One might expect opinion writers, activist groups and politicians, who are never slow to exploit a major news story to advance their agenda, would at least check the research before mouthing off with dogmatic certitude. Last week, the focus on what needed to be changed, if our society was to cleanse itself of gender based violence, was on a number of things like prevention, reform of the judicial process and sex education. Somewhere in the mix, the Church took a rap as well for having created the misogynistic climate that still fuels ‘toxic masculinity’ in Ireland, notwithstanding the fact that Ireland has established itself among the most fiercely secularist countries in the world.
Too wide a focus is unlikely to drive change effectively however, so, not surprisingly, this week the spotlight has come to rest on the thing that allegedly lies at the root of our moral rot, single sex education, or sex segrated education to use PC rhetoric. According to The Irish Examiner’s Elaine Loughlin, sex segrated education is as ‘bonkers as gender based grocery shopping’. Not the happiest of comparisons on many counts as it draws our minds to the conspicuously segregated world of retail, especially in the areas of beauty and fashion. However, it is, more significantly, a trite and offensive apples and oranges analogy that shows little understanding of the seriousness and complexity of educating young minds and forming character. Education has always acknowledged the value of segregation on the basis of age, aptitude, general ability, language levels as well as gender, particularly in the adolescent years. It may be more or less beneficial on one point or another but there are, at very least, arguments on both sides.
The fact that the Slovak suspect in the horrific killing of Ashling Murphy was presumably educated in a co-educational Slovak school system that has long lost all traces of religious influence, has been lost in the rush to embed this story in the narrative of Ireland’s regressive and repressive educational system that nurtures ‘toxic masculinity’ and stalls our progress towards, in the words of Elaine Loughlin, ‘a more equal and inclusive society’.
In an age that lauds ‘evidence based’ policy and argument, the assertions of people like Elaine Loughlin, Cork’s Educate Together spokesperson, Colm O Connor and Labour’s Education Spokesperson, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, are based on nothing more than hunch at best or, more sinisterly, self-interest and ideological prejudice.
As Louighlin’s article points out, Ireland has the second highest number of single sex schools in Europe, after Malta which she characterises as a priest ridden backwater despite the fact that Malta became the first European country to ban gay conversion therapy and seems at least as advanced along the path of secularism as Ireland. Its homicide rate at .8 per 100,000 people, is slightly behind Ireland’s figure of .7 but both are significantly better than more liberal countries like France, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden, countries long committed to co-education within a secular educational system.
Another interesting piece of data to emerge as a challenge to the misogynistic Ireland meme, earnestly and piously trotted out by Mary Lou McDonald, was the revelation that priest haunted Ireland is a safer place for women than the very flagships of global secularist liberalism, Canada, New Zealand and Norway. So if the evidence is leading to any link between single sex education and gender based violence then the only possible conclusion is that a safe environment for women may well be supported by single sex schooling.
Of course, correlation is not causation but it at least raises reasonable questions about the way associated trends may enforce each other. On the other hand, the likes of Aodhán and Elaine and Mary Lou have not the merest wisp of evidence to support their claims. In fact, it is worse than that. Their desperation for anything that looks like supporting evidence finds them sawing off the branch on which they sit. Aodhán Ó Ríordáin has previously claimed that ‘significant numbers of young women born since 2000, are experiencing violence’ to build his case for the abolition of single sex education which also, let us not forget, serves as a proxy for his campaign to end private, faith based education per se. The problem for Aodhán is that single sex schooling -currently about 30% of Irish post primary schools- has been giving way to co-educational schooling in that same period, continuing an already well established trend. Why then, we might ask him, are not things improving, not even the tiniest whit, in fact the very opposite, getting worse and markedly so?
It is one thing to make assertions without evidence but it takes some chutzpah to make assertions in defiance of the evidence. When Aodhán Ó Ríordáin stood up in the Dáil in 2020 to opine that single-gender schools are ‘a contributory factor in domestic violence’, one might have expected him to reference some body of research to back up his view. He offered none. He ought to have known that in 2011, the World Health Organization (WHO) conducted multi-country research which concluded that education of itself, offered protection against domestic as well as other forms of abuse against women. In identifying the factors associated with domestic abuse, alcohol came first. Other factors considered significant were cohabitation, young age, outside sexual partners, childhood abuse and attitudes supportive of wife-beating.
Is there research to show that perpetrators of violence come mainly from the diminishing number of single sex schools? Is there research to the contrary? Research is moot unless it enforces what ideologues already believe. Aodhán Ó Ríordáin has said, ‘nothing can convince me that that (single sex education) isn’t part of the problem’. He has made his mind up. History, he would probably say, is on his side so who needs evidence? In the context of the present discussion, he has stated that ‘parents have deeply held views on the matter’ without acknowleding the legitimacy of those views. For leftist ideologues, single sex education is itself toxic, ‘a fake environment’ as Ó Ríordáin put it, something to be forced out of our culture when parental resistance can be overcome as overcome it will be, by policy if not decree, should Aodhán Ó Ríordáin ever become Minister for Education.
What we do know about single sex schools is that their students tend to do better academically. Parents can read the league tables and make up their minds on that question. If one accepts that gender may be a factor in learning patterns and subject selection, that adolescence is a time when the safe space of single sex education may be beneficial, that time and resources may be more strategically directed in a single sex school then who is anyone to say that your views and choice have no legitimacy? Indeed there are credible claims, based on the social, developmental and educational needs of young adolescents, to be made on both sides of this argument. That is why it is important to allow individual families to make choices based on the needs of their individual children.
Aodhán Ó Ríordáin is right in saying we are ignoring the ‘elephant in the room’ in this discussion. It is however not what he thinks it is, or wants it to be, single sex education. It is alcohol. It is clear that our historic relationship with alcohol remains a significant social problem. In 2019, major research conducted by WHO found that Ireland was among the countries with the highest level of per capita alcohol consumption in Europe. A study by The Lancet magazine, also from 2019, found that ‘Ireland has one of the highest per capita consumption rates in Europe’. More worryingly, it also concluded that overall alcohol consumption here was an upward trend.
There is little national focus on our problematic relationship with alcohol and the way it poisons family life and relationships. Children from socio-economically disadvantaged homes and neighbourhoods are more likely to be exposed to both excessive alcohol consumption and violence. This is what conditions them to repeat the pattern. Is there not a political dividend for politicians in addressing such a social challenge? Public awareness campaigns are used for all sorts of health and welfare issues so why not for this? There is also another social toxin that we should consider before blaming ‘toxic masculinity’ on single sex education and that is the newer cultural phenomenon of drug addiction. According to WHO ‘ interpersonal violence and illicit drug use are major public health challenges and are strongly linked’. Compounded, these twin forms of substance abuse along with rising concerns about porn addiction, could go a long way in explaining the surge in violent attacks on women. It would also point the way towards concrete,constructive remedies based on actual evidence rather than ideology.