WATCH: Niamh Uí Bhriain on Niall Boylan Show re SPHE

SPHE is often used as a trojan horse to introduce class lessons or campaign groups which are controversial, and parents were outraged in the past week to discover that a schoolbook for use in SPHE portrayed traditional Irish families as being narrow-minded, bigoted and insular. 

Niamh Uí Bhriain's piece on Gript Media on Saturday received a huge amount of attention, as parents, teachers and TDs and Senators were made aware of exactly how grossly offensive the material was. She began: 

Did you know that if you love GAA, and have a family business, and play Irish music, and holiday in Ireland, might be critical of RTÉ, and support Irish filmmaking – and maybe keep hens, and think potatoes are tasty – you are Family A in a SPHE handbook being used in Irish schools since 2023? And it's very obvious that Family A are not just inferior to diverse families, but they are probably bigoted, insular, and small-minded too.

The chapter in the SPHE book  – ironically entitled “All different, All equal” – was brought to the attention of Carol Nolan TD this week by a furious parent who said her 12-year old son had come home with it from school, having started first year this week.

At first glance, it’s actually laughable, being so wildly clichéd and asinine as to almost be beyond offensive, and, in fact, many people sharing it online yesterday thought it was a parody. But actually, there’s nothing funny about it.

Two families are compared in this exercise. If you are more like Family A, you are not diverse, and that is your terrible failing – because failure to achieve that holy grail essential for modern virtue-signalling means that, despite the supposed emphasis on equality, you are definitely and absolutely a lesser family, and you can be subjected to lazy, offensive, stereotyping – not just online or in the media – but in the classroom.

You are narrow-minded, gastronomically illiterate, hicks. You hate people who don’t share the same religion, and even your cattle look slightly stupid probably because they are a reflection on their owners.You eat bacon and cabbage every SINGLE day because you hate variety and are therefore deprived of good taste or even taste buds or shops or something, or because you are too dim-witted to discover other meats – even though you keep hens – not to mind pasta, and really exotic stuff like spinach, or maybe frozen veg.

You like the Fleadh Cheoil and attend every year, which obviously means you hate all other music, not because – in common with vast swathes of the country – you love your ancient, beautiful culture, but because you are afraid of diversity. You are not inclusive or open-minded enough to see that anything and everything is preferable to what is uniquely Irish. But you are also a control freak, so you won’t let your kids listen to anything else or watch Hollywood movies.

If your children are unfortunate enough to be in the classroom when this passive-aggressive bullshit is being read aloud (as ordered by this absurd, pathetic, vile schoolbook) they have to close their eyes and listen while Family A is being described, presumably with the right mixture of condescension and contempt, by their teacher. They have to “close their eyes and imagine what it would be like to live in this family”, with the obvious subtext of “imagine the horror”.

Most people reading the page from the SPHE handbook yesterday couldn’t believe this garbage could be real, and is actually included in a schoolbook that they’ve paid for. Your taxes also pay for it to be read aloud in the classroom that you’ve entrusted your kids too – so that your kids, who maybe like GAA and maybe play trad, and God forbid, maybe speak Irish too – are being sneered at while the entire classroom can join in a critique of how awful your family is.

Now, obviously Family A don’t really fully exist, because there almost isn’t a person in Ireland (the country with brutal emigration rates due to ferocious colonialism and indifferent governance) who doesn’t have relatives abroad, or who doesn’t eat pizza, or who wouldn’t enjoy seeing a bit of the world, but, of course, not every item in this sneering description needs to apply. If “all your family members are Irish”, and maybe you like Irish dancing and pay hurling, this gist is that this is your family, because this is how labels and stereotypes and caricatures are applied, something you’d think the authors of a SPHE handbook would know. Maybe they do, and they wrote this garbage anyway.

Look at the words being used, by the way, and imagine your child in the classroom being made to feel that because they are proud of their Irish heritage, and because their parents committed the cardinal sin of marrying another Irish person, their family is being lampooned in this exercise. “No foreign games are permitted.” “We get told off if we mix with people with a different religion”. “Our parents complain” ete etc. Nasty, small-minded bigoted parents, who won’t let their son play drums because they hate foreign things, and by implication foreign people too.

Also imagine, if you will, what the reaction would be if this was written about an Indian family. “They eat curry every day. They only like other Indians. They won’t let us talk to Catholics. They only let us watch Bollywood. We can only play the sitar.” There’d be an immediate uproar, and a Late Late national examination of conscience, followed by Fintan O’Toole articles about how we needed to atone for our wrongdoings by taking out a subscription to the Irish Times.

   

TDs and Senators called for the book to be withdrawn, saying it was "anti-Irish" and "discriminatory", wth Carol Nolan TD saying:  “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." 

“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,” she said.

Niamh also spoke to popular radio and podcast host, Niall Boylan, on the issue, where she said that the books needed to be withdrawn and called on Norma Foley to make a statement on the matter. 

     

  

The publishers have now apologised and said they will withdraw the lesson, but Ms Uí Bhriain says that an investigation must take place as to why the lesson was approved for publication, and calling on the Minister to make a public statement.