Should teachers and schools be allowed to keep information about a student's pronouns or gender identity from parents?

@SW-User

How would it be a violation of parental rights and if so, is it more important that the parental right be upheld in this instance or more important to prevent potential harm to a child?

@SW-User Pubic school is free, or at least supported by taxes, not fees.

@Pikachu You do not prevent "potential harm".

A harm is either harm or not. For example, you do not potentially attack someone. This is a pre-crime, and that is what an authoritarian state acting under the guise of a democratic state considers worthy of punishment.

If a child has been harmed, this should be demonstrable and able to be convicted in a criminal court.

Parents have created their children, and are therefore responsible for their children. If the child is a minor, they ought to know if the child is requesting to be called a different gender, as there can be implications to this. A parent needs to know what state of mind their child is in.

Teachers do not have the right to undermine this. They are at schools because they have been put there to teach children, so society can ensure these children can be of use and behave in a way society wants when they have grown. When people home school their children, or send them to free schools, they are doing it to ensure their children remain their children.

@SW-User We're not talking about parents murdering their children because they use a different pronoun. Obviously such crimes should be punished. But not all abuse is illegal. Parents can cause great harm to their children without violating the law.

Parents deserve to know their child's state of mind, but that means they should create an environment where the child feels safe in confiding this. If the parents haven't created that environment, the school shouldn't be complicit in exposing children to potential harm, which may not rise to the level of criminality.

I'm curious, to what extent do you think schools are responsible for notifying parents of their child's state of mind? For example, let's say the parents are liberal atheists, and the child is expressing conservative views at school and spending lunch in Bible study with other kids. Should the parents be told about that?

@LeopoldBloom In what way can parents cause great harm to their children without violating the law? What is your idea of harm?

How do you define it? What is its extent?

Does it concern anyone else apart from the child's family?

"Potential harm" doesn't exist. You do not preempt harms in matters of family life, or anywhere else. It is a parent's duty to create an environment where their child feels safe, and able to discuss anything with them. However, because children are children, it can be difficult for them to discuss everything with their parents. This does not mean that the parent has failed in creating an environment where the child can confide in them.

It is not the school's concern how parents choose to raise their children, excluding criminal violations. As long as the teacher has not seen any possible criminal violations (example: physical neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse), they should not be interested in the child's family life.

"Which may not rise to the level of criminality"

Do you realize how dangerous your threshold is? It means that parents who are not abusing their children can be treated as if they are, and as if this is an objective reality. This thinking is authoritarian.

If a child requests to be called a pronoun that is not reflective of their biological sex, a parent should be notified. If children are too young to consent to sex, to purchase alcohol, to get married, to vote, etc. they are also too young to decide, without the knowledge of their parents, that their gender does not reflect their sex. Your hypothetical is not comparable, as it does not concern self-identification on the basis of sex and gender, which are intrinsically related.

If this is a true case of gender dysphoria, it is probable that the parent will already know, or have some awareness, that their child is not presenting as their sex or the gender presumed to reflect their sex.

Most fundamentally, a teacher should not call this child by their new gender, without the knowledge of the parent. The relationship between the parent and child is natural and innate, and teachers do not need to interfere with it. Society does not need to interfere with it.

We are raising our children, not the state. Teachers are not self-appointed babysitters, nor are they a child's "friend". We pay them to teach our children, and nothing else.

@SW-User

Then let's put it this way: Some children WILL be harmed by this. That's a fact. Some parents WILL, upon learning this information, punish, coerce or hurt their children.
So when we're talking about preventing potential harm, we're talking about reducing the number of children who would be harmed by this information being relayed to their parents.

You seem to be framing this as some kind of subversion by the teachers when all it actually is, is a teacher not sharing information with a parent that their child chose not to share themselves.
Parents are raising their children, not teachers and if the child doesn't feel comfortable sharing this information with a parent there may be a very good reason for that and it is not the school's or teachers place to guess at which parents will beat their trans child and which will accept them.

@Pikachu What children will be harmed? Why do you assume that children will be harmed because a teacher has chosen to tell their parents (legal guardians) that they have asked to be called a different pronoun?

What numbers do you have to reduce? Are you really suggesting that we reduce non-existent numbers? That is insane.

How do we know a child in this scenario does not feel comfortable sharing it with their parents? There could be another reason they have not told them.

Are you claiming to know the child's thought process?

@SW-User


Because some people are bigots. Some people think it goes against their religion.
This is no different than outing a gay kid to their parents. Some parents will beat that child, punish that child, abuse that child either because they're disgusted or in a misguided attempt to straighten them out,
That's a fact.


It doesn't matter. That is not a teacher's place to guess. If the child has told their parents then there is no reason for the teacher to do so. If the child has not told their parents then there may be a very good reason they have not.

@SW-User You need to talk to people who grew up in homes where a parent was an alcoholic, or drug addict, or verbally and emotionally abusive. It's also harmful to subject children to "reparation therapy," which unfortunately is still legal in some states. And this doesn't include some pastor screaming at them that they're a "sodomite" who will burn in hell for eternity. This can be extremely damaging and have lifelong effects, even if none of these are illegal.

All I'm saying is there's no reason for a teacher to call up Johnny's parents and tell them he wants to be called Jennifer, or vice versa. If the kid feels safe revealing that to their parents, the parents will already know. If the kid doesn't feel safe, that's the parents' fault for not creating a safe environment.

It's interesting that you don't hold bigoted parents responsible for damaging their children. Parents don't raise their children in isolation. They're part of society, and society has a duty to protect children from bad parents. It's not asking much for teachers to not rat kids out for something as potentially dangerous as different pronouns.

You didn't answer my question of whether a teacher has an obligation to call a kid's atheist parents if the kid seems to have converted to Christianity, or if liberal parents should be informed that their kid is acting like a MAGA at school. Like most conservatives, you think schools are bastions of liberality, helping to corrupt children and prevent their conservative parents from raising them properly. So I'm wondering if you still support teachers ratting out kids in the opposite situation.

I think Kahlil Gibran expressed it well.

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

@LeopoldBloom I'm not sure what conversion therapy for gay people has to do with anything. The OP asked about gender identity and pronouns, and whether teachers ought to disclose this to parents, or tell them what gender their child is or wants to be. What does being gay have to do with this?

Like the OP, you also mention bigoted parents. But, who are these bigoted parents? Why is your immediate conclusion that a parent must be bigoted if they do not know how their child is identifying?

If they are bigoted, I am still yet to find out how this affects you, or why it should prevent openness between a teacher and parent.

Where does one draw the line? If, for example, the child doesn't want their teacher to reveal other things that could cause their parents to be displeased, should they relent and not do that? What if children do not want parents to know they are being bullied, or are the bully? What if they are disruptive in class?

Or, what if they want to be called a different name?

What are bad parents, according to you? Would they just be parents you have deemed not suitable for parenting?

Interestingly, some of this is correlated with class. When middle class people discuss the best ways to parent, how parenting should involve oversight from society, etc. it is the working class who suffer.

Why do you treat them this way?

As for your question, I didn't answer it because I thought it was silly. Our politics are not the same as our pronouns. They have an intrinsic practical use. When it comes to how we must refer to people, they are almost as important as the person's name.

For instance, Sir/Madam, he/she, and him/her are how you will be referred to by people. No one is asking you what your politics are, unless they are very strange.

@Pikachu Are you affected by other people being bigots? Do you know for certain that they are bigots?

Are teachers supposed to not communicate openly with parents because they perceive them to be bigots or possible bigots?

If they need to talk to the parent for an unrelated reason, how are they supposed to refer to the child? Which pronoun should they use?

If they need to talk to the principal about the child, which pronoun should they use?

If the child wanted to change their name, do you think a teacher should inform the parents then?

@SW-User

Let me ask you this: Do you think there are zero parents who for one reason or another would punish, hurt or abuse a child if they found out they were trans?

@Pikachu A more relevant question would be how many trans children were or are being abused without their identity being a factor?

I would imagine the number is higher.

@SW-User

No, that's not the more relevant question because what we're discussing here is protecting children from harm.
So answer the question:

Do you think there are zero parents who for one reason or another would punish, hurt or abuse a child if they found out they were trans?

@Pikachu What about any harms that led to some transgender children being transgender? Can't a transgender child be abused in more than one way, and for more than one reason?


I don't know. I also don't think people should pretend to know.