Conservative teachers demand an end to gender ideology in schools

Read the full article at The Spectator Australia.

Conservative teachers have taken a definitive stance on the transgender issue: they’re demanding an end to what they believe to be child abuse.

New research has revealed that 91 per cent of educators believe transgender ideology should not be taught in schools.

The landmark member survey conducted by the Teachers’ Professional Association of Australia (TPAA) revealed that transgender ideology is having a pervasive and corrosive impact within the education system – and teachers are seething.

The issue has reached boiling point in recent months as nurses revolted over an initial delay in the pausing of puberty blockers and transgender surgery for minors, despite the landmark findings of the Cass Review in the United Kingdom.

Any hesitation would fly in the face of Justice Andrew Strum’s ruling that Michelle Telfer, Australia’s leading transgender advocate, gave misleading evidence in support of puberty blockers. Strum described the practice as ‘life-altering and irreversible’. In the court of law, the facts have been laid out, while this ABC puff piece from a few years ago has aged like milk.

Additional research from the Nurses’ Professional Association of Australia (NPAA) shows that within the Queensland Health Minister Tim Nicholls’ own constituency, 84 per cent of nurses are of the view that there isn’t enough evidence to support the child gender ‘treatments’ despite enthusiasm from the government.

That same research also revealed that less than 9 per cent of nurses believe the current approach to gender affirmation treatments aligns with the Hippocratic Oath principle of ‘do no harm’.

Queensland nurses and doctors are rightly livid at the prospect of abandoning their Hippocratic Oath. Perhaps this was predictable given support for gag laws just three years ago, whereby ministers voted to give bureaucrats the power to override medical professionals.

Minister Nicholls, who voted for abortion up until the moment of birth, is also continuing the former Labor Health Minister’s apparent persecution of Dr Jillian Spencer. Dr Spencer, a respected psychiatrist, was stood down by Queensland Health after raising concerns in an internal forum – to which she was invited – about the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat children with gender distress.

Given this track record, we wonder if the Minister for Health would be more comfortable being a Greens or Teals Health Minister. Most revealing of all is his refusal to deal with the non-left-wing NPAQ – in our view, this should disqualify him from ever being an LNP Health Minister.

On top of these domestic affairs, reverberations are being felt as the Trump Administration takes executive and legislative action on the issue. From banning ‘trans women’ (men) from female sports, to defunding all child ‘gender-affirming care’ (genital mutilation), the President’s actions are matching public sentiment – transgender ideology is child abuse and it must be eradicated from public life entirely.

And now, for the first time, Australian teachers have actually been asked what they think about transgenderism. Until now, teachers have been beholden to the Australian Education Union’s (AEU) transgender crusade. As the philosophical arm of the Labor Party, the AEU has been the driving force behind pushing gender ideology into the classroom. Teachers knowing the militant nature of the Labor Party-supporting unions, have been wary of stepping out of line – feeling powerless to speak out.

Dissent has long been forbidden in schools, and it’s clear to see why.

The TPAA survey made the staggering finding that up to 82 per cent of schools either allow or encourage the use of transgender pride flags in classrooms and around school grounds. Teachers are asking what purpose this could possibly serve? There’s concern that this is a sinister exercise in exerting influence on children so they associate themselves with the ideology that the flag represents. The numbers suggest this is precisely what is happening – we’ll get to that shortly.

Just recently, yet another ‘Pride Month’ came to its conclusion, and this year, frustration turned to outrage for teachers and parents across Australia. Don’t think for a moment that this ideology is confined to public schools – kids in private schools are no more protected.

Take a Melbourne grammar school as an example. This is a school that purports to be Anglican and claims to value ‘truth’, yet was caught red-handed engaging a ‘queer Palestinian activist’, whose sexually explicit social media posts were publicly available, to talk about sexuality to young boys. The school apologised.

As you can imagine, parent reaction ranged from bewildered to outraged. It turns out, Christian parents are furious that the sin of pride is being worshipped at supposedly Christian schools. But this isn’t an isolated occurrence. Private schools are forced to bend the knee to the government’s warped agendas in exchange for funding.

Parents are beginning to realise that they aren’t the ones raising their children, and teachers have their hands tied. So, teachers, nurses and parents are all on the same page. They’ve all expressed dismay at both government and private education systems forcing the ideology onto students.

The worst policies are often masked by flowery names. Respectful Relationships. Safe Schools. Student Diversity and Inclusion. Try reading one such policy without the words ‘tolerance’ and ‘inclusion’ virtuously littered throughout. Beyond the headlines however, a clear agenda does appear – and it’s far more disturbing than they’d have you believe.

With a sharp rise in sexual incidents occurring throughout schools, as well as children accessing pornography at an increasingly young age, teachers are rightly asking, is government sponsored transgender ideology sexualising children?

Of course, transgenderism is inherently sexual. The central tenet of this ideology is for adults to tell kids they were born into the wrong sex, and that the solution may be to mutilate their reproductive parts. Evidently, children are believing this.

More than two-thirds of teachers have confirmed that they’ve taught a class with at least one student who identified as transgender. This is unsurprising given the 30,700 per cent increase in referrals for gender dysphoria by the Queensland Children’s Gender Service. Diagnoses for this mental disorder have skyrocketed across the Western world in recent years.

Where this was a non-issue a decade ago, and a fringe issue 5 years ago, the transgender issue in schools is now existential.

What has caused this surge of students identifying as transgender? Over 70 per cent of teachers put it down to either social contagion, or the ideological push in schools. Of course, one leads to the other. Government policies pushing transgender ideology have undoubtedly resulted in more ‘transgender’ children, which in turn dials up the social effect whereby children are influenced by their peers.

Just how much of this can be attributed to attention-seeking? We’ll be investigating further.

What we do know is that teachers are not equipped to deal with the unmanageable number of students who have mental illness. It’s no surprise that student results have plummeted as teachers’ focus has been dragged away from … teaching.

Teachers know very well that children are quite impressionable – there’s a reason why they can’t vote until they’re 18. They know that adults must be the voice of reason to children struggling with gender dysphoria.

So, what exactly is your school’s leadership doing to address this ever-growing crisis? In fact, perhaps the greater question is, what is the government doing that is driving this crisis?

For one, they’re banning teachers from discussing students’ gender identity with their own parents. In Victoria, students can begin ‘transitioning’ without any parental knowledge. No wonder trust in education is at an all-time low, as home-schooling booms in popularity.

There’s been plenty of commentary about the supposed rift between parents and teachers due to government policies that demand secrecy and deception. But the research points to teachers and parents being firmly on the same side of this issue – they want it to stop.

Queensland is not alone. Every other Health and Education Minister in Australia, by their silence, is supporting transgender ideology which we believe harms children. Governments on both sides of politics have failed to protect students and cannot be trusted to act. By allowing schools to exercise autonomy on this issue, parents will have the power to keep their kids safe, and teachers will be able to focus on doing what they do best: teach.

Edward Schuller is the National Secretary of the Teachers’ Professional Association of Australia (TPAA).