If the NUT didn’t exist it would be necessary for a latter-day Michael Wharton to invent it. This week the teaching union is having its congress where, among other things, it’s pushing for the government to install an anti-Section 28; a rule stating that schools are required to teach positive examples of same-sex relationships as part of sex education.
I always thought Section 28 was a bad idea because it was not Westminster’s job to tell individual schools and teachers what to think. I imagined that schools would know how best to guide their pupils through these difficult years of confusion. But for some people the principle behind Section 28 was wonderful; they’re all in favour of this sort of ideological domineering – they just want to be the ones doing the oppressing.
In other news the teaching union, always shy to latch onto a fashionable political idea, is getting behind transgender politics, tweeting this brilliantly argued leaflet, ‘Why Trans teachers matter’, which contains this flawless point:
Can children cope with the idea of people changing gender? Will it upset them? Children’s literature is full of transformation stories.
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