Teacher suspended in Ireland for refusing to use prefered pronoun and name

[miri1985]

www.thejournal.ie/high-court-injunction-teacher-westmeath-pronouns-5853324-Aug2022/

And yes he is one of those Burkes (large very fundamentalist family, campagined against gay marriage, prone to take cases but not a great track of winning)

I had a teacher like that . Very conservative and bossy. He taught geography and taught it very well indeed. You can't politicise geography though.

It’s annoying that the media have chosen to single out his refusal to use different pronouns. He’s been arrested because he broke an injunction which stated he was not allowed to go into the school premises after he was aggressive towards the female HT.

He sounds an awful person regardless of his stance on pronouns.

Thanks, spangly, it's good to hear a perspective from someone directly involved.

Sweeping statements are just sweeping statements.

You need to produce a fact or at least a rational argument as to when and how he breached his contract and an counter argument to how the school had not breached the contract first.

He was suspended with pay while a disciplinary investigation was being conducted as a result of his aggression and disruption at an event which included pupils (some presumably very young, possibly the child in question too) and parents.
I don't believe that he was ever disciplined over his non-use or disagreement with the use of the desired pronoun and new name of the child.

However, from my understanding of the case he expressed his intent to return to the school despite his suspension and the Board of Management felt that his return to the school would be disruptive to the students as they had hired a temporary replacement to cover his classes.
The school then sought an injunction to prevent him showing up to school which was granted.
He then showed up to school and was arrested.

He has been remanded while he purges his contempt (whatever that means).

So that's a long-winded way of saying that he was suspended while an investigation was ongoing as to whether or not he had breached his T&Cs of employment.

I think that having different teachers with a wide variety of view points is beneficial to the student body as a whole.
There is a tendency to focus on tick the box teaching to meet the exam criteria and get the points for college. And then there are the teachers who for various reasons have given up their passion for teaching.
Some of the best educators I met in are able to get students to express an "different" opinion from the study text and encourage class a discussion which explores it while engaging the whole class.

I am sure it is difficult for the students in that school at the moment.

I hope you have got your child(ren) to lock down their SM to existing friends and warned them that discusions could become v nasty.

It's ironic that he teaches German which uses der, die and das! 😎

"German goes them one better and adds a third gender: neuter. The masculine definite article (“the”) is der, the feminine is die, and the neuter form is das. German speakers have had many years to learn whether wagen (car) is der or die or das."

I wonder how he can stomach having to refer to das kind 😂

youmakemesigh
an investigation was ongoing as to whether or not he had breached his T&Cs of employment.

Yep natural justice and fair process will be key elements in the process.

From the newspaper reports:
The school got the injunction because he had entered the school after being suspended.
The arrest was at the school after the school went back to court to inform the court that he had entered the school after the injunction was issued so a bench warrent was issued on the Friday he was arrested near/at the school on Monday.

The school will have an option to begin a second disiplinary investigation for these actions too.

I'd say it's fair to say that he probably breached a lot of T&Cs of his employment at that school. There would have been several witnesses and some people even had to keep him away from the principal.

I think that respect for pupils would be paramount.
In schools, you have children who come from all sorts of diverse backgrounds and I would hate to think that even one child was upset at witnessing the aggression. That alone would be enough for me, even if I believed in his right to free speech. They're teenagers, not adults. You don't know whether a sensitive child might have been frightened. That even one might have been, or could have been would be enough for me to say that he was not respectful of the students.

If he wanted to take it up with the principal, he should have done so in private. If he wanted to express his views elsewhere, he could have gone onto twitter. Or protested at Gay Pride parades or something. A school is not the place.

He comes from a family of 10 children all of whom were home-schooled and all of whom appear to be degree educated and above. I'm not sure that any of them actually work though (although he clearly had a job). I believe his sister was involved in something too and she worked with a top law firm.
That's the problem with the argument for challenging thoughts. If they're all litigious and religious (a bad combo), were they ever given a chance to experience views other than those of their mother?

This is them.
www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-40955927.html

This is a better newspaper source for the case.
www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/courts/2022/09/07/teacher-enoch-burke-tells-court-even-if-he-remains-in-prison-for-the-next-100-years-he-will-not-compromise-beliefs/

From the Irish Times article

"In his ruling, the judge accepted the school’s board of management argument that the application before the court was not about Mr Burke’s opposition to transgenderism nor his religious beliefs. It was as the school submitted, about the teacher’s refusal to comply with the terms of his paid suspension and the terms of the injunction obtained by the school."

He's a drama llama alright. I laughed reading he'd rather be a Christian in Mountjoy than a pagan at wilson's.

Reading the links above about this case reminded me of this:

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

George Bernard Shaw. From Man and Superman, coincidentally enough, a play about the roles of the sexes.

As a poetic bonus, I see from one of the newspaper articles posted above Mr Burke quoted in court Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken; here's the final stanza:

"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

Hi Enoch!

His family are the equivalent of those crazy Westboro people in the USA and go out of their way to provoke and cause havoc in the name of ‘god’.
he’s not being arrested because he won’t use a pronoun, he’s been locked up breaking an order telling him to stay away from the school.
those poor kids are trying to learn and he brings the circus in…

A kid from a wealthy family had their (!) parents contact the school to seek to be called they/ them. The school issued orders that the school staff were expected to comply. This was not legal. Religious beliefs are protected in Ireland. Gender self ID in Ireland does not cover they/them (it specifically covers male or female). The school had no right to issue this order. They were in the wrong. My guess is that Enoch's concerns were dismissed as bigotry and 99% of teachers would have folded at that point, but because he is a zealot, he kept going.

@Solidarityisbetterthanchsrity curious how you know they are wealthy and why that makes any difference whatsoever. And the legal opinion is wrong, religious beliefs are not protected in that way, you are entitled to your beliefs you are not entitled to be a bigot or spread hatred. The High Court would not have issued an injunction if the school were in the wrong.

The injunction was about his behaviour, not he opinions.

And since when is not using terms like "they/them" being a bigot or spreading hatred?

The injunction that he breached was because of his behaviour towards the principal. It was nothing to do with why he was suspended. The rights or wrongs of the suspension have yet to be argued and the court did not look at or rule on that issue. @Solidarityisbetterthanchsrity is correct that self-ID does not cover they/them pronouns and a minor cannot self-ID (yet) afaik. Refusing to say that someone can magically change sex is not bigotry. It is fact. It does not spread hatred. It asserts reality. How do you function in the real world if you think reality and biology are spreading hatred or bigotry? They may be inconvenient but that's about as far as it goes.

because he is a homophobe, refusing to use pronouns - fine; refusing and casting religious slurs on those that do is not

It doesn't matter. The welfare of the child is a priority. Why does he object to using pronouns requested by the child and the child's parents? Why does he object to the new name? He objects as he doesn't believe in transgenderism (?). Would he object to a child fleeing domestic violence having a new name? He believes that it's against his religion and that it's against the ethos of the school to support a child transitioning. The school's ethos is that of the Church of Ireland. Their ethos is not forced on any student. They are multidenominational but their primary ethos is that. In Ireland, the welfare of the child is paramount in law.

Would you want him teaching your teenager?