Sex education in UK schools but not as we knew it!

I don’t think they really do identify as animals - I believe that they are laughing at the staff who have so thoroughly bought into an ideology that the children know is ridiculous. It’s either that or the notion that ‘I can be anything I like’ has taken root so firmly that psychological problems have become endemic in the children brought up with it.

It seems that the guidance might change as a result of this (if so, well played Tiddles and Fido!). If that happens it will be interesting to see how it is taken by those who have shouted loudest and virtue-signalled their support of the discredited affirmation policy. Will they backtrack and start shouting equally loudly that children need to be treated as children, or stick to the beliefs about identity politics that they hold so dear?

I’m sure that on the whole there will be a collective sigh of relief across the teaching profession if the guidelines state that the clock is being wound back to when there were two sexes and ‘gender’ was just a way of describing society’s norms as regards the expectations of how members of those two sexes should behave. There might then be space to look at ways of breaking down those expectations to allow for greater choice, and adult conversations can be had. How liberating would that be?

Sadly the years of dogma and indoctrination will leave behind a generation of damaged children - will the Stonewall supporters take responsibility for that, or claim that they were only obeying orders?

I really hope that there is a proper investigation into all this, but given the fact that it has taken hold during the time the government has been in power I don’t know how thorough it will be. Someone has to be responsible for allowing the identity madness to take root. I hope that whoever it is will have the decency to stand by the damaged children and ensure that they get the help they deserve to compensate for being so badly let down.

The problem is that teachers are people and as well as many being gifted and sensible there are also a proportion of those who are really stupid and children are unmerciful, in finding these out and exploiting them.

I can look back on my school days and think of one or two teachers, that we dismissed as useless (and yes, they were) and we played up, and playing up doesn't mean being disruptive. I and a friend were described as being 'deeply subversive'.

In these tales of children saying they are cats, I can see my subversive self. It is exactly what i would have done in the circumstances, and my DD would have had the whole class bringing her milk, stroking her fur and throwing balls for her to play with. I would have told her off and discouraged her from doing it. As an adult I would never condone her bad behaviour. But some teachers do act very foolishly.

I would not be a secondary school teacher for all the tea in China, but if you are really need to be on top of the job, and this teacher clearly wasn't.

Terri bill👏👏 well remembered.

At least it’s only a few who have moved onto claiming they’re an animal.
Insanity- the number of people supporting the idea that being non-human is being your authentic self.

Really couldn't help recalling the opening lyrics of Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall, against the backdrop of the recent debacle:

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teacher, leave them kids alone!

Somehow seems to resonate right now, which it didn't at the time.

Jen62

Did any of you know that many schools now tell staff they cannot say boys & girls due to possibly upsetting a non binary or trans pupil? They refer to them by group. Eg, " come on year 9" . Got an email recently from a school signed with preferred pronouns after name. Another school initiative.
Getting crazy.

Key stage 1
I’m confused. If we are to accept that girls can be boys and vice versa, why can’t we say ‘girls’ or ‘boys’ (or ‘non-binary’)?
We haven’t lined up boys and girls for years now, but children like a challenge. So I might ask who is ready to go home?
If I look round and see the boys (or girls) are sitting more quietly at the end of the day, why not say ‘boys (or girls) are quietest this afternoon, so boys (or girls) get your coats first?’

Any boy who identifies as a girl would obviously wait for the girls’ turn wouldn’t she?
Presumably the non binary child is wearing clothing associated with one sex or the other, even though the school uniform doesn’t specify who can wear the trousers/skirt/ shorts/dress/polo shirt.
If I asked boys to leave first, would the non-binary child in a dress get up?
Should the other children who don’t really understand that Jacky is non binary be reprimanded for pointing out that the child in a dress today is still the boy he was yesterday?
Or should I just say Jacky, if he/she is sitting correctly?
All these situations could arise as we move further down the path.
Should challenges the children enjoy be discontinued for fear of offending, or should they continue, with the acceptance that some children are boys, some are girls and some get to choose on a day to day basis?

Jen62
Me and my daughter picked up my granddaughter from school one day. As per usual we asked her what lessons she’d had that day. Sex education came the answer. We both said oh in unison. She followed that up with masturbation
She’s never been embarrassed by any part of her body or anyone else’s.

Sorry Jen62, I wasn't ignoring you - I had pasted and formatted the article when I saw your posts.

I agree with you that this is not good for young people at all. they need adults to give them certainties, as far as possible - not gaslight them into having to say things they can see are untrue.

Sorry for all the Telegraph links, but they keep pinging on my phone. Here is an extract from yet another article about the 'furries'. I think it is spot on, and mirrors a lot of the things we have been saying on here for years. The accusations of a 'Right Wing plot', the fact that Gender Dysphoria is very rare, but treated as though it is as commonplace as Anxiety, the anger from the teacher as she is challenged - it's all very familiar on these threads. There are more articles, including one saying that Keira Starmer has finally spoken sense on the so-called 'gender' issue, and this is, as I say, just an extract; but I am in danger of reproducing the entire Telegraph on here if I keep going. You can read it all free for a trial period if you are so inclined, but the gist is in the extract:

It feels absurd to be typing this, but audio has emerged from an East Sussex school of a teacher reprimanding some pupils who’ve refused to treat as a reality another pupil’s claim that they are, in fact, a cat.

The teacher’s response has to be heard to be believed; were it not for the recording made by a shrewd child in the room, I would have struggled to believe this wasn’t a hoax. Having chastised them about the importance of “inclusion”, the teacher informs the girls they are “despicable” and ought to be at a different school. (Child murder? Despicable. Defrauding a charity? Despicable. Saying girls have a vagina and boys a penis? Not so much.)

Next, she threatens to report the children to “Miss Willis”, the Cotton Mather de nos jours. When one pupil says that her mother will back her up on this, the schoolmistress claims that this explains why we have such a problem with homophobia around the world. Yes, that’s right, we’ve cracked it. The Ayatollah and the Taliban are taking their lead from the mother of a teenage girl somewhere in East Sussex.

The teacher concludes by solemnly explaining that the cat-identifying pupil is now “writing a statement” of her own. Presumably in lieu of a traditional written statement, Macavity will be dropping a furball or a dead shrew at the teacher’s feet.

There is much to unpack here – good and bad. Firstly, it puts paid to the myth that all young people are on board with this rubbish. Children are discerning; with a keen eye for the absurd. They are not stupid. It’s the adults peddling such nonsense who can’t take the flak. Note the teacher’s mounting anger at having her beliefs challenged. While she parrots gender buzz-phrases, presumably learnt at some inset training day or in the nether regions of Tumblr, the pupils remain calm yet utterly convinced of their own beliefs. This represents a grotesque inversion of roles; adults should provide rationality to the young, not vice versa.

Though this teacher embodies the “ad absurdum” end of the spectrum, this can scarcely be called a “made-up culture war”, or “Right-wing propaganda”, but proof of the deranged indoctrination infiltrating our schools. Nor is it an isolated incident. Indeed, it mirrors the logic used regularly by the trans lobby.

Gender dysphoria is a distressing and extremely rare condition, whose sufferers need proper care and support. But the explosive rise in the numbers of children identifying as a different gender, within a short space of time, suggests vast social contagion.

Did any of you know that many schools now tell staff they cannot say boys & girls due to possibly upsetting a non binary or trans pupil? They refer to them by group. Eg, " come on year 9" . Got an email recently from a school signed with preferred pronouns after name. Another school initiative.
Getting crazy.

I'm shocked at what goes on in secondary schools now. My children are grown up now but some of the sex ed they received was frightening. Many kids didn't tell their parents for fear of causing trouble & out of embarrassment. They're shown pictures of sex acts & had to describe them in front of class. My daughter walked out of class in embarrassment. Some of the acts were far from " normal" unless you see golden showers & so on as normal.
Now it is also the norm to have posters & rainbow flags up everywhere, posters about trans rights etc. It's bloody constant. Look around next open evening.
One gay colleague even said he was sick of it. He said where are the posters saying, "Some people are straight, get over it" ? Haha. Teens are at vulnerable age, I don't feel like they are any happier with being bombarded with all this information. Quite the opposite.

So glad I don't have to teach this now.

Me too. It must be extremely difficult to have to insist on children saying something you know (and know that they know you know) is clearly untrue.

I was getting more and more confused about this recording so I listened to it again, on my laptop. The confusion came because the sound and subtitles were being transmitted against a photograph of a male teacher in a busy classroom.

That said, I agree the content was totally inappropriate and inaccurate; the girls seemed completely au fait with it all. I did not feel the teacher was bullying or aggressive and I did feel the girls were impertinent in the way they interrupted and spoke to her. I wouldn't have spoken to my teachers like this at school, but that was almost sixty years ago.
So glad I don't have to teach this now.

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Oh well

I already asked, for VS’s explanation, so I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who wonders.
I think the DM is harmful in the same way that social media is harmful. It exaggerates, with words like everybody, leaving people wondering why they didn’t know something, then going to look it up and adding to the angst.
Or everybody who reads the DM, is likely to cause harm. The same could be applied to Twitter or Social media. The potential for being safe to work with children is not limited to which newspaper you read. We also see reports from the Times, the Telegraph or the Guardian which give us cause for concern.

Indeed Dodledog. Whilst not a DM reader, I would like to see an explanation of VS’s claims.

VioletSky

The Daily Mail has done so much harm to my friends, family and society as a whole

I think I should have the right to know whether a teacher is a daily mail reader to know if my children are safe with them or not

On the whole, I agree, but I'm not sure how the irony was supposed to work. Being ironic is supposed to have some sort of joke, or wit attached, but I can't see any here.

I think the Mail could be called harmful to society as a whole because it can make people believe things that are exaggerated and specialises in making its readers angry with scapegoats of various kinds, but what was the harm that the Mail has done to your friends and family? And in what way would a Mail-reading teacher be unsafe around your children? I think the rest of us should know, in case our own loved ones are at risk.

Doodledog

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I love Matt's cartoons - as usual he is totally on point here.

I don't care what papers people read, I was being ironic

But I do think the Daily Mail is a complete pile of dog poo

M0nica

Violetsky You cannot classify anyone by the papers they read. We read the Daily Mail because we disagree with its politics . DH is insistent that if we should read papers from both sides of the political spectrum and reality probably lies between the two.

We read it for exactly that reason! I always say we "read the Daily Mail", rather than we are "Daily Mail Readers".

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To be honest, a small group of teenagers saying 'She said X' is not particularly good evidence, given that teachers are in a position of power and as a result can annoy pupils simply by enforcing regulations or cracking down on bad behaviour.

A recording leaves no doubt as to the veracity of the accusations and the tone of voice that was used.

Putting the video online was a step too far, as I do think that teachers (along with any public-facing workers) should be able to go about their business without fear of public ridicule. I also think that is is a shame that both the school and the teacher are now well known. All the same, the end result has been that this issue is now in the public domain, and the concerns that were expressed ages ago and ridiculed as 'pathetic' have been shown to be reasonable.

Does the end justify the means? I don't know, really. There should probably be a sanction for recording and publishing the video, but the focus of the debate should be on the issue, not the exposure of it.

If the pupil had complained, she would have had plenty of witnesses who were in the same lesson and who could corroborate her story even if the teacher denied it.

eazybee the girls who recorded the teacher had been told to stay behind after the lesson, so not loads of witnesses to the abusive teacher. Even if it had happened during the lesson, which it didn't, would other children necessarily be willing to speak up against the teacher, especially given the subject matter? The girl's mother has said when her daughter came home and told her, she assumed there was a large element of teenager exaggeration. She was shocked when she heard the recording.

If the pupil had complained, she would have had plenty of witnesses who were in the same lesson and who could corroborate her story even if the teacher denied it.

Teachers are not allowed to record their pupils; this did happen some years ago and parents were shocked to see and hear their children's behaviour they had previously denied, but it was stopped fairly swiftly; infringement of human rights, I believe. It works both ways.
I am sure this teacher's teaching practices and planning will be investigated and evaluated, as happens all the time; complaints are made all the time into the 'he was horrible to me' variety. Will any investigation into allowing a pupil to identify as a cat be carried out?

A good rule of thumb Rosie, if you wouldn't want you said to be recorded and shared, think very carefully before you say it.