Nipping bias in the bud - Some preschools are using a special program to teach their students, before prejudices take hold, to respect cultural, racial and religious diversity.

She loved her hairdo until the morning she walked into her preschool class at Temple Israel of Hollywood. "You look like a boy!" a few of the children blurted out. Violet was devastated. She couldn't wait for her hair to grow, and made sure to wear a pink headband every day.

It was the kind of painful lesson that many young children endure day in and day out, be it for having darker skin than other classmates, an accent that sounds different or a disability that provokes taunting. But in Violet's case, teachers confronted the incident head on, speaking with students about understanding and respecting differences and pointing out that some girls in the class have short hair and some boys have long hair.

Similar lessons on cultural, racial and religious diversity have been incorporated into Temple Israel's curriculum on an ongoing basis as part of the A World of Difference Institute, a program recently adopted by the school.

Sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League's Miller Early Childhood Initiative, it is one of the few anti-bias programs specifically for preschoolers, drawing on research showing that children begin to perceive differences and attach negative or positive values to them as early as age 3.

Now operating in 14 cities, the program trains teachers in strategies to confront prejudice and uses specially designed materials developed with the characters from "Sesame Street." The goal is to teach tolerance, respect and inclusion in a way that is geared to young minds.

"We really wanted to focus on building the right foundations," said Lindsay Friedman of A World of Difference Institute. "We know that biases and stereotyping are seeping in even at this age, but this is meant to be a preventive approach, not as much countering negative messages as building positive ones."

The program already has had an effect at Temple Israel, said nursery school principal Sherry Fredman.

"We used to devote the entire month of January to Martin Luther King, but this program has expanded our focus," she said. "We've broadened our curriculum and now it's an everyday part of life."

After Violet's classmates realized that they had hurt her feelings, several apologized to her, and a parent of one of the students who had made a remark wrote her a note.