Schools should not teach ‘important terminology’ like transgender, pansexual, intersex, gender fluid, or gender dysphoria to eight-year-olds, according to the Government’s chief legal advisor.
Attorney General Suella Braverman today cautioned teachers who are “well-intentioned but misguided” that they may be “indoctrinating students into a one-sided and contentious vision of gender” in the classroom.
The Cabinet minister, who recently competed for the Tory leadership before being defeated in the race to succeed Boris Johnson, also said that teaching four-year-olds that individuals may change their sex or gender is not ‘age-appropriate.’
The Cabinet minister aimed to provide “legal clarity to schools and parents” on transgender problems in a speech to the Policy Exchange think group.
The Department of Education is scheduled to release new guidelines for schools, teachers, and parents, with Mrs Braverman stating that she was’setting out the legal scope’ for the approach to what students are taught.
According to the Attorney General, a “lack of clarity and uncertainty” has led some instructors “fearful of doing the wrong thing” and “cornered into embracing the doctrine they are supplied, adopting the materials they are presented with.”
‘They feel they have no choice but to teach something they profoundly disagree with, believe is detrimental, and know to be incorrect,’ she adds.
‘We can’t be living in an atmosphere like that, in a society where teachers, parents, and young people feel silenced.’
If government guidelines is not implemented or followed by schools, the Attorney General has warned that ‘Ofsted must step in.’ Mrs. Braverman’s thoughts on transgender difficulties in the classroom, as well as the legal debates around them, emerged when she talked more broadly about equality and human rights legislation.
She advised Conservatives to resist a “quasi-religious narrative” from “the Left” that rights are “an unstoppable march towards ultimate liberty.”
‘All rights, no matter how noble, impose constraints and duties on others, some with difficult trade-offs,’ Mrs Braverman said.
The Attorney General, who is currently endorsing Liz Truss for Tory leadership, spoke on trans problems in schools:
It is legal for a single-sex school to refuse admission to a child of the opposite biological sex who identifies as transgender; it is legal for a mixed school to refuse a biologically and legally male child who identifies as a trans-girl from using the girls’ toilets; it is legal for a mixed school to refuse a biologically and legally male child who identifies as a trans girl from using a single sex girls’ dormitory;
Mrs. Braverman believes it is ‘wrong’ for schools to claim they have ‘legal duties’ to call students by their chosen pronouns or names, or to admit them to opposite sex toilets, sports teams, or dormitories.
The Attorney General slammed transgender-related beliefs that are “pervading the public sector and being taught in certain schools without any democratic review or consideration of the repercussions.”
Existing Government guidelines, she says, “makes it clear that if partisan political ideas are addressed, schools ensure that they are provided with the proper context, which facilitates a fair presentation of competing perspectives.”
‘In my opinion, a primary school teaching “important terms” such as transgender, pansexual, asexual, gender expression, intersex, gender fluid, gender dysphoria, questioning, or queer to Year 4 students, aged eight and nine, would be in violation of government instructions,’ Mrs Braverman said.
‘It’s also inappropriate to tell four-year-olds that individuals can change their sex or gender.’
She went on to say that according to government guidelines, elementary schools “do not need to arrange activities linked to children’s “self-identified gender.”
‘In these cases, schools – which may be well-intentioned but ignorant – are violating their responsibility of impartiality and indoctrinating youngsters into a one-sided and contentious perspective of gender,’ the Attorney General stated.
‘Age appropriateness is crucial; the younger the kid and the more simplistic the explanation, the more likely schools will fail to reach the correct balance.’
Mrs Braverman argued that children should not be frightened if they question “what they are being taught, or refuse to adopt a preferred pronoun for a gender questioning child, or complain about a gender questioning child using their toilets or changing rooms, or refuse to participate in activities promoted by Stonewall or other such organizations.”
‘The right to free religion, opinion, conscience, and expression must triumph,’ she said.
Mrs Braverman also said in her address that Britain now has a “rights culture” that “did not exist” previous to New Labour’s Human Rights Act in 1998.
‘Aspects of this are confusing and distressing,’ she added.
‘Many of the challenging situations we’ve encountered, in my opinion, have been emblematic of Blairism’s long tail.’
Mrs Braverman praised the Government’s proposed ‘Bill of Rights,’ which she said should become legislation “as quickly as possible,” as a “further step toward regaining control” and a way of “injecting a healthy dose of common sense into the system.”
In response to the Attorney General’s address, a representative for Stonewall, the LGBTQ+ organisation, said, ‘Trans children and young people need to feel secure and welcome while learning, yet our data reveals that half of them (51%) endure bullying at school just for being trans.’
‘A priority we can all agree on should be supporting school leaders and classroom teachers in providing a learning environment where trans children and young people’s welfare and dignity are taken seriously.’