Is it me or is this just creepy?
A class of 10-year-olds are sitting on the carpet looking at their teacher with open mouths. Their faces say: outrage.
Their teacher, Rosemary O’Brien, has put up a statement on the board – a real one, by the Football Association in 1921. Football is “quite unsuitable for females”, it says. Across the classroom, pupils are voicing their disagreement.
“That’s completely untrue,” says one boy assertively. A girl speaks up too: “Women should be allowed to play. Like men, they should have football clubs and be famous and do whatever they want,” she says.
Well, yes, things have changed somewhat since 1921. We know this already and I have no problem with pointing this out. However…
It is not only among pupils but staff, too. One teacher, Jack Holmes, noticed he was talking to girls in a softer tone than to boys. “I realised I didn’t need to do that.” He started to “hear” when girls were addressed as “my love” or “darling” by staff. “It now stands out to me. I don’t think we do that any more.” He says the programme has made him and other male staff more aware of how they came across to female colleagues. “You question your own stereotyping, your own role.”
So what have teachers done to change? For the past year, these five schools have been participating in the pilot of a programme created and run by a non-profit organisation, Lifting Limits, which encouraged school staff to analyse every little thing they did in the classroom through a “gender equality” lens.
Imagine having to micro-analyse everything you do and say all of the time. And, not to mention that terms such as “my love” are used in the adult world by men and women alike and are not gender specific.
This has Soviet style indoctrination written all over it. What a hideous idea.
There were displays in school about “mankind” and exhibits of work exclusively celebrating famous men, as well as lessons about inventors, artists and explorers that were very male-dominated. Some of the books used to teach children to read were full of old-fashioned sexist stereotypes such as “the fireman put up the ladder for dad”. In one library, astonishingly, a book about war was labelled “for boys”.
Crime of the century. Mankind is a perfectly suitable term to describe humanity. It is not derogatory towards women.
To make it all happen, a senior teacher was appointed in each school as a “gender champion” to oversee the programme.
Gender champion, political officer, what’s the difference?
Back at Torriano, Tina, who is 11 and wears a hijab, is talking about how much she loves playing football. “I really want to be prime minister one day, so I can speak about how we can all be equal.”
And when she reaches adulthood and reality kicks in, she will find that those ambitions will be somewhat thwarted – probably by a controlling husband who will keep her chained to the kitchen sink and permanently pregnant. She will also learn that we are not all equal and never will be.
There is nothing wrong with the concept of equality of opportunity, but we are not all equal, for we are all individuals. Equality of outcome merely reduces us all to the lowest common denominator. I also notice that these schemes never seem to be encouraging women into roles that involve going down sewers, collecting litter bins or scaling high buildings… Just sayin’.
But women do play football and at the highest level. In fact women occupy all the top jobs in every activity.
The problem is that at the moment most of them still insist on being identified as men.
Well, yes. But now they complain that female footballers don’t get paid as much. This lady puts that one to bed very nicely:
My point is that we are ALL (potentially) women now. It will always be the case that some women get paid more than others.
This does indeed look like sinister Soviet style propaganda and indoctrination.
The Frankfurt School of Thought appears to be winning. We really are f*cked!
It’s the existence of this sort of dishonest grievance propaganda that helped us to make our decision that we would keep our child away from Religious Education lessons. Just a single read through of the local ‘agreed syllabus’ for RE and it’s policy of treating all faiths as morally equal – something that is an obvious fallacy – told us all we needed to know about just how crap and dodgy the RE curriculum is.
We also picked his current school because the headteacher was not, as one other head we met was, a politically correct nutter, who promised that they would not let the nutcases and child abusers of the Mermaids group to operate in the school. Unfortunately, the Government, a so called Conservative govt mind you, is going to push trans and LGB propaganda on the schools and on the children without any method for parents to object to it or keep our children away from it.
Most inventors throughout history have been men. There are always honourable exceptions. Hedy Lamarr springs to mind (spread spectrum technology) as does Florence Nightingale (pie chart)
Damn! I don’t know why, but I always thought Hedy Lamarr was a man. I’ve just learned something new 🙂
That was HEDLEY Lamarr – villain of “Blazing Saddles”.
Of course! Thank you!
“Somebody’s gotta go back for a shitload of dimes”
Oh dear! Where have you been? Florence Nightingale was a paid-up member of the evil empire-building White Establishment and is therefore posthumously no-platformed; it’s all about Mary Seacole these days.
Yes indeed, that well-known cafe owner and entrepreneur….!
All teachers do now is brainwash the pupils. Smokers, drinkers,white people over 50 are all fair game following their diverse, multicultural policy. Not surprising that the kids have mental problems. My schooling in the fifties and sixties at primary, junior, and secondary modern comprised a superb education with no brainwashing.We were taught to make our own judgments. Its no surprise to me that most teachers have a left wing bias. The whole profession in the state sector could do with a good clear out !
This stuff strikes me as the kind of stuff that you fret about when you don’t have any real problems.
I’d really like to see women playing with a Casey on a wet Sunday afternoon in Manchester….
OT but are you aware that there is now an Indian Longrider?
https://vizdom44.wordpress.com/
Well, well, well…
The self-criticism aspect of this is really chilling – a ‘gender equality lens’, for goodness’ sake! Sadly, from experience, I think it’s a fairly accurate foretaste of where teaching is going.
I particularly liked this quote from the article:
Grievance is truly a growth industry!
Just as a bit of info, the FA had a women’s football game in the 1920’s. It was that popular they were afraid it would be bigger than men’s football. That is where the statement came from. They stopped women’s football dead in its track because they were afraid of competition.
Same as golf stands for gentleman only ladies forbidden!!
In the past women have been put down but now it has all gone loopy and those that do fight for inclusion, equal pay and opportunities are undermined by these weird ideas.
I spent some of my schooling at an all girls school and some at a mixed school. They both had benefits and disadvantages. When girls are taught in an all girls class they do well in the sciences, in the mixed school the boys dominated the classroom. Boys and girls develop at different stages so to separate them in the classes means the classes develop at the same time, less disruption . But it is good to have mixed discussion clssses and to in general mix. My conclusion would be to have mixed schools but lessons taught separately.
There are far more men entering care work which must be a positive thing. But to be honest I don’t really think of myself as anything but me, I go to work to do a job, not worry about whether I am a woman doing a mans job or a woman’s job. I think there are too many people with too much time on their hands. Maybe they need to get a hobby.