The value of difference

As retired member of the National Education Union, I receive their member magazine, Educate, regularly. The March/April 2023 issue contains coverage of the union's recent and, as I write, ongoing strike action in schools in England. It also has a feature article exploring the charity Lifting Limits. The head of education at the charity is a member of the National Education Union, and is cited in their magazine feature.

There is an aspect of the work of Lifting Limits in schools that emerges from the feature that is quite commendable. This is their work around recognising and challenging roles that are often stereotypically described as being "for boys" or "for girls". This can relate to the sports in which children are expected to participate, to the examples of scientists who feature in the curriculum, to subject choices at A-level and to career choices as they leave school. In all of these areas, and more, there is no reason why children should not be equally encouraged in their choices independently of their sex as male or female. 

However, I do think there is a danger in assuming that role stereotypes based on sex are always going to be harmful. There will be boys and girls whose aspirations match to such stereotypes, and who are quite comfortable with those aspirations. Asking them to question their aspirations, on the grounds that they are stereotypical, is not going to do them any favours. A number of the examples of practice described in the feature in Educate usefully include the contributions of women as well as men; but this is only of value if it offers boys and girls more freedom around their aspirations and is not used to create an ideological opposition to aspirations that follow stereotypes. It should act as an enabler to all aspirations, both those that go against a stereotype and those that go along with it.

The feature refers to another aspect of Lifting Limits work. Citing an example from one primary school:

The school is also teaching children about the use of pronouns and the fact that not everyone identifies as the gender registered at their birth. One year 3 child has a parent who is transgender. "For Fathers' Day they wanted to draw a dress on their card, and they put the transgender flag inside it. It has been easily accepted by all of their peers".

Lifting Limits is keen to break the habit in some schools of labelling children by gender and highlight the things children have in common with one another instead.

"Having school structures and routines that highlight gender is saying, girls and boys are different,", says Kirsty [head of education at Lifiting Limits], adding that this can encourage unhealthy relationships between children.

Certainly it is unhealthy to have a school environment that deliberately plays boys off against girls. But avoiding that is not the same as adopting a reluctance to speak of a difference between boys and girls. This  contrasts sharply with what Pope Francis had to say about gender in a recent interview, where he emphasised the value of such difference: Pope Francis: I dream of a more pastoral, a more open Church:

Pope Francis then stated that he is not writing a new encyclical. In response to a question about whether he has been asked to write a document on the subject of gender, the Pope replied in the negative. On this topic, he reiterated that he “always makes a distinction between pastoral work with people of different sexual orientation” on the one hand, “and gender ideology. They are two different things," he said. "Gender ideology, at this time, is one of the most dangerous ideological colonisations. It goes beyond the sexual sphere. Why is it dangerous? Because it dilutes differences, and the richness of men and women and of all humanity is the tension of differences. It is growing through the tension of differences. The gender question dilutes differences and makes the world equal, all level, all the same. And this goes against the human vocation.”