Ed West Ed West

Kids love fairy tales. This doesn’t mean they must be taught about transgender politics

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. If a mouse can become a footman and a frog can become a man without traumatising young minds then men and women crossing gender roles is a tame idea by comparison. Christine Burns, Author of ‘Making Equality Work’ and ‘Pressing Matters’

The tiny, tiny drawback to this argument being that a frog can’t actually become a man outside of fairy tales, and children know that fairy tales aren’t real. For example my eldest was stunned to learn that princesses existed in real life; ‘you mean, not in princess land?’ Like most children she’s aware that there is a fantasy oldy-worldy fairy tale land and a real world, and the latter is more prosaic but safer.

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