Parents in uproar following SPHE portrayal of an ‘Irish Family.’

Independent TD for Laois Offaly Carol Nolan has written to the National Council for Curriculum Assessment (NCCA) and the Minister for Education Norma Foley following a significant backlash from parents against what she is describing as an “absurdly misconceived and discriminatory depiction of an ‘Irish family’ in a Junior Cycle SPHE textbook.”

Deputy Nolan, who is also a member of the Oireachtas Committee on Education, Further and Higher Education, said a constituent first raised the issue with her last week and since then dozens of families have asked her to have the offending material immediately removed from classrooms until such time as a more appropriate exercise can be devised:

“At first, I thought this was some kind of parody but astonishingly this is not the case. These images and texts are being presented to our children with a grim and disgusting seriousness that is bewildering to me and many, many, others,” said Deputy Nolan.

“Anyone with an ounce of objectivity looking at these descriptions involving an ‘Irish family’ will immediately grasp the utterly absurd, hateful and sneering attitude that has been adopted,” said Deputy Nolan.

“The typical ‘Irish family’ is lampooned as insular, angry, petty and let’s be honest here, xenophobic and racist while the contrasting family in the presentation is apparently filled with outward looking insight, tolerance, and intelligence. It is almost inconceivable how this trash made its way into a junior cycle textbook.”

“This depiction is entirely wrong-headed and must be removed.

“The (not-so-subtle) messaging here is that any preference for your own cultures music and sport, for example, is now being depicted a marker for racism. This is extremely dangerous territory.”

“A family can love traditional music, the GAA and indeed the kind of Irish food many of us do love without this involving some kind of brain-dead insularity preventing an assessment of the good things inherent in other cultures.”

“I am seeking answers on how this material made its way into the textbooks; material I might add, that is about as disconnected from the reality of what parents want their children to be taught as it is possible to get,” concluded Deputy Nolan.