So if he was given materials including the Rowling controversy and the students were opposed to even conceeding that an alternative opinion was possible, how on earth was it his fault that "it wasn't working".
Had he off his own back introduced this controversial topic and argued passionately for the GC viewpoint instead of gently challenging the group think (were all the students in agreement, or has it just become so verboten to disagreement with the ringleaders that other students are frightened to have an opinion, let alone express it?) to stimulate thought and discussion then the head teacher might have had a point.
I think cancelling the teacher rather than offering suggestions about how to handle hot topics in future is a terrible precedent and isn't in the best interests of the students at all.
It all has echoes of Philip Pullman's League of St Alexander from The Belle Sauvage:
"Some of the teachers who had left in protest or by being required to take leave had come back, sullen or chastened; others had vanished and been replaced. The real authority in the school was held by the never-quite-named, never-quite-described, never-quite-admitted-to group of senior pupils forming the first and most influential members if the League. They met Mr. Hawkins [new head teacher after the last one tried to discourage the League had been removed] every day, and their decisions or orders were announced in the next day's assembly. Somehow it was implied that any such proclamation was the direct word of God, so that to disobey or protest was to blaspheme. Many pupils got in trouble before they understood this. Now, though, the understanding had permeated everywhere...
...You could spend quite some time in the school and never hear it mentioned; but all the same, its existence became known to everyone as if it had always been there, as if it would be strange for a school not to be pervaded by this half-enthralling, half-frightening miasma....
...Few pupils were openly naughty any more - there were fewer fights in the playground, for instance - but everyone seemed guiltier."
Or JK Rowling's own Inquisitorial Squad from Order of the Phoenix.
I left school in the early 2000s and I had a general impression that feminism had already won all the important battles (votes, pay etc) it was only in my final year when we were doing a unit on Women and Christianity did I begin thinking about it, and it really took me being an adult and getting pregnant that really opened my eyes to everyday sexism and why sex (and feminism) matters today.
And I went to a mixed state school with lots of low level sexual harassment, girls being rejected as slags or as d*kes. It was very homophobic and sexist looking back.
I wonder if the girls in an all girl's school might have even less of an awareness of the need for feminism today if #metoo and #everydayfeminism either haven't permeated, or if the injunction to be kind and put other people first means they are busy fighting social justice causes for other groups and perceiving themselves as privileged.