Secondary school pupils are being taught it is their responsibility not to offend other people.
Not the best lede I’ve ever seen. It’s not crazy to teach children not to be gratuitously rude. It all hinges, of course, on what “offend” is taken to mean.
A GCSE revision guide for citizenship studies states that Britons have a responsibility “to use freedom of speech but not offend”.
The textbook is designed to help 16-year-old pupils prepare for their Pearson Edexcel GCSE in citizenship studies. Almost 21,000 pupils took the subject in England in 2025.
Labour has made citizenship a central pillar of its education strategy, making the lessons compulsory for primary school pupils.
Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, has described this as part of a “plan for change” to help young people “step boldly into the future”.
The same Bridget Phillipson who has refused to release the new guidance on single-sex spaces until after the May 2026 local elections. I think we can assume she considers it “offensive” to say a man is not a woman. I think she’s not one of the people we want telling us what we can’t say.
Laura Trott, the shadow education secretary, told The Telegraph: “It’s utterly wrong-headed to teach children they have a right not to be offended. Schools should be places where ideas are tested and debated, not repressed.”
Yes but again, it depends. If children are calling people racist or sexist epithets, the school should tell them to stop.
Free Speech campaigners have criticised the resource for “whipping up cancel culture in schools”.
Lord Young of Acton, the director of the Free Speech Union, told The Telegraph: “This revision guide is encouraging children to cancel their classmates for saying something they find offensive. It’s whipping up cancel culture in schools.”
That could be true or it could be a matter of not gratuitously and/or bullyingly calling other children harsh names. There is a difference. To spell it out, no the schools should not pretend men can be women lest they “offend” men who pretend to be women, and at the same time no the schools should not let kids call each other “nigger” or “faggot” or [and especially] “cunt” – which is a very popular epithet in the UK.
“If children are being taught in school that the right to free speech doesn’t include the right to be offensive, God help us.”
Quoting Lord Justice Sedley, he added: “Free speech includes not only the inoffensive, but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative, provided it does not tend to promote violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.”
Does name-calling of the kind I mentioned tend to promote violence? Probably. It may be something people do instead of violence, but it may also be a step in working up to violence. That’s a pretty familiar dynamic, right? A quarrel starts, the words get harsher, the fists fly?
But then comes a whole new problem with this “textbook”.
The textbook also states that it is “discrimination” to provide lavatories only for men and women and that “human rights come ahead of the right of a country to conduct its own affairs”.
As examples of discrimination, it includes “gender reassignment discrimination, eg toilets provided only for men or women”.
The textbook seems to be incoherent as well as wrong. What is “toilets provided only for men or women” supposed to mean? Do they think toilets should be provided for rabbits or horses or the local chimpanzees? What kind of toilets are schools supposed to provide in addition to those for women and men?
In the “Answers” section at the back of the guide, it adds: “Gender can change individual identity. For example, an individual born in one gender might choose to change to another gender, with changes in appearance, clothing, and practical aspects such as which public toilets they use.”
But they’re still going to use either women’s or men’s.
Also, of course, the usual – the claim that an individual born in one gender might choose to change to another gender is just the familiar magic bullshit. People born one sex cannot change to another sex; gender is just make-believe; eat your spinach and do your homework.
The guidance appears to go against the findings of the 2024 Cass review, an independent NHS England report carried out by Dr Hillary Cass, which found there should be “no exceptions” for single-sex facilities at schools and colleges, including lavatories and changing rooms.
Campaigners said it was “grossly irresponsible” for the exam board to tell teenagers that it was lawful for someone to change to another gender and use the lavatories of their choice.
It’s irresponsible and it’s bad pedagogy. Magic changeable sex is a fantasy, and should never be taught to children as a fact.
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