To feel sorry for the teacher who was secretly recorded?

[Forster2018]

Link to article here:

Agree

If someone thinks they are a cat THEY ARE mentally unwell, and the people that go along with it are to blame.
It may not be nice to hear after everyone affirms you and says of course you're a cat, but it's the truth that they are not.

It's not offensive to acknowledge that some people have mental health issues. Many people, in fact. Stigma will not be reduced by pretending these issues don't exist.

Are you suggesting someone who believes they are a cat is completely mentally sound?

The argued very well and calmly. Underlining the teacher's, a trained professional, inability to do so.

It was extremely heartening. Anyone thinking that the language used was "vile" or "derogatory" is speaking from a position of already established bias.

I know of a school where teachers, one in particular, were filmed because they weren’t actually teaching.
The particular year group were in their final gcse year. The teacher spent most of her time googling or being chatted up by a 6th former who tended to just wonder in.
The schools response was to ban phones in class and hand out detentions not sack the teacher.

No one would have believed them if it wasn’t filmed.
If teachers are doing their job there would be no need for recording them.

In this instance the teacher was being ridiculous and deserves to be called out. However I don’t think the recording should have been posted online, it should have only been shown to senior members of staff. If the matter is dealt with properly in house then alls good. If not then it should be sent to Ofsted.

So you don’t ever let him run around the garden roaring like a dinosaur?

I personally find that cruel.

I do not allow dinosaurs into the classroom but I would have absolutely no issue with them running around roaring at break times as they need that outlet and they aren’t doing anything wrong.

They’re not about to get surgery to turn themselves into a dinosaur but running around roaring in their free time makes them feel good and why should anyone stop that?

There’s a balance.
Yes they need to fit into society but it doesn’t mean they can’t be themselves when they’re in their safe space around the people they trust.

If telling someone they are crazy to believe they’re a cat is bullying then I give up now. Imagine being so susceptible to being offended all the time. It is not ableism. What a terribly sad way to live your life.

I'm impressed these girls had the foresight to film it. There was no actual video just sound so they weren't invading privacy and the appalling behaviour by the teacher would never have been believed if they hadn't captured it.
If you genuinely believe you are a cat despite all evidence to the contrary you do need to see a medical professional and trying to convince children that its normal is indoctrination.

This 100%.

Even on this thread the two 13 year old girls are being smeared as bullies with not a scrap of evidence to support that view plus a poster saying 'what if they were racist' which comes across as an attempt at mudslinging because it obviously drives the conversation in a certain direction. Probably outright denials will come later when the ground has been prepared with fantasies about what the girls might have done in an alternate reality. That's with the teacher caught bang to rights - forget about the gender twaddle, it's a red herring and extremist, niche and controversial as the teacher's views may be, what matters here is that she was threatening the girls and must lose her job for it. But we have to waste energy on the manufactured culture war coming from certain parts of the self-ID left because it is its proponents defending an outright bully and using it to deflect from the issue.

Regardless of whether the teacher was right or wrong (I disagree with her views 100%) and had this been about another topic where there were different opinions say for example fox hunting or migration as a teacher you allow different views. The whole point of education is not to shut down other views so in terms of the teacher's skills I would say they were lacking.

No they’re obviously not of sound mind so telling someone who has obvious MH issues or SN that they belong in an asylum (in front of an entire class and whilst being recorded) is despicable behaviour.

Only on MN would language like that be acceptable.

They denied saying that though. So why do you assume they did?

That was the teacher’s interpretation

Where does it end? Can we affirm that a teenager, a grown adult is a cat?

What if the pilot of your airplane or the surgeon operating on your body affirms that he/she is also a cat?

What if an airline steward/anaestheticist affirms they are a dog? Or a mouse?

The fact that teachers do it "because we have a mortgage to pay" is even worse!

He is allowed to PLAY at being a dinosaur. But he knows he’s not one. That’s the difference. It’s not a “persona” and should not be validated as such. It’s a game.

Agree with this.

This teacher is, in my opinion, very confident in the blatant lies they're telling, very confident in their right to tell others what they may or may not believe in, and very confident that biology and science can be thrown out of the window in favour of ideology and religious like beliefs.

I cant imagine this in isolation. This is a whole-school, possibly whole-education system, problem.

There are enough videos on you tube and tiktok of teachers laying down the law about their beliefs, and openly declaring that they teach kids in their care all about their personal lives, including sexual partners. It's deeply disturbing that this is now "normal" in some schools or locations.

I don't think these girls would have been believed without evidence. They collected the evidence because clearly they thought the same.

Without evidence, there's no case, is there? I don't think it's right to toss one teacher onto the pyre. I think the whole system is rotten and rules need to be created and enforced to stop ideological beliefs systems overruling facts in our education.

I can't vote on this. I've worked various different roles in schools and I know how tough it is. However I'm also the parent of kids who might be described as "gender non conforming" and I do not think they need to be medicalised for what is essentially a reaction to the society around them, mired in stereotypes.

The teacher was out of her depth and handled the situation badly. Her own beliefs should not impede impartial lesson delivery. However the guidance is lacking and schools are allowing quasi religious lobby groups to influence or deliver lesson plans. In that sense she was probably in an extremely difficult position, delivering a high stakes lesson she couldn't understand. Plus right now, kids are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the topic.

Of course she didn't deserve recording and her name getting out there. She should never have been asked to deliver that material full stop.

However it is fully understandable that the kids didn't go through the correct complaints channel. From their POV, the school have allowed this deeply unscientific material in. The management cannot be trusted. Remember what a huge responsibility teaching children actually is. Remember the huge power imbalance.

The actions of these kids has to be understood in the context of 2023. Both institutions of power and popular culture dismisses, threatens, slurs and shames people like them who believe in reality. They understood that this might be their only way of getting heard. Use of social media to bypass power happens all over the world where people are oppressed.

This has nothing to do with attacking women. But OF COURSE women are usually the collateral damage, because they are in all things trans rights activism.... It has strayed so far beyond the original remit of protecting actual transexuals that it is essentially a men's rights movement.

Where did you get this from? Did the girls say this? How do you know?

The girls referred to another pupil as crazy and mentally unwell. She told them off for upsetting the other pupil.

The girls then said that you can’t identify as a different gender, if you have a willy you’re a boy etc. Here, the girls are conflating sex and gender. The teacher correctly says that sex and gender are not the same thing and that you can identify as a different gender to your sex.

The girls say that identifying as a different gender to your sex is weird. This needs challenging. Gender reassignment is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act.

The teacher is incorrect about the meaning of intersex, and incorrectly talks about homophobia. It’s not a good teacher-pupil interaction.

But if pupils in a class are referring to other pupils in the class as crazy, mentally unwell and weird, that needs challenging.

Doxing this teacher (which the girls did themselves on tiktok) and the deluge of abuse that has been unleashed on this school and teacher as a result are utterly horrifying and totally out of proportion to what was said in the recording.

"SN that they belong in an asylum (in front of an entire class and whilst being recorded) is despicable behaviour."

Who says they said this? In front of an entire class?

the recording would have been just about forgivable to use as a challenge to the school, with a possible implied threat of leaking it further, but it wasn't acceptable to post it online.

DS issues started with rising an issue with relevant support team in school and then getting punished and raising still in school wider as a whistle blower.

School leadership have had little problem lying to us and council and seemingly no shame when caught out.

I have no idea what they tried prior to this - or what they saw others trying to get issue sorted - so don't feel it is fair to judge this action till there is more information.

"Only on MN would language like that be acceptable."

Really not only on Mumsnet.

The children explicitly denied the asylum point in the audio. It appears only to be the teacher that made that leap

Yep.

Anyone who fails to see it through this lens, needs a word with themselves.

Only on mumsnet could two 13 year old girls being openly threatened and bullied by their teacher become the real villains.