A new Social, Personal, and Health Education (SPHE) textbook trashes traditional Irish families as backward and bigoted, idealises diverse families and forces students to choose which family they’d prefer to belong to, fumes Niamh Uí Bhriain in Gript. Here’s an excerpt:
Did you know that if you love GAA, and have a family business, and play Irish music, and holiday in Ireland, might be critical of RTÉ, and support Irish filmmaking – and maybe keep hens, and think potatoes are tasty – you are Family A in a SPHE handbook being used in Irish schools since 2023? And its very obvious that Family A are not just inferior to diverse families, but they are probably bigoted, insular and small-minded too.
The chapter in the SPHE book – ironically entitled “All different, All equal” – was brought to the attention of Carol Nolan TD this week by a furious parent who said her 12 year-old son had come home with it from school, having started first year this week. …
Two families are compared in this exercise. If you are more like Family A, you are not diverse, and that is your terrible failing – because failure to achieve that holy grail essential for modern virtue-signalling means that, despite the supposed emphasis on equality, you are definitely and absolutely a lesser family, and you can be subjected to lazy, offensive, stereotyping – not just online or in the media – but in the classroom.
You are narrow-minded, gastronomically illiterate, hicks. You hate people who don’t share the same religion, and even your cattle look slightly stupid probably because they are a reflection on their owners. …
Now, obviously Family A don’t really fully exist, because there almost isn’t a person in Ireland (the country with brutal emigration rates due to ferocious colonialism and indifferent governance) who doesn’t have relatives abroad, or who doesn’t eat pizza or who wouldn’t enjoy seeing a bit of the world, but, of course, not every item in this sneering description needs to apply. If “all your family members are Irish”, and maybe you like Irish dancing and play hurling, the gist is that this is your family, because this is how labels and stereotypes and caricatures are applied, something you’d think the authors of a SPHE handbook would know. Maybe they do, and they wrote this garbage anyway. …
Then we come to Family B, who are obviously preferable in every way because they are diverse and therefore marvellous. Not for them the Stone Age mindset of favouring GAA or learning slow airs. Look, they have smartphones and pizzas, and funky square glasses are obviously super-mad-craic and lovely and gorgeous and kind and open-minded. We haven’t a bad word to say about them.
They “love change and difference” and support their kids in whatever life-path they choose, unlike rotten Family A who are forcing their poor children to slave away in the mouldy old family business – but hey, why would the families who take great pride in being the second or third or fourth generation to be productive members of society passing on an essential trade and providing employment, be offended? (Irish people aren’t allowed to be offended anyway, we’re too far down the misery and exploitation hierarchy despite 800 years of living under the lash of arid censure to quote Donagh McDonagh). …
But this absurd, insidious classroom exercise actually gets worse. The kids are then told, after discussing the advantages and disadvantages of Family B (though there are obviously no disadvantages in the description) that they must decide which family is more inclusive? Gosh, one wonders what answer the kids have been primed to give?
And then we come to the most egregious part of the exercise: “After your class share their answers to the first three questions decide which family you would choose to belong to”.
We’re rating families in the classroom now? Under the pretence of respecting diversity? This is actually a disgusting exercise in the bullying of schoolchildren whose families, like being Irish, are proud of being Irish, and who therefore could find themselves targeted in a way in school – an outcome that should be completely and absolutely unacceptable to any parent.
You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.