Potentially damaging to children’s mental health
Government and heads of schools differ over the “What To Do about students who say they are trans” problem.
School leaders have described advice from the attorney general, Suella Braverman, to “take a much firmer line” with pupils who identify as transgender as “unhelpful” and potentially damaging to children’s mental health.
In an interview last week, Braverman said schools in England do not have to accommodate pupils who want to change gender and are under no legal obligation to address them by a new pronoun, or let them wear a different uniform.
They shouldn’t have to or be under a legal obligation to, it seems to me. Schools aren’t required to play along with all students’ fantasies, after all, so why is this one fantasy singled out for Careful Handling? Especially when the basic job of schools is to educate, and that requires not lying.
Headteachers, however, who are increasingly having to navigate their way through these issues, fear that not listening to young people “would risk damaging mental health” at a time when pupils have already suffered during the pandemic.
Maybe it would, but here’s the thing: maybe so would “listening to young people” in the sense of agreeing that they are the other sex. Maybe both are risky. Maybe both are risky but one is more risky than the other and it’s not clear which one. Maybe the listening and agreeing approach is more risky over time – a palliative now but the source of disaster in two or five or ten years. It’s really not the case that humoring the belief system is obviously and clearly and reliably the safer option.
The attorney general told the Times that under the law, under-18s cannot legally change their gender, so schools are entitled to treat all children by the gender of their birth. She also said some teachers were effectively encouraging gender dysphoria by taking an “unquestioning” attitude.
This prompted criticism from Caroline Derbyshire, the executive head at Saffron Walden county high school, leader of the Saffron academy trust and chair of the Headteachers’ Roundtable – a non-party political headteachers’ group operating as a thinktank.
She said: “No good can come of any young person being forced to adopt a gender they feel miserable with. It certainly won’t improve their learning.”
How about letting the young persons dress (and cut their hair) however they like, and just set aside all the My Gender Is stuff until later. (It’s hard to know what “adopt a gender” even means. A girl isn’t “adopting a gender” if teachers continue to call her “her.”
“Schools do all kinds of things to safeguard the welfare of young people that they are not ‘bound’ to do by law,” she went on. “I am a believer in rules and following them, but I think that not listening to young people and their parents on this quite particular and personal matter would risk damaging mental health.”
But what if agreeing to young people’s fanciful and socially-induced ideas about their Magic Gender would also risk damaging their mental health? Which, if you think about it, seems pretty damn likely.
Some schools have already adapted their uniform codes to remove distinctions between boys’ and girls’ schoolwear in an effort to accommodate transgender students. Dysphoric or transgender pupils at Brighton College, a private day and boarding school that takes pupils from reception to sixth form, can choose between wearing a traditional blazer, tie and trousers, or skirt and bolero jacket.
That. Do that. Relax about the clothes, and then stop thinking about them. Don’t draw wild conclusions about teenagers being the other sex because they don’t like the clothes they’re made to wear. In fact why can’t they wear trousers and a bolero jacket? Why can’t they wear trousers and a turtleneck? Why make them wear ties for god’s sake? They’re not working in office towers. Loosen up on the clothes, and leave “gender” for much later, when it’s someone else’s problem.
My high school and junior high had a strict dress code, so maybe my perspective is biased, but … It wouldn’t have been my school without it. Did it make us more academically competent? Who can say? What it did was help build a school (ugh) identity.
People did push to relax the code, but that push was never from the boys, for whom requirements were stricter and infractions more likely to be punished. It also wasn’t from the girls who preferred to wear slacks rather than regulation skirts, because from my first day, pants were part of the girls’ dress code. The push was always to allow girls to wear more, let’s say, fashionable clothes. By my graduation, the girls’ code had relaxed so much that one might be forgiven for thinking the girls had no code. And while the boys certainly noticed the asymmetry, it’s not like hormone-fueled teenagers were going to complain about seeing more bare female skin.
Nullius in Verba, you can have uniforms and a strict dress code, just not base it on sex. If a girl wants to wear trousers and a blazer, she should be able to. If a boy wants to wear a skirt and a turtleneck, he should be able to. If girls can have long hair, boys should be allowed to as well. Same with makeup and nailpolish. Kids shouldn’t feel like they have to declare themselves trans or nonbinary in order to dress in the way they are comfortable. It’s like schools that prohibit girls from wearing tuxedos to prom. Schools should not be in the business of enforcing gendered behaviors or appearance.
You’d think that would the case right?
When my older brothers went to high school, uniform code was very restrictive. By the time I reached the same high school four years later, the code had relaxed somewhat, and within another two years significantly so.
Our school colours were gold and green. Historically boys wore gray pants and shirts in winter, white shirts in summer, with jumpers, blazers, ties, sock bands using the accent colours (mostly green in the case of jumper and blazer. Girls had a green dress for summer and wore white houses with a green and blue tartan skirt in winter with the same jumper and blazer options as boys.
By the time I’d been at high school for two years boys could wear the following in any combination:
Long sleeved shirt (white, grey, pastel yellow, pastel green)
Polo shirt (white, yellow, green)
Jumper (green)
Blazer (green)
Tie, optional (green)
Socks (grey, white, green, yellow)
Long trousers (grey)
Shorts (‘business’ style) (grey, green, navy blue)
Girls could wear:
Green and white poplin dress
Tartan skirt – no more than 2″ above knee, but down to ankle length if desired (green and navy blue)
Cotton skirt (green)
Blouse (white)
Trousers (grey, green, navy blue)
Long sleeve shirt (white, grey, pastel yellow, pastel green
Socks (grey, white, green, yellow)
Tie, optional (green)
Everything was of a standard brand, but could be worn in any mix that made you comfortable.
A couple of years back when uniforms came up I checked the school website. It’s gone back to a uniform code stricter than when I was there, more akin to my brothers experience. Very little choice for either sex, strict summer/winter uniforms, no crossover between boys and girls.
What a regressive step.
Oh, and makeup was ‘against the rules’, but girls that wore it without being too blatant were ignored, just like if skirts were a ‘bit’ short, that was ignored (and cherished by us boys). This was in the days before people went wild with hair colour and style was largely long and scruffy. I’m sure there were gay and maybe even trans kids at school, but since it was technically still illegal and society was still deeply homophobic back then, no guy was going to wear makeup or a dress unless he actually wanted a beating. Hell, I got beaten up for being quiet and liking books.