Irish Examiner view: Changes for a changing country

The primary school curriculum in Ireland is to undergo a huge overhaul.

Yesterday, the first major overhaul of the primary school curriculum in 25 years was brought to Cabinet by Education Minister Norma Foley.

Under the proposals, primary school pupils would move towards a broader curriculum, including foreign languages, an increased focus on maths, science, and technology, and a greater emphasis on pupil wellbeing. 

There will also be more time dedicated to arts, as well as social and environmental education.

This is a reimagining of the curriculum to reflect a changing Ireland — and a changing world, as evidenced by a new focus on environmental issues, for example. 

There is a lot to like in the proposals, though they stop short of addressing the question of homework.

What is likely to feature in the headlines and consume much of the debate on school teaching, however, is the potential inclusion of teaching about transgender identity issues, something that was supported by both the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste earlier this week.

“It just makes sense to me that education is about teaching children about the real world,” said Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. “And trans people exist in the real world.” 

He was responding to the Catholic Primary Schools Management Association, which provides advice and support for chairpersons, principals, and boards of management in more than 2,800 primary schools. 

It has sent a letter to Ms Foley and Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman stating that teaching primary school children about transgender issues “would be counterproductive, generating unnecessary divisions in school communities where none now exists”.

In a context likely to appeal to future historians, the presence of a religious school management association linked to almost 3,000 primary schools is a clear result of the State abdicating its educational responsibilities to the Catholic Church many decades ago. 

Identifying the errors of the past will hardly make the forthcoming period of public consultation on the curriculum any easier — though it could be a warning to participants in that debate. 

Ideology dictating the implementation of policy can have long-lasting consequences.

Transgender issues make up a particularly combative front in the modern culture wars, and there is likely to be more debate — and more heated debate — on this aspect of the curriculum revamp than on the rest of the proposals put together.