Non-binary teacher?

[Thompson198]

Name change.
I’ve got a 5 year old daughter due to go into year 2 in September. We’ve just been told that the teacher for next year is a non-binary/‘non-gender-conforming’ man who wants to be referred to by ‘Mx’ (pronounced mix) and they/them pronouns.
Quite a few of the parents have already complained and started looking for other places at local schools because of this.
what do you think?
My daughter has SEN and is one of the youngest in her class, I worry how she’s going to be able to keep up with the pronouns and understand this without us having to teach her about gender ideology at her age. My husband is extremely against teaching her gender ideology, especially so young, I’m not the most positive about it either but don’t feel as strongly as him. He also doesn’t want her being at the school in September but they have been very supportive for her so far and I’m concerned it might not be the same elsewhere.
Thoughts? How would you feel if this was your child’s teacher?

But they is plural - for male and female pronouns, we use the singular.

I’m guessing that person must’ve grown an actual penis.
Like an axolotl or something🙄

This is how I would handle it but my daughter is 9 and her eyes would probably roll back as well - she’s quite worldly for her age.

She would call him by his name as he wishes (and yes, he’s a “he”) as she would respect her teacher but she would be told the truth.

I’m not sure a 6 year old would handle it so well.

If it’s just a year OP, I would wait it out and get on with it. The kids will learn quickly enough to address him as he wishes and I’m sure the odd mistake won’t be harshly dealt with; they’re such little kids.

Yes but it's not about you.

As we know it's usually about the person and how they feel they are being perceived. Will this person go off the deep end if given a wrong pronoun? I would be asking for clarification about things like this from the school. They must have a working policy on it. I wouldn't have my child in a situation where they may be singled out because of a wrong word!

Sounds to me like critical thinking is not your strongest side

He's a self-indulgent tedious trendy wanker. Hardly what you'd want as an educator and influencer on young minds.

You can't guarantee this though and the norm seems to be that people hold these identities so personally that anyone who crosses them are liable to be in the firing range.

If your six year old has managed to learn Mr, Mrs and Ms, then learning one more word shouldn't be too much of a problem.

She doesn't have to know anything about gender.

Being gay, or black, or asian, are all simple facts about a person. That have no impact on anything that goes on in a classroom.

These are not the same thing at all as claiming to be 'non binary', and demanding special titles and pronouns. This is a declaration that you hold a set of beliefs that are unscientific made-up nonsense, which have caused enormous damage to a lot of very vulnerable people, and that you expect the people around you to go along with these beliefs.

It's because children are open minded and accepting that they will trust what they are taught by adults, and parents have to protect them from teachers promulgating dangerous and false ideas.

You think she's not going to have questions about why Mr wants to be called Mx?

But the teacher isn’t like the unborn babies because his sex is known, so why teach children to pretend it isn't?

Yes, language is a tool, but here it is being used to serve the wishes and subjective feelings (not 'needs') of the teacher, not the needs of the other partners in any communication. The children forced to call him "they" are being taught that they mustn’t trust their own natural instincts about who is male and who is female.

Not all the time. They is commonly used as singular when referring to people when you don't know who they are, or otherwise. Would you really be confused by this interaction:
Where's Jenny?
They're in town.
What are they doing?
Getting their hair done.

Not difficult, not outside the realms of possibility that someone would refer to someone as they/their regardless of identity. It's a normal part of speech.

I address people as they wish to be addressed. Personally I think Ms is a pointless addition to the lineup, but if someone requested to be called that, I'd honour it. So would do the same with Mx. Children will accept anything you tell them. If she was told to refer to him as Sir, Lord or Reverend, she would. As long as the school and the teacher understand that mistakes might happen and the children try their best to respect other people, then that's as much as you can hope for.

The original post said it's pronounced mix, so the school have obviously told people.

Children will have far less problem with it than adults. As you say, we've got a lifetime's experience of there just being he and she; they're just going to grow up with (like it or not) he, she and they, and they'll probably be fine with that.

Whether you like it or not, there are quite a lot of "Mx"s out there. It may be less of an "issue" for children who encounter them early on.

The biggest difference in the classroom will presumably be that there won't be any "boys line up first"; if the teacher wants to split them into two halves they will have to come up with some other division!

Back in the 70s/80s, some women decided to be Ms rather than being defined by their marital status. Some people disapproved of this, but it's now fairly well accepted. Now we have some people who don't want to be defined by their gender.

I just don't agree with your bias. I have a bias too (we all do) but it doesn't interfere with my work.

You're risking your job if you take that bias into work with you.

You just say that's your teacher's name.

Children that young don't particularly understand 'Ms' either but they manage it.

It doesn't have to be complicated.

“When you don’t know who they are”

😂😂

and she won’t know who her teacher is?

Yes, but often harder to do naturally when you do know what someone's sex is. If you see a man, it's natural to say he.

Absolutely.

We don’t have to unlearn that though. Everyone is either make it female. Pronouns are bad in the sex if the person.

Self proclaimed ‘identity’ is not relevant it if any interest to the vast majority of people. Pretending that there is a special group of people who transcend sex based stereotypes (don’t we all aspire to that?) is detrimental to women and children.

My oldest child later asked is X a boy now? I said yes. The end.

You lied to your child about something quite fundamental to his or her understanding of biology and human sex and reproductive capability.
That’s quite shocking.

This is what would worry me most, and good luck ever expressing any concerns if the teacher's of the more militant variety

Whether the school have made a wise appointment will become clear in time, but I very much doubt OP will be the only one looking elsewhere

You can see from the amount of people on this thread that would absolutely NOT allow their children to be in this class how small the class number will end up being.

Bonus for SEN!!! Class sizes are crazy in UK state schools usually.

Deliberately obtuse. You know (I'm assuming) that the 'they' in the example of an unborn baby is not the same 'they' as that applied to a person of one sex or the other when that person is present/observable.

I've been mulling over the reasons why I would struggle having a "non binary" person teaching my very young child and I think it's this.

Our children are surrounded by gender stereotyping from before they are even born and I think it's really toxic and harmful. When I was pregnant with my first child I bought little baby grows in gender neutral colours even though I knew I was having a boy, thinking I could reuse them for a second baby regardless of sex. But of course when he was born we were given all this stuff covered in trucks and dinosaurs. When I was pregnant with my second my mum was desperate to know what I was having and I wouldn't tell her because I knew that if she knew I was having a girl she would spend the next 5 months stocking up on pink frilly dresses. She became convinced I was having another boy and bought loads of blue and green stuff, and then when I had a girl she went mad shopping for pink stuff anyway. One of her friends who has two grandsons was so excited when she heard I'd had a girl that she returned the gender neutral gift she'd already bought us to the shop and bought a little pink dress instead.

It's everywhere. It's in the two hundred little cars people won't stop buying for my son and the army of dolls that only started to appear after I had a daughter. It's in all the toy aisles and the clothes aisles and even in the goddamn books, even when the characters are fictional animals. Every day when I picked my son up from crèche he'd been playing with cars and trucks and every day when I pick my daughter up she's been taking good care of her dolls.

I think these stereotypes are harmful to children and I try to combat them as much as possible but I know I'm fighting a losing battle.

I'm trying to teach my children that they can play with any toys, wear any colours, have any interests they like. It has nothing to do with being a boy or girl.

People who identify as non binary are fully signed up to these stereotypes. Their identities literally depend on regressive stereotypes like pink for girls and blue for boys, because they need to have something to rebel against. A man who thinks he is non binary is saying, "I don't feel like I fit these stereotypes about boys/men, therefore I am not a boy/man."

I don't want someone who believes in and upholds these stereotypes teaching my child. I don't want them teaching my child that this stuff is for boys and this stuff is for girls, and if you're a boy who likes the girl stuff then maybe you're really a girl, and if you're a girl who likes the boy stuff then maybe you're really a boy, and if you don't feel like you fit in either box then maybe you're neither a boy nor a girl. This is nonsense. It is regressive, sexist nonsense which reinforces stereotypes which belong in the 1950s. It is dangerous nonsense which leads children who feel a little bit different to want to identify as something they are not, and to fear their normal sexual development.

There are plenty of teachers out there who believe that God created the earth. Some of them teach in faith schools and parents who send their children to those schools understand that they will be taught a certain set of religious beliefs and if they are not comfortable with that then they need to choose another school. Some of them teach in non faith schools and understand that they must not being their religious beliefs with them into the classroom. If they do and parents get to hear about it, parents can legitimately complain. Parents have the option to withdraw their children from religious education, and nobody is questioning the right of those parents to tell their children that religion is a load of made up nonsense and you don't have to believe in it.

As far as I am concerned, gender ideology, and particularly the belief in "non binary" identities is equivalent to creationism. I accept that many people believe in it, but I do not agree with them and as far as I can see there is no scientific basis for it whatsoever.

So why can we not opt out of having these beliefs taught to our children? Why can we not choose between schools where these beliefs are promoted and schools where they are not promoted, and have the right to recourse against the school if we learn that our children have been taught these beliefs in a "non faith" school?

I want my children to learn about sex, and consent, and same sex relationships, and all that stuff, in an age appropriate manner. I don't want them to be taught that you can choose whether to be a boy, a girl or neither, because you can't. It's a lie.

I don't want or need to know whether my child's teacher is Christian, or Buddhist, or gay. That is private information. So why can't this "non binary" teacher just be Mr Jones from 9am to 3pm Monday to Friday?

The problem with waiting to find out if they are a good teacher is that teaching isn't just about teaching the facts.

It would be bad enough teaching Joan of Arc in a gender neutral way.
But being a teacher is also about providing a good learning environment, so do you wait until every wall is covered in LGBTQ+ flags and inspirational people (sorry folx), or until the book cupboard is full of gender neutral books or books that say girls can be boys and visa versa.

Mx (which I am not too bothered about) is the thin edge of the wedge.

My experience of Non-binary teachers has not been good, they have been loud, brash and politically motivated to push their own agenda. But this has been in secondary schools.