Drag queen storytime should be allowed in schools for ‘inclusivity’, says teachers’ union

[ChristinaXYZ]

I cannot understand why any teacher continues with his or her membership of the NEU.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/05/drag-queen-story-time-allowed-schools-teachers-union-neu/

"Drag queens should be invited into schools to help challenge the “heteronormative culture and curriculum”, the country’s biggest teaching union has said.

Members of the National Education Union (NEU) voted to support initiatives like drag queen storytime at a conference in Harrogate on Wednesday morning.

Drag queens and LGBT+ authors visiting schools challenge the “heteronormative culture and curriculum that dominates education”, the approved motion stated.

NEU members agreed that the Government is “creating a hostile environment” for trans people by blocking Scotland’s gender reform plans to allow people over 16 to change their legal sex by signing a statutory declaration.

This has “encouraged the far-Right to organise further attacks on drag queen storytime and has created an atmosphere where hate crime can thrive,” they said.

Shelby Millard, a teacher at the conference, told delegates: “The fact that Rishi Sunak has used Section 35 to stop the Scottish Gender Recognition Reform Act is sickening.”

She claimed that he is “supporting the far-Right attacks on drag queen story time”."

Much more on the Telegraph linked above.

Alternative trades unions for teachers and lecturers include Affinity https://workaffinity.co.uk/ or if you just want the backing of some legal advice Edapt (not a trades union , edu-law specialist, not quite the same) https://www.edapt.org.uk/ . Teachers in my family have mostly recently switched to Edapt but if their schools were particularly tough or employment likely to be less stable they'd have gone for Affinity.

@ThunderDad I would think it was your use of the n word that rhymes with once that caused someone to report your post.

By letting drag queens into schools they are getting children used to men dressed as hyper sexualized characatures of women being in their spaces.

Look what fun! Men that dress like women are all absolutely harmless. Yay, rainbows and glitter sparkles!!!!

Disguised by claiming it's homophobic to object.

They could surely just invite a gay surgeon or lesbian engineer to talk to the kids......

It's strange how the LGB people I know go around wearing normal clothes and doing normal things (like anyone with half a brain would realise) and yet they can only be represented in schools by men dressed in ridiculous clothing that shows off their penis and being incredibly misogynistic.

Me too. Where would you go?

I am a member of the NEU because they are the only Union fighting for improved pay and conditions. At the current rate of atrophy there will be no qualified teachers left at my school. The recruitment and retention situation is acute. I just they weren't also complete lunatics!

They could surely just invite a gay surgeon or lesbian engineer to talk to the kids......

we can’t have children thinking that gay and lesbian people are just people - like all the other adults they know.

It wouldn’t be inclusive if we were just showing that being LGB is just ordinary. No we have to present this stuff as all different and extreme. That’s inclusivity. Apparently. 🤯

Jeez have unions been infiltrated by right wing secret agents ? Or are they just led by a bunch of despicable useless creeps? Completely agree that there is no place for drag queens in our education system. Why is this even a thing ? Seriously this is PIE again. I hope members tell the executive committee where to go and take their subs. I left my trade union, Unison when they voted for Self Id without even asking the predominantly female membership. Been a member since Unison formed and was in Cohse before that,gave them free hours and hours of activism and they do that? Naw , no thanks.We need to take our subs and hurt them into listening to us. I agree with previous poster ; it's never the lesbian engineer etc doing storytime is it ? That DragQueen Storytime creep has his semi visible on his photos.🤢

Why are we inviting adult entertainers to teach our children? We accept that there are boundaries between what is for adults and what is for kids and yet drag queens get a free pass?

A drag queen is a male adult entertainer. Not a bloody oppressed minority.

Get a lesbian woman or a gay man to read a bloody story.

Why is this so difficult to comprehend?

Some far right people may have protested but a ton of lefties like me object too.

I think you are probably saying what a lot of teachers are saying and that just shows how this ideology has taken over

Next time I shall refer to them as cryptographically generated random numbers. We wouldn't want those running around schools.

I don’t understand what drag queens have to teach children about gay people. It’s a niche stereotype. My daughter has known gay men and lesbians since birth- none of them wear drag, they’re regular people.

I’ve known gay teachers and TAs, all very ordinary and maybe even as boring as the rest of us.

20 years ago this idea would’ve been called homophobic- now it’s progressive. Why have we stopped explaining gay people are just ordinary people, no different to heterosexual people?

The NEU is a highly politcised union that was formed from an amalgamation the old NUT and Lecturers union. The NUT was always bolshy and forever agitating - and now the NEU is too. This motion doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

Shelby should really be ashamed of herself using very dubious rhetorical tactics (in the quoted bits).

It is not ok to infer that to be against drag queens in schools is to be somehow ‘far right’. It’s clearly rhetoric intended to gaslight lots of people - even people of the left politically - into thinking they must be toxic and ‘far right’ if they object to this or have any reservations.

Trying to silence people from raising perfectly reasonable concerns in this exact ways is nasty. It’s standard TRA tactics. And doesn’t reflect well on the activists who do it.

It’s also not inclusive of LGB people who are not served at all by presenting a uniform rainbow alphabet of letters that is defined by the exceptional. Being LGB is not ‘exceptional’. It’s totally normal and ordinary. Anything that tries to present it as ‘weird’ or ‘outlandish’ by default is not helpful.

Inclusion would be simply recognising that LGB people are just an ordinary part of society. They are teachers, doctors, family friends, may even be your friends’ parents… As varied as the rest of society and just as ordinary a part of it. None of that is served by making drag queens the focus of anything.

I always avoided the NUT when I was teaching ( they morphed into the NEU). In my experience they were forever agitating and politicking when what most people wanted from their union was just basic representation when really needed.

They were forever calling for longer and harder lock-downs in schools during Covid, which i didn't agree with. My daughter is now teaching and has joined another union instead. She has carried on working when the NEU teachers strike - especially as she works in a school in an area of deprivation which has committed to staying open during strikes.

DQ representation of the LGB is so bloody homophobic. Not because of the trans issue, but because it basically says that this group of people are different to everybody else, deliberately setting them apart as hugely different in the minds of children. Half the teaching staff could be LGB and nobody need ever know because hey, we don't have LGB glitter-stamped to our foreheads.

The problem with the other Unions is that they are weak on teachers' pay and conditions.

Agree with this

It’s really bad.

We have same sex parents at school, it’s normalised to the dc. We don’t need grotesque fantasy at all. Trouble is we have this nearby and it’s caused issues.

The thought of it in schools is too much. Just leave it where parents can choose to pay and attend.

If this type of debacle shows us anything, it's that all of us have to participate in these organisations or they will be taken over by motivated groups with their own agendas.

I'm always intrigued by the whole DQSH schtick.

I mean, where are the (out of work) actors, those other performers with good diction who can make a story come alive?

Those working in costume at stately homes?

Poets, writers, English and drama teachers etc?

We really saying the only group to put themselves forwards are these activist DQs that sign themselves up to the whole TQ+ "sex positive" pressure groups maffia that have institutionally captured the education system?

Not likely. It's just that the non DQ candidates aren't signed up to this grift.

It is ridiculous isn't it @SquidwardBound to tie drag queens to the lgb community. As you said the lgb community are like ourselves, they are a group who advocated tirelessly to get the rights they have now & in Ireland it's great to see the solidarity between the lgb & straight communities. Nearly everyone has an lgb friend or family member or knows at least a few. Our neighbours are a lovely lesbian couple with a little girl who's completely doted on. The are a lovely family... To my children it's completely normalised that they are the babies mammies & don't bat an eyelid.
Drag is something that should never be normslised to children, it is not a reflection of the lgb community & tbh my stranger danger sensors would be in overdrive if this was actually a thing.

We are predictably appalled but not surprised at this move from NEU. We have been trying to talk to them about safeguarding and ideological capture for 4 years

Here us SSA statement

twitter.com/SafeSchools_UK/status/1643712457213456384?s=20

This!