Most people have no idea what the Convention on Education is, what it is doing, or who is informing it. I got my hands on the agenda for this weekend. It's quite something: johnandsarah.ie/p/dr-ebun-jo…

Trouble brewing in the maths curriculum... thefitzwilliam.com/p/leaving…

Here's a tweet from the NCCA about Jones Irwin's speech during the redevelopment of the primary framework. It promotes the view that the role of the curriculum is to teach students to "read the world." The idea that students must learn to "read the world" in addition to normal literacy refers to Paulo Freire’s vision of education as a tool for fundementally altering the very fabric of society. "Reading the world" means viewing the world through a very specific lens. Focusing on power, oppression, and group conflicts, students learn to apply a neo-Marxist critique to understand social, cultural, and political conditions. By doing so, students learn to not only analyse and question the status quo but also to dismantle so-called oppressive social sturctures (e.g., race, class, gender etc) through collective action. This is what I mean when I say that our educational reforms are intended to radicalise students. The point of this type of education is to create revolutionaries out of our children. Like Marx, Freire believed that the current state of society alienates us from our true nature (which is collectivist). Through developing critical consciousness, Freire believed that students would be motivated to take action to transform society, liberating them from the structures that he believed maintained this state of alienation. When you see education described as "transformative," this is what it is referring to. Add it to your list of 🚩 words and pay close attention to the meaning behind the words when you see this phrase in documents. The question is from what and to what type of society are we transforming into? They will tell you it is a more equitable, democratic and humanistic one. But history has taught us that tyrannical leaders (for instance, Lenin and Mao) always sell their tyranny to the people by framing it in this way. And remember, Freire referred to Mao's cultural revolution, in which several million people died, as the "most genial solution of the century." Genial? No. Horrifying, yes. These ideas are dangerous. The fact that the NCCA has knowingly reformed our educational system, from early years up to senior cycle, to explicitly include these ideas is mind-boggling and chilling. This deserves much more outrage from parents and society as a whole than it is currently getting. The fact that Norma Foley received 10,000 first preference votes despite the coverage of the appaling changes to SPHE scares the crap out of me. We're in deep trouble if people don't wake up to what is happening within education and demand an end to it.

My submission to public consultation for Climate Action curriculum was not represented whatsoever in 'summary of public consultation'.

What has been done to Irish education is a travesty. A band of overly zealous sociologists are running the show and systematically destroying the curriculum across the board. Our politicians are sitting back, oblivious, and allowing it to happen. People need to wake up and realise how bad things really are. The people making decisions on what the curriculum should look like are not experts in the subject disciplines. They have no background in psychology and the actual science of learning. Their "expertise" is in the sociology of education (Jason Arday types). They are fundamentally altering the purpose of education. They don't give a damn about whether your child is being properly educated, they are using education as a means to transform how society works, socially and politically. Not a single citizen gave the NCCA a mandate to do this. It is undemocratic. This has been tried before elsewhere, and failed. Their fantasies for a transformed society never play out as intended because their ideology is absolutely moronic and fundamentally misunderstands human nature and fails to account for the consequences of what it imposes. When will the NCCA be held accountable for the destruction of the curriculum, for attempting to usurp democracy and parents constitutional rights in relation to their children's education, and for wasting colossal amounts of taxpayer's money on bogus consultations and performative redevelopment processes?

I looked up the lobbying registry a few years ago and found that she is one of the most-lobbied politicians by the genderist activist groups

The wicked grow bold as they are tolerated.

The same issues keep arising in all subject redevelopments because the NCCA is pursuing its own agenda - and that agenda has nothing to do with the transmission of subject knowledge or the building of proficiency. The NCCA sees itself as the architect of radical social transformation, far overstepping its remit. It needs to be reined in, and quickly.

So, we have Jim O'Callaghan strengthening the rules around Irish citizenship while the ultra-ideological @NCCAie issues a syllabus seeking to turn pre-school children into 'global citizens'. Can the Government see the contradiction?

PISA: across OECD countries, disadvantaged students lost 4 points in reading. "Advantaged" students lost 20. The gap narrowed because both groups lost ground but the advantaged group lost much more. So, here's what modern education can do: it can provide equitable outcomes by making everybody stupid all at once. But, hey, at least they're closer together.

Remember that PISA is a lagging indicator and reflects how 15 year olds have been taught over roughly the last 10 years. This is just a glimpse of what is to come. We will only begin to see the real damage of the NCCAs redevelopments over the next two or three cycles of PISA. It's all downhill from here.

The explosion of therapy language has not provided teenagers with better mental health outcomes. What it has done is give them a therapy lexicon from which they can pull any number of pathologies to explain ordinary anxiety, sadness, awkwardness, and discomfort. Kids gain social capital in certain circles by trading mental health diagnoses. Schools often reinforce this themselves. Wellness programs and SEL teach impressionable teenagers to interpret perfectly normal parts of adolescence through a therapeutic lens. But, most of the time, a teenager is just an ordinary teenager. And schools should be MUCH more careful about Trojan-horsing pathology into ordinary adolescence experiences.

I am not at all surprised that @CarrollJennifer has not issued a statement about the recent ALCI scandal and appears to be ignoring the risks to children posed by trans ideology. Back in 2022 after the publication of the interim Cass report, she pushed for the Tavistock–Crumlin pathway to be re-established despite all of the concerns that had been identified.

The HSE cannot simply disown the content provided at its conference by the ALCI. The ALCI is a Section 39 organisation which has been funded over several years by it, using taxpayers money. womensspaceireland.ie/posts/…

Basically, FF/FG TDs need to cotton on to the fact that NCCA-driven changes to the curricula are driving down standards (maths), or trying to turn kids into Soc Dec/Green voters. Then they need to pressure the Education Minister.

The resignations from the NCCA Leaving Cert Maths development group are incredibly important. The NCCA is not fit for purpose. They must be brought in front of the Oireachtas Committee. The issues within the NCCA run much deeper than problems with the LC Maths syllabus. Listen to the interview below with Prof Pauline Mellon and Humphrey Jones describing their concerns with the development process in both maths and science. Parents have been shouting from the rooftops about issues with the NCCA for a long time, and now, we see that those same concerns have been identified by those with internal involvement. To summarise, Prof Mellon identified the following issues: 🔸️ She felt NCCA personnel tightly controlled the process and outcomes. There was a lack of open discussion. 🔸️ Feedback from those with expertise on the development group was not taken on board. She, and others, raised concerns and produced several documents which were not seriously considered or circulated within the DG. 🔸️ She states, "The NCCA does not routinely, or formally, or systematically, in any way, involve subject experts" and further adds, "That does not appear to be accidental because similar concerns have been raised with other subjects." 🔸️ She has no faith in the consultation process because although the public consultation received a lot of feedback, the DG was not povided this feedback prior to producing the final specification and was informed that this was NCCA policy. Humphrey Jones (Chair of the Irish Science Teachers Association): 🔸️None of the consultation data was shared with the DG before the final specification was produced. 🔸️ Under FOI they accessed the raw data from the consultation submissions and found that in terms of tone and content, the actual feedback bears no resemblance whatsoever to the NCCA's 19-page Summary Report on the consultation. On this last point - I can personally attest to the fact that summary reports are not an accurate representation of feedback. I made a submission during the consultation on LC History. The summary report exclude my feedback entirely, claiming they received all positive feedback and agreement with the aspects of the specification that I expressly critiqued. It is now abundantly clear that NCCA is driven solely by their own agenda, that consultations are nothing more than box ticking exercises, and that they routinely ignore not just parent feedback but also expert feedback. The NCCA have gone rogue and are destroying education. They need to be disbanded and there needs to be a full investigation into all curricular reform that has taken place from 2015 onwards. @Education_Ire @1Hildegarde @Toibin1 @1PaulLawless @kenoflynnTD @MichaelFitzmauriceTD @RichardODonoghu @CNolanOffaly rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/4f…

First we have the ALCI pulling bios off its site, now the HSE is hiding its 2016 breastfeeding action plan. We can only presume that there’s been a male lactation agenda for quite some time. Now it’s been exposed …. and they’re scurrying to cover their tracks. This is unacceptably underhand & dishonest behaviour from state & publicly funded bodies. WHEN ARE WE GOING TO GET ANSWERS FROM THE MINISTER? @CarrollJennifer @HSELive

The manner in which ALL subjects are being revised by @NCCAie needs to be looked at, not just maths. The ideological rot has done very deep. @AnMailleach @danobrien20 @Casey5122dark @timcrowley_