The evolving junior cycle “wellbeing” curriculum in Irish secondary schools, including SPHE, has caused more than a little concern amongst parents who are only now realising just how all-encompassing it is.
Parents are also just now getting a glimpse of what radical activist doctrines are inserted within it, and how activist ideologies are planned to be embedded within the entire school curriculum going forward.
Many parents are objecting to this and many of them want to withdraw their children from this instruction. However, some parents have been led to believe, particularly after talking with their child’s school principal, that they will not be allowed to do this, or that the school is not obliged to facilitate the parents’ wishes . This is false, they can always withdraw their child, and the school has an obligation to accommodate said children.
The Irish Education Alliance (IEA) advises sending a non consent opt-out letter to the principal in your child’s school.
This template letter addresses the content of concern within the SPHE curriculum and listing out some of these items individually. It’s an opt-out so it states in the IEA wording that these are issues not to discuss with the child. Listing these subjects individually would mean that these issues are not to be discussed with the child in any class, not just within the SPHE class.
These activist issues can be brought into other classes as well so that they eventually permeate into the entire educational environment. Ironically, over time this ideology displaces the official ethos of the school through a creeping embedding within the entire curriculum.
The IEA template letter lists specific subjects, such as gender ideology, pornography literacy etc, that are not to be discussed with your child; either by teachers or by visiting groups or contractors. This template letter is a resource that parents can easily use and adapt to their own school, and it can be the starting point in a conversation about how involved your child’s school should be in their moral instruction.
The NCCA has dictated that 400 hours of each student’s time during the Junior cycle will be dedicated to “wellbeing” subjects. While some non-cognitive skills and activities, such as PE, are important, and a counselling service done on a one to one basis is very desirable to help children deal with stress and individual psychological issues, these are not the focus of this new “wellbeing” curriculum.
Essentially it consists of group therapy which pathologies children who had no problem going in. Also it is 400 hours taken from education which could be applied to core skills in literacy, maths, languages etc. When that includes activist indoctrination about subjects such as gender ideology, CRT including lectures on white fragility, queer theory, black lives matter Marxist activism, etc. parents have a right to be concerned and to opt their children out if they want.
In fact, these should actually be opt-in subjects. The dumbing down of education is one aspect that should concern parents, another is the nature and content of this new curriculum, which many see as activist based indoctrination pushed by activist organisations.
Where this new direction for education came from is very interesting and is a story for another article (spoiler: all roads lead back to the Brazilian Marxist Paulo Friere and the theories he lays out in his hugely influential book Pedagogy of the Oppressed), however the subject of this article is what parents can do who want to opt their children out of SPHE or specific parts of it.
Some schools have resisted parental requests to withdraw their children from SPHE and have attempted to fob parents off with excuses that the course is obligatory and that they don’t have resources to provide alternative supervision or tuition.
Some parents have told Gript that their children’s school have tried to put the burden of supervision back onto them. They (typically the school principle) have acknowledged that their child does not have to attend the SPHE class, but that the parent must collect their child from school and return them afterwards for every SPHE class. This is an onerous burden, and parents rightly see it as a tactic to put them off and reduce resistance to the SPHE curriculum.
The Irish Education Alliance advise a second, follow-up, opt-out letter which puts forward the case that the Education Act (1998) requires that the school provide alternative tuition or supervised study. Taking the lead from the constitution which places primacy of moral instruction with the parents, the 1998 Education Act, Article 30(2)(e), states The Minister shall not: “…require any student to attend instruction in any subject which is contrary to the conscience of the parent of the student or in the case of a student who has reached the age of 18 years, the student.”
But does that mean that, as some principles have argued, it is up to the parents to supervise the child while SPHE is being taught?
The obligations of the school in loco parentis would seem to indicate otherwise. In consultation with Lawyers for Justice Ireland, the IEA argue that the school “is authorised under s30(4) of the Act to provide alternative tuition to pupils who do not attend SPHE instruction on the grounds of conscience.”
There is also an important point regarding the growing numbers of legal issues and legal liability that are arising from exposing children to the gender ideologies within SPHE – which can, it is argued, lead to contagion in social and psychological terms. The letter informs the school that these risks exist, and therefore puts an onus on them to undertake a risk assessment.
The letter says: “I trust that you are aware that in the UK parents have recently issued a class action against the Department of Education for failing to act on the foreseeable harms of exposing children to inappropriate curriculum material on gender identity ideology. By requiring my son/daughter to sit at the back of the classroom during SPHE instruction the school is not only acting contrary to my conscience but is also exposing him/her to the foreseeable harm of instruction on gender identity ideology.”
In informing the school that there is a foreseeable harm, in can be argued that the parent is giving notice that the school has a legal obligation to assess these risks and undertake a risk assessment.
It is important that the legal position and right of the parents to opt their children out based on Irish law (constitutional, statute, and case law) are made known to schools, and also to the school board of management.
Lawyers For Justice Ireland (LFJI) say Irish law has the Irish constitution at the pinnacle of authority, but policy comes from legislative acts which are signed into law to become statutes.
The constitution gives us a low resolution of the aspirations of the law, but statute, which must reconcile with a legal interpretation of the constitution, gives us the specifics that become the enforced law.
The constitution is an attempt to put into writing the primacy of natural law; a thing that arises out of our humanity and is not derived of the authority of kings and legislators. It is “imprescriptible” and thus trumps all laws of legislators and courts.
The constitution and its recognition of “imprescriptible rights” is a good place to start a good-faith conversation with your child’s school, but it is not the end of the line or the only recourse. The primacy of the role of the family and the primacy of the child’s parents in their moral instruction is only one aspect that the SPHE course effects. Another thing that it affects is the responsibilities of the school to the child when acting in loco parentis.
In short, LFJI argue that the school has a responsibility not to put the child at risk from harm and is open to liability if they do not undertake a sufficient risk assessment before introducing new changes in practice. The new SPHE curriculum is a radical new direction, they say, and there are foreseeable risks associated with it, and therefore should undergo a risk assessment.
The Bad Law Project in the UK, is now taking a class action undersigned by the parents of ten children, against the Department for Education who exposed children to trans ideology and influenced the children to transition.
They argue that harm done to these children was in part, pushed through the schools RSE programs and so the DfE (Department for Education UK) is liable for the harm done to these children argues this suite. LFJI say that it is incumbent on Irish schools to undertake a risk assessment which would examine these foreseeable risks in the new SPHE programme, and that not to do so would expose the school management to liability.
To understand how novel the new SPHE is and where it is coming from, here is Dr Anna Loutfi of the Bad Law Project explaining what’s wrong with the mentality of the activists who push this agenda.
Dr Anna Loutfi of @BadLawTeam
‘The new religion is taking hold in our schools, making parents redundant.’
Please support parents campaign against Dept for Education 🌈 📷 https://t.co/oqLjTe2XVZ…@LozzaFox | @educationgovuk pic.twitter.com/zQDB2JzVXi
— TheBadLawProject (@BadLawTeam) September 22, 2023
The Bad Law Project says their case intends to “put an end to the shameless political activism in schools preying on the most vulnerable of our young people.”
Some parents might not be keen on taking on what might be seen as a confrontational line with their child’s school, but parents have the right to give the school notice that they have a legal obligation to your child and that they cannot supplant you as the parent of your children with primacy of place in their moral instruction.
At question here is the very basic question of “whose child is s/he”. The activists behind the curriculum push, seem to think the children belong to the state and their activist NGO organisations, and that they must be programmed and protected from their parents. Dr. Ana Loutfi talked about it in that clip inserted above, and there are others who spell out is another activist who says it for him/her/zer self.
I'm protecting children from violent parents and possible conversion therapy
What you're doing is telling children they cannot confide in anybody outside the family which is dangerous when that family home could be a toxic violent household
Why would you do that to children?
— DubNoBassWimmieBleedinHeadMan (@Basshead_Dub) September 27, 2023
This X user is not talking about protecting children from actual violence within the home, he/she/ze says it is to protect children from “conversion therapy”. This mangling of linguistics is a perfect example of the deceptive brainwashing we can expect in SPHE, where words and terms are inverted by ideological activists and can sometimes mean the opposite to their real meaning. A child cannot “know their true gender” as trans activists like to put it, and consent to gender transition; and what this X user calls “conversion therapy” is actually the opposite, it’s the sensible and cautious approach of not rushing a child into a mutilation of their body through the gender conversion which they call “affirmation”.
If parents are concerned or at least curious, it might be useful to look up the SPHE course online. See if it is what you want your child to learn. If you do not want them to take part in this instruction, you have the right to opt out. The law is on your side.