Scottish Union for Education – Newsletter No16
Newsletter Themes: irate parents fight back, evidence of ‘transitioning’ harm, the need for exams.
This week Stuart Waiton looks at some of the concerns raised by parents and the attempt to police these concerns. Dr Jenny Cunningham and Sebastian Monteux provide evidence of the potential harms that affirming gender identities have on children – evidence that we will be sending to every school in Scotland. And Alex Standish discusses the importance of exams for both children and education.
Has the whole world gone CRAZY?
Stuart Waiton is an academic and Chairperson of SUE
Last week Claire Watson, a mother of two, was once again threatened with arrest for the ‘hate crime’ of posting comments regarding the promotion of transgender identity in schools.
You may have watched Claire’s video in this Substack where she asks the primary school headteacher if she is prepared to recognise that women have vaginas. Subsequently Claire went on Facebook and posted about her concerns. I’ve listened and spoken to Claire on a number of occasions; I’ve also challenged her about the use of the term ‘paedophile’ to explain what is going on.
Whatever Claire is and is not, she is no shrinking violet. She can be quite in your face, angry at times, upset at others. The ‘paedo’ thing is, in my opinion, often unhelpful, and people need to be careful about accusing individuals of anything without having proof. Indeed, a friend of mine tells me that his lawyer is now filling up his time with cases where individuals are suing anyone who used the ‘P’ word against them on Facebook or Twitter.
Listening to the recording of the police instructing Claire to essentially watch her mouth, you get the feeling that they think she is losing the plot. Some parents, I suspect, would not appreciate or endorse Claire’s at times confrontational approach. They may have a point. But the question that keeps coming back to me is this: is it Claire Watson, mother of two, who faces a headteacher who refuses to accept the fact that women have vaginas, who is losing the plot? Or is it the world around her that has gone crazy?
With that in mind, also last week, I received an email from a concerned grandmother in Ayrshire whose granddaughter has an activist teacher at her primary school who is keen to get the kids to create LGBTQ+ T-shirts and who asks the children to ‘identify’ themselves, something she then endorses.
In England, there is also news of a primary school teacher who was sacked after refusing to use an 8-year-old’s preferred pronouns.
Wider concerns have been raised about the apparent sexualisation of children’s education, something that English teacher Colin Smith will address in next week’s Substack. And in fact it was Claire who pointed out to me the pi symbol on one of the flags on the front cover of Drag Queen Story Hour performer Aida H Dee’s children’s book, My First Pride.
My First Pride cover, illustrated with the polyamory Pride flag
Some have mistakenly taken this flag and symbol to represent paedophilia. It’s actually the polyamory Pride flag. Here we find the celebration of polyamory in a children’s book, i.e. the promotion of non-monogamy or being involved with multiple sexual partners at the same time!
I tend to be pretty liberal about sex, but I can still recognise that there is, in fact, a difference between what consenting adults do and what is taught – as education – to small children. As a colleague said to me, ‘this may not be about promoting paedophilia, but it’s pretty creepy and weird’.
And yet we find the drafting of a motion at the recent NASUWT teacher’s union meeting in Scotland last week, demanding that schools ‘promote the educational, equality, health and wellbeing and social justice impacts of initiatives like Drag Queen Story Time and inviting LGBT+ authors into schools’. (The proposers of this motion thankfully didn’t bother to turn up to the meeting, and so it was not voted on or passed, and I suspect – at least I hope – that as the NASUWT, unlike the EIS, hasn’t gone full trans, this part of the motion would have been voted against).
As I’ve argued elsewhere, we should reserve the label of paedophile for those who are found guilty in a court of law of a relevant crime. However, concerns being raised by parents like Claire and by many other parents and grandparents should not be dismissed because what they are correctly identifying is the transgression of boundaries and the promotion of both transgender and also sexual identities to very young children.
Thankfully, some people are fighting back, and members of the Western Isles Council appear to be holding their ground on their refusal to teach the sexualised RSHP curriculum being promoted by the education authorities. The gender critical feminist MP Joanna Cherry has also won her legal battle with the Stand Comedy Club, who attempted to cancel her from speaking at an event in Edinburgh.
The battle against the Scottish state, the political class and the education authorities who are promoting trans identities to children and who are encouraging a sexualised form of activist education to primary school children may feel like a losing battle at times. But thanks to those individuals, like Claire Watson, who shout out ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore’, this war is not yet lost.
And as Dr Jenny Cunningham and Sebastian Monteux explain below, even the medical evidence is growing that shows the harm that transgender ideology is having on our children.
If you have any stories that can help us expose what is going on in schools, get in touch at info@scottishunionforeducation.co.uk.
Evidence of the potential harms produced by gender-affirming interventions in young people
Dr Jenny Cunningham is a retired community paediatrician.
Sebastian Monteux is a lecturer in mental health nursing.
We review an important, recently published critical overview of ‘gender-affirming’ interventions in adolescents [1]. It is our hope that all teachers, especially science teachers and teacher trainers, will give it their attention, especially in the light of the Scottish government’s manifest transgender advocacy and advice to teachers to socially transition any child or young person who is questioning their gender identity.
In the introduction to the review, authors Stephen Levine and E. Abbruzzese explain that:
The lack of credible evidence of benefits of gender transition has come into focus for today’s transgender-identified youth, whose numbers have sharply increased. The presentation of gender dysphoria has markedly changed in recent years: the sex ratio of youth presenting in medical settings has reversed from primarily male to primarily female, with the preponderance of youth whose transgender identity emerged for the first time in adolescence and in the context of significant pre-existing mental illness and neurocognitive disorders.
They argue that the narrative that highly medicalised ‘gender-affirming care has been scientifically proven’ depends on ‘several key assumptions misrepresented as proven facts’. Foremost among these are:
1. the assumption that a teenager’s transgender identity is authentic and permanent;
2. co-occurring psychiatric symptoms are a direct result of gender incongruence and the only way to relieve or prevent such problems is to medically intervene as early as possible;
3. “gender-affirming” interventions are safe and effective at improving short-term and long-term psychological outcomes.
Assumption 1
First, ‘identity development in teenagers is far from complete’. Children and adolescents are too young to appreciate that their current gender identity is likely to be impermanent. ‘Adults should know that that young people’s sexual orientations and gender identities fluctuate as they gain more life experiences.’ It is common for gay, lesbian and bisexual teenagers to have gender dysphoria when younger. There is evidence that up to 70 per cent of adolescents presenting with gender incongruence have had prior, ongoing or co-existing mental health conditions. Several studies show a ‘strong connection between a trans identity in adolescence and the presence of neurocognitive diagnoses’, such as autism spectrum disorders. The authors argue: ‘The natural arc of adolescence is the eventual resolution of identity confusion and consolidation of a healthy, multifaceted identity. Problematically, every stage of “gender-affirming” care disrupts the natural course of identity development’.
Assumption 2
Levine and Abbruzzese challenge the second assumption that mental health problems in adolescents are the direct result of gender incongruence. Among the recent cohort of gender-questioning young people, mental health problems frequently precede the questioning of their gender identity and possibly should be considered as causal rather than consequential.
Furthermore, systematic reviews of research have ‘failed to find trustworthy evidence’ to support the assumption that gender transition is essential to alleviate mental health problems associated with gender incongruence. The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) was commissioned to evaluate the first two stages of medical gender transition for adolescents: the use of puberty blockers and then cross-sex hormones. In each of NICE’s systematic reviews, published in 2020, studies reporting positive findings were judged unreliable due to poor methodology. For puberty blockers, no evidence of improvements in key areas of mental health were found. In the case of cross-sex hormones, improvements were found to be ‘highly uncertain’, suggesting that this should be carefully weighed against the risks of hormone interventions. Both the Swedish and Finnish health authorities ‘came to similar conclusions after their own systematic reviews’.
Assumption 3
Regarding the third assumption, that ‘gender-affirming’ interventions are safe and effective, Levine and Abbruzzese iterate just some of the known harms of medical gender transition: sexual dysfunction and infertility; risks to bone development; increased medical morbidity; ‘difficulties in romantic partnerships; substance abuse and addiction’.
Because of the recent dramatic increase in the numbers of adolescents presenting with gender dysphoria, systematic reviews of evidence are necessarily ‘limited by very short-term follow-up’. The review reports on several long-term follow-up studies of adults who transitioned decades ago, acknowledging that most transitioned when they were older than today’s cohort of transitioners. The long-term data from these studies fail to show lasting mental health improvements after medical and surgical transition.
Worryingly, evidence from a long-term Swedish study, published in 2011, found alarmingly increased rates of suicide among adult-transitioned individuals, with the highest risk among female-to-male transitioners. A Dutch follow-up study, from 2020, found a higher risk of suicide for ‘trans people’ than in the general population, during every stage of transitioning. Thus, not only is there little evidence of improved mental health, but there is strong evidence of treatment-related harm.
In the case of adolescents who transitioned in the past two decades, there is evidence of poor outcomes from a group who showed regret about their gender transition and who subsequently detransitioned. Whereas among mature adult transitioners adverse effects emerge 8–10 years after transition, among recently transitioned adolescents ‘there appears to be a shorter time to regret and a subsequent desire to detransition, around 3–6 years on average’. The authors cite some of the reasons: ‘Strained intrafamilial bonds, inability to find a stable relationship, the experience of discrimination, need for ongoing medical care [and] substance use to quell anxiety and depression’. Some regret never having had a chance to explore their concerns in psychotherapy before being transitioned. Recent UK and US data suggest that ‘10–30% of recently transitioned individuals detransition a few years after they initiated transition’.
The move away from ‘gender-affirmative’ care
The final section of the review discusses the recent decisions by authorities in Finland, Sweden and England to reverse their previous endorsement of ‘gender-affirmative’ care and, in its place, implement new national health policies ‘that prioritise mental health interventions as the first and often only treatment available outside of clinical research settings’. Changes to policy and practice have also begun in France, Australia, the US state of Florida and, most recently, in Norway. This reversal is partly in response to recent studies that have shown how much of the original Dutch research that initiated the experimental practice of gender realignment for adolescents was deeply flawed and ‘unfit for clinical or policy decision-making’. The Dutch studies also raised serious ethical questions: nearly all the young people in the research were same-sex-attracted at the start of the process and after transitioning became sterile, with limited or no sexual function or capacity for sexual pleasure.
Conclusion and implications for teachers
The review concludes that:
The evidence base for gender-affirming interventions is sparse and of very low quality. While the evidence of benefits is highly uncertain, the harms to sexual and reproductive functions are certain, and many uncertainties about the long-term health effects exist. As a result, it is hard to ethically justify continuing to use hormones and surgeries as first-line ‘treatment’ for gender dysphoric youth.
This research overview has important implications for teachers, who are under pressure to follow the Scottish government’s advice to unquestioningly socially transition gender-questioning and gender non-conforming children and young people. No one can be in any doubt that social transitioning has led to medical interventions in a high proportion of the adolescents seen by the Scottish Gender Identity Service for Young People at the Sandyford Clinic in Glasgow.
Reference
1. Levine S.B. and Abbruzzese E. (2023) ‘Current concerns about gender-affirming therapy in adolescents’, Current Sexual Health Reports. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11930-023-00358-x.
Why we need formal exams
Alex Standish is an associate professor of geography education, teacher trainer at UCL Institute of Education, and co-editor of What Should Schools Teach? – Disciplines, subjects and the pursuit of truth. Follow him at @alexstandish9.
After Covid, questions were raised in the teaching profession about exams, and indeed the very idea of exams has come under scrutiny for some time both in schools and increasingly within universities. But if not exams, how should we assess students’ achievements?
Performativity culture
Across the UK, it is not unusual for members of the teaching profession to discuss exams as if they are a threat to the mental wellbeing of pupils. Following the pandemic, the campaign group Worth Less, for example – which represents headteachers from 78 English local authorities – argued that without ‘far-reaching change’, the stress of putting this year’s cohorts through exams will lead to a ‘mental health crisis’.
In July of 2021, Jules White, head of Tanbridge House School in Horsham and leader of Worth Less, stated, ‘The government must strike a much better balance to maintain standards whilst looking after children’s mental health. The idea that pupils will simply ‘‘catch up’’ on months of lost learning is neither realistic nor workable.’
The view that exams place too much stress on children has been around for a while and is linked to a growing emphasis on mental health and wellbeing in schools.
However, one reason why exams have become more stressful than they need to be is because schools in England, and arguably in Scotland as well, are using results in the wrong way – to measure their collective performance rather than the performance of individual students.
This means that students become responsible not only for their own results but those of the school – and they know it!
In a research paper titled ‘Good Education in an Age of Measurement’, Gert Biesta outlines a ‘performativity culture’ where ‘Means become ends in themselves, so that targets and indicators of quality become mistaken for quality itself.’
In too many schools, exam specifications have replaced curricula, while ‘teaching to the test’ has become the norm, devaluing the idea that the pursuit of knowledge has an intrinsic value.
Through overzealous exam preparation and coaching children on how best to answer specific questions, teachers are simultaneously removing responsibility for passing exams from students and discouraging them from thinking for themselves.
This misuse of exams puts them into conflict with broader educational aims – a practice that in prior decades would have been viewed by educational theorists like Douglas Holly, among others, as ‘professional cheating’.
In Scotland, Professor Marina Shapira and Professor Mark Priestly have argued that at times schools pick and choose subjects to teach in a ‘performative’ way, less to improve education itself than to maximise the benefit of ‘school attainment statistics’.
As SUE board member and teacher Stuart Baird argues, ‘For any course, a degree of preparation of students by their teachers in advance of any assessment should be expected. But a myopic focus of “teaching to the test” corrupts that process and reduces teaching to a technical task and learning to a sterile experience’.
Work ethic
We should acknowledge that the system is placing undue importance on students’ exam results, but a better way forwards would be to change the system of accountability rather than cancel exams.
We want young people to be in good health, mentally and physically, but concerns with ‘mental health’ have the potential to conflict with the legitimate need to put students under the academic pressure necessary for them to succeed and progress.
One interesting lesson we’ve learned from the cancelled exams in England during Covid is just how much they mattered to the students taking them.
Emma, a GCSE student from Faversham, recalls how she felt after exams were cancelled: ‘We no longer have that pivot to dedicate our time and studies to ... and we’re unable to find other work and areas of study ourselves which give us the same work ethic’.
Another student told me that she’d prefer exams over teacher assessment because, ‘They provide a focus and an endpoint to concentrate on’ and are ‘fairer’.
The examination itself is an opportunity for pupils to demonstrate what they know, understand and can do. In this sense, they teach young people to take responsibility for their own success and offer a pathway to the next stage of education or training.
While teachers will do their best to ensure students are well prepared, it’s the individual student themselves who has to revise, prepare and perform in the exam.
Many students don’t actually have a problem with putting themselves under pressure to get the grades in exams that will often define the next stage in their life. Working under pressure is also an important life lesson in the transition from childhood to adulthood.
Moreover, the fact that grades can be such a determinant in young people’s lives is a good argument for why teachers shouldn’t be awarding them.
As teachers, we’ll often invest ourselves in the students we teach. We help them to grow, mature and improve, and therefore want them to succeed.
It’s an attachment that’s inherent to the pedagogical relationship, but one that also makes teachers less objective when it comes to evaluating students’ overall achievement, which is why most educational jurisdictions keep their teaching and examinations separate.
Objective assessment
Objective assessment of what young people know, understand and can do is what gives grades their social value. Employers will look for a foundation of exam results as a proxy measure of basic skills and the ability to apply oneself.
We must decide on the best way forwards, but to suggest that exams place ‘unnecessary stress’ on students right now amounts to an abdication of responsibility for putting young people under pressure to succeed and reach their potential.
My argument is that exams, as summative assessment, are an integral part of education, providing valuable experience of taking responsibility for your own progress. Yes, our current exams must do more to reward independent thought and creativity rather than regurgitation of content.
And yes, exams aren’t the only way of validating students’ achievements – we should remain open to using a combination of assessment methods.
However, by showing young people that we value their education enough to sustain a system of education and examination that provides them with a pathway to their future, we teach them a valuable lesson.
This is a rewritten version of an article that first appeared in Teachwire.
News Round-up
A selection of the main stories with relevance to Scottish education in the press in recent weeks.
https://www.gbnews.com/news/nottinghamshire-news-teacher-sacked-pronouns-row-child GB Reporter, Primary school teacher ‘sacked after refusing to use 8-year old’s preferred pronouns’. 12/05/23
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/20/third-of-uk-librarians-asked-to-censor-or-remove-books-research-reveals?fbclid=IwAR3gvPDaOUKJ2dZ6usqF3V9ar3s_QEYBKzqEV6CpIgPfwdVAAXGB4qWgYXM Sarah Shaffi, A survey by Cilip shows members of the public using increasingly threatening behaviour about the removal of books on empire, race and LGBTQ+ themes. 20/04/23
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/adjoa-andoh-and-the-racialisation-of-society/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=BOCH%20%2013052023%20%20App%20Ads%20%20AC+CID_d0d1ec1f95021023f65b99d2dbbc45dc Brendan O’Neill, Adjoa Andoh and the racialisation of society. 11/05/23
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/13/outrage-over-who-advice-on-sexuality-for-infants/ Michael Murphy, Outrage over WHO advice on sexuality for infants. The Guide argues that ‘sexuality education starts from birth’. 13/05/23
https://journals.lwbooks.co.uk/forum/vol-65-issue-1/article-9698/ Walter Humes, Scottish education A crisis of confidence and trust.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/05/14/the-new-homophobia/ Ben Appel, Homophobia in drag. Transgender ideology has breathed new life into a dark, old prejudice. 14/05/23
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-65588466?fbclid=IwAR05nU9iVY2a3mOLyTefWIb6eGdu5yWb-HXLl57X0-t6PaEVMBKTKzLm_AI Nicola Sturgeon ‘absolutely failed’ Scottish children - commissioner (retrieved 15/05/23)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/12/oxford-university-students-colouring-pencils-stress-relief/ Ewan Somerville, Oxford University students given colouring pencils ‘to relieve stress’. The scheme, rolled out across campus to encourage undergraduates to ‘give your mind a break’, has been mocked for ‘infantilising’ them. 12/05/23
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