A TEACHER JUSTLY SACKED.

I remember my Year Eleven Economics Teacher saying on the second day of classes that if our name was something and we preferred to be called something else, to please say so. A guy in the class who was intelligent but lazy and had a wit, replied, “George will do.” George wasn’t his real name. Obviously, the teacher didn’t mean that if your name was Robert and you wanted to be called Fred that he would oblige, but if your name was Robert and you preferred Rob, Robbie or Bob, he would have.

When I read about a teacher in England who was sacked for not referring to a student by their preferred pronouns, and a court upholding it, I was pleased that it was a piece of good news to emerge from there, with the transphobic agenda of the Tory Government. If you had taught Robert as Robert in Year Eight, and then you had Robert as Roberta in Year Eleven, the change might take a little getting used to, just like if Robert was Robert Smith but his mother remarried and he became Robert Thompson, but a teacher does not have the right to insist that Roberta has to be referred to as Robert. Similarly, if Roberta was transferring from another school, where she had been known as Robert, the teacher is telling the whole school that Roberta is transgender, and if Roberta was taking a testosterone blocker and her voice had not broken, it may not have been something that the students would have worked out in a week.

That teacher’s actions were bullying and especially if he had been briefed by the principal that he was not to deadname a student or refer to them by the wrong pronouns, but he believed he knew better. The issue of it being against the teacher’s beliefs does not and should not hold up as grounds for appeal against his dismissal.

You become a teacher because you want to work with kids, and if a student is from a broken or dysfunctional home, that teacher could be a confidant. I know, when I was viciously bullied, my Year Eight Home Economics teacher was a confidant, especially when I had a bullish mother. The role of the teacher is not necessarily to be a friend of the student, but to establish a rapport with the student, not to be the classroom bully.