, the teaching resources are all available online.
Why are traditional fairy tales seen as sexist?
Here are just a few sexist tropes as identified by Dr Lauren Rosewarne, a social studies expert at the University of Melbourne:
- women being saved by men
- women's value being attached to how beautiful they are
- old women being witches
"Fairytales have long been in the crosshairs of feminists who have considered the presentations to reiterate antiquated stereotypes," Dr Rosewarne said.
Is this teaching program an example of political correctness?
Dr Rosewarne doesn't think so.
"I see this as being about a culture that has become savvy about identifying where stifling gender roles come from and how they get reinforced by our culture," she said.
"It's about thinking critically about material we too often dismiss as 'just entertainment' or 'just children's stories'."
Dr Matthew Beard, from the Ethics Centre, says there's a difference between sanitising texts and critically looking at them.
"If children are being told, 'This story is bad, stop enjoying it,' then that's a problem, there's a genuine reason why parents would be concerned," he said.
But he says simply thinking critically about a story doesn't stop you from enjoying it.
"We can revel in the excitement of a prince that's fighting a dragon but also think, 'Hmm, I wonder why it had to be a man?'," he said.
"I don't think criticism or reflection is the enemy of entertainment."
Are we breaking with tradition?
Dr Rosewarne says no, because what we think of as "traditional" fairy tales are actually recent inventions anyway.
"The fairy tales so common in storybooks and cartoons are actually already heavily sanitised versions of the stories original circulated by the Grimm brothers," she said.
Dr Beard also notes that the nastier aspects of fairy tales have already been washed out.
"The little mermaid in the Hans Christian Andersen version kills herself at the end because she doesn't actually find true love," he said.
A couple years ago, we took a closer look at the surprisingly dark and gruesome stories behind Disney's fairy tales.
Aren't fairy tales supposed to be all about teaching values in the first place?
Dr Beard says they are, and that looking at gender stereotypes adds another dimension to this.
"Fairy stories have always been about teaching moral lessons, that's the entire purpose of these morality tales," he said.
"They're meant to teach about courage, they're meant to teach about humility, or patience."
Dr Rosewarne says fairy tales and folk stories should adapt over time to reflect changes in our culture.
"Holding tight to some notion of 'tradition' isn't about authenticity but rather about rigid adherence to conservative values that have, historically, limited women," she said.
She points to Frozen and Tangled as examples of modern fairy tales that challenged gender stereotypes and were still popular with children.
Topics: schools, popular-culture, books-literature, arts-and-entertainment, vic