Meath Senator Sharon Keogan has called for the resignation of Minister for Education, Norma Foley, in light of the SPHE training administered by Dublin City University (DCU).
As reported by Gript, SPHE teacher Mary Creedon shot to online virality for an interview in which she discussed what she saw and heard on a DCU course providing training to post-primary teachers in regard to SPHE lessons and materials.
The veteran teacher later revealed to Gript that other exercises for SPHE taught in the course involved asking students to write a detailed script about a “pleasurable sexual experience” , with “line by line dialogue”, and “notes on actions”, including “physical pleasure”. A word game was used to examine porn terms.
Now, Independent Senator Sharon Keogan has called on the Education Minister to hand in her resignation, while slamming a recent interview on Newstalk during which Foley was questioned on backlash to the new curriculum.
Senator Keogan’s criticism comes just hours after a Fianna Fáil TD called for Minister Foley, his party colleague, to ensure that material being taught for SPHE – which he described as a “total disgrace” and “explicit” – was “immediately” withdrawn.
Deputy Seán Fleming said on Wednesday that “many people” had been in touch with him regarding the SPHE curriculum, and that he “shared their outrage and concerns.”
Speaking in the Seanad on Thursday, Senator Keogan said: “The Minister’s interview on Newstalk last week showed a shocking level of negligence from the media in doing its job of probing the story. The presenter, Kieran Cuddihy, flippantly dismissed it as a non-story in response to the Minister’s defence of the training as a seminar that was for adults by adults.”
In the interview in question, the Education Minister took to the primetime Newstalk slot to respond to what she referred to as the “misrepresentation” of content included in the curriculum.
She told the radio station: “I want to be really clear [that] what’s being presented is just full of misrepresentation. The course that’s being referred to there is a course that was run for adults and the materials provided were for adults, for adult discussion.
“I want to be really, really clear – no graphic or explicit material is ever, ever shown in a classroom setting. I want to be really, really clear about that and that’s being entirely misrepresented here.”
The Minister for Education also told the programme that she had received “quite a number” of emails regarding the video. She went on to say that the goal of the updated SPHE programme was to help young people understand issues like consent, respect for themselves and others, the “risks of pornography,” and “ultimately we want young people to be safe in the world which they live today.”
The government Minister insisted that the material was “age and stage appropriate,” and denied that the graphic material which had been referenced would be shown in class- adding that she would be “shocked” to “think that graphic material would be shown in that class, or indeed, in any class at all.”
However, Senator Keogan said it was her view that host Kieran Cuddihy failed to challenge the Education Minister, and instead decided that Foley right, and that the whistleblower teacher had given misleading information.
“Rather than discredit the messenger, he decided that the Minister was right and that the whistleblower was giving misleading information.”
The Meath Senator went on to say that the “real lie is the cover-up by both the Minister and the media.”
She said: “The whistleblower on the course discussed how some content is already administered in classrooms in the UK. The WISER programme, a similarly obscene and graphic SPHE sex education course, received complaints from parents in a Galway school some time ago. For the record, the entire course was recorded. I can only discuss a part of that course today.”
“The Minister should be sacked immediately,” she added.
“To those who would retort that children are looking at it online anyway, this is a so-called safe environment to receive information. I need only point to Senator Mullen’s Bill to ban online pornography for minors. It cannot become law fast enough. It is a real solution that ensures children are shielded from sexual content.
“The Minister has spent €9 million on child protection by deactivating smartphones in schools when children’s mental health services are on their knees. A better way to use this money would have been to invest in counselling services in the schools, where they are sorely needed. I call on the Minister to resign. She has presided over and defended this content. It is simply not good enough. Children deserve better.”
‘WORRYING WHISTLEBLOWER EVIDENCE’
Also addressing the issue today, Senator Rónán Mullen urged the Minister for Education to come to the House for a debate about the social, personal and health education, SPHE, syllabus and how it interacts with schools’ child protection obligations and our obligations under the law.
“We did some child protection very well in this country about a decade ago. Thankfully, we have very robust child protection procedures in schools dating from 2017. These mandatory school procedures are informed, among other things, by awareness of the vulnerability of children around sexual matters, the capacity for grooming and the inability of a child to consent,” the Galway Senator said.
“The procedures clearly spell out what sexual exploitation is and how it can link to pornography and sexually explicit material. These procedures, importantly, precede in time the recent push to prematurely sexualise young people through school curricula. They precede the queer theory and gender theory-laden SPHE syllabi, which seek to disrupt dominant and normalising binaries, pretending that such binaries and norms are oppressive.
” These child protection procedures precede the worrying whistleblower evidence from an SPHE teacher concerned by recent Department of Education-funded training courses delivered in DCU, in part by academics sold on queer theory and gender identity ideology. Frankly, it featured such toxic and desensitising material, according to what I saw.”
Senator Mullen said that despite objections to the new SPHE curriculum “delivered by parents” during the consultation and design phase, the NCCA “pushed ahead” with a reductive syllabus “inspired by hedonism under the guise of inclusiveness.”
“Even the ASTI recently proposed to its teachers that they should not teach an SPHE programme if they do not feel confident to do so. That is a welcome but insufficient response,” he added, before calling Minister Foley to “stop covering for educational incompetence.”
“I call on patrons and boards of management in all schools to subject, immediately, the new NCCA SPHE syllabus content and methodology to a full, children-first audit, as is their duty. School boards of management cannot escape the duty to engage in full child protection and risk assessment.
“Despite the constantly expressed steady groundswell of concerns over recent years, the NCCA has created an unforgivable mess and needs to be made publicly answerable. There can be no hiding places. The Minister for Education needs to stop covering for educational incompetence.”
The SPHE controversy also spilled over into the Dáil today, with Deputy Mattie McGrath raising it with Tánaiste Micheál Martin.
“A Tipperary teacher who has taught SPHE over a period of 16 years says she is one of several teachers who have resigned or are considering resigning from their roles because they are completely appalled, sickened and deeply concerned at the new SPHE curriculum, which they say has the potential to be very harmful to young school students,” McGrath said.
“I am not against sex education in secondary schools but the explicit content in this textbook and associated material has crossed a line.”
The Deputy further claimed that the Department of Education had failed to conduct a proper risk or impact assessment on the potential harm this material could cause to young students.
“I call for the Minister for Education to immediately withdraw this textbook from the teacher training. What is going on in the Department of Education? This is not the first time that we have seen things like this. Who is driving this agenda? This has to be withdrawn immediately. I call on the Minister, Deputy Foley, to act immediately and, if not, the Tánaiste should act on it.”
In response, Tánaiste Micheál Martin, said at first that he was not clear if the matter related to teacher training, if it was for adults, or if it was for RSE or SPHE education. Deputy Mattie McGrath clarified that it related to material to be given to students. Deputy Martin said he would refer the matter to Education Minister Norma Foley, and ask her to come back to the Deputy on it.