Pronouns, Power, and the Formation of the Young
The modern classroom has become a battleground not of noise, but of assumptions. Beneath the language of kindness, inclusion, and empathy lies a deeper question—one that cannot be avoided: what is the teacher actually doing when he speaks? For speech in the classroom is never neutral. It carries authority, shapes perception, and, in the case of the young, participates directly in the formation of the human person.
The recent commentary in The Irish Catholic is therefore not merely another contribution to a culture war skirmish. It is a necessary intervention into a far more serious matter: the ethical limits of authority in the education of children¹. For when a teacher adopts the language of preferred pronouns, he does not simply accommodate a request. He enters into a claim about reality itself—and he does so in the presence of those least equipped to interrogate it.
This is the point at which much contemporary discussion falters. The issue is persistently framed as one of manners, as though pronouns were no more consequential than nicknames. But this analogy collapses upon inspection. A nickname alters nothing beyond convention; it is descriptive, contingent, reversible. The contemporary use of pronouns, by contrast, is frequently presented in school guidance and training materials as expressive of an inner identity that may diverge from biological sex². It is, therefore, not merely linguistic—it carries ontological implications. To speak it is to affirm something about what a person is, not merely what he is called.
That distinction matters. It matters because the classroom is not a café, nor a private conversation between equals. It is a structured environment in which one party possesses recognised authority and the other is, by definition, in formation. Adolescents do not enter the classroom as fully realised selves. They are, psychologically and morally, unfinished, engaged in the developmental task of identity formation³. Their sense of identity is not stable but emergent, often fragile, and responsive to signals of approval or disapproval from authority figures⁴.
To treat such a context as though it were ethically symmetrical is not compassionate—it is negligent.
The defenders of current practice appeal reflexively to empathy. Yet empathy, untethered from judgment, is a poor guide to action. It may perceive distress, but it does not determine the appropriate response to it. Here the findings of the Cass Review become unavoidable. Commissioned as the most comprehensive independent review of gender identity services for children and young people in England, it concluded that the evidence base for interventions remains limited and uncertain, and that social transition—of which pronoun use is a central component—is not a neutral act but one that may influence developmental pathways in ways not yet fully understood⁵.
This caution is not confined to England. Across Scandinavia—long regarded as a pioneer in this field—a striking convergence has emerged. Health authorities in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark have each undertaken systematic reviews and policy revisions. Finland now prioritises psychosocial support over medical intervention for minors⁶; Sweden has restricted hormonal treatments for those under 18 to research contexts⁷; and Denmark has centralised and tightened oversight of youth gender services following a marked rise in adolescent referrals⁸. The common thread is unmistakable: where evidence is weak and development ongoing, restraint is considered clinically responsible.
The claim that “it costs nothing” to comply is therefore revealed as false. It may cost the adult nothing. It may cost the child rather more.
What is at stake, then, is not whether teachers should care for their students—they must—but whether care is compatible with the uncritical affirmation of contested claims about identity. The answer cannot simply be assumed. For the role of the teacher is not to mirror the student’s self-perception, but to assist in the slow and often difficult task of understanding reality, self, and truth in their proper relation.
It is at this point that the institutional reality must be faced with clarity. Contrary to popular assumption, neither Department for Education guidance nor Catholic Education Service principles mandate the routine use of preferred pronouns. The Department for Education has stated that schools should take a “very careful approach” to social transition and that such measures should be exceptional rather than routine⁹. It has further clarified that no teacher or pupil should be compelled to use preferred pronouns¹⁰. Likewise, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales has affirmed that gender ideology is incompatible with a holistic understanding of the human person and that social transition is not a neutral act¹¹, while the Catholic Education Service has maintained a case-by-case, safeguarding-led approach rather than a blanket policy¹².
On paper, therefore, the direction is clear. Pronoun use is not a default. It is a significant decision.
And yet, across the country, many schools—Catholic and state alike—operate as though the opposite were true.
In practice, the dominant model within schools often reflects not national safeguarding guidance nor cautious anthropological principles, but locally produced frameworks such as the widely circulated Brighton & Hove “Trans Inclusion Toolkit” and analogous local authority guidance¹³. These materials, frequently developed in partnership with advocacy organisations, encourage the adoption of preferred pronouns and social transition as part of inclusive practice¹⁴.
What must also be acknowledged—though it is often obscured in public discussion—is the role of external advocacy and campaigning organisations in shaping school practice. Groups such as Mermaids and the Allsorts Youth Project do not merely offer support services; they actively produce guidance, training, and educational materials intended for use in schools. Mermaids explicitly encourages schools to adopt affirming practices and utilise resources aligned with its policy positions¹⁵. The Brighton & Hove toolkit itself was developed in collaboration with organisations including Allsorts Youth Project, which delivers peer-education workshops in schools promoting particular frameworks around identity and inclusion¹⁶. These materials are routinely incorporated into PSHE and RSE provision, selected by schools without parental consultation and, where disclosure occurs, often only after implementation. This stands in direct tension with statutory guidance requiring schools to make curriculum materials available to parents and to engage them in the development of relationships and sex education policy¹⁷. The result is that contested ideological frameworks are not merely discussed in the classroom but embedded through external provision, blurring the line between education and advocacy.
The result is a quiet but profound shift. Without formal mandate, without explicit legislation, a particular anthropological framework has become embedded in school life. It enters not through statute, but through training sessions, policy templates, safeguarding briefings, and anti-bullying programmes. It becomes, in effect, the air the institution breathes.
This is not an accidental development, nor merely the by-product of institutional convenience. It reflects the sustained influence of advocacy-driven frameworks, consciously promoted through training, resources, and external partnerships, which advance a particular ideological understanding of identity within the school environment.
Schools operate under pressure: legal obligations under the Equality Act 2010¹⁸, safeguarding duties under Keeping Children Safe in Education¹⁹, inspection expectations from Ofsted²⁰, and the risk of complaints or reputational harm. In such an environment, ready-made guidance offers clarity where official frameworks offer caution. It promises simplicity where reality is complex. And so it is adopted.
Over time, adoption becomes assumption.
The consequence is a widening gap between formal authority and operational practice. National guidance speaks in the language of prudence; local frameworks act in the language of affirmation. Catholic anthropology insists on the integrity of the person; classroom practice often proceeds as though identity were primarily self-defined. The teacher, who ought to exercise careful judgment, is instead subtly positioned as an agent of validation.
This matters because the classroom is not a neutral space. It is an environment structured by authority, inhabited by the young, and oriented—at least in principle—toward the formation of the human person. Adolescents do not encounter language as fully formed individuals. They encounter it as those still becoming. What is affirmed by authority carries weight. What is normalised becomes thinkable. What is assumed becomes, in time, believed²¹.
To speak, in such a context, is to act.
Such an environment is inimical to education properly understood. For education requires not only the transmission of knowledge but the cultivation of intellectual freedom. A student must be able to ask, to doubt, to examine. Where the teacher’s language signals that certain conclusions are already settled, that freedom is curtailed—not by force, but by atmosphere²².
Literature has warned us of this before. Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie offers a striking illustration of how a teacher’s convictions can shape the lives of her pupils. Miss Brodie’s assertion—“Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life”—captures precisely the danger of unrestrained formative authority²³.
The modern classroom risks repeating this error under new conditions. The language has changed; the impulse has not.
What, then, is required? Not hostility, nor indifference, but discipline—the discipline to distinguish between compassion and affirmation, between support and endorsement, between accompanying a student and directing his self-understanding. Above all, it requires the recovery of a principle that has quietly receded from view: that authority in education must be exercised with restraint.
For the teacher’s task is not to construct identity, but to safeguard the conditions under which it can be truthfully discovered.
The temptation of our age is to believe that affirmation is liberation. But this is a category error. When authority affirms what is not yet understood, it does not set the student free—it risks fixing confusion into conviction. And where that conviction becomes the basis for further steps—social, psychological, and, in some cases, medical—the consequences are no longer abstract. They are lived, embodied, and, at times, irreversible.
This is no longer merely a question of language, nor even of pedagogy. It is a question of safeguarding in the fullest sense. For when institutions normalise practices whose long-term effects remain uncertain, particularly among the young, they assume a responsibility that cannot be discharged by good intentions alone. The emerging clinical caution seen in England and across Europe is not theoretical; it is a response to real cases, real outcomes, and real harms.
Lives are not shaped in policy documents, but in classrooms, in conversations, and in the quiet authority of those entrusted with the formation of the young. When that authority is misapplied—however sincerely—the cost is borne not by systems, nor by frameworks, but by children themselves.
And that is why this question can no longer be deferred, softened, or obscured. For in the end, it is not reputations that are at stake.
It is lives.
¹ Sandra Adams, “Pronoun use has consequences – endorsers should inform themselves about them,” The Irish Catholic, 16 April 2026, p. 17.
² Brighton & Hove City Council, Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit, Version 5 (2024–2025).
³ Erik H. Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis (1968).
⁴ Laurence Steinberg, Adolescence, 11th ed. (2016).
⁵ Hilary Cass, Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People: Final Report (2024).
⁶ Finnish Council for Choices in Health Care (2020).
⁷ Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare (2022).
⁸ Danish Health Authority (2023).
⁹ Department for Education, Gender Questioning Children Guidance (2023–2024).
¹⁰ DfE Education Hub (2023).
¹¹ CBCEW, Intricately Woven by the Lord (2024).
¹² Catholic Education Service guidance (latest).
¹³ Brighton & Hove Toolkit.
¹⁴ Ibid.
¹⁵ Mermaids UK, school guidance materials.
¹⁶ Allsorts Youth Project, education programmes.
¹⁷ Department for Education, Relationships and Sex Education Statutory Guidance (2019).
¹⁸ Equality Act 2010.
¹⁹ Keeping Children Safe in Education (latest).
²⁰ Ofsted Handbook.
²¹ Albert Bandura, Social Learning Theory.
²² John Stuart Mill, On Liberty.
²³ Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
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