Primary schools praised for labelling children 'transgender'
Ofsted inspectors have praised several primary schools for labelling children ‘transgender’ and encouraging pupils to disregard gender norms.
Children as young as four years old are now being labelled ‘transgender’ by a number of primary schools if they express a preference for the activities or clothes of the opposite sex.
Ofsted, the official body for examining schools, singled out one school for having what it deems is a ‘praiseworthy’ attitude towards gender. The school, catering to 4-7 year olds, was praised for its “excellent work” with “pupils who are or may be transgender”.
Earlier this year, another Ofsted report praised Central Street Infant and Nursery School in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, because “transgender pupils are taken seriously”.
The report stated: “The school appreciates that a boy may prefer to be known as a girl and have a girl’s name and similarly a girl may have a girl’s name but wants to dress as and be a boy.”
Transgender Programme
The school has a programme which encourages ‘transgender’ children from surrounding schools to take part in its afternoon activities.
The report also noted the school’s efforts to give same-sex parents their preferred names, such as “mum Pat and mum Dawn”.
Another school was praised for encouraging pupils to act in a “non-gender stereotypical way”, as boys are encouraged to dress in girls’ clothes and put ribbons in their hair.
According to Ofsted, evidence of a successful transgender policy would be if “boys are happy to say if they prefer cheerleading to football”.
Yet according to many studies on the subject, the vast majority of young children who believe that they are a different gender quickly change their minds upon reaching adolescence.
Wider Push
Critics have noted that there has been a push in some circles to question gender, and to suggest that gender differences are artificially constructed by society.
The Council of Europe recently drafted a new definition of gender, stating that it now means: “the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for women and men.”
Pioneers of this new trend include the influential California Teachers' Association, which recently held a conference during which the attendees received materials advocating ‘gender liberation’.
According to the materials, male-female distinctions must be eliminated in order to ‘liberate’ children from unnecessary male and female stereotypes.
Closer to home, and after a sustained campaign by a ‘sexual rights’ pressure group, Hamleys toy store in London decided to become gender-neutral last December, banishing pink and blue themed floors and removing the signs indicating which toys are for boys and which are for girls.
It has also been reported that Edinburgh City Council is in the process of introducing measures to prohibit primary schools from separating children into groups of boys and girls when lining up in the playground and when participating in sports day activities.
A Government ‘tsar’ for children and young people, Tam Baillie, has previously claimed that boys should be free to wear skirts in school because the application of a traditional school uniform code was a “discriminatory practice” which could cause “serious distress” to pupils who were “gender variant”.
Comment
Andrea Minichiello Williams, CEO of Christian Concern, said:
“Implying to children that they can choose their own gender is likely to be extremely confusing for them and lead to real damage.
“Unfortunately, the welfare of children does not seem to be the highest priority of those who want to push on all of us the latest fashionable and politically correct ideology.”
Fay Voshell, writing in the American Thinker, stated:
“Elimination of gender distinctions means entering a ‘Brave New World’ in which everybody belongs to everybody else, and all belong to the state. Proponents of the abolition of gender remind one of the Emperor who wore no clothes. They are deluded by fatuous intellection and dystopian phantasms that defy rationality.”
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