Maths teacher sacked for refusing to use opposite sex pronouns.

[SweetChilliGirl]

I hope he wins at tribunal.

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/kevin-lister-transgender-pronouns-teacher-b2515054.html

Me too. He's representing himself which is brave.

That’s a pity if he didn’t realise how much support he’d get if he’d crowdfunded. I think it’s (another) important case

@MrsOvertonsWindow he does have a crowdfunder now and it looks like he has a barrister helping him - Dr. Anna Loutfi, of the Bad Law Project - but I'm not sure if that means she'd be representing him in the tribunal.

Brave!

A shortage of Maths teachers yet they sack one for no good reason. Madness. I hope he wins.

I wouldn’t die on this hill!

It wasn’t pronouns, he was refusing to call her by her ‘new’ name in class, arguing it is compelled speech, which I just think is pretty rude. There is also something about a Maths competition which I can see both sides of. She asked if she could enter and he said ‘of course, you are a girl’ and entered her under her previous name. There are so many more diplomatic ways around this, such as saying your sex is female and it is open to all members of the female sex, however you know think of yourself, and use her new name.

If you are gender critical, surely that goes for names too? If Harriet wants to call herself Harrison, why would I care? He decided to gesture at her silently instead, which would be pretty offensive.

In the article I read, pronouns weren’t even mentioned.

This! It's absolutely extraordinary that we've got such a shortage of teachers yet one is being sacked for basically a "nothing" reason. The lunatics really are in charge of the asylum.

I think part of the problem is the reasons these children are changing their names are because they want to identify as a different gender so you could argue by going along with the name changes we’re encouraging the young person’s beliefs and teachers shouldn’t be encouraging anything that’s harmful. If the young person had joined an extremest group and adopted a name associated with that group we wouldn’t be happy with teachers going along with that would we? I worry that somewhere along the line, we’re going to have a lot of young adults with regrets wondering why the adults and professionals around them encouraged and enabled them to make these life choices

@taxguru ,

umm, how about if your child hated their name and changed it for whatever reason but a teacher, again for whatever reason, decided not to use it, and just pointed at your child instead?

I am as gender critical as most in some ways, but being rude and upsetting to a child in class would not ever occur to me.

These things need to be dealt with in a properly way among the relevant adults and out of the classroom.

@Upinthenightagain ,

‘you could argue by going along with the name changes we’re encouraging the young person’s beliefs and teachers shouldn’t be encouraging anything that’s harmful.’

Yes, interesting point. But, again, I would use the chosen name in class but refer the pupil under the Prevent scheme. I wouldn’t unilaterally have it out with them in front of the whole class, which would probably have the opposite effect and radicalise them more.

Schools have all sorts of structures which can be used to deal with this sort of thing. It just isn’t a classroom teacher’s job to try and deal with complex psychological issues, especially not by humiliating a pupil in front of the class.

Many years ago I had a pupil like that but, after the memo from the Head, of course I wasn’t going to use their previous name, regardless of how silly using the new one made me feel.

I support his actions wholeheartedly. I hope his union is backing him.

On the other hand, New College Swindon is a complete dump, so if he loses the case, he'll be better off out of there anyway. With policies like that, I'm amazed they have any teachers (whose job is to teach facts) left.

As a skilled maths teacher, he'll have no problem finding a much better job somewhere with an intelligent and competent senior leadership team.

@Newbutoldfather but unlike with Prevent there isn’t good enough guidance for schools. They haven’t really got anywhere to refer children to to help with these things so they’re just going along calling them ‘she’ when they’re ‘he’ and ‘Joanna’ when they’re ’Joseph’ and I’m not sure that’s the right thing to be doing as a professional and someone in a position of influence.

@Upinthenightagain ,

But where do you draw the line here?

Child insists they need to drink in the lab as they have a medical condition. Head has agreed with parents that this is ok.

You, as a perceptive teacher, know this child has had hypochondria for years and judge it to be attention seeking, and shouldn’t be validated in that it just encourages the hypochondria.

Does the teacher’s personal judgment trump the school’s, and is a classroom the best place to have the conversation?

@Newbutoldfather nobody is drawing the line anywhere it seems. I think it’s part of a bigger issue in schools which is why I’m glad I don’t teach in secondary schools anymore. It’s totally unenviable

Maybe he wanted to make the subtle point that she considered herself to be a boy yet still wanted to enter a competition for girls, and of course if she were to enter a competition for girls it might raise questions applying in the name of Liam or Oscar, or whatever. I think his point was 'yes you can enter it, of course you can, because it's a matter of simple fact and biology that you are a girl. But why do you want to enter a girl's competition if you see yourself as a boy? You can't cherry pick.'

So she's girl enough when it comes to wanting to enter a girls competition but wants to be addressed as a boy. We have some very confused young people out there who shouldn't be being so encouraged in all this nonsense. Why are so many people suddenly so unhappy with the sex they were born? Why are so many kids thinking changing their gender is the answer to all their problems? It's all very worrying and being very badly handled. I guess it's easier and cheaper to just let them call themselves whatever they like than actually deal with their mental health problems.

That is a false comparison, and I think you know it.

If a child wants to change their name, with the consent of the parents, and that new name is on the register, of course it would be correct to use it.

That was not the case here. The child in question had decided to change their name (;again) without any formal process. It could be argued that pointing was the safest and most considerate way of indicating the child.

This case is local to me and has caused a lot of debate and interest locally. The prevailing view seems to be that the teacher was competent and popular, and is missed.

He has been barred from teaching children by DBS, I understand.

You all need to remember it is a confused and vulnerable minor here!

You can’t just foist a view, correct or otherwise, on someone who is not ready to hear it. And adults humiliating children in front of their peers is a real no no in education; rightly so.

The maths teacher was either highly insensitive or maybe a bit on-the-spectrum himself.

Either way, if he couldn’t call her by her ‘new’ name, he should have discussed it with his head of pastoral and they could, together with the girl and her parents, come up with a compromise which worked for everyone.

He is clearly going to lose this case for all the above reasons.

I'd have thought if the competition was just for girls and this DC was a biological girl then fine for her to enter but she would need to be entered as a female.

It’s quite obviously a case of compelled speech.

Whether he was rude, undiplomatic, ineffective, a dislikeable person, or anything else, is neither here nor there.

@RapidOnsetGenderCritic Then the world truly has gone mad.

Who would want to be a teacher?

@Newbutoldfather

You all need to remember it is a confused and vulnerable minor here!

She is only confused because she's been led up the garden path to believe you can pick and choose your sex/gender.

She wouldn't have been confused if she'd been brought up as a female and given no indication she could change her sex/gender, in the same way she could change her favourite pop group or football team.

We, as society, have caused all these problems by buying into the lie that you can choose.

I despair at a few decades of women's lib where we'd been banging the drum for equality, fair treatment, etc., with the aim of making women equal to men in terms of careers, education, etc. We've embraced alternative sexualities so people are a lot more free to be gay, bisexual etc. We should be in a position where men and women are equal, should be able to dress the same (we've made massive progress there in women not having to wear dresses/skirts anymore etc), choose how they want to be intimate with of either sex, etc.

Rather than encouraging people to think they can change and choose their sex/gender, we should be continuing the fight to make it less important as to what sex/gender you are and to accept nature rather than fight it and most importantly to continue the fight for equality so that people of either sex have the same opportunities, rights etc.

There's another thread here: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5031546-teacher-kevin-listers-court-case-starts-today-on-tribunal-tweets?reply=133906454

It's open to remote observers, send an email with your name and email address agreeing to abide with judge's directives to
[email protected]- request for Remote Observation of 1404223/2022 Mr K Lister v New College Swindon.

Either way, if he couldn’t call her by her ‘new’ name, he should have discussed it with his head of pastoral and they could, together with the girl and her parents, come up with a compromise which worked for everyone.

That's exactly what he tried to do, but the school prevented him from doing it. There's some background to the case here:

https://tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/kevin-lister-v-new-college-swindon

In 2021, a 17-year-old female student told Mr. Lister she wanted to be referred to as male using he/him pronouns. Mr. Lister then raised a safeguarding concern stating that he wasn't able to affirm the pupil unless he had parental consent. He contacted the safeguarding team 10 days later and was told they did not intend to speak to the parents.