The University of Chicago English Department has announced that it “is accepting only applicants interested in working in and with Black Studies” – meaning that students who wish to study english there will also have to take a course that many say draws its inspiration from the Black Lives Matter movement that includes the dismantling of the […]
“What simpering, shallow wokeness”, wrote one critic yesterday. “Possibly the worse tweet ever sent by an Irish public representative.” Can anyone, in good faith, disagree? Keeping 'To Kill A Mockingbird' and 'Of Mice and Men' on the JC syllabus isn't worth the hurt they are causing. Dept should see sense here. "Government urged to drop […]
The plan to re-open schools was released yesterday to great fanfare, and contains lots of big announcements, which are neatly summarised here, courtesy of the journal.ie: 1,080 extra teachers will be added to post-primary schools at a cost of €53 million to help reduce class sizes. Additional substitution, supervision, guidance counsellors and psychologists will also […]
What fresh nonsense is this? Ms Foley said all individual grades will have to be checked and reviewed using different demographic characteristics – including gender and socio-economic status – to ensure they are as fair and equitable as possible. “I want to make sure that this work is done rigorously – so that the results […]
As of a 2018 OECD report, Ireland ranks 4th out of 36 OECD countries and 3rd out of 27 EU countries for reading literacy among 15-year olds. But for how long? According to the OECD’s 2018 PISA Report (Programme for International Student Assessment). Ireland ranks 4th out of 36 other OECD countries and 3rd out […]
As reported recently by Gript a controversial sex education programme that taught children as young as six about touching their “private parts” has been withdrawn by a council in Britain following a backlash from parents. “Following an outcry from parents The Christian Institute wrote to Warwickshire County Council saying parents were considering legal action. The […]
No voluntary organisation in the world does more work in the fields of education, healthcare, poverty relief, etc. than the Catholic Church, led in many cases by the Church’s religious orders. Amidst all the criticism of the Church, this basic fact is often forgotten. Cara, a research body at Georgetown University in the US, compiles the […]
Next week, just days before the general election, secondary school teachers across the country will go on strike to protest against continued pay inequality for their profession. In Ireland in 2020, we still have the objectively absurd situation where two people, teaching the same subject, in the same school, for the same number of hours, […]
The new educate together secondary school, which is due to open in Castletroy, Limerick in 2021, will include fully gender-neutral toilets, its principal has confirmed. However, these toilets will be accompanied by traditional male and female toilets, should students wish to use them. Limerick Educate Together Secondary School is due to accept 1,000 students. The […]
The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history. George Orwell, 1984 The recommendation of the National Council for Curriculum Assessment that the teaching of history remain an optional subject for the Junior Cert hardly came as a surprise. Anyone who read the 2016 NCCA background […]
Senator Ivana Bacik has recently argued in a piece she called “The Catholic Church hasn’t gone away, you know” that what she calls a “secularist” approach to separation of Church and State would help to remedy a situation in which the Catholic Church in Ireland “influence(s) public policy” through its religious teachings, runs a “shadow […]
I sensed I was missing something, yet had no idea what it might be. I now understand what it was I lacked: your capacity to integrate your view of reality with the objects you manipulated and the things you did with your hands.