A PROPOSED NEW SPHE curriculum for Leaving Certificate students has attracted some controversy online because critics suggest that it will teach students about Critical Race Theory and white privilege.
“Following the revelations that [Education Minister] Norma Foley wants to teach Irish kids about ’white privilege’ I’m calling for Norma’s immediate resignation,” one Twitter post that was retweeted hundreds of times said.
In a now-deleted tweet, Conor McGregor also hit out at Foley and the draft syllabus, sharing a post which read: “Education Minister @NormaFoleyTD1 reveals she wants Irish children to be education [sic] in school about their history of white privilege.”
“This is radical American critical race theory that has NO place in Irish schools.”
A recent Gript article called Draft SPHE Curriculum Wants Children Taught About “White Privilege” begins: “Ireland’s new draft SPHE curriculum features a range of recommendations, including around ‘white privilege,’ ‘male privilege,’ and gender ideology.”
It is unclear why the terms white privilege and male privilege appear in quotation marks. Those terms never appear in the draft 23-page draft curriculum; no one is being quoted.
A lot of claims are being made about the terms ‘critical race theory’ and ‘white privilege’. But what do they mean? And are they going to be taught to Leaving Cert students?
Critical Race Theory (CRT) has been at the centrestage of American culture wars in recent years.
A memo sent to US agencies by the Trump White House banned federal agencies from spending money on training that included “critical race theory” or “white privilege,” which it characterised as “divisive, anti-American propaganda”.
CRT has also been the frequent target of US rightwing figures such as Florida’s “anti-woke” governor Ron DeSantis and former Fox News firebrand Tucker Carlson (who also, puzzlingly, said he hadn’t figured out what it was, even “after a year of talking about it.”).
The Encyclopedia Britannica defines CRT as a “framework of legal analysis”, based on the idea that “racism is inherent in the law and legal institutions of the United States”.
Essentially, CRT is a framework for understanding the history of the United States and the way its society currently functions.
While concepts developed by CRT advocates have been applied to other subjects, and to countries outside the United States, the same could be said of almost any academic discipline.
Some US states have explicitly banned CRT from being taught in schools or government agencies (though critics have argued that these bans targeted something that wasn’t been taught in the first place).
Another term quoted by critics of the new SPHE syllabus is “white privilege”, a concept often associated with Black Lives Matter protests, left-wing American academia, and post-colonial theory.
The term is primarily used to discuss advantages held by people who appear Caucasian, even if those advantages are not racist or caused by racism.
While mostly used in an American context, the term has also been used by international scholars, though often to refer to very different situations than their US counterparts, such as assumptions that white people only speak English.
Historically, the term was used to describe the status of white people in America before the civil rights era who were not subject to the same explicit segregation and discrimination affecting non-white groups.
However since the late 1980s, the term’s meaning has shifted to refer to advantages experienced by those who are white, even those which are unstated, unconscious or taken for granted.
These are said to include the experience of seeing people of your own race represented in the media, or being able to buy “flesh-coloured” plasters as standard that match the colour of a white person’s skin.
But are these two concepts going to be taught to Leaving Certificate students?
The proposed SPHE curriculum or, to use its official name, the Draft Senior Cycle Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE) Specification, was developed by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA), a group appointed by the Department of Education.
The NCAA advises the Minister for Education on school curriculums and assessment.
The current SPHE curriculum covers subjects like mental health, gender studies, substance use, relationship and sexuality education, as well as exercise and nutrition.
The draft SPHE curriculum for the senior cycle (ie those who have completed their Junior Certificate), is currently undergoing a public consultation phase until 18 October.
This means that anyone, including students, guardians and teachers, are asked for feedback on the proposed curriculum.
Other consultations, with in-person groups and experts in the subject of SPHE, have also been held to develop the new curriculum.
According to the draft, Learning Outcome 3.6 of the proposed syllabus states that students could “demonstrate allyship skills to challenge unfair or abusive behaviours and support greater equity and inclusion”.
The term “allyship skills” is where the controversy appears to stem from, and the draft has provided a definition.
“Allyship skills: refers to the actions, behaviours, and practices used to support, advocate and collaborate with others, in support of justice and equity,” it says.
“Allyship involves recognising and using one’s privileged status (for example as white or male or Irish person) to support individuals from minority identity groups.”
While the words “white” and “privileged” are both used, the term “white privilege” with its academic baggage is not.
As such, the use of this term in quotation marks to criticise the syllabus is somewhat misleading.
Moreover, at no point is the phrase ‘critical race theory’ mentioned in the document either.
Although there is a clear overlap with the draft’s definition of allyship and some meanings of the term “white privilege”, any associations with the US, or Critical Race Theory, or being ashamed of being white, or Irish children being taught that they have a “history of white privilege” are made by the readers and are not found in the text.
Moreover, the syllabus is still a draft: there is no guarantee that students will be taught this in future, although it is possible that they might.
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