The State doesn’t trust parents to teach their children about sex

‘The gloves are off’ writes Senator Ronan Mullen with a government that refuses to ever acknowledge concerns or admit mistakes …leaves very little room for trust

Over 2.5 million viewers on X heard Late Late Show host Patrick Kielty reassure fellow chat show host Jimmy Kimmel that “this is Ireland and you can say whatever the f*** you want”.

The gloves are off, it seems, and perhaps parents need to take the same attitude regarding the new primary school curriculum, which is now being rolled out, a curriculum which according to the Minister of Education will be ‘inclusive, empowering, and deeply relevant’ to children’s lives.

Many parents and teachers are concerned that the curriculum offering is more intrusive than inclusive. What if, instead of being empowering and relevant, the curriculum manipulates young minds and undermines the values that their families and teachers want to foster in them? There is good reason for caution and pushback. Many parents raised objections last year when it appeared that the new primary curriculum was veering into gender ideology and attempting to prescribe (without any evidence base) that gender was a ‘spectrum’. The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment pulled back on that one, temporarily anyway. But to listen to the Minister this week, any pushback on the new curriculum was based on ‘misinformation’.

Refusal

The refusal of Government to ever acknowledge concerns or admit mistakes in this area leaves very little room for trust.

What we do know is that, as part of the Wellbeing component of the new primary curriculum, children must “begin to understand sexual orientation as describing attraction to someone of a different gender, the same gender or more than one gender”. So primary school children will have to be told about homosexuality and bisexuality. Gender ‘fluidity’ is being soft-pedalled for the moment, but the curriculum-moulders will still regard that as progress.

Children may be harmed by the wrong teacher with the wrong attitudes teaching the wrong material, at the wrong time, and perhaps using the wrong textbooks as well”

Teaching about realities that are objectively factual can be reasonable, if it addresses what children are encountering in their lives. But when are children ready for the discussion? No two children mature in the same way and at the same pace. Nobody can judge as well as parents what their children are ready to learn, and when. And no educator has any right to undermine the wellbeing of any child through inappropriate content – even if the content might be deemed appropriate for another child. Any child receiving any school instruction must be developmentally ready for it, with guidance that matches their emotional and cognitive maturity. Children may be harmed by the wrong teacher with the wrong attitudes teaching the wrong material, at the wrong time, and perhaps using the wrong textbooks as well.

Trust

But the State doesn’t trust parents to teach their children about sex. And the State, meaning the people who run the State right now, for whom many Ministers act as fronts, wants to put across ideas on sexual matters that don’t sit with traditional religious beliefs of most people, Christian or otherwise. Whatever good there is in other parts of the curriculum, dealing with P.E., science, technology and maths, the arts etc, the State is on a mission when it comes to sex and relationships. They will claim that it’s about respect, and preventing toxic and unhealthy sexual and inter-personal relationships as children mature into adulthood. If only it were so.

People who choose to send their children to Christian schools, even ones funded by the State, should expect, and are entitled, to have those values fostered as normative, rather than strange or toxic”

They might then realise that schools with a Christian ethos, which were founded by Christian people, are among those ideally placed to educate children for a virtuous life. That encompasses many issues, but when it comes to sexuality, the focus is on respect for every person in their distinctness and on preparing for lifelong marriage as the true and good context for sexual relations. That, of course, is a radical and revolutionary view by today’s standards. But it still makes sense. And people who choose to send their children to Christian schools, even ones funded by the State, should expect, and are entitled, to have those values fostered as normative, rather than strange or toxic.

There are questions about how the Patron’s Programme, the two-hours in the week that the Department of Education grudgingly acknowledges to be the domain of patrons of religious-run schools, will relate to the rest of the school curriculum.

Assumption

The assumption may be that, in Catholic schools, this time will be used to prepare children for the sacraments. At the rate things are going, this time may be needed to put the content of other parts of the curriculum into proper context. The hope must be, however, that Church patrons and trustees will insist that the ethos of their school won’t just be reflected in the Patron’s Programme but will permeate all teaching in the school. They have a Constitutional entitlement to that. Freedom of conscience and the free profession and practice of religion are guaranteed to every citizen and “every religious denomination shall have the right to manage its own affairs”. That includes education where, the Constitution tells us, the State shall “require .. that … children receive a certain minimum education, moral, intellectual and social”, “shall provide for free primary education and shall endeavour to supplement and give reasonable aid to private and corporate educational initiative … all with due regard, however, for the rights of parents, especially in the matter of religious and moral formation.”

Terms like ‘homophobic’ and ‘transphobic’ are themselves capable of being used to bully people with legitimate and reasoned, not to say normal, Christian moral beliefs”

Those who are running schools need to be especially vigilant whenever the State tries to engage in ‘moral formation’. Recently, I came across the terms of the Department of Education’s anti-bullying procedures which require primary and post-primary schools to prioritise concepts of ‘homophobic’ and ‘transphobic’ bullying when developing anti-bullying policies. For a Christian school, all bullying, for whatever reason, is wrong, and there should be no hierarchy introduced by naming one kind and not naming another. What’s more, terms like ‘homophobic’ and ‘transphobic’ are themselves capable of being used to bully people with legitimate and reasoned, not to say normal, Christian moral beliefs.

Some parents are of the view that they and their patrons were bullied into accepting this anti-bullying policy. Somewhere along the way, people tend to forget that a Department of Education circular isn’t law. It is secondary to what’s in the Constitution, to legislation and ultimately to the rights of parents and those whom they choose to educate their children.

Parents need to assert this when and however they can. Even The Late Late Show has given them permission to say what they think. And church leaders with the challenging task of negotiating with the State and managing schools for the community, mustn’t bottle it.