What do educators make of what is happening in our schools?

[imwideawake]

I wonder what Head Teachers, teachers (and anyone else involved in the nurturing and educating of our young people) are really thinking about the worrying way in which activists have turned their attention to children and have successfully infiltrated the school system, to the point they seem to be having having a very real and disturbing influence on young impressionable minds and their bodies.

What do they make of this mass bombardment of our children - encouraging children to go down the trans route, instead of leaving them be - to dress and behave how they want to, and to grow up with minimal interference to their minds and bodies.

The constant scaremongering of parents by so-called experts. The rolling out of dubious stats as a threat as to what might happen if the parents don't listen to the current advice.
Children taking hormone blockers when the long term effects haven't been properly tested.
Children being encouraged to mutilate their perfect bodies.

Frankly, I'm horrified that children appear to being used in some massive social experiment and I would would hope that people involved in education, more so than most, would at the very least question the advice that's being given out instead of blindly following things without questioning as to whether those things are right.
I appreciate that schools are sometimes bullied into following the current guidelines and are stuck between a rock and a hard place - we live in an environment, whereby to question and go against the flow could cause a person to lose their job, but what are they really/privately thinking?

Surely they can't all have been brainwashed!
These are serious times.
It really is a case of
Leave them Kids Alone!

Maybe this should have gone in Staffroom.

This is all making very chilling reading.

I note that primary schools are not coming under the same sort of pressure, it would seem.

But something which sent chills up my spine was the recent push for drag queens to go into kindergartens.

It sounded like a bit of harmless fun, until I read that the aim was to teach four-year-olds how to identify transphobia and call it hate speech.

Spending a lot of time convincing four-year-old children that a man in a dress is friendly and unthreatening, suddenly takes on a whole new meaning in light of this thread.

Datun
Resources will be in many Primary schools.

There's a couple of early years books published recently rooted in an ideological perspective.

P19 of this report identifies the schools ttaking part in the 'inclusion' programme and further pages show the next schools targetted

equalityupdates.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Meeting-the-Needs-of-the-LGBTI-Community-in-Glasgow.pdf

LGBT Youth Scotland have recently been recruiting for several positions, including a project manager. They are certainly expanding and are well funded.

The GIRES training is aimed at everyone, primary or secondary, but I agree we in primaries are going to see less of this.

Also, very important to see the 'easy-read' version of the Govt's consultation paper on changes to the GRA.

This is standard practice to provide accessible text primarily for people with learning disabilities & it is recognised these will also be used by younger people, those with limited literacy skills and those for whom English is a second language (as well those who don't want to read the alternative 86 page document )

It is worth considering the impact on parents who will be using this government guidance as well as pupils.

There is the usual guidance with regards style but also surely a responsibility & requirement for content?

Some concerns about which are discussed here:
twitter.com/helensteel12/status/1014408578264961024

link to document:
consult.education.gov.uk/government-equalities-office/reform-of-the-gender-recognition-act/user_uploads/final-gra-consultation-easy-read-lo-res_v3.pdf

Maisy
You are absolutely right in everything you say.

SuburbanRhonda
Although primaries may see less, primary children being gnc raises questions about influence from parents - like the parent in this court case who lost custody after a Judge decided that she was inappropriately influencing her child and he was NOT in fact transgender.
www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2016/2430.html .

This judgement is a 'case study' of how a parent and professionals zealously following an ideology can completely ignore the needs of a child and put him at massive risk. Despite teachers and other professionals repeatedly referring this 4 year old as at risk of emotional harm, social services ignored all this, followed the mother's demands that her child was born in the wrong body, ignored everyone else who challenged this, addressed and treated the child as a girl throughout all their contact with him. At the end of a lengthy case, the judge was scathing about their behaviour and failure to protect him. The parent was supported by Mermaids.

And if you go back to that GIRES training you will find an exercise where a school nurse is told that the correct response to a primary child (so 4 - 11 years old) who says that 'everyone thinks I'm a girl but I'm a boy is to ask her what name she would prefer to be called by!!! No mention of safeguarding, information sharing, parents - nothing.

echoing sarah carers gender non conforming autistic children. lots of experience of this personally. IT IS OK TO NOT CONFORM TO GENDER STEREOTYPES.

parent of autistic children and it turns out that I am likely to be too.

Yes, I remember that question and answer in the GIRES training. I couldn’t really articulate on how many levels the answer was wrong and in my view, it was an example of a leading question, which is an absolute no-no in safeguarding.

I see what you mean about how the push is more likely to come from parents when the child is primary age . But for that reason alone, I think we’re less likely to see as many “trans children” in primaries because of the lower risk of social contagion.

Thanks for links R0wantrees.

When I said HSE consultation earlier I meant this:

www.gov.uk/government/consultations/changes-to-teaching-of-sex-and-relationship-education-and-pshe

Again I will say that I feel that people like Bespin are acting in good faith. Most gender ideologists are. They have no idea how harmful and cruel these behaviours are to vulnerable children.

This is the problem. I am sure supporters of homeopathy or healing crystals feel the same. Those people, however, are not getting government funding to go into schools and spread their nonsensical woo to impressionable children (while creating a climate of fear among adults who know better).

The following is well worth a read:
It's an Endocrinologist's review of I Am Jazz - which typical of the is the type of book that some schools are encouraging children to read.

www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/04/21220/

The following is well worth a read:
It's an Endocrinologist's review of I Am Jazz - which is typical of the type of book that some schools are encouraging children to read.

www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/04/21220/

Try again
www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/04/21220/

The head of DDs school seemed pretty relieved about cancelling the planned Mermaids event. They were coming to do a 'lesson' for 5/6 year olds, reception kids. I told all of the parents I speak to what Mermaids actually are, and what they would be 'teaching' (GI Joe, puberty blockers nonsense) and they told others and it went round, and after parents researched themselves as obviously you don't take what you hear in the yard as gospel...near every parent pulled their child out. In the end there were only a hanful of children who were going to be going, so the head cancelled alltogether. And as I say, seemed rather relieved about it though obviously could not say that. DDs teacher had been under the impression it would be just a general 'accept LGBT kids, don't bully' type thing and was seriously shocked to find out mermaids was a pressure group.

Oddly enough, at all parents meetings they have a screen that tells parents to join up to mumsnet, for support and stuff, so I highly suspect the teachers are mainly gender critical, if they post on here

so I highly suspect the teachers are mainly gender critical, if they post on here
I'd say that based on the people I get on with in school, most are reasonably gender critical.
Trans seems to be very much 'that's how someone perceives the situation, offer them support but avoid coming down either way on GC or TRA because it's not our job to push ideology either way'. We have a couple of students who identify as trans & support and logistics are in place. Nobody makes a big deal, students accept the trans students as they are but don't seem particularly fixed on blue brain/pink brain. Students are willing to ask challenging questions.

Then again I think as a school we are very good at offering activities across both sexes, lots to challenge boys in subjects under attended by boys, projects for girls into STEM, leadership roles go to boys and girls, lots of sharing of stories of men and women being great in a range of fields, we talk about men's mental health and unhealthy expectations on boys not sharing emotions, we don't accept 'girl' as an insult. We do a lot of work to promote the idea that there are many ways for men and women to be successful and thrive.

As a result we include our trans students, have an accepting school community, a surprising number of openly gay students, boys doing musicals is as accepted as girls in the enterprise team.

I think we have a sensible approach.

Sounds great @maisypops

sorry i had not read this thread before and seeing as i was named in it early on i would like to reply.

in your post sarah you claim that i glorify trans children, i really celebrate most of the young people i work with i find the good points in all of them. i work with quite a few young people, usually suffering from trauma or other mental health issues and i work with young people with ASD as well. these groups of young people are often marginalized by the main stream and written off, i would like to present a different view to people at these young people have amazing potential. I spoke to a young lady yesterday and all she wanted to do was move to the seaside and work in a shop. but because of her history and the things she had experianced she thought no one would ever employ her, not because of what she could do but because of how she felt people saw her. I would hope that anyone closely working with young people would be proud of them and also proud of the work they do with them. When news papers write critical articles about you every week it tends to make you think that people are being critical about you and young people do pick up on this, and sometimes they do feel that the world is against them but so do a lot of young people unfortunately.
I am glad that you think i am acting in good faith, but please do not think for one second i do not consider the impact of the work that i do with young people. Given the nature of the work i do for a living i would not be able to do the job that i am currently doing without spending all my day assessing the impact i have on the people i work with.

I would be very interested in discussing ASD in young woman and girls and if this presentation does present or mirror trans presentation. At the moment i am finding at a lot of young woman with ASD and mild learning disabilities are tending to be highlighted with mental health issues, when infact it is there Autistic anxiety that is misinterpreted as such. Completing assessments for asd with these young ladys as proven hard so it as tended to be missed due to there lack of engagement.

Bespin please consider asking MN to delete the details of someone you work with. Seriously!

R0wantrees

thank you for showing concern with this, i do not share any information that is not anonymous or put any identifying details of anyone i work with. Also as no one knows who i am or where i work then i am confident that this is an anonymous example.

the only teachers that I have asked about this have been chirpily supportive of 'trans' tbh.

sorry R0wantrees i did not mean for that to sound patronizing, i am passionate that the stories of these young people are heard. They are often written off, by society as they are too hard to work with, or locked away. The number of young people held in secure institutions is shocking and is a scandel that very few people ever talk about because people do not know about them. These young people could be managed in the community but the cost of that is far higher so they remain in these places and transition into adulthood and adult services without anyone ever giving them a chance.

also if people can find it, on channel 4 please watch the dispatches episode, under lock and key. and if you can leaned a voice to these young people who have none. They do not need to be in these places and could be managed in community settings with individualized care.

Bespin thanks for engaging in good faith with what I'm saying. You could easily have huffed and puffed at what I said but you seem to reflect on your practice and have an open mind. It was the way you talked about the young people in the thread earlier on that made me say you were glorifying and isolating them. You specifically identified trans young people as being more supportive of each other than other young people. It was also thhe way you kept talking, and still are talking, as if other adults are against them. I can well believe that their peers may have isolated them but you seem to be inferring that adults are judging and criticising them. This pits them with you against the world. I think there is a real danger here; when anyone who has had mental health struggles themselves and/or has felt isolated that they project their own experience onto the young people and create for themselves a tribe.

With regard to ASD; since gender is a social construct the two innate things that can affect the way children interpret and internalise gender are two things that have a direct impact social interaction ie where they are on the autism spectrum and their sexuality. Gender identity cannot be innate since it, like all identities, develops socially. Children on the autism spectrum respond differently to social cues, fail to internalise gendered expectations and therefore see how they are being imposed on them where other children don't and they often have a very uncomfortable relationship with their bodies due to proprieception issues, fear of change (in puberty) and dyspraxia. Their bodies can literally feel alien to them. They can also be extremely vulnerable to being influenced.