To feel sorry for the teacher who was secretly recorded?

[Forster2018]

Link to article here:

How long until a pupil is punished or a teacher is disciplined for not affirming cat identities by meowing and offering a head rub?
I have a GC child at school but he doesn't make his views public because it would be social suicide. The girls are brave to publicly voice an unpopular opinion. Belief that you are a cat IS a sign that someone is unwell imo.

I’m a secondary school teacher. I have very conflicting feelings about this story.

• I think the teacher handled it poorly. The recording demonstrates it was in a busy area, and the tones of the teacher and the students suggest emotion was running high. She should have arranged to meet them later, with a tutor/HoY if she was concerned about them being unkind to a fellow student, and have a calm discussion.
• I am gender critical, I think that women’s rights need to be protected and children are becoming political footballs in this culture war.

HOWEVER

• I totally get OP’s point about needing to pay a mortgage. Next to the Daily Fail article is another article about a teacher who won a lawsuit after being dismissed for criticising her school’s teaching of trans issues. Good for her, but how many teachers can risk that/afford a lawyer?
• Government guidance is totally lacking.
• it is unacceptable to record somebody. Those people who say teachers should be recorded all the time, I just hope they can afford private school fees because trust me there will be an even bigger recruitment crisis if teachers were being recorded to check they had the ‘right’ views. This isn’t 1930s Germany.
• Context is everything. As a teacher my first instinct was that those two girls were very unkind to another student. They clearly then chose to turn on their phone to record the conversation, and they clearly were trying to catch this teacher out. Maybe she has form for being pro-trans, maybe her child is trans, maybe she’s just a PITA but the fact of the matter is that this teacher has been humiliated publicly, and the conversation edited and put on line for right wing news groups.

teachers are stuck between a rock and a hard place over this stuff. Trust me.

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

Something else that isn't really getting enough weight is that a teacher was saying this to two children. If this happened to me as an adult I'd be pissed off and maybe upset, but I'd have the ability to escalate and I would expect to be treated fairly. I would know that I had certain protections, either by law, HR policy or whatever.

At 13 if I'd had a teacher saying that to me I'd have been incredibly upset and worried about how this would come back on me. Would I get into trouble? Would my parents be hauled in and told about what I'd supposedly done? Would I have to change schools?

The girls clearly suspected that they wouldn't be believed - and I would put good money that if they'd just relayed events verbally that they wouldn't have been - hence the recording. The teacher accused them of saying things they were adamant they hadn't (the "asylum" comment), made threats, made personal comments (the use of the word "despicable") and therefore I would say she has abused her power over them. This could so easily have escalated into an entirely unfair 'teachers word versus theirs' disciplinary issue against the students.

That they had the foresight to record it is to their credit.

Teachers Unions are all “Transwomen are women you Bigot!!” And insisting that boys who identify as girls must be allowed to shower alongside teenage girls on their say so, and share dorms with them, that it is also bigotted to teach basic biology, and evidence based medicine is transphobic.

teachers are stuck between a rock and a hard place over this stuff. Trust me.

I agree with this, but I'm wondering are teachers raising this point with their unions? Surely this is an important issue for them to get involved in to protect their members?

X post I see

she should be sacked for questioning GENDER in a conversation about SPECIES ffs

And does this position reflect the position of their members, or are their members happy to swallow this top down madness?

'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."'

😁

@Bathsheba1983 its acceptable to covertly record someone in a position of authority who is abusing their power. Undercover reporters do it. Whistleblowers in government and companies witnessing corruption do it. Workers in care homes witnessing abuse do it. Why shouldn’t schoolchildren witnessing abuses of power in schools do it?

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.

Except in this case the children are expressing a protected belief - that sex is immutable and matters. It is like saying Muslims should find another school.

I feel sorry for her. I feel more sorry for vulnerable kids who buy this nonsense because it is being pushed by what should be the sensible adults in their lives.

If this story makes teachers more wary about simply repeating the bullshit without thinking about its truth, then it will probably have been worth it, but at a huge cost to this individual.

Sadly, lots of children are already paying huge costs for this ideology and as I say, I have more sympathy for them.

I was completely with you until your statement about ‘ right wing news groups’.. That would be the Times and the Telegraph, then ( both of whom have only recently started reporting on ‘gender’ issues, largely I suspect because the comments of their paid subscribers are overwhelmingly supportive of the biological reality believers: still a significant majority in the UK).

So would you feel differently in the incident had been reported in the Guardian or on the BBC? Don’t hold your breath.

I don’t see how the conversation has been edited, btw, it’s just an amateur recording from a phone inside a bag.

it is unacceptable to record somebody. Those people who say teachers should be recorded all the time, I just hope they can afford private school fees because trust me there will be an even bigger recruitment crisis if teachers were being recorded to check they had the ‘right’ views. This isn’t 1930s Germany.

can you explain why being recorded undertaking professional duties is unacceptable please @Bathsheba1983 ? Genuinely interested. I’m regularly recorded at work. Lots of people are, especially when they’re in highly responsible roles or positions of authority.

Im wondering why one’s personal views would be a concern here, or even relevant.

@ArabeIIaScott
’Tu as des croquettes?’

I’m usually on the teachers side but not on this. The girls are basically whistle blowing so good for them. What she was saying was outrageous.

This is where the governments weakness and fudging this issue has got us.

Those people who say teachers should be recorded all the time, I just hope they can afford private school fees because trust me there will be an even bigger recruitment crisis if teachers were being recorded to check they had the ‘right’ views. This isn’t 1930s Germany.

No, we're in Oceania in 1984 where children are being indoctrinated in a dangerous ideology, people who refuse to believe it are denounced and doxxed, and people who want to succeed at school, university or their career are forced to parrot total lies. These girls were whistle-blowing.

This isn't about checking whether teachers have the right views. It is about teachers attacking students for not having the "right" views, which is even more worrying when the "right" views they are supposed to have are obviously and objectively wrong.

Maybe it's unfortunate for this teacher that she was the one who ended up on Tiktok when so many others around the country are doing the same thing, but it's important for society to understand the scale of the problem. A massive backlash against this ideology, as soon as possible, is the only way self ID is not going to make it onto the UK statute books, so this is time critical. (Also for vulnerable children on gender clinic waiting lists who might just make it to adulthood still in possession of all their body parts if this stuff is nipped in the bud now.)

Let’s remind ourselves what this teacher is pushing - she is pushing an ideology that says girls are girls or boys are boys because they identify with regressive sexist stereotypes. That if you are a girls who is struggling to deal with societies representation of your sex, sexuality, the changes to your body due to puberty, or rejecting your body due to sexual abuse then you must be a boy. And as a boy your puberty should be suppressed preventing brain maturation, and bone mass increase, further isolating you from your peers, locking you into a medical pathways and inevitable sterility. Children are threatened that they will commit suicide if they don’t do this despite there being no evidence of this prior to transition but significantly increased risk of suicide post transition. It encourages the use of breast binders with their 97% risk of harm. Other children don’t escape either - they are told they must not have bodily boundaries and it is transphobic to refuse to strip off in front of the opposite sex, girls are denied the chance of succeeding at sport as their sport is made mixed sex, they are required to ignore the evidence of their eyes and pretend men are women with all the safeguarding flags that involves.

I don’t feel sorry for this teacher.

100% this.

It removes the element that kids are making up shit.

Its standard for whistleblowing. And we are very much in the land of whistleblowing with this issue.

I feel sorry for the cat girl. It's one thing seeing the little dinosaurs, police officers and fairies rushing around in Nursery or Reception classes. But a 13 year old identifies as a cat and a school goes along with it? On what planet is this acceptable?
Along with a serious mental health intervention, this confused child must be told that she may identify as a cat at home with her parents but this is a school and schools deal with facts and science - not pandering to delusions.

"This call may be recorded for quality and training purposes."

But absoluetely not at school, where the quality of sex education matters jack shit and can be hidden even from a FOI request behind business contract confidentiality bullshit...

Very well put.

It's the difference between the two responses that gets me, Datanotlore saying how would you like it if your children are filmed all the time and we go fine we think its an excellent idea then this response saying basically how can we say that. Both are being used as threats

Just a reminder that an understanding of biological sex in mammals is not “right wing”, never has been and never will be.

If the opposite point of view is now left wing, the political left should not be anywhere near power. And I say that as someone who has never voted Tory, only Lib Dem, Green or NHA.