Why we must be careful not to correlate gender identity and religious education
The INTO Congress passed a motion last week calling for the removal of the relatively recent rule that all teachers that wish to work in a Catholic School must possess a Certificate in Religious Studies. (Ironically, this is offered by a secular institution and doesn’t specify this is Catholic Religious Studies, such is the overwhelming monopoly of the system.) It was one of several motions passed at the Congress and it caught the attention of almost all the mainstream media.
Like many media outlets, they also posted the story on X.
While I wasn’t surprised to see a number of responses claiming that these teachers are cursed with the 21st century affliction of “wokeism” and the several bot accounts claiming that Ireland is a Catholic country and the unions are Communists who are trying to remove god and Irish culture to be replaced by Sharia Law, (I’m not sure what the link between Communism and Sharia Law is but that’s for another day,) but I was surprised to see a growing opinion that the removal of religious instruction in schools correlates to gender identity lessons being brought into schools. The argument seems to stem from a view that gender identity is a new religion.
As you can see from the post above, it received more “likes” than RTE’s original post. The post asks whether teachers will have to attend workshops on gender identity in response to the news story that teachers voted in favour of removing the Catholic religious certificate. There is no other way to interpret this post as the idea that “the new religion” of gender identity is to replace “the old religion” of faith formation. It’s clear that many people agree.
Not only is trying to make this connection a ridiculous idea, it is also dangerous. I will explain where I believe the root of the idea comes from before explaining why the link is ridiculous. For the rest of this article, I will be using the term “gender ideology.” This isn’t because I agree with the term but I am using it as the language that people are using.
I also should state that I do not have strong feelings on the teaching of gender in primary schools because, unlike those trying to make a moral panic over it, I know that gender identity is not on the curriculum and I know that if we have children in our schools with questions over their own gender, schools work with their families and we give them whatever support that is needed, without judgment.
The seed of the idea that teachers are “indoctrinating” children into “gender ideology” comes from a couple of places. The first is from the Busy Bodies pamphlet which is written by the HSE. It is not part of the primary school curriculum. The PDST (now Oide) made a workbook for teachers based on the pamphlet and it contains nothing on gender identity, as it is not part of the primary curriculum. The Busy Bodies pamphlet is designed as an information booklet for families, not schools.
The second place that “gender critics” are placing their ire is from resources from NGOs such as BelongTo and TENI. They also reference a particular video from the INTO which explains how a teacher introduced a “social transition.” Again, “gender critics” will point to the video as proof that schools are “buying into” “gender ideology.”
That’s a lot of quotation marks — and the reason for them is that all of the above is opinion and conjecture. I can understand why those that are gender critical would baulk at some of the resources as they do not accept there is more than two genders but the purpose of the above is not to judge this view, more it is to explain where it comes from.
Where it leads is my main worry. For example, a moral panic has been created that all children are being taught or will be taught “gender ideology” in schools. It reminds me of the moral panic that was circulating around Relationships and Sexuality Education that children were being taught how to masturbate.
Moral panics tend to bring out emotive language and “gender ideology” is no different. Even the term “ideology” creates a potentially dismissive tone. However, terms like indoctrination, colonisation, cult, agenda, etc. are emotive and their purpose is to claim that they are a threat or that their purpose is brainwashing or propaganda.
For example, Colfer has written her thoughts on what she calls “The colonisation of the Irish Curriculum,” where she outlines what is being taught in primary schools. Particularly in Ireland, colonisation evokes powerful feelings. She states:
Ireland is no stranger to colonisation. The arrival of the Vikings, Anglo-Normans, and subsequently the English, changed the trajectory of Irish culture, society and people. Today, rather than raiders stealing silver chalices from monasteries, plundering resources and grabbing land, a soft-colonisation is underway involving the implantation of gender identity theory throughout the Irish education system.
Another emotive word — plantation.
However, it would be unfair to judge Colfer on her blog or X posts. Emotion is allowed. In fact, I don’t doubt Colfer’s integrity and I believe it is important to ask questions about perceived norms. Colfer generally backs up her convictions with international evidence. The following is a letter she wrote to the Irish Times regarding the Cass Review in the UK.
The reason I am using Colfer’s musings is because I respect her opinions even if I don’t necessarily agree with them. As I said, I don’t have strong feelings about the topic. I am still learning.
However, one thing I do have strong feelings about are the attempts to link religious instruction in schools to gender identity.
In Ireland, 96% of primary schools are patronised by religious bodies, 90% of which are the Catholic Church. This allows religious bodies to provide 2.5 hours per week to faith formation. Faith formation means passing on the word of god to the children. This is done without a critical stance. Faith formation is otherwise known as Religious Instruction or Indoctrination.
Indoctrination — the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically. (Oxford Dictionary)
Those who are gender critical have not tended to be critical of religious indoctrination, and furthermore get annoyed when faith formation is described as indoctrination. For example, Dee from Raheny who I have mentioned a couple of times in my podcast.
While I find it somewhat funny that the most vociferous critics of “gender ideology” often will also defend religious education in denominational schools, this is where the link between gender and religion begins and ends.
Colfer, and others, infer that “gender ideology” is replacing “religious education” in schools. Their logic stems that the decline is religious indoctrination must be replaced by another form of indoctrination — in other words a void must be filled with something else. Plenty of other “ideologies” have come into the world since the decline of religion — civil rights for people of colour, women’s rights, decriminalisation of homosexuality, to name three. It is interesting that none of these are linked to “gender ideology” — for now.
This is where the danger is. By linking two unrelated “ideologies” where as one goes down, the other fills its place, it creates a false narrative that the only way to stop one is to save the other by any means, and worse, claim that its fall is caused by the other. Links can easily be established by those that want to find them. For example, the marriage equality referendum passed very easily in 2015. Pride festivals and Pride flags were ubiquitous around the country. Things have changed. While only anecdotal, the reaction to Pride flags in the last couple of years feels very different.
In recent years we have seen protests where anti-LGBTQ+ protesters enter libraries to try and remove books with, what they claim, are innappropriate for children.
While some people are amused by the green hoodies, given what I’ve said already about indoctrination in schools, these scenes are a more sinister aspect of the debate around gender identity in schools.
Aoife Gallagher, Senior Analyst with the Institute of Strategic Dialogue told a journalist in The Journal:
The protests follow a similar pattern to anti-vaccine, anti-migrant and anti-refugee direct action protests that have taken place in recent years. Demonstrators usually enter a library and locate the books, before repeatedly questioning staff about their content, and if they will be removed. (https://www.thejournal.ie/library-protests-ireland-6135746-Aug2023/)
Gallagher describes it as “outrage bait.”
The “success” of gender critics is that it has successfully managed to harness the fears of many people around gender, and this fear is being harnessed by more sinister factions of society. These people have form — we saw the protests around mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw the first unexpected street riots in the capital and the burning down of buildings from people that were riled up so much by anti-migrant rhetoric. How long will it be before the words on X around gender identity turn to violent action?
Attempting to convince people that the decline in religion in schools is linked to gender identity will simply add another layer to an unlinked agenda. For example, last year Barbara McCarthy caused potential security issues for a primary school in Dublin when she released a story claiming a teacher had insisted on the children calling them by their preferred pronouns. No such thing happened but it didn’t stop the more sinister members of society from believing it to be true.
One has to wonder how safe does an LGBTQ+ teacher feel in a primary school now compared to ten years ago. With the attempt to link the secularisation of education with the growth of gender identity education, what will the future look like for any teacher in terms of “undermining the ethos?”
When Enoch Burke was dismissed from his position, it was not because he refused to call a student by their preferred pronouns, but because of his behaviour towards the school management. Again, more sinister members of society have been very successful at convincing people otherwise. This story is still very much live and the narrative refuses to go away.
By all means, I think it’s very important that we do discuss gender and education. There are strong feelings on both sides of the divide. Those that are opposed to it need to be listened to because if they aren’t their voices will be driven into the underground belly of chat forums on Discord, Signal and similar. These are the places where the more sinister lurk and recruit and it’s where that conjecture can fester and become more and more real to those who can be convinced. In fact, it may already be too late. Reading the replies to that thread, it’s impossible not to see that there is a strong belief that the growth of “gender ideology” in schools is because of a decline in traditional religious beliefs. Colfer eventually accepts this is the case though with enough doubt to keep the seeds germinating.
I am not offended by Colfer’s views but I am very concerned about the impact it will have on the progress we have made over the last 40 years in trying to separate church and State. Creating the false narrative that there is a link may unravel so much of the good work that’s been done. This will mean the continuation of the structural discriminatory system that those complaining about indoctrination don’t seem to mind.
The trouble is that it won’t stop there. If they succeed in linking religion to gender and keeping Ireland as a “Christian” country, what other “Christian” values might follow? One doesn’t have to read a Handsmaid’s Tale or The Prophet Song to see the risks as we only have to look to the US, where women’s rights to abortion became illegal and how there has been a record number of books banned in public schools.
The same people who will join in the calls against “gender ideology” also like to extend their hatred to all LGBTQ+ people, Muslims, Jews and migrants. We only have to look across Europe to see the number of countries who have elected right-wing politicians. I will be shocked if we don’t elect at least one in the local elections later this year.
I guess my hope is that we are careful about the associations we make when we stand very strongly on an issue. If we do where there aren’t any, we run the risk of joining these associations. If I decided to conflate Christianity with anti-Semitism, which once was the case — Jews can often still be called Christ-killers — it doesn’t take much to dehumanise Jews further by linking them to all sorts of other things. Again, we know only too well what came of that.
