Durban - The African Christian Democratic Party and the Freedom Front Plus have expressed concerns over proposed changes to the SA school system which seek to scrap separate toilets for boys and girls.
The news website The South African reported some of the guidelines set out by the Department of Basic Education.
They include:
– Schools will soon be required to provide "genderless/unisex toilets and changing rooms".
– Individual stalls, redesigned bathroom signs, and more cubicles are touted as a solution.
– Teachers are to be told they must avoid gender-segregating pupils by splitting classes, lines or groups into "boys and girls".
– Gender-neutral uniforms must also be made available to all pupils who require them.
– "Deadnaming" will also be outlawed. This means a student identifying as a different gender cannot be called by their previous name.
In a series of tweets, ACDP leader Reverend Kenneth Meshoe said this set of radical rule changes for schools will allegedly move communities away from the usual “gender norms” in society.
"It is reported that schools will soon be required to provide genderless/unisex toilets and changing rooms. Teachers will reportedly be told to avoid gender-segregating by splitting classes, lines or groups of pupils into boys and girls," he said.
He added that some of the guidelines set out by the department included making gender-neutral uniforms available to all pupils who required them. This would not solve the challenges of discrimination in schools, but would exacerbate them instead.
Dr Wynand Boshoff of the FF+ said an ideology of radical individualism was attempting to take over in education.
"The general opinion is that every person is a free-floating individual who has a choice in everything – in this case, even their gender.
“According to radical individualism, community norms restrict the individual – self-fulfilment can be achieved only once those norms are abolished. Moreover, the only appropriate response from the family and members of the community is to support the individual's choices," he said.
Boshoff added that they had a different view of a person's place in the world. He said an individual person was inconceivable without the community.
"(An individual) is literally conceived by the community. Communities are made up of families and extended families, and ultimately form part of even larger communities, both cultural and political. An orderly society cannot exist without community norms. And yet, within any community there are exceptions – people whose personal identities do not conform to the general community norms," he said.
He said a totalitarian community that forcefully imposed its norms on everyone was indeed not ideal.
"In a caring and functional community, exceptions are recognised and respected, but still considered exceptions. Every aspect of the community, from marriage to (toilets) at schools, cannot be reconceptualised as if the exception is the norm. The FF+ supports school governing bodies that want to maintain the community approach in their schools," he said.
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