Yesterday, my colleague Ben Scallan asked Minister for Education, Norma Foley, a question she didn’t seem to want to answer. Did the Minister believe that a 12-13-year old could change their gender, and if not why were teachers expected to teach this in schools?
It’s a straightforward question, and given the significant controversy around SPHE textbooks – think of the hideous Family A depiction in schoolbooks (now withdrawn), and the findings of the Cass Report – it should have been one that the Minister was able to answer. However, as ever with Norma Foley, instead of a straight answer we got the usual waffle and attempts to endlessly talk around the issue.
However, mostly because Ben pushed the Minister to answer his question, some interesting information was gleaned from the exchange.
"I'm being very clear here."
— gript (@griptmedia) September 25, 2024
"You're really not being clear, Minister. I'm asking you a simple question."@Ben_Scallan grills Irish Education Minister Norma Foley on whether she personally believes that transgender ideology should be taught to young children in schools. pic.twitter.com/pjF9mf6NwD
First, the Minister said she stands over the SPHE curriculum. She seemed dismissive of the serious concern expressed by the “vast majority” of the parents who took part in the consultation on same, and who strenuously objected to the inclusion of gender ideology in the final NCCA specification.
That final specification from the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) is expressed in the new learning outcomes and wellbeing indicators for the Junior Cycle SPHE course which is generally taught to 12-16 year-olds.
Those learning outcomes – in other words, what the teacher hopes to achieve – spell out that teen students should know that gender identity is part of young people’s self-identity, and that they should “appreciate” that gender identity is “experienced and expressed in diverse ways”.
Those learning outcomes are the basis for much of the madness we are now seeing appearing in SPHE schoolbooks: the insistence that babies are “assigned a gender” at birth, when in fact their sex is observed; that students who don’t suffer from gender dysphoria are “cisgender”; the nonsense about using ‘they’ pronouns – and encouraging children to police the use of same; and much more.
Even though, parents might be inclined to dismiss this nonsense as harmless, the lessons often force students to agree with gender theory: obliging first year students to say that gender identity is separate from sex, the only correct answer given in one exercise, for example.
Other exercises are even more disturbing, such as the workbook where first year students are also asked to advise other young people regarding gender confusion – with the possibility of sex change implied.
“The tweets below have been posted to a Twitter support group for teenagers,” 12 and 13-year olds are instructed. “In groups, imagine that you run the support groups Twitter page and reply to the tweets.”
Amongst the messages that First Year students are supposed to respond to are a girl who describes her body as being “stupid” with “stupid breasts”. What kind of unsettling message is that to put in front of 12-13-year olds?
Nothing to do with me, the Minister insisted yesterday, even though as President Truman once pointed out, the buck stops with her. (The famous sign, “The Buck Stops Here” on his desk was an admission that the most senior person is ultimately responsible for what happens on their watch). Foley is the Minister for Education, and she is ultimately responsible for what is being taught in schools.
(This government has set new lows, it must be said, in constantly weaseling out of responsibility – the bucks increasingly lands anywhere but where it belongs. It’s lame.)
Foley is also responsible, surely, for taking action if it is discovered that material is being taught in schools which is a) not factual b) unscientific and c) carries a risk of causing real harm to students.
Gender theory is mostly nonsense. That’s not to say, as Ben Scallan pointed out yesterday, that gender dysphoria doesn’t exist – it does – or that children with gender confusion shouldn’t be treated with respect and kindness – of course they should.
But the new SPHE books go much, much further. They treat an increasingly disputed and disreputable theory – which claims that gender is not based on biology and, in fact, is fluid – as if it is fact, when it’s not. The potential for harm, as the Cass Report found, is very real.
Leading psychotherapist, Stella O’Malley, previously said that it was “concerning” that the SPHE lessons “offer this material without a preface that highlights that all this is based upon a theory that is not supported by scientific evidence”.
Then the Cass Report – undertaken in the UK after an explosion in the number of children, particularly young girls, presenting as transgender – showed that the concerns every parent should have are about more than a whacky theory being presented as fact.
The report in Britain warns against enabling “social transition” – where schools allow students to change their names, pronouns, clothing and bathroom use. The review found that “those who had socially transitioned at an earlier age and/or prior to being seen in clinic were more likely to proceed to a medical pathway”. Other studies found that the vast majority of children who experienced gender confusion eventually grew out of it.
Tremendous harm can be caused by actions that set children onto a pathway that leads to medical transitioning, and schools should have no part of it. The Minister cannot shrug her shoulders in regard to the enormous potential for harm in this material. She can’t simply push that responsibility onto the “autonomy” of the school and of the teachers and schoolbook providers.
That brings me to the second interesting aspect of the Minster’s exchange yesterday. She referred repeatedly to an “enormous public consultation” which had taken place which, she said, had shown support for the new SPHE curriculum from teachers and parents and management bodies.
But that’s not true – and it seems to me that the Minister should surely know the facts regarding what actually happened with that consultation. In fact, the “vast majority” of parents opposed the inclusion of gender ideology in schools.
As Alan Whelan of the CPSSA said yesterday, Minister Foley knows “quite well that the two largest National secondary parents associations were excluded from the NCCA SPHE working party” and that not one parent was invited to 80 person stakeholder meeting.
The Countess campaign group noted that “the public consultation that Minister Foley keeps referring to would be the same one in which the NCCA noted in a report that “the most common cause of concern related to references to gender identities within the draft specification”.”
The facts are indisputable: 4,353 parents are on record according to the NCCA as responding to the SPHE consultation, while there were written submissions from another 55 individuals – and emails/letters from 317 individuals.
Parents therefore made by far the most submissions – by a factor of ten to one – to the consultation. And the representative groups insist that the thousands of parents who made their voices heard to the consultation process on the curriculum were ignored and dismissed, while, they say, “undue emphasis was given to a select group of NGOs and individuals whose views are radically at odds with parents.”
The NCCA certainly seemed dismissive of the parents’ views in their report, describing the responses as “petition-style communications”. They then refused repeatedly to give Gript a breakdown on the submissions received by parents – and also refused to name the nine experts within the HSE referenced in the report who were consulted in writing the draft report on the new sex-ed programme.
Minister Foley said she “stands over the process” regarding the design of the curriculum. Really? She stands over a process where parents, the primary educators of their children, were ignored. Is she seriously saying that after the alarming findings of the Cass Report, the risk of harm to children – and the nakedly anti-Irish depiction of Family A – that there doesn’t need to be an immediate review of the madness that has entered the SPHE curriculum?
Norma Foley needs to address the questions. Does she believe a 12-13 year-old can change gender? If not, why is she forcing teachers to teach that gender is fluid and not based on biology. She can’t keep dodging the question forever.