It's time to take lessons about civic duty and ethics off the school curriculum before children get hurt, writes Fintan O'Toole.
WHENEVER THERE is a discussion about the apparent lack of interest in politics shown by most young people, someone suggests the need for more political education in schools. Actually, in the current climate there is a need for much less political education in schools. It would be far better for our young people to remain blissfully ignorant of politics than to preach to them about democratic values and then encourage them to watch news and current affairs programmes. The contrast between what they are taught and what they encounter is a perfect school for scandal. If we hold up their political leaders as role models, we will raise a generation of amoral cynics.
Recently, when the controversy about Cathal Ó Searcaigh first blew up, Fine Gael's Brian Hayes raised in the Dáil the possibility of removing his poems from the Leaving Certificate curriculum. Mary Hanafin made sympathetic noises about seeking advice from the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment. "As a former teacher who taught these poems, I can understand the case could prove difficult for teachers." They would have to talk, she said, not just about the texts but about the poet's own life and behaviour.
Given this concern that Ó Searcaigh's rather beautiful poems might have a corrupting influence on the young, I couldn't help wondering if the same might not be true to an even greater extent of the statements and behaviour of some of our leaders? Are they fit for young ears? If it's difficult for teachers to have to explain the complexities of the human heart in relation to a poet and his poetry, might it not also be a little difficult for teachers to teach children with autism without the minimal required facilities?
Might the delicate moral sensibilities of the young not also be offended by hearing Mary Hanafin, around the same time, berate a school in Castleknock in Dublin for not accepting children with autism simply because the HSE was refusing to provide occupational, behavioural or language therapists? In Junior Cert classes all over the country, kids study Civic, Social and Political Education. According to Mary Hanafin, it aims to "equip students with an awareness of their rights and responsibilities, and the values, knowledge and skills for ethical decision making. I am also conscious of the need for positive role models for our young people."
There is a new edition of the standard CSPE textbook, Make a Difference! On page nine there is a big picture of Bertie Ahern with a long quotation from a speech he made in 2006: "Our civic duty calls on us to look beyond our purely private roles and rights as consumers to our active roles and responsibilities as citizens." The accompanying workbook has a rap that defines some of those responsibilities: Obey the law, you know it's right/Don't vandalise, rob things or fight/Pay your taxes, careful when you drive/Know the rules, arrive alive.
On the sausage factory principle - if you saw them being made, you wouldn't eat them - it is surely crucial that we keep this kind of material away from our young people. What would happen if they asked why, if civic duty overrides private gain, the role model they are being presented with took large private donations while holding public office? What if, in their development of a capacity for "ethical decision making" they happened to overhear Dermot Ahern's recent assertion that "Charles Haughey was a great politician" whose acceptance of £8 million from donors was not corrupt? What if they started to wonder whether the injunction not to "rob things" (like money given to your political party) is really so absolute after all? What if they had followed the Mahon tribunal and started laughing at the "pay your taxes" bit?
It is surely a matter of urgent importance that this offensive material be removed from the curriculum. The CSPE course is perpetuating sinister and subversive notions. One of its core principles, for example, is that "every person is responsible for their actions towards other people at all levels. Irresponsibility results in self-interested or careless actions which can be damaging to other people." Any young person whose level of political consciousness has been raised higher than that of a dead gnat knows that this is completely untrue. No one, especially a government Minister, is ever responsible for anything. When damage is done to other people, the blame lies with "systemic failure". Teaching kids otherwise will merely confuse and disturb them.
We should scrap the CSPE course on the grounds that it is better to keep young people ignorant of politics than to give them object lessons in hypocrisy. This may be hard on the publishers of well-intended textbooks like Make A Difference! who persist in the naive belief in personal responsibility, civic duty and public morality. But there is another market they could aim at. I can think of at least one cabinet and a few parliamentary parties who could do with a crash course in civic, social and political education.