Santa Sabina principal digs in over gender row
THE Catholic school’s gender fluidity furore has intensified, with the school community raising concerns about troubling ideology and a former teacher promoting Islam, writes Miranda Devine.
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THE ‘gender theory’ furore at Santa Sabina Catholic girls’ school only intensified this week, as the school board called in crisis managers and embattled principal Dr Maree Herrett called an “emergency assembly” at which she wept in front of 1000 students.
Dr Herrett told the girls at the assembly Monday morning that she was a victim of “bullying tactics. It’s not a nice feeling”.
“You are a diverse community, that’s the reality, but you are all Santa girls …. You all have a right to be here. What you don’t have a right to is bullying, harassment and telling other people they’re wrong”.
The elite Catholic school in Strathfield has been in uproar since Herrett linked the concept of gender fluidity to the introduction last month of trousers into the school uniform, saying it was about enabling, “a variety of gender expression” and making students who questioned their gender identity “more comfortable”.
Parents were further alarmed when, two days before the uniform launch on February 25, Herrett tweeted an endorsement of a book about the radical gender theory which underpins the discredited Safe Schools program and which disputes the concept of binary sexes — as in male or female.
“Gender is a social process, a dynamic of change quite different from biological evolution,” wrote Herrett, with a link to the book Gender Reckonings and the exhortation: “Buy the book!”
The book is coedited by transgender academic Raewyn Connell, who was Herrett’s academic supervisor for her own 2012 doctoral thesis at Sydney University on “gender education”.
About 200 concerned parents, ex-parents and ex-students held a protest meeting on the weekend to demand Dr Herrett’s resignation and threatened to pull 200 girls out of the school.
In personal letters and statements to The Daily Telegraph they have listed a litany of questions about the direction of the school, including:
— The politicisation of the uniform and endorsement of the gender theory book;
— Dr Herrett’s refusal to explain her comments, while deleting her Twitter feed;
— Religion classes proselytising Islam and requiring girls to stand up and declare if they were for same-sex marriage.
— Dr Herrett’s involvement in the Alliance of Girls’ Schools (AGSA), which supports girls transitioning to boys at single-sex schools, facilitates talks at girls’ schools on topics such as “neurogender/neurofeminism”and “gender beyond biological determinism”, by speakers who dispute the link between biological sex, sexual preference and gender identity. AGSA also has promoted through social media the teaching of anal sex at girls’ schools;
— Her appearance at an AGSA conference as an expert on “transgender and gender identity”;
- Primary students being given “gender fluidity” books, which were removed from the library “for review” after parents complained;
— A new strategic plan focused on “identity and culture”;
- A general feeling that Catholic teachings are being abandoned and gender theory introduced by stealth.
Ex-students say, under Herrett’s leadership, the school “promoted and endorsed gender fluidity”, and that former religion teacher Helen Smith, who retired last year, “promoted an Islamic agenda ... We were taught that we had the same God as the Islamic God, that Christians are the ones persecuting Muslims, that Jesus ‘was a refugee’ and thus we should have free and open borders, and that Islam was peace and essentially, truth.
“She … promoted Islam, gay-marriage and was pro-Hillary Clinton despite her support of abortion.”
Infanticide advocate Dr Peter Singer also was invited to give a talk at the school.
A red flag went up at Santa Sabina earlier this year when the 2018 student diaries came home. Nine pages had been neatly cut out of the diaries which previously had containing hymns, prayers, a map in which every part of the school bore a saint’s name, the national anthem and the school motto “Veritas”.
The school board responded to complaints on Monday by issuing a letter to parents saying it “remains in full support” of Dr Herrett and that the media coverage “has not accurately represented … whether the [uniform] change and comments by Dr Herrett are linked to what some may consider is ‘gender education’.”
One board member, who asked not to be named, claimed yesterday that the school has received over 200 supportive letters from parents.
The board also appointed crisis management firm Australian Public Affairs to conduct 12 one-hour “focus group” sessions over four days with no more than eight parents in each group and produce a report by mid April.
The cost, according to two public relations practitioners, would be upwards of $50,000.
Disgruntled parents regard the small focus groups as a “divide and conquer” strategy and were last night seeking legal advice.
“Catholics should not even consider the gender theory because it is against our religion so we have to ask why has Dr Herrett commented about gender identity,” says one mother.
“Why does the principal of a Catholic school publicly portray on her Twitter account her agreement with the gender theory?
“Sexuality is an open consideration but gender is not subject to any debate at all. Children are being indoctrinated to think that gender identity doesn’t always hew to biological sex.”
But the parents have a fight on their hands to force out Dr Herrett.
At the assembly Monday she declared: “This is my school … I don’t have to prove anything … I promise I will do as I said to you, stand strong and not be bullied. I’m a Santa girl, too”.