What are UK schools teaching?

[namechange10022002]

Just curious to hear what, if anything, your children have been taught about the trans issue? (At either primary or secondary school).

My own kids will be starting to primary school soon and I just want to get an idea of how much exposure to this topic they might receive.

Yes. I thought: "I find JKR's views on feminism troubling because such innocuous words result in death and rape threats."

Wave!
I've told DP his excellent GC actions are starring on MN, he's very proud.

Elsanore do you think your DH might be interested in signing this petition started by Sex Matters to update the Equality Act to make clear that the protected characteristic ‘sex’ means biological sex.?

www.mumsnet.com/talk/petitions_noticeboard/4668426-petition-update-the-equality-act-to-make-clear-the-characteristic-sex-is-biological-sex?page=1

I forgot to say it is an official petition site with guaranteed anonymity.

I’m resurrecting this thread because it mentions the transman Jude Guaitamacchi. Just to recap, Jude has been earning a living visiting schools (mostly private schools I think?)and talking to teachers and school children about their experiences of being trans, including their surgery and hormone treatments. There was another thread about this person on Mumsnet about a year ago but it got deleted.

Anyway it would appear that Jude is now no longer going to be visiting schools to give lessons/advice on trans issues. Yesterday, on their Instagram account - becomingJude - they issued a written statement and also posted an emotional video - the statement read:

‘After 11 years of speaking in schools I won’t be accepting school bookings moving forward. I’ve been teaching LGBTQIA+ awareness in secondary schools around the UK and Gender Critical parents are actively targeting my work. I no longer feel safe as an independent trans professional working in UK schools. I started this work to be (a) voice I needed to hear as a kid. To say I’m crushed is an understatement. I feel like I’ve failed them. But the reality is that this country is continuing to fail them. I feel driven out. I am hurt, angry, frustrated at the state of this country. This is my livelihood but it’s not worth my wellbeing. I am looking to deliver more training and keynote talks to companies and corporate businesses to educate those that need it the most and the parents that think I shouldn’t be educating their kids!“

There are hundreds of comments all lamenting the fact that Jude is no longer going to be visiting UK schools (Trish Godard amongst them)There are also comments about ‘transphobia’ forcing Jude to quit. The fact that parents are contacting schools to enquire about the precise nature of the educational content of Jude’s lessons, is interpreted as ‘targeting’ Jude, and as a hostile act.

There is absolutely no acknowledgement that parents are well within their rights to enquire about the content of the ‘lessons’ that their children are receiving in school. It’s all interpreted as victimisation.

Jude G is in their mid-30s and didn’t transition until their mid-20s. They are articulate and sensitive and have obviously found a great sense of purpose in doing this work. I honestly feel for them but also cannot understand their blindness and naïveté in thinking that schools should just allow them to deliver their thoughts on gender identity as if they are a fact. The accusation that they would not feel ‘safe’ carrying on annoys me somewhat. It seems that having someone disagree with you is deemed to be a ‘threat’?

They have had a troubled youth (estranged at various points from both their father and mother) and obviously found a home and ‘chosen’ family within the trans community. But there’s just no awareness of the bigger picture, and a certain arrogance in feeling they have the right, and the educational credentials to go into schools and speak to possibly other vulnerable children and present ‘transition’ as an answer.

I’m not in any way ‘gloating’ about this situation. I actually think Jude could do with stepping away from social media for a while because they seem quite fragile. I certainly don’t wish them any ill and hope they can find ways to support themselves and that they have supportive people round them.

I suppose it’s inevitable that many trans influencers may find it harder to get paid gigs in schools if schools become more vigilant about the credentials of third party organisations they bring in to speak to our children.

Anyway, I thought the people on this thread might be interested to know this.

Thank you @ScoldsBridal for this. It's interesting that Jude self identifies as an "independent trans professional". Not sure what their professional qualifications are in relation to child psychology, development and education but if they've now decided to stop selling their personal story to young children then that's a relief.
As you point out, it's long overdue for schools to exercise some due diligence and critical thinking about all the groups and individuals desperate to influence children with their personal views (and making £££ out of it). Schools are legally required to be politically impartial and not offer up children to every passing political influencer.
Lots of people are mentally fragile and vulnerable - schools are not the places for them to seek validation from the applause of young children.

We had an advisor from Brook speak to the children (y6) this week and I was unpleasantly surprised to watch a presentation, to 10 and 11 year olds, containing such nonsense as 'women and those who have vaginas' and 'men and those who have a penis'. As my colleague pointed out, though, at least it wasn't the 'havers' BS...

Ooh how interesting and how fortuitous. I had a meeting at a school recently and asked for a copy of his materials to be sent to me. Thanks so much for sharing this good news!

Year 9 had to write this in French?

If the teacher really said that, it should be flagged up with the head then board of governors.

Did any of you correct the speaker? Why are ten year olds being exposed to nonsense such as “those who have vaginas”?

Although this is an old thread it's an ongoing problem. I'm glad some guidance is finally out but the Tories really dropped the ball, they should have done something years ago. Not just the schools but the teaching colleges too. And do something about that fucking champions scheme!

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/stonewall-tells-schools-not-to-call-pupils-boys-and-girls-08mzlrmtr

https://archive.ph/TUzfV

I see the Times have correctly called Stonewall a' transgender rights lobbying group'.

I guess you would be described by Jude as one of those parents ‘breathing down their neck’ - this was stated in the emotional reel they posted. Was Jude scheduled to visit? Did your school provide any of the materials that Jude was going to be using? It’s a bit lame to object to this bare minimum of scrutiny - why baulk at such reasonable requests for accountability?

I rather get the feeling that Jude’s lessons may consist of them showing how happy and successful you can be as a trans person - but it’s all wrapped up in their own particularly glossy experience - they’ve got modelling contracts in their non-binary capacity for Moss Bross, River Island, Harrods, go on paid for cruises with Virgin Cruises hanging out with the likes of Linda Reilly of Stonewall and Kate Osborne ‘I block TERFs’ MP. They get to wear their Moss Bross suits at loads of Award Ceremonies where they have won awards for their work in schools, give Ted Talks - it all looks very glamorous and I imagine would impress many a young school kid in much the same way any minor celebrity giving a talk at your school would. And of course any school teachers with aspirations of being feted as a diversity champion would gain Brownie Points for bringing Jude in and perhaps securing their school a high ranking in the Stonewall Diversity Champions chart.

It must be hard when so much of your self-worth is wrapped up in your work - and a huge pressure to keep up appearances when everything isn’t all champagne and roses. It’s all so appearance-based. So many trans men spending hours and hours down the gym aiming for hugely muscled physiques on their often diminutive frames - exercise is great but this constant body-focus can’t be good for your mental health.

I know ‘visibility’ is important but that’s got to be truthful and balanced. If you’re going to have Jude in to give a talk, then have a detransitioner in the next day - or a gay person in talking about the ridiculousness of stereotypes and how you don’t have to adhere to rigid sets of behaviours in order to ‘qualify’ as a man or a woman. And then let the discussions happen and the genuine questioning happen without the threat of being accused of transphobia.

Anyone who goes into schools to talk to children and yet who refers to parents who care about keeping their children’s education free of dodgy ideologies as “breathing down their necks” is a huge 🚩. This language smacks of the abuser who asks children not to “tell the parents” and to “keep what happens between us a secret”.

FrancescaContini I hear what you’re saying but I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by painting a picture of everyone that speaks like this as some sort of abuser. I don’t think that gets us anywhere. (And I’m not denying that the ruse of saying ‘come talk to me - I won’t tell your parents’ can and has been exploited and we should absolutely condemn and safeguard against this) I know you weren’t directly accusing Jude of being such a person and I know what you mean with the red flag warning.

I just wanted to say that Jude seems a genuinely good person who completely believes that what they’re doing is for the good of humanity. I really believe that. That doesn’t mean I think they’re ‘right’ - I just think they’re completely blind to the fact that the beliefs they hold are like a scaffold to their whole sense of identity and world-view. To step outside and look objectively at themselves and admit that ‘yes’ I believe this is the answer to my own fragility but isn’t an absolute ‘truth’, would bring their own world crashing down. If it’s true for them, they believe it’s true for everyone else who feels a sense of discomfort or self-loathing of their sex and/or body.

Once you commit to the idea of not really being the sex you were born, and you follow up with procedures and medications that irreversibly change your body and your body’s potential - then you’ve passed the point of no return. You can’t entertain the slightest doubt, the slightest regret. Putting yourself on social media as a ‘trans professional’ cements that belief - you really aren’t allowing yourself any way back because you feel that you would be letting your followers down too.

That’s why the detransitioners who speak up are incredibly brave. And it’s incredibly important that we hear their voices.

My year 9 has been taught you can be born in the wrong body, to be kind and they've read a book on trans in reading class.
He said none of his class believe it but they are all too frightened to speak up or challenge it in any way.
My heart breaks for all the kids being purposefully brainwashed, confused and frightened by this.
Resign Gillian Keegan you are an utter disgrace for allowing lies in schools.

Agree - they might not understand why this is a huge red flag and safeguarding breach and they may be in good faith but the FACT remains it's a failure of safeguarding to try and alienate children from their parents. It is wrong.

Parents are many times more likely to have their children's wellbeing front and centre than any teacher let alone any random coming in to push their political views. This idea that parents are the enemy is very dangerous for schools.

I would recommend to anyone who is at the point of choosing schools and wants their child's education to be gender ideology free to opt for a school with children of many different faiths in it. My DDs secondary has large range of religious communities all of whom seem to get on very well together (kudos to the school which teaches respect for other people's beliefs without having to comply with them well) and all of whom are pretty clear about biological reality, seemingly and have pushed back extremely hard on any hints of totalitarian imposition of gender belief.

Agree with Keegan, she's allowed this emotional abuse.

It IS emotional abuse - as is defined in KCSIE - pretty clearly fits that definition. I'd be raising a safeguarding concern quoting KCSIE.

Julie Bindel in the Telegraph

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/22/nowhere-is-safe-for-children-in-our-trans-obsessed-era/

https://archive.ph/6nRIw

Those poor children. They have been manipulated into silence and are fearful of raising questions - which is the very antithesis of the purpose of going to school.

Did you raise a complaint with the school SLT?

You highlight the problem ScoldsBridal. Trans training is nearly always delivered by self invested adults wanting to tell their story. Normally when schools invite adults in to talk to children it might parents of murdered children warning about knife crime, "reformed addicts" speaking about their experiences, holocaust survivors, organisations running anti bullying workshops etc. All of these people have a story they want to tell to help children and the schools think it will be helpful for children.
In contrast, trans adults / lobby groups not only want to tell their story but also want to influence children's beliefs. They promote their personal beliefs as facts to young children. The groups who've been allowed to wreak havoc in schools aim to upend the curriculum (boys in girls changing rooms and sport), challenge facts and science (TWAW) and gaslight vulnerable children that they can change sex.
There's rarely any engagement / discussion about issues as this is framed as transphobic and because "training" often delivered by a trans individual self identifying as "an expert", few children or adults feel able to raise any challenge. It's exceptionally manipulative as can be seen in this reaction from an individual being told "no more".
This is down to the government (via the trans captured DfE) and schools who have failed to exercise critical thinking and due diligence, prioritising the promotion of an ideology by adults steeped in disordered thinking & completely failing to centre the emotional health, wellbeing and safety of children.

Our DS is in primary school (year 2) and we have friends with children in year 5. Nothing of Trans is mentioned at all.
My friends child goes another local school and they are the same up to now.

The Telegraph are reporting that a number of boarding schools have policies (no doubt written by the dodgy Stonewall) stating that boys believing they're girls may share dormitories with girls - and vice versa. An unbelievable safeguarding fail. With the grim child abuse history that so many boarding schools have had in recent history, it defies belief that those in charge are actually promoting this:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/21/boarding-schools-trans-pupils-dorms/