A curriculum is a powerful tool that allows policymakers to determine what should be taught and how. The Irish primary school curriculum is being redrafted by the National Council for Curriculum Assessment, NCCA, for the first time in 25 years. The public have until June 7th to make submissions about the content.
Every adult that cares about children’s wellbeing and safeguarding must tell the NCCA to ‘press pause’ and halt the primary curriculum development process until the NCCA can confirm that the findings of the Cass Review are reflected in the curriculum framework. Parents also have a right to know that their opinions will not be dismissed by the NCCA as they have been previously.
The Cass Review, published on April 9th, reviewed the NHS Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service. Its findings matter for Irish schools, because of the strong influence transgender activists, some with radical views, have had on this area over a relatively short period of time
Gender identity is said to be an inner sense of self as being male, female, neither or both – and may or may not match your sexed body. It cannot be observed or measured and has been described by some as a ‘gendered soul’. Those who hold this belief – including children – may request to ‘socially transition’.
Some Irish schools facilitate social transition and allow students to change their names, pronouns, clothing and use the bathrooms of the opposite sex. However, the Cass Review found that social transition is a pipeline to medical transition – which can include puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and surgery.
It’s important to understand how devastating the Cass report’s finding were in terms of how children were mismanaged. The expert review found also found that there is no good evidence to support giving puberty blockers and wrong sex hormones to under 18s to manage distress about their bodies – and that other evidence-based treatments may be more effective.
It also found that claims that not prescribing puberty blockers increases the risk of suicide are false , and that medical professionals have a duty of care apply the same rigorous clinical approaches to assessing children who present with ‘gender distress’ as with any other condition. In other words, the practise of unquestioningly ‘affirming’ children who present with gender confusion is not medically sound
(Alarmingly, 6 out of 7 UK gender clinics refused to cooperate with the Cass Review and withheld records of 9,000 adult patients who had used the children and youth services.)
Yet, the Department of Education has produced no gender identity policy or guidelines to advise or support schools on how best to support students experiencing distress about their gender. They have abdicated this responsibility to lobby groups such as TENI (Transgender Equality Network of Ireland) and BeLongTo who promote the lie that a child can be born in the wrong body.
Parents I’ve spoken to have been alarmed at some of the materials produced which aim to facilitate social transitioning for young children.
Now, the new primary curriculum framework contains the following statement;
[the framework] is concerned with the best interest of every child, considering that they vary in their competence, language, family background, age, culture, ethnic status, religion, gender, and sexual identity.
What does the NCCA mean by ‘gender, and sexual identity’? Does ‘gender’ in this context mean biological sex, gender identity or both? Does the term ‘sexual identity’ mean biological sex, gender identity, social sex-role, sexual orientation, a combination of any of these terms or all these terms?
These terms are now locked into the curriculum framework and will be woven into every aspect of the curriculum; opting out of lessons about gender identity will not be possible.
It is clear from the training video (above) produced by the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) entitled ‘Facilitating a social transition’ that telling children that ‘boys can turn into girls and girls can turn into boys’ is an idea that is supported by elements within the largest teacher’s union in the country.
In my experience, the majority of teachers do not believe in gender identity and must not be forced by the curriculum to teach this abusive, anti-scientific concept to a captive audience of primary school children.
The NCCA and the Minister have an opportunity to prevent the creation of a schools-to-gender clinic pipeline identified by Dr Cass if they amend the primary curriculum framework document and guarantee parents that no child will be told they can be born in the wrong body. They failed to do this in Junior Cycle SPHE and as a result we have a secondary school curriculum that endorses the upside down notion that biological sex is a fiction and gender identity is a fact.
Parents who criticised the gender identity elements of the Junior Cycle SPHE curriculum were described by the NCCA as engaging in ‘ petition-style communication’. In short, parents were accused of trying to undermine a process they had been invited to engage in. How do parents legitimately express their concerns if criticism is reframed as evidence of a conspiracy?
Children’s welfare is too important for the adults in the room to worry about being called names. The NCCA and the Minister for Education have an obligation to listen to parents. They are not merely stakeholders in their children’s education. Their opinions are worth more than those of NGOs and lobbyists. Parents must demand that the NCCA press pause on this process before children are damaged.
Submissions to the consultation can be sent to PCRRsubmissions@ncca.ie (Capitals required) by Friday, June 7, but parents are now urgently calling for a #presspause campaign by including ‘Press Pause on the Primary School Curriculum Consultation’ in the email subject bar.
Submissions do not have to be long. A short email asking for gender and sexual identity to be defined and stating you do not consent to gender identity being taught as fact will be sufficient.
Sandra Adams is the former Schools and Safeguarding lead with The Countess. She is a mother of two and lives in Dublin.
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