The subject of this thread is prompted by this article:
While I am the first to say this is a shitty thing for the teacher to do I wonder, can the state tell the teacher they cannot call the student by any name they want?
This is probably too good to check, but decades ago Black Philadelphia parents supposedly named their two children Sir John and Lady Shirley. If a teacher addressed the boy as John, he said, excuse me, that is Sir John.
I think that, as in this probably apocryphal example, it should be up to the parents to name their children.
How would she handle A Boy Named Sue?
Great song.
As to the OP I would like to think the teacher can call the student any name they like BUT the state has no obligation to keep them employed as a teacher.
I wouldn’t think a student is obligated to answer to a name they don’t want to answer to, assuming they’ve already made their wishes known.
Of course, sticking to that would depend on the individual’s temperament.
The teacher in question is a bigoted asshole. How on earth she is smart enough to teach math I can’t imagine.
But we can’t make hard and fast rules- a student with a scatological or curse word name can appropriately called some other cognomen. Fuckhead Brown had better accept being called Brown.
A teacher that legitimately can’t pronounce a name should not be punished.
But you can’t do that sort of stuff for bigoted reasons.
The only penance for working a sinful job is to resign. So why doesn’t she if she really thinks it’s against her religion?
Oh that’s right, bc she doesn’t.
All that said. I think the teacher should have the option to refer to someone by their last name if for some reason they don’t feel comfortable with the first. But misgendering should be off the table.
But even with a surname they can mess with it by saying Mr. or Miss. (or something else).
Given what brutes kids can be with teasing, it has to be the same usage for everyone.
If so, the teacher has to call the child Sue.
Now, if the parents say they are going to change it to Steve, but haven’t gotten around to doing it legally, Steve it is.
What if my religious freedom rights as a student conflict with hers?
[A Boy Named Sue]
Written by Shell Silverstein!
How about the freedom of these students to be treated as if school is a safe place for them? Statistics were cited in that article about the higher risk of bullying and suicidal ideation in transgender people. Wouldn’t it be nice if their teachers didn’t contribute to that drama? If you care about your students like you say you do, use their right fucking names and pronouns, and if you refuse to, you should be fired.
Although I disagree with the teacher and don’t think a teacher can use ANY name, the question is legally can a teacher use the student’s legal name over the student’s objection? If I have a student who wants to be called Jonny but I call them Jonathan do they have a cause for action?
If I’m writing the law, it seems to me that the teacher, on the job, has to abide by the school’s policy. If the policy is to let the student decide their own name, they should have to follow that. I don’t exactly agree with such a policy – I think naming should be up to parents – but the administration does need to be able to dictate teacher speech on the job.
Freedom of speech comes in off the job.
Right. I should have specified that.
Were I that student, I’d feel completely justified in ignoring anything the teacher said when using that name.
Me too, but it still doesn’t erase the hurt.
When I was a junior, on the first day of class one of my teachers called out students names and asked each one if they had a preferred name. This was in the early 1990s so this wasn’t about gender identity but more about whether Thomas wanted to be called Tom or Jeffrey wanted to be called Jeff. When asked what he wanted to be called, one student replied, “Worm.” She looked at him and said, “I’m not going to call you Worm.”
Obviously this isn’t the same as calling a child the name that matches their preferred gender. The teacher is a jerk. I don’t think a policy requiring a teacher to call a student by the name that matches their preferred gender is a violation of their religious rights. Or if it is, the mental health of the student outweighs any concerns I have about the religious rights of the teacher.
I would argue that a preferred name and an obvious joke name would generally be easy to tell apart. I would expect that, being a policy thing, the teacher could ask for an exception if someone gives them a joke name.
As for legal rights: I don’t think the law gets invovled. It’s just policy and teachers have to follow it unless it somehow violates their rights. And this isn’t a law based on religion, applying unequally to people of different religions.