| Location: | Penzance |
| Story Number: | Story-027 |
| Themes: | 1970s, Cornwall, Education, Gender Neutral |
| Listen: | |
| Transcript: | Transcript by Jayde Stevenson This particular event, uh it was… uh 1979 and I was president of one of the local branches of the inner London NUT (National Union of Teachers). I’d set up a working party for devising strategies for gender neutral issues in the classroom – things like the home corner rather than the Wendy house, and when you’re writing um letters and things like that, to uh… referring generally to a child, um, trying to not use the pronoun him for any child. I produced an illustrated leaflet that was circulated to all NUT members. That autumn term, the Equal Opportunities Commission were setting up a working party called Sex Differentiation in Schools, which became referred to as Side Swipe. I decided on a personal project… I don’t know, it was a whim of mine I s’pose, and I started looking at the School Council’s own publications – they were very active in producing um… uh… supportive information for the syllabus, and I chose the uh… GCE – I suppose that was what was… uh it was called in those days – um, the history of medicine textbook. Throughout the book I recollect there was no mention of women as herbalists, midwives or providing basic health support in the communities, in fact no mention of Florence Nightingale and certainly no mention of Mary Seacole. Uh, nothing about the introduction of certified nursing, the struggle of women to become doctors, the hospitals they founded and the organisations they set up. Uh, the illustrations contained more pictures of dogs than women. Uh…Side Swipe wanted me to talk to the Schools Council about the leaflet and my comments on their medicine book. There in the August formal chamber with a horseshoe of wooden benches and desks, I gave my carefully worded presentation. There must have been some listeners who understood and agreed, but afterwards I was bombarded with vitriolic anger at my presumption, mainly from women with their final point that if I my way, Shakespeare would be banned in schools. I suppose that I probably said something that there was no intention to change history, but to consider the future, but I was really rather taken aback, and the meeting moved on. But the result of this is the NUT executive removed me from the committee and replaced me with a man. Further about the NUT, I attended the annual conference that Easter- 1980 and breast fed in the corridor. I gather this resulted in a proper crash the next year. Notes: The National Union of Teachers is now the National Education Union |