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Arbitrary news from a style guide




GUARDIAN's style guide cautions writers about the "National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers". The caution is that the word "and" is not part of that title.  There will be a temptation to insert it after "Schoolmasters" because this sounds like a merger of two originally distinct groups, sort of like the Presidents' Day of educational unions. 

The guide also suggests not using NASUWT.  Call it by the whole long name on first mention, then say "the union" rather than using those "unlovely initials". 

This inspired a little research. NASUWT came into existence because of a secession in the first instance, and later a merger.  In the UK, a fair number of men put aside their schoolteaching jobs to go fight the Great War in 1914.  When the survivors came back, and sought a return to their civilian career, they found that women were dominating their field. 

They were unhappy about this.  The men seceded from the National Union of Teachers in 1919 to create the National Association of Schoolmasters, with that obviously gendered name. NAS existed to argue for, essentially, discrimination in their favor. 

In the 1960s, NAS encouraged the creation of the Union of Women Teachers, UWT, and they became known as the "Joint Two." Other unions, including the NUT, continued simply to sign up both men and women. But the Joint Two held out for various discriminatory practices, with the guiding idea at this point that boys should be taught by men and girls by women. 

The merger didn't happen until after the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975, when the maintenance of single-sex trade unions became illegal.  It was a union not of two unions but of three.  The third was not, as you might expect, of the Nonbinary Teachers Association. It was Scottish Schoolmasters Association.  (I guess they all wore kilts so the non-binary thing was assumed). 

Meanwhile, the National Union of Teachers, whence the original secession, has become the National Education Union as of 2017. 

That was your random trip on my associative train. 

By the way, the above image has nothing to do with any of this, except that it is a house on a street named "Schoolmasters Lane" in Dedham, Massachusetts.

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