Gillian Keegan called for a return of ‘common sense’ to the classroom
FILE PHOTO © Getty Images / Marina Khromova
UK Education Secretary Gillian Keegan has called for British students to be able to decide their own gender pronouns and to “socially transition” with parental consent, promising long-awaited guidance on gender and transition issues is coming soon.
The government will be publishing gender-identity consultation guidance before the end of summer term, Keegan pledged, in an op-ed for the Telegraph on Saturday, stating that the material will be age-appropriate while “ensuring [parents’] voices are central to decisions being made about their child in school.”
The announcement followed reports that multiple British secondary schools were not only allowing students to self-identify as cats, horses, and even planets, but were also punishing students that did not go along with such delusions.
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Staff at Rye College East Sussex have since apologized for an incident in which a teacher branded a student “despicable” for questioning how a classmate could identify as a male cat despite being a female human, the school explaining that while it was “committed to inclusive education,” it would be “reviewing [its] processes to ensure such events do not take place in the future.”
Keegan claimed Rye College was already “undertaking a formal investigation into what happened” and that Britain’s education-standards watchdog Ofsted was mulling an inspection, while Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch has demanded a “snap inspection” there, blaming the teaching of “beliefs which are both politically controversial and have no scientific basis.” Downing Street gently reminded headteachers that they should not be teaching children that they can identify as anything other than humans.
“We must inject some common sense back into the classroom and society more generally,” the education secretary wrote, explaining that “[t]he classroom is a place where fact should be taught as fact and opinion as opinion,” before dismissing the ‘furry’ drama as mere distraction from the growing number of young people “questioning their gender identity and experiencing gender distress.”
Children should be able to indulge their imagination in the playground, especially when they’re little, but it goes without saying that absolutely no child should be forced to affirm a classmate’s identity as an animal or inanimate object.
Last week, two 14-year-old girls wrote an open letter to Keegan, pleading with her to do something about the “growing atmosphere of fear” around “the authoritarian dogma of gender ideology.” Students are “bullied and ostracised for disagreeing,” while “gender-critical pupils are punished by teachers, excluded by students, and abandoned by friends,” the teenagers informed her in their letter.
PM Rishi Sunak promised in March that transgender guidance for schools would be published during the summer term, expressing concern about a report claiming 40% of state secondary schools were letting children self-declare gender transitions without parental consent – or even notification.
