Tánaiste Micheál Martin, in an interview with the Irish Examiner, took aim at home-schooled parents and children, while commenting on the situation of Enoch Burke and his family who have made global news over the last six months for refusing to comply with school instruction to address a pupil as ‘they/them’.
Burke’s subsequent refusal to comply with suspension and dismissal from the school as well as court orders regarding the same has resulted in the teacher spending three months in jail and amassing nearly €30,000 in fines thus far.
Potentially ill-thought through, the off-the-cuff comments by the Tánaiste are reflective of a sub-conscious attitude or prejudice of many towards home-schooling of children in a society where submitting to the State as the de-facto educator of the child has become the norm.
Despite the Constitutionally protected right of parents to be the primary educator of their children, the assumption bound up in the Tánaiste’s comments is that there is something misaligned in parents who chose to opt out of the State education system or something misaligned with their children as a result.
“I find it very sad that a family finds themselves in that situation and that they have a very isolated perspective in life and everybody else is wrong,” said Mr Martin. “And that always strikes me as that there’s a reason for all of that.”
“I don’t want to comment too much but I think it does speak to the importance of socialisation, particularly in education, the idea that people should be educated in schools. I’m not a great fan of homeschooling. I think children need to socialise,” he said.
“I just find the whole thing disquieting. I find it sad at one level.”
There are many layers to this comment and the context within which they appear. The first is that there is the assumption that Enoch Burke and his family are indeed wrong – either in their refusal to submit to the school, in their refusal to submit to the State and/or in their stance on the matter of the school’s approach to affirming children struggling with their identity in school.
The last question: whether Enoch Burke is right to refuse to address as a child in school as ‘they/them’ is not a case of an isolated perspective in life where everybody else is wrong. Many parents – seemingly a majority – are of the same view and have sent submissions to the government on curriculum reform in this area.
If anything, on this issue, the Tanaiste is part of a certain element of society that is isolated from mainstream thinking and attitudes, attitudes that until very recently were simply the norm. Certain elements of society that form a bulk of the ‘establishment’ appear to be ‘captured’ by a fundamentally radical approach to engaging with children who have struggled with what is described as gender dysphoria.
Additionally, established through investigations such as that by Hannah Barnes, reported in her recent book, Time to Think, the unthinking approach of the majority of the Irish parliament is likely harmful and damaging to children where the approach taken by Burke is looking like the conservative and considered route.
The further questions of how the Burke’s have responded to the situation – refusing to accept that there is a process to go through in employment disciplinary processes, in court proceedings, injunctions etc and denying the legitimacy of every stage in the process as it stems from their perceived illegitimacy of the initial instructions given by the school – requires a lengthier analysis, as it seems their intransigence is likely what An Tánaiste finds most ‘sad’.
Perhaps, had the Burke’s been educated in a State school, they would not think differently to the government position and would have no reason to feel that the need to fight back? But wouldn’t that be just a form of groupthink and brainwashing? Is that what is desired?
Perhaps the civilised thing to do would be to accept the due process quietly, to put trust in the system that the correct, fair and reasonable decision would be reached, and one that would be in their favour. Perhaps, and only perhaps, it is a case that this perceived lack of reasonableness comes from homeschooling, isolated thinking and lack of socialisation.
Perhaps. But that is mere hypothesis without the process running its course with Enoch Burke passively partaking to see how it will all turn out, hoping due process, common sense and the protections of religious freedom and from compelled speech would win the day.
The written Judgement of the President of the Court of Appeal does not affirm that this would be the case from a number of perspectives, and any confidence in the process may indeed have been naive.
Firstly, the attitude of President Birmingham towards the issue at stake seems to be less than neutral and in no way sympathetic to the subjective nature of what is being contested.
“I am of the view this case is not about what the appellant has chosen to describe as “transgenderism”, and I would prefer to express my views in terms of the fact that the case is not about transgender rights. I cannot but believe that the term, as used by the appellant, is a somewhat pejorative one, as is his use of the term transgender “ideology”. These are phrases I prefer to avoid; I do not believe they are phrases that in today’s Ireland would find favour with transgender individuals and I would wish to respect their preferences in that regard.”
Additionally, Birmingham does not interrogate the clash of religious freedom and the expressed wish to be addressed according to a chosen gender, so much so as dismiss it out of hand a priori:
“In relation to the suggestion that there has been an attack on the appellant’s religious beliefs, I think it necessary to recall the circumstances in which this issue arose. A pupil in the school, along with the child’s parents, informed the school authorities of a decision that had been arrived at and sought the support of the school. The school was therefore presented with a choice: to respond positively or to reject the request. If the request was rejected, it would involve saying that the school would be a cold house for the pupil involved. The school authorities took the position that the pupil would be facilitated, and that the ethos of the school required that this be so.
… it seems to me that the school authorities were well positioned to identify what was the appropriate response to a request of this nature on the part of a school.”
Included, yet disregarded is that the school sought recourse in the Equal Status Act 2020, which protects discrimination on the grounds of gender, rather than gender identity, yet the judgment chooses to ignore the difference.
In addition, the Judgement also refers to the wishes of the parents who have since informed the public that they had not been informed that their child wished to be referred to as ‘they/them’ by the school nor sought that the school carry this out.
It becomes clear as the judgment is brought to a close that the President gives little consideration to the case presented by Enoch Burke essentially dismissing the religious element without any elaboration.
Returning to the comments of Micheál Martin, even if we were to assume that Enoch Burke and his family are wrong, are suffering from a lack of socialisation and isolated thinking, is it justified to present this as a consequence of homeschooling? Is it justified to extend this judgment to all those children and families who choose to home-school, thereby stigmatising a small minority as dysfunctional?
Nearly 2,000 children in Ireland are home-schooled. If one of these, or a single family, demonstrates what Micheál Martin considers to be a bunker mentality, is it fair to ascribe that to all? Is that not a clear example of prejudice and stereotyping?
If one person coming from a formal schooling background commits a crime, is that to say that all who go to State schools are criminals? Or that state schooling results in criminality? Of course not, but that is the logic Martin employs, no doubt fuelled by a narrow worldview and likely from living within an echo chamber where a dismissive attitude to home-schooling exists.
Minister Martin’s thoughtless comments have been rightly met with anger from parents who home-school.
Monica O’Connor, who is a member of the Home Education Network, said the notion that children who are home-schooled have issues with socialisation or are isolated is “completely erroneous”.
“They’re not kept in a group with their same age peers for six, seven hours a day. They are out at the library and they’re out at the post office and they are out interacting, and I would say that that’s a much better preparation for life.”
“They don’t see that they can only socialise with their peers, they are equally comfortable with younger and older children and adults, they would start conversations with people,” said Ms O’Connor who has educated all of her children at home.
Aristotle said “Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man”, meaning that he understood that the personality of the grown person is formed in the earliest days. A similar quote is attributed to Lenin: “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”
The insinuation from Micheál Martin is that the State is better placed to form the child than the parent, despite the Constitutional protection of the rights of parents as the primary educators of the child.
This reflects the increasing push of the state, the Department of Education, and lobby groups, to impose a particular form of moral and social education through the curriculum and in particular through the SPHE (Social, Personal and Health Education) curriculum and in particular via RSE (Relationship and Sexuality Education) stream, irrespective of the wishes of parents.
In practice, government policy seems to be designed to push children into institutional and formal setting as early as possible providing subsidies to families who put their children in childcare or daycare, while providing nothing to families who seek to raise their toddlers at home.
Writing on this subject in the Spectator, Portia Berry-Kilby, as Jeremy Hunt proposes more subsidies for childcare:
“No provision has been made to support parents who would rather steer clear of the hired help route. And the extended number of free hours of childcare makes the financial cost of staying at home with one’s children nonsensical from a financial standpoint. Mothers who opt to care for their children themselves rather than outsourcing that responsibility to a nursery will face a significant loss of potential earnings. This is simply not an option for so many families.”
Rather than upholding and respecting the Constitutional rights of parents, the comments from An Tánaiste undermine the Constitution that has precedes the law, and the Government, in Ireland. It is likely that once the next round of constitutional amendments are dispensed with that the State, with a mind on Aristotle and Lenin’s understanding of the formative nature of childhood, will turn its eye on Article 42 of the Constitution which states:
1. The State acknowledges that the primary and natural educator of the child is the Family and guarantees to respect the inalienable right and duty of parents to provide, according to their means, for the religious and moral, intellectual, physical and social education of their children.
2. Parents shall be free to provide this education in their homes or in private schools or in schools recognised or established by the State.
Dualta Roughneen