As families around the country went back to school at the end of August, a significant controversy arose around the ‘anti-Irish’ content in one of the SPHE books for first year students.
As an SPHE teacher, I was glad to see some of the content of these books being called out and challenged. Unfortunately, this content is only a sample of the horrific content of the newly published Junior Certificate SPHE books which have made their way into our classrooms under the radar.
I have been a secondary school teacher of SPHE for over twenty years, five of which I spent working as an associate with the Junior Cycle for Teachers SPHE teacher support team. This involved designing and delivering training (CPD:Continued Professional Delevopment) to teachers who are currently teaching SPHE to students ages 12-15 across the country.
Like many other SPHE teachers, I feel my concerns regarding the potentially harmful material that would come from the new curriculum have been ignored. Worse still, like many other experienced SPHE teachers – who only want the best for their pupils – I have felt bullied, side-lined, and treated with contempt.
I know that thousands of parents whose opinions and concerns were also ignored by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) feel the same. It is extraordinary that the views of the primary carers of Irish children were dismissed in this way.
Over the last five years, I have expressed concern about the direction that the review of SPHE was taking. As in every area of Irish society, it became evident that a vocal minority pushing a woke agenda was seeking to control the narrative. When the Junior Cert draft specification was published, I had major concerns about some of the Learning Outcomes, in particular the ones relating to RSE and gender.
TOLD MAYBE I SHOULDN’T BE TEACHING
However, when I raised my concern with an NCCA (Curriculum Development Body) representative during a consultation meeting, I was told that if I had conscientious objections maybe I shouldn’t be teaching SPHE.
This kind of bullying and belittling should not be acceptable in a modern education system – especially one that purports to champion diversity and respect for discussion and debate. I am not the only teacher who has had this experience. Is the Minister for Education, Norma Foley, happy to stand over a system that treats experienced SPHE teachers with contempt for raising concerns around the welfare and wellbeing of children?
In relation to the SPHE content on gender, my objections are two-fold. Firstly, I do have conscientious objections as I believe that we are biologically man and woman, and while there are a small minority of people who experience body dysmorphia, there are in my opinion two genders…male and female. I am being asked to teach children purported facts that I – and many others – simply do not believe to be true. It is not unlike asking a maths teacher to tell students that the sum of two plus two is six.
More importantly though, my main concern lies around the confusion and chaos that this agenda is causing among our vulnerable and most at risk children and teenagers.
When teaching RSE, we have always talked about sexuality in terms of attraction. This was pretty straightforward for students to understand. My own approach to this has been to start with ‘LOVE’ and to work from there. I have avoided labelling and have explained to students that young people exploring their sexuality is something which is a normal part of growing up.
The obsession with labelling has unfortunately transferred into the gender debate and the new Junior Cycle specification has formalised this obsession, with some new textbooks printing detailed lists of gender labels, which young people are undoubtedly feeling pressured to pick. My view has always been that the students should be allowed to just be who they are without the pressure of a label.
It’s horrifying to think that the ideology behind gender self-ID legislation has trickled down to children as young as eight looking to change their names and pronouns in school when all they should be interested in is playing with their peers. The fallout has seen the number of students coming to our doors for counselling increase exponentially, many in extreme states of confusion and despair.
What they are not being told is that confusion and mixed feelings are a normal part of puberty, and that rushing to change their gender can lead to more rather than less of these feelings. Neither are they being told that, according to experts: “for a majority of young children presenting with gender incongruence, this resolves through puberty.” In other words, most children grow out of it.
As mentioned earlier, I have worked as an associate for the Junior Cert SPHE team for the last five years. As part of this work I was on design teams, preparing content which would be delivered to new SPHE teachers across the country on inservice training days, to guide them and help them become more confident in teaching this subject.
MARKED SHIFT IN ATTITUDES IN OIDE
These courses have been in high demand as until now, there was no 3rd level institution offering SPHE as a curricular subject and hence any newly qualified teacher (and more experienced teachers also) could find an SPHE class on their timetable for the first time on their return to school in September without having received any prior training. As part of this role, I also delivered training and provided support to these teachers who were often nervous and overwhelmed by the task in front of them.
For the first four years, I worked very happily within this team and while my colleagues may have had differing viewpoints on a number of issues, I always felt that my experience as an SPHE teacher was valued and respected. While I was concerned about the direction in which the specification was heading, I felt that I could make more of a difference from inside the organisation than from the outside. I enjoyed working with the teachers who were for the most part enthusiastic and eager to do the right thing by students. I also received very positive feedback from these teachers who valued both our expertise and advice.
Now the teacher professional development bodies have been amalgamated, and are answerable to a new body funded by the Department of Education, called OIDE, which says it supports the professional learning of teachers and school leaders in Ireland.
This coincided with the roll out of the updated specification teacher training, and I noticed a marked shift in attitudes within the support team in OIDE.
Opportunities for feedback were stymied, and tensions were high due to recent media attention which the SPHE specification had received. The team leader was adamant that if challenging conversations arose, we needed to ‘navigate conversations with teachers diplomatically’.
It was also mentioned that we did not want to attract any unwanted attention from the media or other sources.
We were told in very strong terms not to use our personal experiences as anecdotes or stray from the script which we were given. The whole experience left a bitter taste and I felt incredibly uneasy about the tone of the messaging being sent both to us as facilitators and to SPHE teachers who would be delivering this curriculum to first year students this year.
Unfortunately, it felt like I had failed to make an impact from inside the organisation and I was unwilling to be a puppet for something that I didn’t believe in.
When I was working with the support team last year, the seminar pointed teachers to the SPHE Toolkit on their website which had a huge variety of resources available to ‘support’ with the facilitation of the programme. However, textbooks for the updated Junior Cert SPHE programme had not yet been published at that time. While some of the material in the Toolkit made me feel uneasy, as an experienced teacher, I was confident enough to choose which resources I felt were appropriate for my own students. In general, we had never recommended any particular textbook but had signposted teachers to the toolkit as all of the material there had been sanctioned by the Department of Education.
SHOCKED BY CONTENTS OF SPHE BOOKS
As I had not been teaching SPHE last year, the content of the new range of books only came to my attention towards the end of the year as I was asked to review them for this year’s booklist.
To say I was shocked with some of the content of these books would be an understatement. Their interpretation of some of the learning outcomes has gone way beyond what I could ever have expected.
They present ‘gender ideology’ as scientific fact with scientific diagrams and explanations rather than as the belief system that it is. Sex is described as ‘assigned’ rather than a biological truth. Terminology such as cisgender, non-binary, genderqueer/fluid and pansexual which were all removed from the glossary for the final specification have been left in the books. Sexual acts such as masturbation, anal and oral sex, as sexually pleasurable experiences to be enjoyed alone and with others, are described graphically while an inclusive school is given the following narrow definition ‘a school where lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning young people, along with people of other identities and are valued and feel safe’.
One book ‘My Wellbeing Journey 2’, published by Gill and McMillan has an 8 page chapter fully dedicated to masturbation.
In working with teachers over the last five years, I have met a wide variety of viewpoints and belief systems. Some were already teaching ‘gender ideology’ as fact before the specification was updated, others felt very uncomfortable and nervous about what was expected of them as teachers, given the limited training which they had received.
There were huge concerns about how to ‘manage’ challenging conversations or situations which might arise in the SPHE classroom. As many teachers pointed out: ‘we are not counsellors’.
What I also observed was a genuine ‘fear’ of saying or doing the ‘wrong’ thing. Teachers are terrified of being labelled as discriminatory or non-inclusive and being ‘cancelled’ due to adversely causing offence to students in their care. Ultimately, teachers care for their students, so it goes without saying that they do not want to cause them hurt.
Anecdotally, in my own staffroom and beyond, many teachers are uncomfortable with ‘gender ideology’ and don’t personally accept it as their truth. Many feminist colleagues and students are very concerned about the effect this ideology is having on women’s rights but are afraid to articulate these concerns in public as they will be condemned for being “transphobic” etc.
Similarly, management teams in schools, especially Catholic schools are caught between a rock and a hard place on this issue. Obviously, they want the best for the students in their care but this ideology is in direct conflict with their beliefs as members of a Catholic community.
School leaders are terrified of becoming the next media story for ‘non-inclusive schools’ and at the end of the day are afraid of both litigation and PR damage for their institution. Hence, what we see is schools pandering to the requests of parents and students and directing teachers and students to change names and pronouns of these students on roll books etc. Accommodations are being made to allow these students to use single sex toilets where other student’s rights and feelings are being ignored. In many cases, these students are receiving preferential treatment such as access to single rooms on school trips.
In my experience, any opposition to the updated SPHE specification was dismissed by the powers that be (including the mainstream media) as either extreme right-wing or conservative Catholic concerns. Parents raising concerns about how their children are being educated have been ridiculed and dismissed by the so-called experts.
Last May, following the release of the Cass report in England, I ventured to ask the following question on two Facebook groups of which I am a member as a SPHE teacher.
“The recently published Cass report reviewed children/teenage gender identity services in the UK and recommended a more cautious approach to social transitioning for gender distressed young people. What are teachers’ thoughts on this given that it is now part of the JC specification? Are there any concerns about the potential dangers of the gender affirming approach which are highlighted by Cass?”
My post was taken down, and when I posted the question a second time it was again removed and I was blocked from the group. What followed was a gaslighting attempt by a member of the group who also happens to be an author of a SPHE book!
She wrote in response to my query: “Thankfully we are not the UK and have a much more inclusive and non-judgmental attitude to LGBTQ+ students”.
In response to a comment where I referenced the skyrocketing of gender dysphoria among teenage girls and young people with Autism she responded: “I think your post is offensive to both trans and autistic people…most guidance counsellors want to quietly support their students without judgement of who they are or are becoming and are motivated by care and not gender critical politics!”.
In a final post asserted that she was ‘trained with the principles of unconditional positive regard and non-judgmental listening’ and ‘will remain in that space and leave moral panic for other spaces’.
After some investigation, I discovered that the while the SPHE teachers page had been set up by a regular SPHE teacher with the intention of building collaboration among teachers, another book author who also happened to work for OIDE had requested to become admin on the page and had proceeded to report and block any ‘controversial’ post or questions.
I then received a number of private messages from members of the group to warn me that I was wasting my time trying to bring up anything which conflicted with ‘the agenda’ set by the book authors and the department and that people are too afraid to say anything for fear of being accused of being transphobic and a bigot.
One member said she had the same experience at OIDE run workshops and in-services also.
TEACHERS BULLIED AND SIDELINED
It is appalling that teachers feel bullied and side-lined in this way. Needless to say, this whole experience has left both myself and other teachers very upset and concerned about the agenda which has been set and the power that these book authors seem to have. I note that the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland has said that SPHE and RSE programmes include “sensitive issues” and that “teachers should only teach material they feel they are comfortable and competent to teach”.
But many teachers, including myself, who do wish to raise valid objections and concerns feel that we will be targeted and obstructed if we do so. That is a deeply unhealthy culture to have developed around the provision of SPHE in schools, and the Minister needs to be both aware of this, and be proactive in dismantling it.
With the introduction of the free school book scheme for Junior Cycle and the fact that many students will not bring home these books (they are generally a class workbook rather than used for homework), it is now likely that the vast majority of parents will be unaware of the contents of these books.
The fact is that out of a total of six publishers, there was only one schoolbook which we were any way comfortable using as a school. All these books are very attractive to look at, very interactive and colourful, and the harm that may be caused to young students from teaching unscientific, inappropriate material is mostly being ignored.
The worst outcome would be that many SPHE teachers, often with long experience of the subjects and a deep understanding of the needs of pupils, are forced out of the classrooms because a small coterie has decided that they will not tolerate the concerns of parents and teachers in regard to foisting a woke agenda on the classroom.
The author is a SPHE teacher for more than 20 years, whose identity is known to the editor.
