A potty abdication of teacher responsibility
ONE OF the marks of a totalitarian state is that children are viewed as its property rather than their parents’ responsibility. They are indoctrinated with the values of the state and taught to comply with its orthodoxy regardless of any parental guidance and beliefs. No child derives security and stability from being encouraged by grown-ups to deceive mum and dad. The world is a safer place when the adults back each other and sing from the same hymn sheet.
So what sort of world does the National Education Union want? Britain’s largest teaching union has just passed a motion condemning the Government’s guidance on trans issues and specifically encouraging teachers not to involve parents. It also opposed ministers’ entirely sensible guidance that a school could decline to change a child’s pronouns.
In short these wild teachers believe there should be no moderation of a child’s wishes based on parental knowledge or reasonable doubt on the part of heads.
That is an utter abdication of all responsibility and the Government’s only mistake was to issue guidance rather than put measures into law, as the Reform Party would.
THERE have been enough stories of mothers only finding out by accident that their kids have been allowed to change their pronouns by their schools to ring alarm bells throughout the country. If teachers are going to ignore parents then they must be held accountable and, other than in very exceptional circumstances, sacked and told to find a different sort of work.
We expect parents to get their children into school on time, in the right uniform and with homework completed but responsible parenting cannot be left at the school gate and no teacher should act as if it ought to be.
Meanwhile on the other side of the fence some parents are sending their offspring to school untrained in the lavatory, unable to do up their shoes and with no clue about using a knife and fork.
It is beyond belief that only 50 per cent or so of parents in one survey considered it their own responsibility to teach their children such skills. Well, it certainly ain’t the teachers’ job. They should be concentrating on A is for apple and B is for ball.