‘Go see the headmaster… now go see the head him/they/them!’: Fury over ‘woke’ call to cancel traditional terms like ‘Sir’ and ‘Miss’ in schools and say gender-neutral ‘teacher’ instead
- A charity has recommended pupils should not refer to teachers as ‘Mr’ or ‘Mrs’
- It recommended using gender-neutral terms such as ‘teacher’ to refer to staff
- But one attendee branded it ‘propaganda’ and criticised her union for funding it
- Social media users have also reacted with fury, saying ‘the world’s gone mad’
- The new guidance was discussed in a segment on ITV’s This Morning today
Fury has risen over a ‘woke’ call to cancel traditional terms like ‘Sir’ and ‘Miss’ in schools in favour of using gender-neutral terms such as ‘teacher’ instead.
In a session funded by the National Education Union (NEU), Dr Elly Barnes told teachers they ought to be moving towards a ‘gender-free model’ in education.
Dr Barnes, chief executive of the Educate and Celebrate charity which spreads positive messaging about LGBT acceptance in schools, recommended dropping words such as ‘boy’, ‘girl’, ‘son’ and ‘mother’ and replacing them with gender-neutral phrases, The Telegraph reports.
But the charity’s ‘woke’ guidance has been met with anger with social media users claiming ‘the world is going mad’.
One tweeted: ‘Dropping genders in school? Whatever next. Go see the headmaster. No go see the head him/they/them.’
Sheilagh O’Gorman added: ‘No union should be spending members money on financing such wokery. If I were a member I would protest. And stop paying my subscription.’
A tweet from the Free Speech Union today also slammed the guidance, saying: ‘We can’t get through a single week without somebody trying to police what language we can use’.
The new recommendations were also discussed in a segment on ITV’s This Morning today.
LBC’s Tom Swarbrick said the current ‘Miss’ and ‘Sir’ terms used in school should remain in place ‘unless there’s a good reason’.
He added: ‘I’m going to be a bit old school about this, I quite like it. I think it’s what has happened to date always and forever.
‘Unless there’s a good reason the teacher doesn’t want to be known as Sir or Miss, but a blanket policy that says, no we’re going to have gender neutral teachers. I just think, what age are we going to institute this?
Social media users have reacted with fury over the charity’s recommendations, stating that the ‘world has gone mad’
Dr Elly Barnes, chief executive of the charity Educate and Celebrate, hosted the training session for teachers funded by the National Education Union
‘Is this going to happen to my four-year-old in her first year of school? It feels like it needs some explaining. Maybe at four or six years old, it’s not the age to start to try to explain the difference between biological sex and gender.’
The show’s presenter Dermot O’Leary added: ‘The pressure is going to be on the kids to try to get their heads round this at an age when they should just be being children and not worry about it.’
And Vanessa Feltz said: ‘I went to an old fashioned, bit posh, kind of school where you had to call the teacher by their name. It’s the more polite thing to do – call the teacher by their name, Mr Smith, Miss Jones, it’s the courteous thing to do. Just call them by their name, end of.
In the webinar, ‘Getting the language right for 2022’, Dr Barnes insisted that the gender-free model was a success in many of the schools her charity worked with.
In clips of the training, Dr Barnes was seen suggesting that ‘male’ and ‘female’ categories be removed from school application forms and that school uniforms could be gender-free.
One attendee questioned whether the phraseology would affect terms such as ‘Sir’ or ‘Miss’, which pupils often to use to get the attention of their teachers.
A female teacher, who wished to remain anonymous, branded the session as ‘propaganda for trans activists’ and told The Telegraph she thought it was against the Department for Education (DfE) guidelines.
She said: ‘Teachers will take what this woman says as fact because the training was organised by the NEU and they’re not going to question their union.
‘They’re trying to erase us by taking away our language, saying we should avoid words like mother and we’re paying for it essentially.’
The NEU was criticised for using its members’ fees to fund the session by The Safe Schools Alliance, a group campaigning against gender ideology being taught as fact and not belief.
Vanessa Feltz (left) and LBC’s Tom Swarbrick discussed the charity’s guidance on ITV’s This Morning today
This Morning presenter Dermot O’Leary said the kids ‘should just be being children and not have worry about it’
The training session recommended that school pupils should refer to their tutors as ‘teacher’ instead of gendered titles such as ‘Mr’ and ‘Mrs’
Educate and Celebrate’s website states that teachers and pupils respond well to its training, with 94 per cent of secondary students saying they ‘felt more confident in expressing their views and be themselves’ in a survey.
It comes after a Reverend Dr Bernard Randall, an ex-Cambridge college chaplain, recalled being deeply troubled by what he felt was ‘revolutionary Marxist’ flavour of the language during session run by Dr Barnes at Trent College in 2019.
He said teachers were were asked to chant ‘smash heteronormativity’, adding: ‘The chanting was frankly bizarre and I felt uncomfortable. It was all very cleverly put together though – her rhetorical skills were impressive.
‘She started off slowly with general things about anti bullying and diversity, which no one could object to. But then the focus moved to gender identity and an introduction to the language of trans.
‘And there seemed to be an emphasis on instruction rather than suggestion.’
He also found it embarrassing that Dr Barnes was giving teachers stickers bearing her group’s rainbow logo when they answered questions correctly.
The Educate and Celebrate charity has received funding from the DfE in the past and charges as much as £400 for a webinar with unions, as well as its award programme which costs £1,800.
Its website states: ‘We provide LGBT+ inclusion training to ensure that you meet all of your Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) objectives for staff, support staff, leadership teams, governors, trainee teachers, student workshops, youth networks, CPD days and an Award Programme.’
The charity lists Durham County Council as a partner and has positive testimonials from a number of headteachers.
Educate and Celebrate and the NEU have both been approached for comment.
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