U.K. schools are increasingly suspending and expelling students — including preschoolers — for being transphobic or homophobic, a trend that author J.K. Rowling called “totalitarian insanity.”
The Telegraph reported Monday that, according to Department for Education (DfE) statistics,
94 pupils at state primary schools were suspended or permanently excluded for transphobia and homophobia in 2022-23.
These included 10 pupils from year one and three from year two, where the maximum age is seven.
On top of that, one three- or four-year old was suspended for “abuse against sexual orientation and gender identity.”
The DfE data did not name either the school or the child, nor did it include any further details on the preschooler’s alleged offense. Telegraph columnist Celia Walden mused:
Did he or she call a female classmate a “girl”? Did they ask Mr. Davis, the expressive arts teacher, why he was wearing a skirt or query the theme in Michael Hall’s Red (a trans parable masquerading as a children’s story in which a red pencil identifies as blue)?
Sane Reaction
Perhaps young children simply have more common sense than the adults teaching them. They know the difference between boys and girls, and when teachers try to blur the line or even push students into socially transitioning, the kids respond with incredulity and contempt.
As Rowling put it on X Monday:
This is totalitarian insanity. If you think small children should be punished for being able to recognize sex, you are a dangerous zealot who should be nowhere near kids or in any position of authority over them.
Others were similarly outraged.
Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at Sex Matters, a London-based organization fighting the trans agenda, told the Telegraph:
Every once in a while, the extremes of gender ideology throw up a story that seems too crazy to believe, and a toddler being suspended from nursery for so-called “transphobia” or homophobia is one such example….
It’s unforgivable for children’s vital early education to be so traumatically disrupted by school leaders who prioritize activists’ demands over their charges’ wellbeing.
Lord Young, director of the Free Speech Union, also headquartered in London, said:
It beggars belief that schools are suspending children as young as five for breaching their “transphobia” policy. I would have thought that if your ideology is so rigid it justifies you punishing toddlers for not complying with it, that’s a powerful argument for discarding it in favor of something less dogmatic.
Asked for comment on the matter, a DfE spokesman told the Telegraph:
All pupils and staff should feel safe and protected at school and should never face violence or abuse.
The Education Secretary has been clear that she expects school leaders to enforce good behavior and we are committed to a comprehensive program of behavior support for schools.
Preschool Predators
After the initial story was published, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s official spokesman told the paper, “Obviously the Prime Minister would not support those sorts of measures. But equally, I don’t know the specific incident in the case.”
“Pupils and staff should never be subject to abuse,” he added, “but any action taken to tackle behavior should also be proportionate.”
Yet school discipline for such offenses is on the rise. “Across all state primary schools,” wrote the Telegraph, “the number of pupils suspended or expelled for homophobic or transphobic behavior increased from 164 in 2021-22 to 178 in 2022-23.”
Furthermore, the Mirror reported in February:
Cases of children sent home for sexually assaulting or harassing their classmates have more than doubled in a year.
Even in primary schools there were 618 suspensions for sexual misconduct in 2023 — with some as young as four displaying disturbing behavior.
This is partly the result of ubiquitous smartphones and the sexualization of children, some of it perpetrated by the very people punishing them for acting on what they’ve been taught.
But four-year-olds? Penned a skeptical Walden:
What’s “disturbing” here — what’s disgusting, disgraceful, shameful and warped to the nth degree — is not the three-year-old “transphobe” or the four-year-old “predator” but the adult capable of projecting these concepts, narratives and beliefs onto our children. And how can there be more than one of these freaks out there? These people are so far gone they’re on a par with the cult members who insist newborn babies must be purged of evil. So unquestioning is their loyalty to “the cause,” so blinded are they by their own ideology, that they are members of a cult.
Moreover, she observed, although the “cult” insists that “transitioning” kids improves their mental health, “What, out of interest, does branding a four-year-old ‘transphobic’ or expelling a six-year-old for ‘sexual harassment’ do to that child’s mental health?”
Expelling Bee
Of course, U.K. kids aren’t being kicked out of school for these offenses alone. In fact, suspensions and expulsions for all reasons have been increasing rapidly in recent years. According to the Telegraph:
In the 2022-23 academic year, 787,221 pupils were suspended across England’s schools, more than double the number in 2016-17.
Of these, some 84,339 were primary school students, an increase of 31 per cent from 64,337.
Students facing permanent exclusions increased by 21 per cent to 9,377 in 2022-23, although the number of primary pupils excluded has fallen by 4.2 per cent over that period.
Clearly, U.K. schools are facing serious conduct problems. If they spent less time punishing students for thoughtcrimes, maybe they could make some headway in curbing actual offenses.
