Secret Teacher: We still don't talk about our bodies openly in Irish schools

High school students at school, wearing N95 Face masks. Sitting in a classroom and writing lessons.

My friend told me a story a few weeks back about her little girl getting her first period last summer. When schools were going back, her daughter was told to bring only a lunchbox due to Covid restrictions. She was anxious about where she should keep her sanitary products; she didn’t want anyone to see them. My craft-savvy friend saved the day by sewing an internal pocket in her skirt.

The story stuck in my head. I wish a young girl in 2021 didn’t have to feel so awkward about having her period. But I’m not surprised to hear she does. We still don’t talk about our bodies openly in Irish schools; how their desires and functions differ, how they impact our lives. In too many classrooms, too many students feel ‘othered’ by the curriculum. They feel invisible in heteronormative institutions, sustained by religiously conservative boards of management.

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. So said Nelson Mandela. But what if the system of education refuses to change? Does its society stop changing too? I think so. And I think it’s happening in Ireland.

Throughout the twentieth century, children went through our school system without learning about sex and sexuality. As our Taoiseach said in his speech last week, “We had a completely warped attitude to sexuality and intimacy, and young mothers and their sons and daughters were forced to pay a terrible price for that dysfunction.” The mother and baby homes are forever etched in our national psyche and rightly so. But while we rightly rail against the church and state we must ask ourselves what we’re doing now to make amends.

The answer?  Not nearly enough, and it’s time we each took responsibility to change that. Irish schools still have the right to omit objective sex education from their curriculum. The Education Act of 1998 legally affords them that right, and nobody seems willing to change it. A survey of school inspection reports in 2016 showed one third of parents knew nothing about the sex education being delivered in their child’s school.

Too many parents seem uninterested in the fact their child’s school might be avoiding clear, objective, discussions around consent, contraception and sexuality. Or, indeed, that schools are inviting Catholic groups like Accord and Pure of Heart to speak to their students about abstinence with pro-life agendas. These groups discuss sex through a heterosexual moral lens; they leave LGBQTI students feeling marginalised and excluded.

The ‘profound generational wrong’ that Micheál Martin attributes to our past is ongoing. How many Irish teens feel judgement through silence? Our Taoiseach tells us young pregnant girls were once treated as ‘outcasts in schools.’ How many children are encountering the same shame in schools that refuse to recognise and represent them and their life choices in the education they receive?

Leo Varadkar, speaking about Irish women and children in mother and baby homes proclaimed, “As a society, we stole from them the lives they should have had.” How many lives are we stealing today? How many children are being bullied for being gay or different? How many schools look the other way when it happens? The Taoiseach describes Irish people in the past as ‘lacking empathy, understanding and basic humanity.’ Have we changed? Certainly, we’ve passed progressive laws in our referenda, but are they evidenced in every school playground? How can they be if they’re never discussed in class?

The Taoiseach knows our government has stalled legislation that could change the lives of countless young people. The Objective Sex Education Bill would ensure all children learn about consent, contraception and LGBTQI rights, without a moral narrative. In his speech last week Micheál Martin linked what happened to women in our country’s past to ‘a dearth of sex education’ which ‘often left young women confused or unaware of why of how they’d even become pregnant.’ This is still happening. Only now, the silence and dearth of sex education occurs alongside a culture of pornography, sexting and cyberbullying. That is where our young people go to learn about sex and relationships. And we are letting it happen.

The bill, like many others put forward by the opposition, is being delayed on the grounds only the government can propose bills that would increase public taxes or expenditure. The government argues they would have to train teachers in the new curriculum, and it would cost money. Teachers are trained every year into new curricula in many subjects. Continued professional development is the responsibility of every teacher. The money excuse is not good enough. Especially when people’s lives are at stake.

The abuse of women and children has not stopped in Ireland. Calls to domestic violence and child services have soared. Rates of assault in our universities are going up, not down. The sex industry is booming. I hear people complaining the Church and State are not taking enough responsibility for what happened in our past. They argue they had the power and so they must shoulder most of the responsibility. I wholeheartedly agree. But we must not forget the part played by society, by neighbours, gardaí, social workers, siblings, and parents. We must not let ourselves off the hook completely. Not then. Not now. Not ever.