Teachers urged to drop gender honorifics at NEU training session

[BraShopper]

This is on the front page of today’s Daily Telegraph, as seen on the BBC News page of newspaper headlines for Tuesday.

It reports that in a lecture session organised and funded by the National Education Union (NEU) attendees were told that pupils shouldn’t call their teachers Mr or Mrs (or Miss or Ms?) but address them as “teacher” ”in an attempt to eradicate gender in schools”.

The NEU is an amalgamation of the old NUT and the ATL, and describes itself on its website as the largest teaching union in the UK.

I don’t have a DT subscription so I can’t read the rest of the article.

Mrs is not my gender. It’s part of my name.

I wouldn't mind dropping the tradition where male teachers are "Sir" but female ones "Miss". That annoyed me.

I’d be interested in hearing the lecture as a whole before making a judgement. There is a big difference between saying that teachers should never use a title, and commenting on how sexism permeates everything at school including the Sir/Miss power difference. It is worth thinking about how often we emphasise our sex in speech without realising it, and if we’re teaching children that their sex shouldn’t hold them back then constantly reminding them of the binary difference between men and women could potentially undermine that. I don’t know really. It’s hard to comment without having heard the whole thing.

I don’t have a DT subscription so I can’t read the rest of the article.

Sometimes if you go to one of the archive sites like archive dot md and put in the link to an article, the full text may be available there, e.g. archive dot md slash ojYG8

Sir/Miss, boys/girls, sons/daughters, father/mother all advised against.

"Dr Barnes also showed a “code of conduct” that she encouraged schools to have at reception and said if people did not agree with it they should not be allowed on to the premises.

The poster listed all the bullet points of characteristics protected under the Equalities Act apart from sex."

It’d be a good start if we could eradicate Mrs as a concept. Not sure why marital status is something that is relevant in the classroom for anyone. And particularly why it’s important that women announce it and not men.

I looked up Barnes and found I'd come across her before. This article has a link to one of her videos and some details on her agenda:

www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/heteronormativity-smashers-elly-barnes/

It isn't directly about Barnes after the link to the Del Noce piece.

The mail are running the story, too

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10513149/No-Sir-Miss-charity-calls-children-use-gender-free-terms-like-Teacher.html

Session was run by Educate and Celebrate.

I had never come across the Sir or Miss rule until I worked in a school. We always used "Mrs Jones".

I was surprised that it didn't bother me because the children definitely said it in a respectful way (unlike all the other insults they would use).

It also really bothered male teachers if a child said miss by accident. If I got called Sir (or mum) the child always immediately apologised and I just nodded and we moved on, class quickly stopped laughing, absolutely no problem. With male teachers, when exactly the same happened, they would bristle, fail to accept the apology with grace, and then have to deal with repeated "miss" and giggles for a lot longer.

Anyway, I don't think the way to get past sexism is to pretend that there aren't two sexes.

"Excuse me Teacher". "Please help me Teacher". "Why Teacher?" "Good morning Teacher" and of course, a nicely personalised letter about baby goat's latest achievement:
"Dear Parent & Parent Goat",

@NancyDrawed

The mail are running the story, too

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10513149/No-Sir-Miss-charity-calls-children-use-gender-free-terms-like-Teacher.html

Session was run by Educate and Celebrate.

From that article "Educate and Celebrate's website states that teachers and pupils respond well to its training, with 94 per cent of secondary students saying they 'felt more confident in expressing their views and be themselves' in a survey."

That'll be as long as their views match what 'Educate and Celebrate' say though won't it!

I’m all for this - I hate being hailed as ‘Miss’, as a middle aged woman when my male peers get ‘Sir’.

I think ‘teacher’ is too clunky though and wouldn’t take off. Not sure what we should do instead though.

The boys/girls point and mother/father point is interesting though - I deliberately make myself say Parents when talking about traditionally gendered roles, but it doesn’t come easily (for example “Next time your parents pop your uniform in the wash, make sure you’ve checked your pockets”

I got a letter from school the other day with the good old Mr and Mrs his initial his surname crap. So there is a way to go. Plus the students will call you whatever they like anyway. I got a few Sirs in my time.

When I taught in Japan, I was addressed as 'sensei'. Can we get the pupils here to adopt that?

When I was teaching, as a form tutor I was very well aware that not every child had two parents at home. I knew that some of my students were living with other relatives, aunts, grandparents, older siblings. Also occasionally they were in foster homes or in care homes. I used to say things like "get your adult at home to sign this", rather than Mum/Dad/parents. I also learnt quickly not to assume names, roles or titles at parents evenings and our data system was able to record the preferred way of addressing the relevant adults for each child.

So for me, that's got nothing to do with making any kind of forced social change or compelling speech to drive change. It's about recognising the real life situations of children and not making any assumptions about their home lives.

@RoseslnTheHospital

When I was teaching, as a form tutor I was very well aware that not every child had two parents at home. I knew that some of my students were living with other relatives, aunts, grandparents, older siblings. Also occasionally they were in foster homes or in care homes. I used to say things like "get your adult at home to sign this", rather than Mum/Dad/parents. I also learnt quickly not to assume names, roles or titles at parents evenings and our data system was able to record the preferred way of addressing the relevant adults for each child.

So for me, that's got nothing to do with making any kind of forced social change or compelling speech to drive change. It's about recognising the real life situations of children and not making any assumptions about their home lives.

I agree with this Roses - that's child centred teaching. But it's different to removing all reference to sex based language because it makes a tiny minority sad or angry

@Plasmodesmata

I wouldn't mind dropping the tradition where male teachers are "Sir" but female ones "Miss". That annoyed me.

At my school, 1980s, most of the teaching staff were female (Miss, Mrs) and the male teachers were 'Mr'.

I would have thought there are many more pressing issues to discuss, frankly. It seems an empty, pointless gesture.

This constant theme of inserting this ideology into young minds in situations where they are away from their parents or carers: schools, Guides, Scouts, universities, TV shows, fan forums, social media...

This has really thrown me.
On one hand I am a huge advocate for removing titles (Mr/Ms/Mrs/Miss/Sir) as they are so imbalanced with men not having to "reveal" their marriage status or the obvious power imbalance between Sir and Miss.
I have been a huge advocate of removing titles in many spheres and usually they are completely unnecessary. Why the fuck should the bank know if I am miss or MS why should somebody at work they can just use my initial and surname or my first name. This school one is more tricky as most schools don't want teachers to be called by the first name. The motivation for removing the titles is because of gender bullshit and that also goes against what I believe.
It would be great if there was a easy solution like teacher that didn't sound quite so clunky.

My dc went to single sex schools and both had Sir and Ma’am which always cheered me a bit. Miss was not allowed.

I genuinely wouldn't mind this. Teacher is the important relationship here, not gender. I think it's more respectful. Like Doctor or Professor.

What happens to teaching assistants and dinner ladies though? They aren’t teachers so they need a different honorific. Otherwise it’s like calling a nurse doctor.

This constant theme of inserting this ideology into young minds in situations where they are away from their parents or carers: schools, Guides, Scouts, universities, TV shows, fan forums, social media...

Yes.

It's dehumanising and robotic. This is someone the children see every day, for many hours, unlike a doctor where the visit is only brief. Turn it around: instead of calling the children by their names, they're just called 'pupil'. Or maybe pupil plus a desk number, like playing Battleships. Is there a call for that? No - for the kids the demand is name or alternative non binary or opposite sex name, plus pronouns, otherwise it's 'literal violence' and 'deadnaming'. So personal, individual names are very, very precious for them, but not for the adult?

I like how it works in France- all adult women are Madam, official paperwork is in the "maiden" name, that's the name used on identity cards, driving license etc, although some have both.