A teacher who has taught SPHE over a period of almost 16 years says she is one of several teachers who have resigned or are considering resigning from their roles because they are “appalled and deeply concerned” at the new SPHE curriculum which they say has the potential to be “hugely harmful” to young school students.
A “whistleblower” video, where the teacher reveals the explicit nature of what was shown to SPHE teachers in a DCU course as examples of materials for students between 12-15 – including an animation of masturbation, a ‘sex map’, and a lesson discussing “fisting” and “rimming”, has garnered more than 50,000 views on You Tube alone in the first day of its release.
She is one of a growing number of SPHE teachers who have joined parents and TDs in calling on Minister for Education, Norma Foley, to “shut down” or “completely review” the current SPHE curriculum which they say now has the potential to be “hugely harmful” in relation to explicit and inappropriate lessons on sex, pornography, and gender identity.
Mary Creedon told Gript that when she attended the course for SPHE teachers in DCU, she felt it was assumed that everyone supported gender ideology – the belief that gender is not decided by biological reality, and that gender is fluid. She felt that there was “no room” for opinions which disagreed with gender ideology.
Like other teachers, she pointed to the Cass Review which warned that social transition (such as immediately affirming a name change in school) can be a pipeline to medical transition – which can include puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and surgery.
She said that when she subsequently attended an in-service Oide course on SPHE, teachers were told to introduce themselves to the class by using personal pronouns, and to avoid “hetronormative phrases such as ‘mum and dad'”.
“I do not believe that children should be affirmed if they show discomfort in their gender. To me this is a reckless abandonment of child safeguarding. I believe the SPHE learning outcomes set by the NCCA – such as learning outcomes 1.4 and 3.6 are seriously flawed – and need to be critically reviewed.”
“SECRECY”
She also said that she felt the direction to teachers to create ‘class contracts” where school students were told not to discuss what had happened in the lesson outside the classroom was a “serious safeguarding issue.”
“Why the secrecy,” she said. “Why would we tell children not to discuss this with anyone – and clearly that includes their parents. This is contrary to all we have learned about child safeguarding, especially given the content of these lessons. Parents need to wake up and realise what is going on.”
“You need to take ownership back of your children,” she said was her message to parents, adding that the SPHE books were not sent home in schoolbags. She also called on SPHE teachers not to teach the new curriculum.
In the video with education campaign group, Natural Women’s Council, she said that much of what SPHE teachers were supposed to discuss with 12-15 years olds were “age inappropriate” and added that she felt there was no direction to offer moral guidance to students. This compounded the child safeguarding issues, she felt.
Jana Lunden of the Natural Women’s Council said that the video had “absolutely appalled parents” – and she urged them to take action with their concerns.
“This is a whistleblower video: its revealing what’s happening behind closed doors in relation to the new SPHE course, and parents are really shocked and absolutely appalled at what they are seeing,” she said. “They need to question what’s happening in their schools.”
The course attended by Ms Creedon also brought SPHE teachers through an exercise for the classroom where students aged 12-15 would be asked to rank thirty words as being “sexual or intimate”.
The words included “fisting”, “rimming”, and “mutual masturbation”, the SPHE teacher said.
In regard to age-appropriate lessons for 12-15 year olds, she pointed to guidance from the NCCA which said that teachers should “begin by helping students to reflect on their own values and expectations of sexual relationships and what they consider to be the features of a healthy adult sexual experience.”
“Why is the NCCA asking 12-15 year olds to reflect on adult sexual experiences when the legal age for sexual intercourse is 17yrs?” she asked. “Nothing in a school classroom should be adding to pressure on children to have sexual experiences.”
She said that SPHE classes “used to be about investigating sexuality – not labelling children at 12 or 13” – and that many teachers were “deeply uncomfortable with the new curriculum which had removed a moral framework from discussions in the classroom.”
“I’ve taught SPHE over a period of 16 years and I loved it,” she said. “We connected it in with wellbeing, felt that it was helping the students regarding drug use, dealing with bereavement (that learning outcome is now gone ), how alcohol impacts on the brain, how to deal with difficult situations, all lessons that helped students.”
“That’s been replaced with a curriculum that is more likely to be detrimental and harmful to students,” she said. “There are other teachers like me, who are upset and appalled at what the course has become and who won’t teach it, so we’re told then than outside agencies will do it instead. It’s very upsetting to see a course that used to help children become something that might harm them instead.”
PORNOGRAPHY
“One of the guidance documents from the NCCA tells students to “discuss how viewing pornography might influence people’s attitudes behaviours and expectations”, which leaves it open to teachers to teach that porn can be ‘ethical’,” she said.
She pointed to a belief amongst what she described as a “small minority with an disproportionate influence” that were driving changes to the curriculum, saying that initiatives such as “porn workshops” where students could be taught that even “rough sex” was fine in porn as long as consent was given should be “ringing loud alarm bells for parents”.
“The people who are making decisions in the NCCA and now in Oide seem to be pushing certain ideologoes which would anathema to most parents,” the SPHE teacher said.
“I feel teachers and even perhaps some others in Oide and even the NCCA feel bullied and intimidated,” she said. Last week, another SPHE teacher writing on Gript said that “experienced SPHE teachers – who only want the best for their pupils – have felt bullied, side-lined, and treated with contempt” when raising concerns about the new curriculum.
The new SPHE schoolbooks for 12-15 year olds have been a source of repeated controversy in relation to the “anti-Irish” depiction of a family as bigoted; an 8-page classroom lesson on masturbation; a lesson which asked children to respond to a transgender teenager who complained she felt “stupid, with stupid breasts”, amongst other issues.
Last month, the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland said that SPHE and RSE programmes include “sensitive issues” and that “teachers should only teach material they feel they are comfortable and competent to teach”.