Pupils identifying as cats? There are bigger issues at play

"God," I think, "It would be nice to be a cat, eh?" 

The news agenda would try to have us believe school pupils are feeling similarly - and identifying as cats. Who can blame them? It would indeed be nice to be a cat.

The notion of cat-kids is an American import. In districts in the US there are rumours about schools installing litter boxes for pupils who identify as cats or other animals. Though these stories have been robustly debunked, they persist.

Brutally, there in fact is an American school district that keeps kitty litter in classrooms. It's for pupils to use should they be locked inside during an active shooting. 

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Last weekend the Sunday Post splashed a story about a pupil in Scotland identifying as a fox. Or, as Seamus Searson, general secretary of the Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association put it, "someone who thought they were a fox". This story, he said, came from the union's "legal advisors".

I don't see any upsides to being a fox; all that scavenging must be hard on the soul, ditto the encroachment of bland, boxy human housing estates where you once made your den. But each to their own.

We could do with a little bit more "each to their own", frankly. 

The cat-kids and fox-kid stories join reporting from Wales that insists there is a pupil somewhere in the country who answers in class with a meow while another, elsewhere, wears a cape and identifies as a moon. 

Very quickly, the prime minister was called to comment on the English and Welsh stories. 

Katharine Birbalsingh, who has made a living out of being Britain's most high profile head teacher while appearing to really dislike young people, told the Daily Telegraph she knew of a school where a pupil identified as "a gay male hologram".

Birbalsingh's take is that parents are too lenient with their children, give them too much choice. "It starts from when they are babies or toddlers and we give them a choice of food, rather than showing them to eat what’s in front of them". Take what you're given, the self-styled UK's strictest head teacher says. 

Right wing media couldn't go to Rishi Sunak without hitting up the leader of the opposition for his thoughts. "I think," a spokesperson for Keir Starmer said, "Children should be told to identify as children." 

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Which is as far as a high profile politician can reasonably go when these types of stories take hold. No one wants to come right out and say, "This is a pile of cold sh*te" because the story, by this point, has gone so far down the road that... well, what if it turns out to be true? No one wants to risk coming down on one side or the other.

It goes without saying that the entire narrative is a response to the relentless fracas around gender identity and trans rights.  

But this isn't a unique situation. Stories like this proliferate because fear sells papers and exaggerated tall tales help politicians push agendas.

Rumours, once they take hold, are almost impossible to completely dispel. 

It makes me think of the ducks in Queen's Park. Stay with me here. Roma communities have been in Scotland for decades but about 15 or so years ago, larger Roma communities came to live in Govanhill, on Glasgow's south side.

Govanhill is a small area and having several thousand newcomers settle in an already densely populated area caused its problems. Many of the complaints - overcrowding, strain on local amenities - were perfectly justified but almost impossible to discuss because of a particularly insidious and mean strain of racism running through the area.

This manifested in unfounded rumours - lapped up by certain reporters and abused by far right political groups - that Roma parents were selling their children on the streets. There was also a bonkers rumour that persisted for an age that Roma people were eating the ducks in Queen's Park. 

Some adjustment, much empathy and enhanced resources have been necessary in Govanhill to make life more comfortable for everyone. The same are needed across the current culture wars, including on trans rights. 

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The Sunday Post could give no more details about the fox child and far be it from me to suggest that there must be either more to this case than meets the eye or nothing to it at all. But the heart of the story returns to the issue with teachers, the SSTA claims, working in a "toxic environment" full of "strange things".

Staff, the SSTA says, "feel they're damned if they do and damned if they don't". I'm quite sure, if anything is true, that is. Issues of identity must be a minefield for schools and teachers to navigate.

The teacher recorded on tape in England in the latest cat-kid story was heard telling a 13-year-old pupil she was "despicable" for saying she believes there are only two genders. This is no way to speak to a young person and it's certainly unpersuasive. 

We have come to such a point in the discussion around gender and identity that reasonable or necessary questions are too contentious to ask; teachers can't be told to merely stick safely to the facts, because no one can settle on what the facts are. 

Identity is there to be explored in youth and young adulthood. Very few – very lucky – teenagers have a settled, concrete sense of self and most want to explore and test boundaries and rebel. They want to counter the norms of the adults in their lives. 

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No doubt some young people have worked out that issues of identity are a sure fire way to agitate the adults around them and they are, quite naturally, enjoying that. 

The cat-kid narrative is useful because it uses a catchy and distracting trope to avoid talking about real issues: underfunding and under resourcing in schools, pressures on teachers, pressures on pupils, safeguarding, and so on. 

It can't usefully be challenged because it's not so far-fetched as to be completely incredible and you can't entirely prove it doesn't happen. An absence of evidence isn't an evidence of absence and all that. 

So the cat-kid narrative will persist and it will do so as a cover for the real issue, which is whether or not we trust young people to tell us who they are, and how we persuade young people to trust the adults in their lives to support their sense of identity while keeping them safe. 

That's another relatable thing about cats: the disdain they show for human beings. Who can blame them?