Irish Curriculum Bid to Present Gender Identity Theory as Fact

What is a curriculum? What are its aims and objectives and who does it serve? Most people don’t ask these questions because we trust that those responsible for designing what is taught to children do so with their best interests at heart. In Ireland, the responsibility for designing primary and secondary school curricula lies with the NCCA, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment. The chain of trust between parents and teachers, and by extension to the curriculum has been damaged by the NCCA’s decision to present gender identity theory as fact. Gender identity, an internal sense of one’s own gender, which may or may not be at odds with one’s biological sex, is a highly contested theory and many Irish parents do not want it taught to their children. However, gender identity is already being taught as fact in Primary and Secondary Social Personal and Health Education curricula (SPHE) and the Relationships and Sexual Education curriculum (RSE).

The intention to teach gender identity theory in the Irish schools was evident 10 years ago. In 2013 Vanessa Lacey, the then Health and Education Officer for TENI (Transgender Equality Network of Ireland), told a Dáil (Irish Parliament) committee that books about gender identity should be available ‘not just in second and third level education but in primary school..….that will ensure children as young as two to five years are aware of their gender identity’. Developmental psychology has demonstrated that children do not understand that their sex is permanent across situations and time until they are about age 6 or 7. Once they develop this understanding, they begin to act as members of their sex. To interrupt that process of development with the idea that ‘boys can be girls and girls can be boys’ can cause profound confusion and distress. This precise statement appears in a 2019 video produced by the INTO (Irish National Teacher’s Organisation) to support teachers socially transition primary school pupils. The once freely available video is no longer evident on the public section of the INTO website but is evidence of the approaches that are being promoted to primary schools teachers by a teaching union.

In 2022 the NCCA produced a draft specification for the revised Junior Cycle curriculum (ages 12 to 15). It included the statement that students should be able to ‘appreciate that sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression are core parts of human identity and that each is experienced along a spectrum’. The existing Junior Cycle curriculum already signposts teachers to an online toolkit that clearly endorses the belief that everyone has a gender identity. The Relationships and Sexuality Education unit, produced by the Health Service Executive, Ireland’s equivalent to the NHS, in association with BeLonGTo, an LGBTQI+ lobby group, is a disturbing mix of illogical fallacy and downright misinformation. The resource conflates sex with gender, failing to define either in a glossary of 28 terms used throughout the document. It defines sexual orientation in relation to an individual’s perception of themselves as being male or female rather than their physical body, going so far as to claim that a ‘lesbian is a woman who is mainly attracted to women’, instead of stating that a lesbian is a female exclusively attracted to females. The unit promotes the unquestioning ‘ affirmative ’ model of care and fails to mention desistance or desisting or refer to data that showed that, without social transition, nearly two-thirds of pre-teen gender-dysphoric males grow up to be gay or bisexual.

The Senior Cycle curriculum (ages 15 to 18) is in the process of being revised, but the NCCA is already promoting gender identity as fact as is evident in its online Gender Identity and Gender Expression E-Resource for second level schools produced by the University of Limerick (UL) and TENI. This resource defines gender identity as “a person’s deeply-felt identification as male, female, or some other gender. This may or may not correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth”. There is no scientific evidence to support this.

Research conducted by the NCCA found that teaching SPHE varies greatly within and between schools although it is described as a required subject. . Only 17.5% – 22% of schools offer SPHE at senior cycle level and even then, parents have the Constitutional right to refuse permission for their child to participate in some or all aspects of the course because the modules can be taught discreetly e.g. personal hygiene, human reproduction and gender identity. However, if teachers follow the recommendation in Section 9 of the UL/TENI E-resource teachers will “Ensure that gender identity and gender expression are incorporated across the curriculum”. This E-resource offers suggestions on ways to teach about Gender Identity and Gender Expression in a range of subjects. This goes so far as to incorporate gender identity, for which there is no scientific evidence, into science classes. How science teachers will reconcile the concept that humans can change sex with teaching about human reproduction is unclear. History teachers are asked to consider a response to a question posed by a student that Joan of Arc was transgender. It will be logistically impossible for parents to remove students from classes where gender identity is taught because the theory will be ‘baked into’ every subject.

The curriculum is an instrument of power through which policymakers define what should be taught and how. Who decides what is taught, and why, is a matter of public interest and it is unsurprising that the recent public consultation on the draft Junior Cycle SHPE/RSE curriculum elicited over 4,000 responses. Submissions that were critical of the content were described by the NCCA as being ‘so similar, both in substance and in wording, as to suggest that the responses were based on a petition-style communication emanating from a small number of groups.’ This is a disturbing characterisation of legitimate concerns. A long overdue public discourse about gender identity theory is now beginning to crystallise the shared concerns of many who had not articulated their reservations before for fear of being accused of intolerance and bigotry. The NCCA has an obligation to be transparent, to declare what values it operates under, to explain why it has chosen to teach these beliefs as fact and to take seriously the concerns that have been articulated by parents.