The Irish State is urging teachers to use an extreme educational guide that calls on schools to expose “white privilege” and deconstruct traditional classroom textbooks.
According to the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA), the 2024 UNESCO document is recommended as a “useful link” for intercultural education in Irish schools, a document which claims that racism serves to establish “unequal distributions of privilege.”
The guidelines claim that current educational materials fuel this inequality by treating white people and Western viewpoints as the default, arguing that pupils must be taught that this is actually a racial power position.
The document outlines a vision for the future of education and the need for radical new teaching materials.
“We need actively anti-racist education materials that provide educators with the tools they need to support anti-racist learning and a vision in which our sense of shared humanity will eclipse our societies’ tendencies for regression, division and conflict,” the document states.
The guide asserts that textbooks often present a skewed view of reality which reinforces racial hierarchy and positions white people at the centre of society.
“In many textbooks, whiteness is not discussed as racial construction,” the guidelines state.
“White positioning appears as non-racial normality and neutrality; it has a normative effect.”
To counter this, the authors say that school resources need to actively challenge the idea that Western perspectives are standard.
“Textbooks should work toward de-normalizing dominant knowledge and perspectives that are construed as objectively true and generally applicable,” the document recommends.
“The ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic diversity in social realities should be reflected in texts and images.”
The UNESCO text also takes issue with the portrayal of white people in various societal roles, claiming that their visibility creates a false impression of the world.
“Members of dominant social groups are associated with positively connotated roles and activities and also shown in generic, everyday activities, which contributes to a further normalization of their position as majority shareholders in society,” the document says.
“The wide variety of roles in which individuals from dominant groups are portrayed easily creates the impression that they are everywhere and can do anything, whereas those from minoritized groups cannot fill all these roles.”
The document explicitly singles out “white men” as an issue in educational materials, arguing they are overrepresented in prestigious careers.
“In many textbooks, in addition to quantitative frequency, there is also a semantic dominance of white people, in particular white men,” the authors claim.
“Positive, aspirational and prestigious positions and occupations…are frequently allocated to white people in the textbooks examined.”
The guidelines specifically complain that science, technology, engineering, and maths textbooks disproportionately depict white men as scientists.
“Examined textbooks for STEM subjects… tend disproportionately to depict white men in the roles of scientists,” the document states.
The text also takes issue with the portrayal of Asian people in these fields, claiming it promotes a problematic stereotype.
“…People of Asian descent are frequently portrayed in such roles, as a population group that regularly features as examples of a ‘model minority’,” the guide notes.
To fix this perceived imbalance, the UNESCO guide instructs textbook creators to actively manipulate the racial demographics of different professions in their illustrations.
“Fill positively connoted, desirable roles and aspirational career profiles…with people from different racialized social groups,” the guide recommends.
“Minimize or avoid the depiction of people from minoritized groups in service roles.”
The authors also advise schools to artificially place minority groups in higher social classes to counter traditional narratives.
“Ensure there are class intersections when depicting racialized groups in different roles, and also depict traditionally marginalized groups as representatives of the middle or upper classes,” the text states.
The guidelines demand that educational materials deliberately push back against perceived cultural assumptions regarding ability and motivation.
“Contradict ethnic or cultural stereotypes of certain abilities, motivation, proclivity and types of behaviour that are associated with particular roles and activities,” the document adds.
The guide suggests that textbooks should highlight how being white interacts with other social categories, and demands that schools tackle the concept of racial advantage directly.
“Textbooks can point out context-specific effects that result from the intersection of whiteness with other social categories of difference,” the authors claim.
“They could point out, for example, in what way POC” [people of colour] “might not enjoy equal opportunities or discuss what is meant by ‘white privilege’ in a specific context.”
Furthermore, the guidelines argue that global historical events and poverty are frequently misrepresented to hide the realities of European colonialism.
“There is a naturalization of white privilege and exercise of power in some textbooks,” the document argues.
“Poverty and conflicts in the Global South are thereby not presented as an effect of European expansion and neo-colonial power but appear ahistorically, as almost naturally given or as a consequence of the abuse of power by black-designated individuals or states.”
Textbooks are explicitly urged to challenge pupils on their own racial identities and their perceived advantages in the classroom.
“Encourage reflections on ones own positioning and involvement in social power structures,” the recommendations state.
The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment is responsible for advising the Minister for Education on curriculum and assessment for early childhood education, primary, and post-primary schools in Ireland.
In recent years, the organisation has placed an increased focus on updating the curriculum to include more intercultural education, aiming to reflect the growing diversity of the Irish student population.
Last year the Irish Department of Justice awarded €100,000 to a school initiative that teaches pupils around the country about the concept of “white privilege” – the idea that all white people have inherent advantages in life purely by virtue of being white.
[https://gript.ie/doj-renews-funding-for-white-privilege-school-program/](https://gript.ie/doj-renews-funding-for-white-privilege-school-program/)
This controversial initiative was previously the subject of an exposé by Gript.
[https://gript.ie/irish-state-funded-group-distributed-radical-material-on-race/](https://gript.ie/irish-state-funded-group-distributed-radical-material-on-race/)
Moreover, the idea of “white privilege” being taught in class has been affirmed and defended by senior government figures like Tánaiste Simon Harris.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePkkFny1pnE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePkkFny1pnE)