During an interview in New York, Irish writer Nuala O’Faolain commented that she both loved and hated Ireland. I feel the same. I love Ireland for many reasons. I love how we collectively mourn the deaths of our poets and musicians, how we laugh a lot, cry a lot too. I hate Ireland for one reason. I hate the way it hates women, and again and again and again the ways in which it fails to protect them.
How ceaseless the violence against Irish women and children has been across the decades.
Teachers have some small contributions to make in changing this culture. Discussions about sex and consent, respect and equality should exist along the very spine of our education system. And yet, in many schools in Ireland of all places, of all places, we curtail these conversations. We curtail the role of the educator. The State proactively silences open conversations about sex and consent and pornography. Ethos trumps freedom. The State permits 90% of its primary schools to teach Flourish, a programme designed by the Irish Catholic Bishop’s conference, a group of celibate men.
The same programme tells small girls that they are perfectly designed to procreate with God. It denies them bodily autonomy and it tells them what a family should look like.
There is no room for God or silence in how Ireland discusses sex.
The Union of Students Ireland (USI) surveyed 6,000 people last year and found that 30% of female college students had experienced non-consensual sexual penetration. NUI Galway surveyed over 600 secondary school students and found that only 58% of boys felt verbal consent was necessary, 67% of girls said the same.
Open, secular relationship and sex education is essential for Ireland to change its gruesome legacy of violence against women and children.
Last Friday, Pat Kenny’s Newstalk decided to explore the importance of Catholic schooling for Irish parents. They invited David Quinn, the director of the Iona Institute to speak. Just him. He confidently declared that most parents are happy to go along with a ‘catholic lite’ school system, suggesting that a removal of the sacraments would be an inconvenience. Yet every single message sent into the show from listeners, from Irish parents, seemed to say otherwise.
What people fail, or indeed refuse, to see is the line between this censorship of education, this societal laziness, and the continuation of abuse in our country.
It is not simply about sacraments and the inconvenience of doing them ourselves. The integrated curriculum, the influence of Catholicism on other subjects, like relationship and sex education is something we need to acknowledge. We tell ourselves Ireland is known internationally for our education system — for the lauded Leaving Certificate. We forget we are far better known for the horrors of the Magdalene Laundries.
I read about pro
