Scottish Union for Education – Newsletter No60
Scottish Union for Education – Newsletter No60
Newsletter Themes: hate crimes, conversion therapy, and the joy of classroom controversy
Police Scotland’s Hate Monster
You couldn’t make it up, but it’s not a laughing matter
The Scottish government plans to introduce the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act on April Fools’ Day. The Act is a very serious attack on freedom of speech and freedom of expression. It will extend existing laws to make it possible for just one individual to raise a complaint against another. Under this legislation, if the accuser believes that the accused ‘hater’ said something because he or she hates people with ‘protected characteristics’, it constitutes a hate incident that must be reported to the police.
Characteristics that are ‘protected’ are age; disability; race, colour, nationality (including citizenship), or ethnic or national origins; religion or, in the case of a social or cultural group, perceived religious affiliation; sexual orientation; transgender identity; and variations in sex characteristics. Under the new hate crime law, using the wrong words to describe people with these qualities could end with a criminal conviction and imprisonment for up to seven years if someone decides it is hateful.
The definition of ‘hateful’ is unclear, but Police Scotland think haters are typically young working-class lads. In one of their Hate Monster promotional videos (issued and then quickly removed), they said that young men from poor areas are most likely to commit hate crimes because, ‘they may have deep-rooted feelings of being socially and economically disadvantaged, combined with ideas about white male entitlement’. No prejudice there then!
This legislation is one of First Minister Humza Yousaf’s pet projects. Yousaf and Siobhan Brown, Minister for Victims and Community Safety, think that the role of government is to police our thoughts and speech and that the role of the police is to intervene and direct all public life. The Act is a very bad law; even the police say that it will be hard to apply, and its most significant impact is likely to be that ordinary Scots will stop saying what they think. Many women’s rights campaigners believe that it is aimed at silencing women who want to protect single-sex spaces and are not prepared to call a man who identifies as trans, a woman.
SUE is concerned about what this will mean for schools, colleges and universities because some educationalists are so very keen to adopt government’s social justice legalisation and ‘inclusive’ teaching methods, such as decolonisation, critical race theory and transgender ideology. What the Hate Crime Act will do is to make it an offence to question these initiatives. Under the new law, it takes only one complaint for police to log a ‘hate crime incident’, and even if this incident is not deemed to be a criminal offence, it will still be recorded and retained.
The ‘victims’ of a hate crime don’t need to have protected characteristics themselves; they can just take offence to what is said. They don’t even need to go to the police to report a ‘hate crime’. Police Scotland has set up 411 third-party hate crime reporting centres across Scotland, included Luke & Jack, the much-publicised sex shop in Glasgow’s Merchant City. Many of these reporting centres are in university student unions and further education colleges, as well as available through housing associations and tenants’ groups and campaign groups.
What will this mean for teachers, parents, and children in schools? The law is likely to have a chilling effect on all public discussion and classroom debate related to the ‘protected’. It may have direct and divisive impact on young people in schools. We have already received reports of schools where anti-bullying policies use the Act to underline the fact that saying something that offends someone else can be deemed a criminal offence. Balerno High School’s Anti-Bullying and Prejudice Policy already has a section on Hate incident or hate crime based on the Equality Act 2010:
‘A bullying incident is a hate incident if the victim or anyone else thinks it was carried out because of hostility or prejudice based on actual or perceived disability, race, religion, sexual orientation or transgender identity. If the incident is a criminal offence and the offender targeted the victim because of their prejudice or hostility based on any of these characteristics, this is a hate crime. All hate crimes should be reported to Police Scotland through the School Link Officer.’
The Royal High School’s Anti-Bullying Policy states that ‘our aim is that everyone should be able to experience a relaxed and secure school environment, where any form of bullying or lack of respect for diversity is not acceptable’. What is meant by a ‘lack of respect for diversity’ is unclear; could it be using the ‘wrong’ gender pronouns for a pupil or staff member? The school then links to a policy timeline in which one possible outcome is that the school will report the hate crime to Police Scotland. Beneath this is a link to the respectme campaign, which links directly to a Police Scotland hate crime reporting page.
Children under 12 should not be directly affected by the Hate Crime Act because, under the Age of Criminal Responsibility (Scotland) Act 2019, they cannot be arrested. However, 12- to 16-year-olds can go to court for ‘serious crimes’, and for any offence, police can arrest a teenager and take them to the police station even without her or his parents if they cannot be contacted.
We urgently need our readers’ help. Some school policies have already incorporated elements of the hate crime law in their anti-bullying policies in advance of activation of the Hate Crime Act on April Fools’ day. We also need to collect intelligence on how the Act is being used after that date. We are worried that this law will criminalise schoolchildren or place a ‘non-crime hate crime incident’ on their records.
Can you please check your local authority high school policies to see if hate crimes are included? We are trying to build a picture of the impact of the Hate Crime Act in education across Scotland. Please contact Kate Deeming, Parent and Supporters Coordinator (psg@scottishunionforeducation.co.uk) with any information.
This week, Jenny Cunningham, a retired paediatrician, takes a close look at another bad law: the Conversion Practices Bill. The government’s consultation on this ends on Tuesday 2 April. We would also like you to respond to the consultation and to talk to other parents about the bill. On a more positive note, teaching assistant Rachael Hobbs has written a review of a new book by a teacher and academic who believes argument and debate should be at the centre of education.
The Scottish government’s Ending Conversion Practices consultation is entrenching transgender ideology
Jenny Cunningham is a retired paediatrician.
In recent weeks, there have been two successful attempts to stop private members’ bills attempting to ban conversion therapy/practices: one in the Lords, the other in the UK Parliament. The arguments made against these bills are equally relevant when it comes to the Scottish government’s proposals to outlaw conversion practices in Scotland.[1] First, there is a lack of evidence that conversion practices are common or widespread. Second, all the heinous practices directed at homosexuals in the past are now unlawful in the UK. Third, the advocates of a Scottish bill are having difficulty defining those practices that ‘fall through the legislative gaps’. And finally, advocates are struggling to provide evidence of the asserted or anecdotal ‘harm’ described by those with ‘lived experience’.
While all these arguments are relevant to a critique of the Scottish government’s consultation document (and will be outlined in a subsequent article), they avoid what is arguably the main purpose of the proposals from the perspective of transgender rights activists – and its really pernicious consequences. It is no surprise that all 15 members of the government’s Expert Advisory Group (whose report underlies the draft document) are transgender rights activists or advocates.
LGBTQ+ and transgender rights organisations want to establish gender identity, and transgender identity in particular, as a legal category, on a par with biological sex and sexual orientation. With the government’s blessing, they do this by illegitimately conflating (and arguably muddling) the two distinct categories of sexual orientation and gender identity. Section 61 of the draft document defines the two terms as follows (based on the Oxford English Dictionary definitions).
Sexual orientation refers to ‘a person’s sexual identity in relation to the gender to whom [they] are usually attracted; (broadly) the fact of being heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual’. The document claims that this is the ‘ordinary meaning’ of sexual orientation, although arguably most people would consider sexual orientation to mean attraction to either one of the two sexes (for heterosexuals or homosexuals), or to both sexes (for bisexuals) – as opposed to attraction to one or more of a variety of indefinable ‘genders’.
Gender identity is a person’s ‘personal sense of being or belonging to a particular gender or genders, or of not having a gender’. Gender is not defined, nor could it be, as it is an entirely subjective ‘internal feeling’ and hence not conducive to substantiation.
The demand for the social and legal recognition of gender identity exposes two dangers that are explicit in the draft legislation. In the first place, it needs to be recognised that the drive to gain social recognition by the transgender rights movement has all along been associated with active recruitment to its ranks (especially among the young), in order to vindicate the notion of transgender identity. Hence the relentless push by LGBTQ+ organisations to infiltrate schools, facilitated by the government’s guidance on Supporting Transgender Pupils in Schools and its Relationships, Sexual Health and Parenthood (RSHP) curriculum. They target children and young people, often the most vulnerable or troubled, with the deceit that you can be ‘born in the wrong body’ and the suggestion that it is possible to change your gender (implying your sex).
Children do not spontaneously arrive at the idea that they are ‘trans kids’. However, they are presented with a pathway to realising their ‘authentic self’ through gender ‘transition’. This starts with social transitioning (affirmed by teaching staff under the government’s guidance) and proceeds through medical and even surgical treatments, which carry risks of largely irreversible body modification and even amputations, as well as lifelong health problems.
Unsurprisingly, this evangelisation of transgender ideology among children and adolescents coincided with a dramatic increase in referrals to gender identity services around 2014–2015, mainly for teenagers, and over 70 percent for girls. Both the Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) in England and the Sandyford Gender Identity Service in Glasgow saw an identical surge in referrals. Both these services followed a ‘gender affirmative’ model, accepting a child’s or teenager’s chosen identity unquestioningly. This was despite the evidence that the new cohort of young people had significant coexisting psychiatric conditions (such as depression, eating disorders or obsessive–compulsive disorder), neurodevelopmental disorders (35 percent of adolescents referred to Sandyford had autism) or social problems (such as being in local authority care or having a history of sexual or other abuse). All these factors could make teenagers susceptible to the idea of gender incongruence. In addition, the majority of young people undergoing gender transition turn out to be same sex–attracted, some even expressing their sexuality before starting gender ‘reassignment’. Dr Matt Bristow, a clinical psychologist who left the Tavistock because of his concerns about its gender affirmative approach, said he came to feel that GIDS was ‘performing conversion therapy on gay kids’.[2]
The Tavistock Clinic is being closed by NHS England following the damning 2022 interim report on its gender affirmative approach by paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass.[3] The Sandyford Clinic, however, continues to operate. A further outcome of the affirmative approach is the growing number of young people who have come to regret transitioning after four or five years and who detransition, to be left with irreversible physical changes, infertility, and loss of sexual function and pleasure. Almost all of them express their sadness that clinicians failed to assess their associated difficulties or recognise their homosexuality.
Transgender rights activists are wholeheartedly in favour of ‘gender affirmative care’ and reject so-called ‘psychiatric gatekeeping’, whereby clinicians advocate for a wait-and-see approach and proper evaluation of associated psychiatric, developmental and social problems. There is good evidence that around 80 percent of young people become reconciled with their bodies and sexuality if not transitioned. Transgender rights activists often label detransitioners as ‘traitors’. Stonewall, the LGBTQ+ lobby organisation, has voiced its opposition to the recent NHS England decision to ban the use of puberty-blocking drugs in gender identity treatment. Herein lies the second danger of the proposed ban on conversion practices. The only kind of gender identity treatment that is tolerable to the transgender rights activists and advocates is affirmative, non-exploratory care for persons expressing or experiencing gender dysphoria. The government’s Expert Advisory Group made this clear in their report.[4]
‘Affirmative care’ within healthcare refers to an approach that validates and supports the identity and lived experiences expressed and stated by the individual. It is (in theory) non-directive: a healthcare professional will take an unobtrusive role so that free expression is encouraged. These approaches would not fall within the definition of conversion practice because they do not seek to change, suppress and/or eliminate a person’s sexual orientation, expression of sexual orientation, gender identity and/or gender expression (Guiding Principles, section 9).
This is precisely where the risk of criminalising parents and clinicians lies, if they want to dissuade children and teenagers from embarking on irreversible, harmful gender ‘realignment’. Without mentioning ‘affirmative care’ explicitly, the government’s draft document tries to reassure parents, clinicians and religious leaders.
‘Conversion practices must have the intention that another person’s sexual orientation or gender identity will be changed or suppressed [...] [the legislation] does not include non-directive and ethical guidance and support to a person who might be questioning their sexual orientation or gender identity or experiencing conflict or distress, whether that is provided by a healthcare practitioner, a family member or a religious leader’.
‘Similarly, the legislation does not apply to non-directive or non-coercive discussions, questioning, guidance or general parental direction, guidance, controls and restrictions’.
This is quite contemptuous assurance. It is because parents recognise the huge threat facing their children if they get caught up in this transgender ideology trap that they have to become directive and actively attempt to steer them away from adopting a transgender identity. This starts with opposition to the government’s advice to schools on socially transitioning pupils and to RSHP material that creates the illusion of having a ‘trans identity’. Equally, clinicians must refuse to take an ‘unobtrusive role’ in discussions with children and young people who express gender incongruence. A wait-and-see model is the ethical approach, together with the active exploration and assessment of their associated problems, to understand what might underlie their unhappiness.
It is appalling that the Scottish government is proposing a new criminal offence that is defined so broadly and vaguely that it may well entrap parents, clinicians and religious organisations. The proposals are highly punitive, carrying a maximum sentence for the offence of conversion practices of seven years and/or an unlimited fine. If this draft legislation is enacted, it will be weaponised by transgender rights activists to at the very least inhibit or prevent any challenges to their ability to indoctrinate children and young people, and at worst, to criminalise parents and clinicians who want to halt dangerous gender ‘reassignment’ practices.
References
1. Ending conversion practices in Scotland: consultation. 9 January 2024. https://www.gov.scot/publications/ending-conversion-practices-scotland-scottish-government-consultation/.
2. Barnes H. 2023. Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children. Swift Press. p. 161.
3. The Cass Review: Independent review of gender identity services for children and young people: Interim report. February 2022. https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Cass-Review-Interim-Report-Final-Web-Accessible.pdf.
4. Expert Advisory Group on Ending Conversion Practices: Report and recommendations. 4 October 2024. https://www.gov.scot/publications/expert-advisory-group-ending-conversion-practices-report-recommendations/.
Book review
Glenn Y. Bezalel, Teaching Classroom Controversies: Navigating Complex Teaching Issues in the Age of Fake News and Alternative Facts (Routledge, 2023)
Reviewed by Rachael Hobbs. Rachael is a mother and a teaching assistant.
Glenn Y. Bezalel is Deputy Head at the City of London School, where he teaches religion and philosophy. He is also carrying out research at the University of Cambridge on the teaching of conspiracy theories and controversies. Bezalel writes for a range of publications on education; his new book makes an important contribution to the discussion on education and freedom of speech and thought.
In Teaching Classroom Controversies, Bezalel cites an open letter from leading thinkers published in Harper’s Magazine in 2020, objecting to increasing restriction of free speech and ‘a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favour of ideological conformity’. His book extends this concern to the classroom, which in itself, he argues, is ‘a litmus test for exposure to different arguments’. Increasingly, schools find themselves in a battle over their purpose: are they responsible for instilling knowledge or a particular set of morals?
This book is a very welcome resource for teachers stuck in a no man’s land of intellectual inertia and censorship in our wider culture. Teachers face the stressful prospect of either avoiding difficult issues altogether, or risking being accused of straying from a new moral code when debates are opened up. Bezalel argues that teachers should not be avoiding contentious topics, because children will face these issues head on when they enter the adult world.
Polarity management, truth and character
Bezalel encourages teachers to begin a revival of informed debate, with all the educational benefits it brings. First, he introduces the concept of ‘polarity management’, suggesting that, where possible, teachers switch from the dichotomy of ‘either/or’ to ‘both/and’. He redefines polarity as ‘an ongoing problem with two correct answers that are interdependent’ (p. 18).
For Bezalel, the twin aims of education are truth and character. These two pillars require teachers to remain at the centre, between intellectual virtues on one side, such as autonomy and critical thinking (truth), and moral virtues on the other, such as compassion and humility (character). The negative aspects of truth and character are to be avoided. For truth, these are intellectual vices of arrogance, cynicism and prejudice, and for character, moral vices of dogmatism, groupthink and self-righteousness. The dark side of both truth and moral puritanism tend to dominate and close down healthy debate. The aim, then, is to always return education to the centre of a discussion.
Non-directive teaching
Bezalel argues that there are two options on how to teach: within a ‘directive’ or ‘non-directive’ approach. Directive approach can be applied when a subject is uncontroversial, and students need the correct answer (e.g. 2 + 2 = 4). When a topic is controversial, teachers could adopt a non-directive approach to accommodate a range of conflicting views while teachers remain neutral.
He urges that in debate, nothing should be taught as ‘settled’ or based on authority, as ‘a victory dependent on authority is unreal and illusory’ (p.27). A student witnessing a teacher striking down debate may legitimately ask, ‘What does the teacher have to hide?’
Philosophical approaches to controversy
Bezalel uses philosophical teaching methods to consider when it comes to deciding what is controversial and to what end we conduct debate (for truth, autonomy, liberty, ethics, or community – for him, the best approach requires a mix of all these). He introduces key approaches to teaching, including the ‘behavioural criterion’, the ‘epistemological approach’ and ‘moral foundations theory’.
The behavioural criterion deems something to be controversial as soon as any number of people disagree with an idea. While it embraces all opinions, it is susceptible to dangerous beliefs (e.g. Holocaust denial, views not to be expanded under teaching goals of reason and reflective judgement) (p. 26). In this approach, known facts can become rebranded as opinion and of no higher status than any other opinion, and the result can be a nihilistic reckoning that every view is of equal worth (a fact less world).
Bezalel wants students to find truth through debate, so this is not simply an exercise in making students more comfortable with disagreement. His is a commitment to teaching students to provide evidence for their view, in place of default rebuttal of alternatives.
He looks at the epistemological pedagogy, or knowledge-based teaching method, as something ‘traditionalists’ might reach for, to bring us back from the edge in a world of ‘alternative’ facts.
Teachers, he suggests, have a duty to help guide students through competing narratives from unregulated social and news media. If a teacher lacks confidence on a topic, thinking in epistemic terms will help set debate boundaries (p. 33). However, Bezalel suggests that this approach is flawed because it cannot answer what is morally felt to be true – based on reasonable evidence. This brings us back to the twin aims of education model: that truth, as intellect, must also register with its moral counterpart – ‘We belittle students when we view them as purely thinking machines and teach them only in terms of facts and evidence. They are human with a range of influences and pressures that will impact their approaches to topics of controversy.’ (p. 38).
Overlooking deeper human sentiment through a complete reliance on ‘reason’ to reach moral truths is ‘no more than the secular counterparts to religious transcendentalists who use sacred texts to find their moral truths’, says Bezalel (p.36). He endorses David Hume’s stance that ‘beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived’. That said, as with a singular focus on ‘intellect’, students should equally not remain in the realm of ‘values’ too long, as this risks thinking becoming ungrounded. Bezalel points us to the ultimate virtue of practical wisdom, or what the Greeks called phronesis: ‘developed through experience and critical reflection, which enables us to perceive, know, and act with good sense including discerning action in situations where virtues collide’ (common sense).
Bezalel promotes a ‘plurality of ideals’ to incorporate a diversity of values, through moral foundations theory (MFT). This incorporates beliefs based on instinct, feeling, autonomy and community, through a foundation of ‘intuitive ethics’ and reason. Autonomy, for example, as a standalone ethical goal of debate, tends to focus on a harm–rights–justice code (e.g. the transgender narrative), and this cannot deal with wider issues, including the ‘ethic of community’ as well as the preserve of institutions such as family and cultural values. MFT ties these principles together.
The second half of the book offers templates for assessing which issues are explosive and how to approach them in class debate. These include gender identity, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, conspiracy theories, and climate change.
These templates follow a structure that requires of students an environment of respect and the task of evidencing their view. Key to his approach is ‘Socratic questioning’, in which the teacher is neutral but asks important key questions. For example, with the Israel–Palestinian conflict, this might include asking ‘What are the main causes of the conflict?’ – an ‘exploratory’ question encouraging class ‘interthinking’ rather than dispute. Students might (for this and other topics) be encouraged to build a timeline of events leading up to the controversy; this teaches children to research, choose resources wisely, and produce findings to back up their position. The teacher could further pose the question ‘What are the possible solutions of the conflict?’ Again, this would require research and deliberation and a focus on conflict management.
Within the Socratic approach, open questions invite collaboration of critical thinking within the class rather than a polarised ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ narrative – students may often be afraid to speak their minds within such a dichotomy. In addition to the guidance templates on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the book provides frameworks for a discussion on the following: Is Santa Clause real? Surely no one can disagree with the idea that ‘love is love’? Are trans women, women? Should there be any limits on free speech? Does being ‘woke’ just mean being kind to others, especially vulnerable people? You don’t really believe what the government and media are telling us? Is the Holocaust a hoax? (for this one, Bezalel advises from the start an absolute no to non-directive teaching, i.e. no, it is not). You don’t really believe in climate change?
All children are at a distinct disadvantage when they embark on a debate, because they have not yet developed the intellectual skills to form judgements and feel confident in how they reached them. In Scotland, classrooms are fast becoming places for government to impose a set of political beliefs, thereby bypassing teaching of reflective analysis to help promote independent thinking. We need to challenge this. Bezalel’s approach offers a positive challenge to the politics of identity activism currently dividing society, in the hope that emerging generations can start to grasp life’s continual task of accepting the ultimate diversity of beliefs.
News round-up
A selection of the main stories with relevance to Scottish education in the press in recent weeks, by Simon Knight.
https://mcc.hu/en/article/reclaiming-classical-education?fbclid=IwAR2-pUbVmPsR4q40W2eozEAldoBSlZmNaNykFGqa9-GvwD2Ir93q4CmSPXE_aem_AYOH9q-4YEsmw7SGT56HdNYRcBbh4unQT7C2U1W1cET7vTJ5NQUl4KftuVuT5VvI0Lg MCC, Reclaiming Classical Education. 22/02/24
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/18/have-the-liberal-arts-gone-conservative Emma Green, Have the Liberal Arts Gone Conservative? The classical-education movement seeks to fundamentally reorient schooling in America. Its emphasis on morality and civics has also primed it for partisan takeover. 11/03/24
https://archive.is/n7tRX Kieran Andrews, Police Scotland will log ‘hate incidents’ even if no crime is committed. New legislation coming into effect on April 1 has been criticised for criminalising freedom of expression. 12/03/24
https://archive.is/iR27y Janice Turner, One day, we’ll look back on era of puberty blockers with horror. In years to come, chemically freezing the sexual development of troubled children will become a topic of gruesome fascination, like lobotomies in the 20th century. 13/03/24
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/24182618.teachers-lead-education-reform-research-argues/ Garrett Stell, Teachers should lead education reform, research argues. 14/03/24
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/5317604/flowjob-drag-queen-paisley-primary-school/ Blair Meikle, WHAT A DRAG. Parents furious as drag queen Flowjob who shares sexual content online visits P1 kids at Paisley primary school. 24/03/20
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/24186774.msps-say-public-board-quota-rules-definition-woman-change/?ref=ebln&nid=1220&nid=1220&block=article_block_a&u=3113c1b3a77b3e25e409aaa02c22166f&date=150324 Jody Harrison, MSPs say public board quota rules definition of woman should change. 15/03/24
https://archive.is/ZF51N Tom Ball, Puberty blocker clinic accepted £20k donation from ‘sugar daddy’. GenderGP, which privately prescribes hormone drugs to children, can skip the NHS ban on the drugs because it is private. 17/03/24
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