To feel sorry for the teacher who was secretly recorded?

[Forster2018]

Link to article here:

I see no problem with it TBH, obviously as long as it's not in toilets and changing rooms.
I think the activist teachers would have more to lose than the kids.
If they're saying nothing wrong, why the worry?
It would protect both teachers and students from false accusations.

'if you don't like it, you need to go to a different school' is a veiled threat.

This teacher - senior and experienced - is in a position of authority. She's abused that, as the school's response shows pretty clearly.

You don’t know what was said before hand. The teacher is unreliable in their interpretation of what was said

As shown by the asylum part

The choice of when to start recording was with the pupil. We don't know what happened before that point whether on the day in question or previously. The only way to consider how the situation got to that point is informed speculation.

I'm going with the idea that the pupil being told off and 'cat girl' had previous interactions and the teacher was at the end of their tether.

Both parties need a thorough debrief with senior staff.

Nothing in that video justifies either expulsion of pupils or dismissal of teachers.

Well this is better than some responses here.

Nothing in that video justifies either expulsion of pupils or dismissal of teachers.

I agree with that.

I'm not sure the fact that it's said a lot makes it ok.

When you hear her saying it it sounds incredibly threatening and unpleasant.

I grew up with a friend whose dad threatened her constantly about bit having a home to come back to if she did xyz or went to y. The number of times he said, "if you don't like it you can get out" and she started to worry that it may be true one day. She was not a happy person, she lacked that sense of stability and the knowledge that her access to hone was unconditional.

I don't think children, especially those who may have difficult home lives, be in temporary accomodation like hotels and bedsits, or in foster care etc should have the threat of school being somewhere that can be taken away from at the drop of a hat bandied about all the time.

Maybe what this is exposing all of us to is just how un child centred, brutal and non nurturing the majority of school environments are. Maybe I've been naïve and foolish to think that teachers, in the main, understand children's developmental stages and emotional needs and behave accordingly.

Would you have believed it if you hadn't heard it? On the feminism boards we're told all the time that these things aren't happening, when they obviously are.

I don't necessarily agree they should have posted it online, I can see why they did though.

I've just listened to the full recording on tiktok and I'm absolutely furious. The teacher is an irresponsible idiot. I'm livid. It's terrifying that teachers like her are in our schools polluting our kids with propaganda. How fucking dare she shout at those students and tell
them to go to another school
for expressing a perfectly valid, factually accurate, sensible and rational point which is shared by the vast majority of the UK?
The teacher needs to be sacked. I don't say that lightly. I love teachers and they do a fucking difficult job. But she shouldn't be teaching. Just awful.

Yes, well, the school are professionals and have experience of dealing with behaviour and procedure etc. So hopefully they understand that a teacher shouldn't be spreading disinformation, or partisan political ideology, or bullying children in her care.

What PRUs?

Yes, but it’s because of people swallowing Stonewall’s campaigning position that this came about.

the PC of GR in the Eq Act gives someone the right not to suffer unlawful discrimination on the grounds of GA. Somewhere along the line that morphed into having to accept that also meant they changed sex and could use the facilities intended for the opposite sex.

A man with the PC of GR is still a man and therefore should not be in women’s facilities. The Eq Act does not give that right. Stonewall has done a blinding job on the institutions of this country meaning we now have de facto self ID despite that not being in current legislation

Bullying is not acceptable, but spoiled children who are never told no by teachers or parents , even when they’re insisting others go along with obvious falsehoods are more likely to be bullied and that is simply factual.

A child peddling falsehood, such as claiming they are a cat, who is then also backed up by the teacher, is even more likely to be bullied.

A teacher who openly favours a lying child over truthful children who object has lost their moral authority to correct them if they say something that is not entirely polite.

Even the thing with possibly upsetting another child isn't as simple as it seems. If you can't state something true, like you cannot, as a human, be a cat ( and it often is something as simple as this that causes the upset) because you will offend someone that is not a good place to be in. We need to be able to speak truth even if some people disagree with it. Obviously, name-calling is wrong but I'm not clear if they called an actual person crazy or just the idea of catgender itself.

Saying to a pupil that if their values (people who identify as a different gender are weird) don’t align with the school values then they perhaps should find another school is one of those things said quite regularly in schools. E.g. if you disagree with school uniform, feel free to find another school without one, because we are going to continue to enforce it.

A lack of belief in wearing school uniform is not a PC. A belief that sex is binary and immutable is. It’s not lawful to exclude someone on the basis that they have a PC.

you’re one of the posters I was referring to earlier, that will defend teachers even where their conduct is clearly indefensible, at all costs.

Agree. I already said upthread I think it’s time we see exactly what’s going on in schools. I bet it would be extremely eye opening.

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

I very very much doubt the third student believes they are a cat.
Attention seeking bollocks.

I've just listened to the recording again.

I don't think it is clear whether the child who claims to identify as a cat is actually present or not.

But on the assumption that they are talking about a particular individual, that makes the teacher's response even more dreadful.

If you listen to the end of the recording, the student says, "All I said was, how can you identify as a cat when you're clearly a girl."

Even if they are talking to an individual, that is a fair question.

If the girl who thinks she is a cat was present and was upset, the teacher should have dealt with the situation by saying something like, "Everyone has different beliefs about their identity. Some people believe they identify as the sex they were born as. Some people believe they identify as the opposite sex to the one they were born with. Some people believe they identify as neither male nor female and some people believe they identify as something other than human. Some people don't believe in gender or believe they identify as anything at all. This can be a sensitive topic for discussion and it's absolutely fine to discuss ideas in this classroom, and to state our opinions in a respectful way. But it is not OK to personally attack others who have a different identity or a different opinion, and so I would like you to apologise to Fluffy before we move on with the discussion."

Instead the teacher launched into a polemic where they audibly lost control of the class and branded two teenagers despicable for saying that a girl cannot be a cat.

And as a PP said, if a child believes they identify as a cat, the appropriate response to that, concurrently with dealing with any bullying from other children, is to initiate some sort of mental health checkup. Not to tell the child that their identity is valid and agree to use miaow pronouns from now on. Because that child is going to grow up, and they are going to have to live in the real world, and they are going to have to get some sort of a job if they want a roof over their head and food to eat, and in that world, it is not ever going to be OK to be a cat.

If this nonsense isn't nipped in the bud, Fluffy's parents are going to find themselves still responsible for feeding, clothing and housing their 40 year old, socially outcast, unemployable catchild, and wondering what the hell happens when they die or get too old to parent anymore, but their child isn't recognised as having a genuine disability which would mean social services had a duty of care towards them.

Either that or it's an attention seeking fad which they grow out of within six months, making it even more absurd to try and force other students to respect it, but because the supposed adults let it go on for so long the child will have no friends and will never shake off their reputation for being the crazy nutter who identified as a cat for a while.

I don't feel sorry for them at all. I taught secondary for almost 25 years and would never have spoken to a student like that. These ridiculous lies to children about all these genders should stop and children be taught there are 2 sexes male and female and occasionally an intersex child is born. People can claim to be whatever gender they like but they are still either male and female sex as they were born. You can't add or deduct chromosomes.

As with all beliefs you can present your point of view but you cannot expect everyone to accept it.
There are still people who believe in religious miracles, no amount of scientific evidence will sway them. What shouldn’t be happening is the suppression of critical thought in schools. There is a heavy bias towards gender ideologies that instead of introducing a calm fact based discussion where the facts can be presented, the gender police cancel debate.
This teacher had obviously presented gender information to a group of young people. The fact they were confusing gender and sex is down to her lack of clarity. Instead of shutting them down she should have discussed what they understood from the lesson and addressed their misconceptions.
Pressing her own agenda was wrong. Presenting the facts and allowing them to form their own opinion is all she should be doing. The fact they were confused is down to the teacher, not the girls.

Most of us do not question our identity so struggle to understand how someone wants to identify as something they are not. To us it is weird.
I don’t believe that people are born in the wrong body, I believe that body dysmorphia is an increasing problem not just with gender. The massive increase in cosmetic surgery, which came into existence to treat WW1 soldiers who had been hideously disfigured, is now used to hideously disfigure perfectly normal healthy individuals.

Worded better than I have.

Its the injustice problem. People facing injustice frequently resort to tactics that are 'not acceptable' because they lack power within the system itself.

The entire dynamic is the Vulnerable against The Establishment.

i can’t imagine that the children will be punished in any way. They have a cast iron public interest defence in recording someone in a position of authority abusing their power. ‘School rules’ do not trump the exceptions made for covert recording laid out in RIPA and I expect any attempt by the school to punish the pupils will be met with a very robust (and no doubt well crowdfunded) legal response.

It looks like from pp the school is rightly addressing the issue with the teacher.

I suspect the advice given to the students ie get training or leaving if not matching the values is more appropriate to them than the girls

I'm another one who would not object to recording in schools (except toilets and changing rooms).

It would help to tackle bullying for one. And help keep teachers from teaching gender ideology as fact.

I can't believe that in 2023 a adult educator is actually telling children that human beings can take a feline form.

I've looked, and AFAIK the last time authorities in the UK took seriously the idea that humans could shapeshift was during the witch trials of the seventeenth century.

What the hell happened?