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.

In the school where I taught, teachers ( and TAs, admin, site staff etc) were always addressed by name - Mr Smith, Mrs Jones, Miss Brown, Ms White... with Mrs/Miss/Ms chosen by the teacher herself. 'Miss' or 'Sir' as a single form of address wasn't allowed. Seems like a good system.

There should be no compulsion or expectation on children to use an unusual title or name for teaching staff, on pain of disciplinary action. It's an unnecessary barrier to teaching. In all the schools I taught in, it was Miss and Sir for teachers, generally, with their specific title and name used if they were being referred to specifically. But of course I was accidentally called Sir on occasion and surprisingly frequently Mum. It didn't matter at all.

How is this supposed to work in classrooms where there's more than one adult though? How do pupils differentiate? Do you end up with Teacher Brown and Teacher Smith?

How do adult teachers refer to one another to the pupils? Do you end up with "You will need to talk to Teacher Taylor about the homework?"

I taught in European schools so I tended to be Miss [first name] and I rather liked that as the familiarity of using my first name was offset by the Miss.

@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.

Absolutely true - and I did the same - but then you get to know the kids in your form and you start using the actual term because you know the circumstances of that kid's life - I spoke to your step-dad, your Mum's coming in tomorrow, whatever. If you know it is mum coming in then it daft to say parent. Especially when kids have often very convoluted backgrounds - they might live with a foster parent and have two parents and more than one step-parent. Your parent is coming in might mean anyone. So parent is silly and confusing in that case.

And don't kid yourself that these words pushed by the training are meant to be inclusive - they really are not.

I wish Liz Truss had been asked about all this at the end of her interview on the today programme in her capacity as equalities minister.

Why are ministers not being held to account by the media over the illegal pushing of all kinds of political ideologies as school and university?

Educate and Celebrate are awful.

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

Totally agree.

I am offended when I am called Mrs or Miss because they define me in relation to my marital status which is not relevant.

It's worth reading this to get an idea of how cosy it all is.

https://www.transgendertrend.com/educate-celebrate-smashing-heteronormativity-classroom/

Despite the many problems with this report it went on to have another life. The data collected by Anna Carlile was used by the social research body, NatCen, who were commissioned by DfE/GEO to evaluate anti-HBT bullying programmes. It seems that Carlile’s data which included a follow-up on only 8 of 60 schools was deemed trustworthy. That much larger NatCen survey bandies around the term ‘gender identity’ and concluded unsurprisingly that more teacher training is needed. [10] Other data providers for NatCen were Stonewall and Diversity Role Models. Nancy Kelley, though not involved in the 2016 report, has just left her job as deputy CEO at NatCen to be the new CEO of Stonewall. It’s a small world.

@ChristinaXYZ I am absolutely not making the point that this organisation is pushing this ideology to be inclusive of children's home circumstances. The exact opposite in fact! Apologies if that wasn't clear. It doesn't seem like anything this organisation is promoting is to improve education for the children, it is entirely about forcing an ideology on schools.

but then you get to know the kids in your form and you start using the actual term because you know the circumstances of that kid's life - I spoke to your step-dad, your Mum's coming in tomorrow, whatever. If you know it is mum coming in then it daft to say parent. Especially when kids have often very convoluted backgrounds - they might live with a foster parent and have two parents and more than one step-parent. Your parent is coming in might mean anyone. So parent is silly and confusing in that case. - Yes of course. I didn't think this needed spelling out particularly, as I was talking about making assumptions when you don't know yet and don't know what each child's circumstances are.

And a reminder if as a teacher you are sick of the politics of your union you can join Affinity workaffinity.co.uk/ which is politically independent or Edapt - which gives legal support to teachers. There is also the Free Speech Union. Only the first, Affinity, is an actual union by the legal definition.

Will be interesting to see if this takes off. In my school kids call all staff Miss or Sir regardless of whether they are teachers or not. (It’s Ma’am or Sir for Ds). If I was speaking about a member of staff to a pupil/parent I would use their preferred title + surname but Miss/Sir is useful shorthand especially for pupils who want to be polite but might not know the person’s surname. But I do wish we could get away from the Miss/Mrs thing in society as a whole.

We would always say parents or carers in letters home. Traditional family set ups are pretty rare now.

On a side note, because we communicate formally, it is a pita when parents email but don’t sign it off properly or mention the pupil’s name. You then have to log into a database to find the child’s name & the parents title & surname.

I’m not sure using forenames will ever be acceptable at secondary level. Though at niece’s primary school in Ireland they use eg Muinteoir John which means Teacher John

Handy, isn't it, as soon you will only need "teacher" toilets and "pupil" toilets.
And school trips - when they finally come back - will just need a certain quota of "teachers" no need to bother about numbers of male and female staff.

In all honesty, I'd prefer it was like it is in higher ed - a first name is fine.

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

Sir/Miss can go...the rest are perfectly valid forms of relationships and should be recognised.

Will be happy to see the back of Mr/Ms/Mrs/Miss/Sir - I would hope we have moved on from referencing the marriage status of individuals as a form of address.

Everyone has a name - use that. If they want to change it that will be handled at the time.

Also, I might be wrong but in some cultures this is how teachers are addressed, by their profession name - i.e 'professor' ...

Teacher sounds clunky but there is a case for it.

Maybe it will help with de-gendering student behaviour towards teachers by removing the gendered element - teaching children that the person teaching them is honoured by their profession and not their title or marital status.

This is an older, second wave, feminism where we didn't need to fly our sex or gender from the flag post because no one was threatening it.

They are Sir and Miss at DD's school, I'm always surprised at this. But if called by their names, the teacher chooses, so many of the women are Mz.
Schools in other countries are first names for teachers, not sure if this would be better?

*Ms...

The Telegraph is going balls to the wall now over the trans issue.
The Sunday Telegraph had a whole page with various articles this week and there are now articles pretty much every day covering the issue.

I know a lot of posters here don't like the Telegraph because they perceive it as right wing - shock horror. It is right of centre economically. But in the course of my work over the years I have had to read all the nationals each day and it is definitely the most female-friendly of the nationals - biggest coverage of women's sport, special campaigns on women in business etc.

@flyingbuttress43 do you have a subscription? If I took one out, would I get access to previous issues or only the current ones? Feel like there's a lot of articles I've missed!

I get called miss by students in higher Ed. I hate it

@Plasmodesmata

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

At a school dh used to work female teachers HAD to be addressed as Madam. I'd have hated that.

I heard it on the radio this morning. They didn’t sound very pleased about it though.

@MaggieMooh

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

I would much rather not use a title ever. If I have to it’s Ms. It’s 2022. Why are women still expected to announce their marital status to all and sundry whilst there is no expectation/ability for men to?

"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."

Yeah, but we've all done that haven't we? Earnestly nodding and agreeing after the lesson that yes, we feel much more confident expressing ourselves now, so as not to offend - next day it's all forgotten. No-one (especially teenage kids) is going to be honest in their feedback!

At primary it was all Mr/Mrs/Miss (with great excitement when someone got married and now we had to use Mrs ). At secondary (first one, girls school) we used Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms - and woe betide you if you just said 'Miss' like they did on Grange hill! At my next school they actually said Miss and Sir, and it actually felt less respectful somehow than using the teacher's name.

And yes, what about all the support staff. I'm an adult, and I feel uncomfortable calling the teachers/school secretary/caretaker by their first name, the kids definitely shouldn't!

And yes, pupil centred means that you're aware and sensitive to a kid's family situation. Doesn't mean that if Ms Washable, and you know it is Ms Washable is the child's mother, that you can't use that in speech to the child! It's much more humanising.

Everyone at my university was called Dr (with the odd professor), no first names. Has that changed now?