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MEDIA RELEASE – 1 September 2023
Teacher Not Using Preferred Pronouns Shouldn’t Be Deregistered – Poll
A new nationwide poll has found significant opposition to a decision which resulted in a teacher losing his teaching licence for refusing to recognise a student’s gender ‘identity’ and using the students preferred pronouns.
A high school math teacher had his teaching registration cancelled after he refused to use the preferred pronouns and name for a 14-year-old student who was in the process of ‘transitioning’ from a biological girl to a boy.
In the poll of 1,000 New Zealanders commissioned by Family First NZ and carried out by Curia Market Research, respondents were asked “Should a teacher lose their teaching licence for misgendering a trans student (refusing to use their preferred pronoun or recognise their gender identity)?”
Only 16 per cent of respondents said yes. Two in three Kiwis (65%) said the teacher shouldn’t lose their licence, and a further 19 per cent were unsure.
Support for the teacher was strong amongst National (69%), ACT (76%) Labour (61%) and NZ First (70%) voters (based on 2020 vote), and even Green voters gave majority support (52%).
“It appears that the Teaching Council failed to ‘read the room’ when it recently cancelled the licence of the math teacher for this exact ‘crime’. The decision effectively told Kiwi teachers that if they aren’t willing to tell a biological lie and fully endorse gender ideology, then they’re not fit to be a teacher,” says Bob McCoskrie.
Current legislation does not address specific issues around names and pronouns, but the Ministry of Education recently commissioned so-called ‘guidelines’ from radical gender activist group InsideOut, which claimed that using a person’s chosen name and pronouns was about respecting their right to self-determination. Fortunately the ‘guidelines’ are not mandatory – and were also not legally accurate .
This polling reveals that the majority of New Zealanders are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the gender ideology curriculum and agenda being rammed down in some schools, its effect on the teaching profession, and the coercion it’s placing on teaching professionals to tell a biological lie.
“When teachers are mandated to tell biological lies or lose their careers because of a flawed and harmful ideology, which involves chemicalising and castrating vulnerable young people, then you know we’re in a really dangerous place. It is not loving to affirm a lie.”
“There is also considerable community and parental angst that parents can be kept out of the loop on all of this, and that a child’s social transitioning may be facilitated by the school without parents being informed.”
In comparison, these teachers can continue to teach:
- A teacher was censured after assaulting his daughter – but kept registration. He wrapped his hands around his teenage daughter’s neck, shook her “vigorously” and threatened to kill her after discovering the nature of her sexual activity. But can still teach.
- Preschool teacher drove to work drunk. She had had three drink-driving criminal prosecutions and one previous tribunal decision relating to alcohol use. But can still teach.
- A Whakatane teacher was censured for serious misconduct after forcing students at a school camp to strip to their underwear and stand with their noses against a tree. But can still teach.
- A teacher was a convicted drug cultivator, failed to comply with conditions placed on her during disciplinary proceedings in 2013, and failed to tell the Teaching Council about the criminal charge. But can still teach.
- A Christchurch teacher was found guilty of serious misconduct after making inappropriate and offensive comments on a podcast about students, a former girlfriend, his sex life and going to work “slightly high on drugs”. Still able to teach.
- A teacher tried to hire a gang member to assault her principal. The teacher also fabricated grades for work not done by students, forged the head of department’s signature, and lied about what classes she had taught. The teacher feared she was going to be fired and so hatched a plan for one of her students’ grandfathers to threaten the principal. The teacher told a colleague she had arranged for the principal to be “capped”. Despite her “unprofessional” actions and “serious misconduct”, the Teachers’ Council gave the teacher permission to return to the classroom.
The nationwide poll was carried out 22/23 August and has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 per cent.
For More Information and Media Interviews, contact Family First
WATCH: FAMILY MATTERS: Exposed! The Radical Sexuality & Gender Indoctrination in Schools…
