Heads should stop teachers allowing children to identify as cats, says No 10

[IwantToRetire]

The spokesman said that teachers should not teach “contested opinions as facts” and called for headteachers to intervene in extreme cases.

“It would not be right to comment on the actions of a specific individual or a specific school without knowing the full details, but we understand why these reports will be concerning for parents,” the spokesman said.

“In broad terms, teachers have a responsibility to encourage their students to engage respectfully with those they disagree with.

“They should also not be teaching contested opinions as fact, shutting down valid discussions and debates.

“It’s important parents and carers are reassured that children aren’t being influenced by personal views of those teaching them. Any example that strays from this would be wrong and we would expect headteachers to act.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/20/rye-college-children-neo-pronouns-cats-moons-rishi-sunak/

Unlike the headline the article makes it clear that a "spokesman" (how old fashioned and sexist shouldn't that be spokesperson?!) has said this so Sunak may or may not have a public opinion about this ...

But the Telegraph seems to be keen to keep the issue of self identifying on their front pages.

When I first heard about children doing this I thought (hoped) that it was younger children making fun of the trans generation, but seems not.

NB article is behind a paywall but can be read at https://archive.ph by entering the Telegraph URL above into the box.

(The cat in picture below looks very cross. Probably feels the same way GC women feel - outraged at the notion that some young human could in any way know or speak with experience based knowledge about being a cat!)

Could it be to slow down breeding thus reducing the population??

Yeah I know it's a bit out there. BUT it will

Well it is effectively eugenics. Given the high numbers of disabled/autistic kids and gay kids caught up in it. Same shit different really

And of course the production of a cohort of young people over the age if consent with the bodies and brains of children. This is not an accident

Belatedly I sometimes post that the obvious explanation for how this 'delusion' has taken such hold so quickly and is so well-funded is that the powers that be want to rid the gene pool of autism etc etc . It is a terrifying thought but then what other logical explanation can there be? Eugenics was a thing in left-wing circles a hundred years ago so the cycle has come round again dressed up as 'progress'.
https://unherd.com/2020/07/how-the-establishment-fell-for-eugenics/

Everything goes full circle. I feel this way about the way sex/rse education in schools is going. With the words girls and boys being removed from materials ( I've seen this for myself btw) and with things like the dice game etc causing such outrage due to its inaccuracy /confusing content/ explicity etc which is now so embedded that I fear this has been done simply to ensure that the quickest and easiest way to prevent kids having access to this inappropriate and/or confusing content is to remove the whole thing. Which of course puts us right back to children being vulnerable and clueless about their bodies opening up opportunities for abuse. And girls in particular ( due to the fact they are the ones who get pregnant) trapped in abusive relationships or unable to leave due to multiple children etc. Back to the days where women had no clue how or what to do to prevent pregnancy and have the ability to make decisions about their bodies. All framed as progressive just like everything else. But its not. Its just another way to regress.

Guess they could invent a shot to give school girls/boys every five years to prevent xyz which render them infertile at the same time.

My mother when pregnant was so sick they gave her a wonder drug for morning sickness in 1959. She couldn't even keep that down so gave up. It was thalidomide.

Her friend was a midwife delivering home babies. She said back in the 40s and 50s babies deformed never took the first breath because they were prevented from doing so. We're talking pre pill large poor families. The midwives thought it a mercy for these mum's

Reproduction and contraception is covered in science thankfully so the baby won’t get completely thrown out with the bath water.

This idea that schools and non specialist staff should or can effectively deliver all of this stuff really needs to be questioned. The schools will do it attitude never seems to take into account that if you’re going to deliver something to all kids that means all staff, however I’ll equipped or uncomfortable or unsuitable will be delivering it. Give them training sounds good but we don’t have time for it.

This idea that schools and non specialist staff should or can effectively deliver all of this stuff really needs to be questioned

Ironically the only reason many of these teachers or external agencies get away with all this stuff is because someone else ( usually parents) has done the " dirty work " and explained reality to their child. That however doesn't explain how i couldn't help within a school without a dbs check despite never being out of sight from teachers and other children. But heads can ok materials that they haven't even read /seen from agencies that don't have any background in child care/education/psychology etc

There is no other job either where "i thought X had checked it" would be seen as sufficient grounds for innocence. A pharmacist will check with drs if they feel a dose is wrong. Bar staff would still ID someone even if they thought security already checked IDs etc

Plus who on earth even thinks to themselves that X is a good resource despite being aimed at adult sexuality amd involved adult themes like drag. Thats like going to your plumber for medical advice .

I was at a Comprehensive school in the 1970s, in English we would discuss and write essays on the pros and cons of abortion, the death penalty etc...real free speech stuff, there was no right or wrong answer. Of course both issues were as now, abortion possible and the death penalty abolished in the UK.
I recall that sex education was pretty much in Science only and was purely factual about reproduction. Most girls would have read a weekly teenage magazine and these responsibly covered the issues of contraception etc. There was of course no internet, no other obvious source of information then.
However I had been already been told 'the facts of life' when I was about 8 by an older child who had been told in Science at secondary school.
It made sense and caused no distress. For the dealing with puberty stuff, I had a 1950s book called 'It's Time You Knew' which was very reassuring and wholesome but the teen magazines would have covered how your periods were a nuisance etc etc.
What we probably need now is an NHS/GP internet website devoid of 'gender woo' giving the facts for teenagers to use if they are doubt. It does not need to cover sexual perversions.

Bringing in outside lobby groups is a daft idea and is maybe born out of too much freedom for the Academy Schools model. Heads really should have had more sense but then who is behind the funds for various Academy schools?

Of course I should add I could ask my Mum anything. That is really the way it should be.

I think we need to be very careful how much we agree to hand over /give up our parental responsibility to the likes of schools and the state. We've allowed much to walk on through because obviously no one wants kids to go hungry or be left with abusive families or be thrown out because they are gay or whatever. These things seem all very well when you agree with whats being done/said/taught etc

But the flip side is of course that when things happen that do affect you or that you don't agree with and we have granted external bodies the right to have control and powers over families, that we are most powerless to stop these people taking over, indoctrination kids with their own agendas and having to go along with it.

I think this unknown borderline between what any of us would expect a child to learn from their family, to what schools should teach has never really been clearly defined. And despite being angry at how parents have apparently had no idea, or based on recent news reports, been denied access to teaching material because it is the copyright of an outside organisation, there are still occassions where a family may have anti gay and lesbian attitudes which can make life really hard for some young people.

But I also wanted to raise the issue of however badly the teacher reacted and talked do any of us know what pressure they (dont know if it is a man or a woman) are under thanks to a school policy they have to adhere to?

The school is acting all innocent, implying some individualistic stance, but as we know many schools have actively promoted the Stonewall agenda and teachers have had to go along with it, or lose their jobs.

I'm not a great beliver in everything being state run, but on the other hand I dont believe in a capitalist consumer approach that has allowed mney making ventures to some how decide what children should be told are "the facts of life" because rather than genuinely they are just exploiting a whole new marekt opened up by the cooption of so many institutes to the TRA agenda.

In theory the benefit to a state run curriculum is that all adults have the right to vote and elect the politicians who have oversight on said curriculum. Councils ran schools for most of my life. Political control might have determined those who abolished Grammar Schools and those who didn't but in general it worked with common sense prevailing most of the time. If a parent had concerns about something, they wouldn't have been called 'transphobic' and threatened with having their kids taken into care.
In theory the 'academy schools' movement should have allowed different approaches and therefore offered choice to parents (eg uniform at school or no uniform).
Instead of choice and competition, we have the whole education sector in thrall to Stonewall Ideology which wouldn't be so bad if said ideology made any sense and everyone were on board with it but it doesn't. It is bonkers and is the way madness lies.

@justasking111
"Guess they could invent a shot to give school girls/boys every five years to prevent xyz which render them infertile at the same time."

Given how many women experienced menstruation problems after the Covid vaccination and the fact that the spike protein was found in the womb after they said it would be localised to the arm, it's possible they've already done that. Fertitility.

A virus was also recently engineered to eliminate stray cats by rendering them infertile. It works by inducing something similar polycistic overy syndrome in a way that not only sends fertility off a cliff but sex drive in females, too. It really would take a bare minimum to adapt the virus for humans. At which point everybody reproduces by IVF and implantation, I guess. Assuming you're approved and can afford the process.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38721-0

We're on the edge of a brave new world.

WantToRetire yes. I haven’t experienced this outsourcing to trainers or buying in resources because my school didn’t take that route thankfully. It does seem crazy to me to do that-particularly from lobby groups and for really controversial issues.

I can empathise with teachers feeling pressured etc but personally wouldn’t deliver ideology driven content and would stand my ground. When I trained there was a lot of thinking about the code of ethics and how we are entrusted with a duty of care.

It’s very easy to mount a reasoned defence of refusing to deliver this uncritically especially now. For example concern for young people with autism who are massively over represented in the sogd stats or respecting different religious beliefs etc. Now you could cite the Cass report or legal cases or recent clarifications from government about bias in the classroom-whatever was the best fit for your senior management.

I think some schools leapt ahead without enough thought or maturity claiming we had to do x, y and z when we really didn’t and plenty of schools didn’t without issue. In Brighton and hove kids were having to fill out questionnaires on their gender identity over a decade ago - some areas were overstepping boundaries and pushing ideology uncritically from way before there was any pressure on them to do so.

I suppose while I sympathise with people not wanting to disagree or have to assert themselves with superiors I can’t excuse it really. I’m a parent and I know what it is to have to entrust your child to a school as well as having professional ethics and duty of care. So, no I can’t excuse it.

Mind you look how much the media capitulated. Unbiased content with air time to both sides usually yet not on this ideology. Haven’t seen detransitioners or lesbians or gc women being given mainstream airtime for balanced reporting.

I do think education should hold itself to a higher standard though.

The silent, let alone the public compliance, with what is really about a very small set of people with a particular view of the world is extraordinary.

Why this one?

We've managed to accommodate, not always that respectfully, an number of sects or choice of life styles.

What was it, is it, that has led so many to effectively centre a minority as the arbitor of how we should lead our lives and educate our children.

But surely identifying as a cat, a dog or a sloth is the same to identifying as a girl if you're a boy or vice..
It can never happen as you weren't born as what you decide to identify as. It's just pandering.
The trans & furry communities are expecting people to indulge & go along with their fantasy.

Not sure if this is the right thread (there were a few!) but thought this might be of interest:

Although the report does not directly address the argument between the teacher and pupils, or the question of whether any pupils identify as animals, it praises the quality of staff training and teaching of relationship and sex education “in a sensitive and impartial way”.

Ofsted’s lead inspector, Matthew Haynes, said in the report: “Pupils are taught how to debate contentious subjects. Most pupils learn to do so respectfully and maturely.

“For example, pupils are clear that there are contested views about gender, sexuality and whether these are assigned at birth. One pupil summed up the views of many when he said, ‘We are taught to think for ourselves, but also to respect everybody’s point of view.’”

The report also found the majority of parents were “impressed” with how the school handles complex issues. “Reflecting the views of many other parents, one commented, ‘Rye College is a great school. My child is very happy, feels safe and is supported by teachers,’” the report notes.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jul/13/school-in-cat-pupil-controversy-given-ofsted-all-clear-after-snap-inspection

How does this:

"... the report does not directly address the argument between the teacher and pupils, or the question of whether any pupils identify as animals"

And this:

"Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “There was a huge amount of political and media noise around the incident which led to this inspection and which we can now see very clearly from the findings of this report was blown out of all proportion.

“The most ridiculous aspect of that media and political noise was the suggestion that children were identifying as animals in schools on a widespread basis – something we have never heard of and never had reported to us by any school or college leader.""
Fit together?

something we have never heard of and never had reported to us by any school or college leader

Funny how many posters on this thread had.

Would you report it ever to anyone if you were so scared of the trans rights pile-on you were validating students as animals? Nah. You'd avoid it going on any paperwork, talk vaguely about trans identities, and hope they grow up soon.