Being Irish shouldn’t be a problem for our kids
A section in a textbook for Junior Cycle pupils paints Irishness in the most stereotypical and unappealing way. And all in the name of ‘diversity’
Most parents don’t pay much attention to what is in school textbooks. They are too busy, and they trust the schools to get things right. One of the subjects now taught in schools is Social Personal and Health Education (SPHE). This includes Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE).
SPHE has became a sort of secular version of catechism class. Pupils will learn all about “gender”, “diversity”, “inclusion” and so on, which all sounds harmless enough until you begin to look a bit closer.
For example, when it comes to “gender”, these textbooks generally fully subscribe to gender ideology which is the belief that the “gender” you identify as can be totally unrelated to your biological sex. Therefore, someone born male can identify as a woman and then take part in women’s sports, if the relevant sporting authority will let them.
This is highly controversial stuff, and yet some of these SPHE textbooks teach gender ideology as though there is no debate about it at all and no other point of view. But is this really what most parents want their children to be taught?
The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) has just issued its specifications for a new
SPHE programme for senior cycle secondary pupils, and it flatly defines “gender” as a “social construct”, which is to say whether you are male or female (or something else) has nothing to do with your biological sex.
For some reason, this kind of content in school textbooks never makes the headlines, and therefore parents are never alerted to what their children are being taught.
But what has just grabbed a lot of media and public attention in the last few days is a section of a textbook for Junior Cycle pupils which comes under the heading, ‘All Different, All Equal’.
Again, that seems uncontroversial at face value. Who could be against “difference” and “equality”? It’s like being against motherhood and apple-pie. But under the heading, we are presented with pictures of two very contrasting families, and it is absolutely clear which one the young teenagers discussing this book in the classroom are meant to like.
One shows a very stereotypically Irish-looking family standing outside their home which is, of course, a thatched cottage. We see the two parents and their two children, a son and a daughter. They are all red-haired. The father has a beard. They are all dressed in Aran jumpers. The children are doing some Irish dancing in the background. The father is holding a pitchfork (no, really). They are on a farm. Just how many stereotypes can you cram into one picture? Oh, the father is wearing wellington boots and the mother a tartan skirt.
Things go downhill from there. Under the picture, pupils can read a description of the family and learn they “do not like change or difference”, and that not a single relation lives abroad.
The children’s life paths are already set. They will join the family business, so no choice there, no respect for autonomy. Traditions must be followed. They eat potatoes, bacon and cabbage every day. They only holiday in Ireland, play Irish musical instruments and go to the Fleadh each summer.
They only like Irish sports. The daughter, Nóirín, would like to be a yoga instructor but the family is opposed. They only watch Irish TV programmes and no “imported trash”. Seriously, is there a family like this anywhere in the entire country?
Then we are introduced to a very different kind of family, a modern family. They “love change and difference”. They like “curry, pizza and Asian foods” and are always touring around Europe.
They love all sorts of music and have relations in various parts of the world. The family is “part Irish, part Romanian and part Dutch”. They like hurling, but also English sports such as soccer and rugby.
The eldest brother, Flor, is partially sighted and has just been to America for an operation thanks to a big fundraiser. He now works as a volunteer with the Red Cross in Syria.
Every summer they do a houseswap with a family in a different country. Thanks to all their travels, they are now very broad-minded, although the carbon cost all of these trips is never mentioned, but let’s just skip over that inconvenient fact.
The picture of this wonderful, fun family shows them taking a selfie opposite the Colosseum in Rome.
It’s absolutely clear what message pupils are meant to take away from this lesson, namely don’t be like that narrow-minded Irish family, be like the diverse, open-minded one.
But isn’t that message itself rather narrow-minded, and maybe even a tiny bit racist?
In the name of “diversity” and “inclusion” we are told not to stereotype people and then the textbook does exactly that by painting Irishness in the most stereotypical and unappealing way.
If you are ethnically Irish and like Irish music and Irish dancing, and going on holidays in Ireland, are you supposed to be a bit ashamed of yourself ?
Is wearing an Aran sweater “far right” all of a sudden? Maybe having red hair is suspicious.
EdCo, the company behind the textbook in question has withdrawn the offending section, but how does something like this find its way into a textbook in the first place?
Would a schoolbook in France tells pupils that the less French they are, the better they are?
Also, what would that wonderful, diverse family from the textbook think if they went to France in years to come and it no longer looked very much like France?
This is the contradiction at the heart of multiculturalism. If every country becomes more multicultural, then every country ends up looking the same, meaning the world actually becomes less diverse, not more.
Would you really want Japan to be a lot less Japanese, or India less Indian? I wouldn’t.
The current curriculum for primary schools has “developing a sense of Irish identity” as one of its aims. That is being dropped from the proposed new curriculum. It’s not necessarily easy to define “Irish identity”, of course, but we know it when we see it.
When Joe Biden was here last year, we served up to him everything that was stereotypically Irish including Irish dancing and music and were delighted to do so and no one suggested it wasn’t diverse enough or was too narrow-minded.
At the end of the day, if we’re effectively teaching schoolchildren that the less typically Irish they are, the better they are, then we have arrived at a very strange place indeed.