If you have never heard of the Convention on Education, then you cannot be blamed. Just rest assured, if you have no opinions on the convention, it likely has opinions on you.
The Convention is an ongoing glorified citizens assembly being run by the Department of Education with a view to developing views on the future of life in Irish Schools. It has been granted the power to make recommendations that the Government is committed to taking on board when developing a new long-term strategy for Ireland’s education sector.
It has been taking place across four intensive weekends in March, May, September, and November, with a panel of students, parents, and educational bodies in the audience to hear recommendations and ideas on how to improve schools. The third weekend is taking place in Sligo on Saturday and Sunday.
Those familiar with how Ireland’s “citizens assembly” system worked will be familiar with the setup: Ordinary people herded into a room, and then given presentations that somehow always conveniently nudge the audience in the general direction of the latest left-wing obsession. Sometimes that actually is in line with where the public goes – as on gay marriage. Sometimes, as on women in the constitution, it turns out it’s not representative at all.
But the state likes this model. Presumably because I cannot think of a single example where a citizen’s assembly has not made a recommendation that government would be deeply uncomfortable with.
A little birdie has sent me a copy of the agenda for Sunday, when the main topic for discussion will be “School Values and Culture” Here it is. Note the speakers:
We’ve got BeLongTo, representing the LGBT youth. We’ve got Pavee Point, representing the travellers (that’s two for two on state-funded left wing groups). We’ve got representatives of Educate Together, which is one strand of education in the country, but no representatives of the Catholic or Religious Schools. And we’ve got Dr. Ebun Joseph, the state’s “Special Rapporteur on Racial Equality” who in 2019 asked whether a Galway hotel serving her blackcurrant juice instead of house red was “racism or mistake,” then treated it as a racial slight.
What do we imagine, Dear Reader, that the collective view of the culture and values of Irish schools will be, this motley crew? What recommendations do we believe that they will make to the assembled stakeholders?
And who will be there to balance them out? Nobody obvious from the stage, that’s for sure.
One of the things about Ireland is that a great deal of long-term policymaking happens well away from the public eye, at conferences and venues like this. The Minister for Education will not be present this weekend. Few if any TDs will attend, likely none. The average parent in the average school – not to mention the average teacher, I asked my wife – likely has no idea this event is even taking place.
The recommendations that emerge, however, will be presented to the Department of Education. These will then – most like – be turned into policy. When pressed on that policy, should anything in it be controversial, the politicians will say “well these matters were all addressed by the convention on education, and these were its recommendations”. The public will imagine a gaggle of experts discussed matters thoroughly. Ideally, nobody ever finds out that it was BelongTo, Pavee Point, and Dr. Ebun Joseph.
The fact that the convention is wholly tilted towards state-funded left-wing extremism is entirely the point – you are just never supposed to find out.
And of course, most people could write a perfectly defensible script for what these groups and individuals are likely to say, because it is the same thing that they always say: That Irish Schools are coloured by racism, homophobia, and exclusion. That the curriculum should be changed to be “more inclusive”. That there should be yet more left wing ideology brought into the classroom. That students should be taught more critical theory.
What the public will never hear, when these recommendations are made and presented and possibly turned into legislative proposals, is from whence and from whom they came. They will never hear that when school culture was being discussed, none of the religious schools were represented. Or that there was no conservative or even moderate voice on the panels.
I’ll talk more about this on tomorrow’s podcast, but I think for now the agenda above speaks for itself. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael pretend to govern this country. In reality, they outsource a great deal of the policymaking to people like Dr. Joseph, Pavee Point, and BeLongTo.
It’s all very tiresomely predictable.
In my ideal, the only recommendations would come from Katharine Birbalsingh.
Thanks John very interesting panel such a pity there's no one to represent the normal irish children but I suppose they are irrelevant these days.