The woke national curriculum

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]Hello and welcome to this week's episode of My Granny is Irish and this week we have the uh the lovely David Quinn from the Iona Institute with us. Um so it's great to have you on David. Uh I thank you last week uh all of you for your comments um on uh on the podcast. So, uh, David, we've got about 45 minutes here, and what we are going to do is I I saw your piece in grip on the history curriculum, um, or at least the proposed history curriculum, um, and what that might mean for Irish students studying that subject. My daughter will be one of them. Um, we are also going to touch on the Pope taking on the tech bros. Will he be the one person to bring them to heal when it comes to AI? And finally, we are going to talk about birth rates.

[00:00:46]uh both of which are down well all over the globe really apart from a few in the global south but in particular uh was in the news in the UK and Ireland. So um yeah so tell me then David what will my daughter perhaps be learning on the leaving certificate history uh curriculum? I think it's currently in draft stage but if you just take us through what your concerns might be.

[00:01:10]>> Okay thank you. So basically um the organization in charge of reviewing everything that gets taught in our schools and coming up with curricula for all subjects from preschool by the way all the way up to leavingert is the national council for curriculum and assessment which we call the MCCA and really that's an organization that people need to keep a really close eye on because it operates more or less absite and out of mind and it is the one that wants to play an absolutely huge part in the lives of your children. My children are out of school. When anybody with children in school or children you to go to school or plan to have children, the NCCA is actually going to loom large in a way they don't know in their lives. And what you can see increasingly happening right from primary sorry right from preschool all the way up to the day they leave school is the overarching ideology that the NCCA obviously wants to operate within the kind of operating systems of all these courses and that is basically what we like to call woke ideology which I'll explain as we go along but if you start off and I get to the leading search soon if you start off even with preschoolers there's a draft career curriculum for preschoolers and the explicit aim repeated multiple times is to turn them into something called agentic global citizens. Agentic means independent.

[00:02:36]There's no mention of turning them into Irish citizens. It's global citizens.

[00:02:40]There's no such thing, by the way, legally speaking, as a global citizen.

[00:02:43]This is just a concept that they've essentially dreamt up out of their heads. There's Irish citizens. There's lots of people coming into the country.

[00:02:50]We need to integrate them. That means turning them into Irish citizens. But this is not an aim. The aim is to turn them into global citizens, which without, it seems to me, much connection to a little place we live in called Ireland, which is a truly bizarre and perverse thing to do because you'd imagine again they'd be doing the opposite. If you're coming in from Nigeria, you want to make them Nigerian Irish, like the Irish were Irish Americans or Irish English and all that kind of thing. But that doesn't seem to be an aim. So this starts off right at the very beginning in preschool. your three and four year olds get exposed to this idea of becoming agentic global citizens and then it works its way right through the entire schooling. So people worry about Catholic indoctrination in schools which as we know is the greatest failure in world history. It's a failure to be put alongside a failure to teach us the Irish language. As you know we all learn it in school from the time we're four or five and we come in hardly speaking a word and then and then we forget what we learned. Anyway, the best hope here, by the way, is that um the kind of left-wing indoctrination that they want to subject children to will fail at some level. Trouble is, that kind of indoctrination has been reinforced at every single level of society, from the movies we watch to the TV programs we see to the videos we see online to all the celebrities pumping the same kind of diversity, equity, and inclusion view at us. So anyway, the latest manifestation of this that I drew attention to uh is in the draft leaving search curriculum course. Um so I was writing about that as you say in grip a few weeks ago and they have a background brief for that and there was a consultation and the deadline for consultations is now closed. But if you look at the back grand briefing for this um it talks about for example uh that children are to be taught about these is this is not even their children but they can be called children uh and acquainted with extreme political movements and ideologies. All right and included among them is nationalism. Now look at the term extreme political movements. We already have a very low term being used and they are juxtaposed against movements campaigning for climate action, social justice and equality. And when you see that kind of language being used, it becomes pretty obvious where the NCCA sympathies lie.

[00:05:08]So essentially nationalism is uh slugs and snails and puppy dogs tales and movements where climate action and social justice and equality are sugar and spice and all things nice. So the theme couldn't be more obvious and more black and white.

[00:05:22]So do they actually say that that nationalism is an extreme political movement?

[00:05:27]>> It's in among them. Yes. It talks about extreme mo extreme political movements and ideologies. Um the brief continues the importance of supporting young people to acquire and develop the historical conscious consciousness and sensibility to explore these phenomena and the conceptual understanding to interrogate them critically and that this is more acute now than ever. So in other words, they want to be able to critically analyze these extreme political movements and ideologies. Um, and and and and presumably to come out sympathizing with these movements with climate action, social justice, a a term that needs to be unpacked and equality, a term that also needs to be unpacked.

[00:06:10]>> Okay. I mean, David, aren't aren't you actually there's two there's two concerns I have. Number one, um, is are you really just scaremongering here? And number two, are you just increasing my workload, which I'd rather you didn't because you know, you say we should keep a close eye on the National Council for Curriculum >> and assessment. Yeah.

[00:06:30]>> But the truth is, isn't it that like I have an eye on like every other parent out there, right? And isn't it this goes to a more serious point, you know, is that all of these bodies, you know, that inferious people like yourself of the Iona Institution or Gri and think put under the microscope are are are funded obviously and they're busy working away um arguably undermining the values that a parent might want to pass on to the to their children. So the the the real truth is there is no way any parent is going to keep a close eye on the national curriculum. Okay. the you got you got your laundry to do, you've got the the dinners to do, and if I can get the kids to do their homework, then you know that's that's h I consider that a win. I'm not going to be going through uh you know with a fine tooth comb what's happening with the with the with these guys in the national curriculum.

[00:07:21]So I guess there's two questions is number one and I have put this in different issues as I I think I put this um to Stella Mali lately. Why is it that these critical state bodies seem to be stacked towards, you know, pushing what I might call what we would call woke left ideology. Wherever you turn, that's the ide ideology being pushed. It can be the NG an NGO. It could be, as you say, a curriculum. um you know they in the in the UK it seems now the police are completely infested with it with with incredibly serious um circumstances and you know pe people the the ordinary voter does not have time to challenge this right they've got mortgages to pay they've got homeworks to supervise and and that's about it and then so that's the first thing is why and then secondly um the uh oh yeah should we be worrying about it because if you say you know it's It's this left-wing indoctrination probably best case scenario would be that they it'll be as success successful as the Catholic indoctrination as in not very successful at all. And it is true is my my big complaint with the with the kids um especially when it comes to history is that they just don't know anything you know and and uh you can put this curriculum and there's a few exceptions obviously that have that that really know what they're doing but they are as you say the biggest influences are things like the TV um you know uh I knew what you did last summer or whatever it is um you know the Snapchat don't start me on the Snapchat and the the the YouTube Um, and the the other one, the Tik Tok. These people are far more influential than whatever it's going to be cooked up by the national curriculum people.

[00:09:10]>> Okay. So, I'd say a few things. Number one is, you're right, parents are too busy to really think about this sort of thing. And that's what they're counting up. Okay. We're all too busy that there's very few of us bother to go uh to actually read all these things. I mean, I do this kind of thing professionally. If I wasn't doing it professionally, I wouldn't be doing it in all likelihood. So, what instead you get is if you kind of isolate the people around the country paying attention. I mean, I know people who actually do do this in their spare time. And I just take my hat off to them that they actually go to the bother of trying to find out what's going on here. Um, am I scaremongering? I wish I was but absolutely 100% not because this kind of DEI ideology as I say starts out in prechool and goes all the way up to the day your children leave school and today with the leaving start as at the time that we're recording this. So it is absolutely riddled throughout it. Now would it be as unsuccessful in imparting this ideology as um as religion class or as Irish class? H the trouble is it's getting reinforced everywhere. I mean, people who come out joining um and chanting with Greta Thornberg or on behalf of the Palestinians um are voting for Captain Connelly. They didn't come out of nowhere. They have a very self-reinforcing ideology that they see pushed at them from every single direction. A lot of the time they are happily embibing it. A lot of the time they they are not. They're just kind of passively embibing it. people do not see uh you know catechism class um or re class reinforced throughout the day by the celebrities and the movies and so on.

[00:10:48]>> Yeah. Isn't that the fault then of the local church? You know because a lot of this stuff as I said is is is totally pushed through Tik Tok and things like that. That's why politicians want to get on Tik Tok. It's far more influential.

[00:10:58]So why why don't the Catholic your local Catholic church whip up a a couple of curriculum, you know, a couple of catechistic lessons on on TikTok and and and push it through there?

[00:11:08]>> Um well, I I suppose they probably neither of the they neither have the skills nor the resources nor very famous people. However, and I don't want to get too far off the point. I mean, there are very successful um apps online um which are religious and content. the hallow the hall app for example in America that is people I think Chris Pratt involved with it and I think Matt Damon maybe involved with it as well I might be getting his name mixed up with some other famous guy >> I think I know it's Wahberg is it Wahberg >> it's Mark Wahberg yes you're quite right I always get those two mixed up by the way um so anyway there are quite a lot of those successful apps um which do seem to be interesting some young people in religion there seems to be some evidence of a slight openness to religion uh among some young people who are in their early 20s and late teens and that kind of a thing. But I just want to um just you know stress and build up the case for why uh there's no scaremongering going on here. So for example, if you look at the politics and society course, okay, now there's only about 10,000 of the 70,000 even um kids do it, but 10,000 is not insignificant.

[00:12:22]>> Oh, so just just pause David. So now you're talking about a different subject now, politics.

[00:12:27]>> Yeah. Okay. So there's history.

[00:12:28]>> So I'll go back to history. I'll go back to history. But I what I want to show is how this goes across subjects.

[00:12:33]>> Yeah.

[00:12:34]>> So the politics and society course, it deals with 27 thinkers uh among other things. But if you look at the 27 thinkers, about 20 of them are firmly on the left. People like Edward Sed and Naam Chomsky among others. There's about two could be considered genuinely right-wing or conservative. There's a few who are kind of centrists, but the overwhelming bias is leftwing.

[00:12:59]>> Oh, do you have do you have more names there? Can can you Sorry.

[00:13:02]>> Um, I have a few of them listed. So, one of the conservative ones is Samuel Huntington. There's a kind of libertarian guy called Robert Nosik.

[00:13:12]Among the left-wing thinkers, Chomsky.

[00:13:14]>> Yeah.

[00:13:15]>> Karl Marx. Um, Edward S. He's somebody who's very kind of anti-colonialism, but again that's a term that needs to be unpacked. There's a one called I never heard of her, Sylvia Walby, and she works on theories of patriarchy. Okay, another term which needs to be unpacked.

[00:13:34]I don't know the full list here. It's easily found for anybody who wants to look up the politics and society course, but they're in the process of revising it as well. So they consulted with students about this and some of the student feedback they got said we think it's a bit biased you know we think you need to have somebody for example if you're somebody criticizing patriarchy we might need somebody to push back against this and actually allow them to critically examine some of the critiques of patriarchy and what do you mean by patriarchy and so on. Yeah. And so here's what the NCCA said in response to the students who worry about the bias of the course. The NCAA the NCCA says it's worried about quote potential risks associated with including theories that may be at odds with a human rights approach.

[00:14:22]>> Wow.

[00:14:23]>> So therefore you include anything else that's considered conservative or underright and this is anti-human rights. You see they use all these terms in incredibly loaded ways. Social justice, who can be against this?

[00:14:35]Equality, who can be against that? and who could possibly be against human rights. But then again, you've got to explore what they mean by all these things because they are not harmless neutral terms. And it's not as if because you're a conservative, you're automatically anti-human rights, although that's actually what they believe and is what they want the children to believe as well. And by the way, the English course, so surely that's harmless. No, it's not because for example, one of the books they teach is um small things like these. Oh yeah.

[00:15:07]Yeah.

[00:15:08]>> Recently made into a movie about a magnet and laundry operating in Ross in 1985 except actually that Magnet Laundry closed in 1967 but never mind about details like that. But the point is this book is in the course. H there's a book that actually Nevie V mentioned to me yesterday and um it's a poem and it's about the Anne Love it case in Granard back in the 1990s. She's this poor unfortunate teenager who died having a baby um um under a grotto with a Virgin Mary and this caused huge consternation at the time rightly so in many ways but I think also um this was used as a kind of um cure which to beat Catholic Ireland because this could only have resulted in a Catholic country which by the way is not true but that's a subject for another day. There's a lot of very distressed teenagers out there for all kinds of multiple reasons, including at the present time. Um, but you can see again what they're trying to do is cast Catholic Ireland in a bad life. And you see, just getting back to the history course, they want to have a look at all the various institutions, magnetries, mother and baby homes, industrial schools. Now, they are putting in the mental hospitals um from from the past, the or the mental asylums as they were called. They were easily, by the way, the biggest institutions of the country by a country mile. They were run by the state. But I'll bet they do not get the kind of coverage in the course they deserve. But if we're to judge by what's going on at the politics, sorry, in the English course, it is very likely when they deal with the likes of the Magnumies and the industrial schools, these will be completely or almost completely hung around the neck of the canopy church, uh people are going to come out of school and as usual, they will have the Gothic horror version of nuns in their mind. I'd be absolutely amazed if it gives a balanced idea of nuns and priests and religious.

[00:17:02]>> Yes. Well, look, I do I do agree with you. I do think I think my daughter has already has already read that book. Um, and uh, as you >> small things like these, you mean?

[00:17:11]>> Yeah. Yeah. I I think what what what always irritates people like you, you and me, is and as you know, I've I've written about especially to him repeatedly gripped is the headlong rush to judgment and the total lack of balance. M >> the total lack of context being given or the fact that this was going on in other countries particularly in the UK. I think there was a a piece in in the Sunday Times a few weeks ago about a a mother who said she was looking for her child who had been taken in a Church of England institution. you know, as you say, this the casting of uh the Catholic Church and MagdalaRries as unique to Ireland, number one, and also uniquely the Catholic Church, >> you know, it's just not it's just not true. Um and because there is there and and the the agenda there is, I think, as you say, to to move um to move even Catholic children away from from those kind of values. H it's it's totally what I would say is as I said it's a lack of balance the lack of proportion taken to it. I mean it's propaganda right it's not it's no longer a history course then it's a um it's a propaganda course. Um so that is that is the other problem. I mean what are what are some of the main key topics in the history course? I mean other than learning about how evil the nuns are. I mean are we covering any of those key wars? Well, it's >> or conflicts or or anything like that is that does I mean do do yeah you know does that >> yeah so so I mean that'll all be in there I mean it deals you know made so the leaving search history deals mainly with um modern history >> so modern world history is judged to begin 1917 and why 1917 because that's when the bolster revolution happened in what became the Soviet Union it's a kind of slightly curious year to uh to begin uh Ireland begins a bit earlier in the late 19th century but if you Look under the world history course. I mean there's a thing called strand two. I'm just looking here what I wrote. Um and strand two of the history course deals with critical inquiry and interpretation. And the word critical sounds fine but the word critical as critical theory or critical race theory. What it all it always means is left-wing theories about race and left-wing theories about history. So that's what the word critical means. this kind of leftwing ideology brought to history and allowing you to interpret history in a leftwing way. So it has um for example as a movement for change the anti-apartite movement in South Africa which is perfectly fine but I hope it will also give uh kids the option to learn about another big movement for change that was extremely important with the 20th century which is for example the solidarity movement in Poland >> that helped to bring down communism. was an immensely important movement. So are all the movements for change that they're going to highlight are they going to be basically anti-western movement? Is it movements is it going to have any anti-communist movements? I mean communism was a rather big deal in the 20th century. It goes from basically 1917. So they begin that year and of course it doesn't end on in in Europe until the early 1990s with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. So this is a huge trance of history.

[00:20:25]Unbelievable numbers of people died.

[00:20:27]Unbelievable numbers of people were oppressed. If we're dealing with a world view whose primary concern is to divide the world into the oppressed and the oppressors, how are they going to deal with one of the most oppressive movements of the 20th century, namely communism. I mean, I'm just dying to see how it's going to handle that. Or is the or is the focus going to be on Western colonialism chiefly? And I very much suspect that's what it's going to do because we find elsewhere. These are some of the themes they might introduce children to. Communism in different contexts, USSR and China. Now, I don't know what kind of comparisons they're going to be doing there. And to what extent are they going to critique how communism operated under the Soviet Union and China? Then we get over to Cold War front line, the Iron Curtain, Cuba, and Vietnam. Now, I would bet under Cuba, it'll be all about the American enemy and the American sanctions and blockade on trade with Cuba and the American attempts to overthrow Castro. Vietnam, it'll be about the Vietnam War, about French colonialism, then the Americans coming in, and then the fight for liberation by the brave North Vietnamese communists in the final triumph by good nighting the country. I'd be willing to bet that's how they're going to handle it. Then we get de decolonialization in Ghana and Algeria. So we see the west are the bad guys again. Then we get really specific topics like women and work in interwar and wartime Britain and the USSR because they want to do lots of women's studies in this course. And then we'd have one women and work in the USSR and China.

[00:22:06]>> Very niche. And then a comparative look at women in East Germany versus West Germany.

[00:22:12]>> We're getting really niche here. I by the way, I'd be willing to put a be down with you about how they're going to deal with women and work in West versus East Germany. Under in West Germany, they had a quite traditional view of the family and wanted to help women to stay at home with their children if that's what they wanted. In East Germany under communism was all about essentially draoning all women out to work. And I would say the course will come down on the side of East Germany and the side that the that the East German regime was more feminist and open-minded than the West German democratic regime.

[00:22:48]>> So I mean you're saying is this curriculum it was under consultation.

[00:22:52]The consultation is closed. So it's currently in review. But I mean it it's not going to be ready for fifth year students this year. I mean they have to >> they want it for next year September next year. Now, I'd be surprised.

[00:23:08]>> Yeah, I be Yeah, I'd be surprised if they have it ready that quick.

[00:23:12]>> Um, but there it is in the pipeline.

[00:23:14]Now, they have a committee that's drafting this up and uh people can go looking through the committee. There's people from the teachers unions, for example.

[00:23:23]>> Yeah.

[00:23:23]>> Um there's I think one history specialist >> on the committee of about 15 16 people.

[00:23:30]There's a lady they brought in from Dublin City University, but her specialism seems to be kind of bringing a diversity perspective >> to bear on these things. Like she's behind an essay that I was looking up and the essay is all about social justice education. Now again social justice sounds fine but they but this chapter that she has co-contributed to this particular book I was looking at that said social justice education enables children and young people to engage critically and analytically with systemic oppression and to recognize their own embeddedness within those systems that is within those oppressive systems. So again, you're getting the oppressor versus oppressed worldview all the time. And all human relationships are put through those lens. Men and women, religion and religion, whites and blacks, west and east, west and south.

[00:24:26]Every single thing we do is analyzed in an oppressor oppressed way. Us versus them. It's essentially kind of the class struggle Marxist kind of thinking is obviously the social classes is also a system as they see them of oppression versus oppressed and we saw the excellent results in the Soviet Union by the way of trying to create a classless society with no oppression. Right? But they're taking that same analytical framework outside of class sphere that is the social class sphere into every single human relationship. So they want children to think of all of their relationships in an oppressor oppressed way. And they're going to be inviting people to consider whether they are the oppressors or the oppressed. And if for example you're a woman, you'll be invited to think you're oppressed. If you belong to a racial minority, you'll be invited to think you're um oppressed.

[00:25:19]And if you're a white guy, even if you're a workingclass white guy with hardly two pennies to rub together, you will be invited to think you are a member of the oppressor class. So this is this is basically embedding the league table of victimhood, you know, in Irish children. And it sounds very >> very poisonous and also very very divisive, which of course can be handy then as the children, you know, they can they can sort of uh look at each other suspiciously, right? um and and reconsider really is you know person as you said personal interactions between people are actually perhaps not somebody simply being you know rude or thoughtless but now they are part of the either victim or oppressor class. Well no wonder they're they're all so miserable. I mean the other the other thing David that I wonder about is how you know Ireland is in a new in a unique position in that we um I think you and I would would you know view us we're obviously part of western civilization we have we have benefited from we are under the influence of both uh America and obviously Britain to the other side and Europe in general um so we are definitely uh part of western civilization which is traditionally in leftist view is seen as you said as we always know the colonizer and the oppressor but of course Ireland was colonized and oppressed itself. So how how do they manage to pin or turn Ireland who who who was uh colonized um into actually the the oppressor?

[00:26:52]>> Um that's not clear. Um so from the outline of the course I can't see necessarily how they're going to do that except maybe to say that Ireland particularly now today is part of the western structures and we benefit from the kind of privileges of western societies and we must be aware of this.

[00:27:11]We must kind of check our privilege and so on. I mean they like they want to introduce into schools concepts of for example allyship. So you become aware of which kids sitting alongside you belong to oppressed groups and you must be aware of whether you belong to an oppressed group an oppressor group with privileges and you must be taught to check your privilege and to ally with those who are less privileged than you.

[00:27:34]You see there is there is an aspect of this which is based on Christianity. The first shall be last and the last shall be first for example. So somebody could come along and say well this sounds like Christianity but it's not at the end of the day because Christianity does not constantly divide the world into oppressed versus oppressor. And if you go back to the pap and cycl from Pope Leo the 13th in 1891 it's rising in a system in a world where you have capitalism versus rising socialism. And one of the points that the pope wanted to make was you cannot be div you cannot be thinking about the world and about life in terms of class struggle. And that's what they're essentially trying to do here except they applied class struggle to all spheres of human relationships. And you see this is done in the name of of inclusion. But what could possibly be more divisive than teaching children to see themselves as being on either side of a divide? The oppressor oppressed divide. This is an incredibly intrinsically divisive way of seeing the world by setting groups against one another. And you see in the view of this kind of um ideology, the only way to reach the nirvana where nobody is oppressed and nobody is the oppressor is to achieve total equality.

[00:28:51]Now we've seen that attempted before and it doesn't work and it tends to make things worse because in the real world you wi the people who get ahead you with the people who don't get ahead inequalities will arise if you keep on trying to stamp out those inequalities.

[00:29:05]Now we want fairness we want equality of opportunity but if you go in overzealous pursuit of a goal of total equality it always ends in tears and maybe bloodshed as well. Will they be taught that? Will they simply bring so like the politics and society course the leaving paper uh from last year it is a big quote from Aaron Daddy Roy who's a Indian thinker saying nationalism is responsible for most of the genocides of the 20th century and you're thinking what like what about communism communism killed up to 100 million people in the last century are they going to be taught about that and are they going to be taught about why it killed so many people what was going on and the amount of class hatred that erupted in places like China and the Soviet Union or Cambodia under Paul Pot. Are they going to be properly acquainted with these things and I'd say they will not be?

[00:30:00]>> Yeah. Well, communism I think AC across across the West is the is you know under under instance perhaps because it ultimately failed. you know, you sort of think uh there's nothing there's nothing to worry about and and and clearly in the west it's Nazism that still is the is the dominant evil which of course it was but as you said I think communism >> the only evil >> yeah so the point >> um it look you you you've thoroughly depressed me on that so um and thanks for that I think I think it is good though that parents are at least aware of what's coming down the line um I think we've all experienced the the you know the time when your your your kid comes home from school and just says something just really bizarre. Um but uh three-year-old >> they see I mean parents are going to be wondering why their children have certainly suddenly turned into Katherine Connelly voters right because this is the this is the direction that all of this wants to feed people towards and what really baffles me is parties like Fina Fall and finale are they paying any attention whatsoever to going up are they paying any attention to the fact that all of these courses have one aim produce Katherine Connelly Holly Karns Yeah.

[00:31:14]>> And Avanabashic supporters. Why are they presiding over this sort of stuff? And I think it's because they are absolutely completely intellectually disarmed parties. So they hear terms like social justice. So who can be against it?

[00:31:27]Equality, who can be against it? Human rights, who can be against that? So they have become because they don't know what these terms actually mean when used by these people. Phenofall and finale have become absolute intellectual roadkill for the left. They have no powers of resistance whatsoever. And will this history course is it going to say anything good about western civilization? Because the very concepts of human rights and equality that they talk about and castigate the west over those concepts arose like the equal dignity of every human being arose chiefly in the west and by the way originally and chiefly from Christianity. Yes. Are they going to be talking about a con concepts like free speech and democracy originated in the west or is the west simply going to be the source of all evil and I suspect the latter is going to be mainly the case?

[00:32:15]>> Yeah, I mean as you say the most depressing thing is that this is done under under uh a a government you know a phenopal finaale coalition that's been in power for years. So um you can only imagine what what what it would be if um a leftwing if there was a left-wing coalition. But I mean this is a classic case of you know a march through the institutions and if my four-year-old hasn't declared that he's a global citizen just yet but um perhaps he will in the future and as you say if it's as bad >> he's trying to be agentic right.

[00:32:45]>> Yeah. Who knows? Um I I I as you said it's it's the fact that it starts so young it works its way throughout you know throughout the schooling system um right the way up to leaving and then they're inserted into the universities which we know are absolute you know hotbeds of of of of leftwing thinking um and then you're left you know you're left scratching your head as to why they they are all Katherine Connelly voters.

[00:33:08]I yeah look I I don't I don't know I don't know what to say. Um but it's certainly uh you know it's certainly excellent that at least you have have have made parents aware of it and we we should we are at least aware and try and keep an eye on um what they're actually learning in school. As I said my my chief concern is that they don't really seem to learn that much. Um but perhaps uh perhaps I am wrong on that. Now David, you mentioned an encyclical there by uh nearly 200 years ago and the latest are our our current the current pope Pope Leo had an encyclical out on artificial intelligence which I saw even the left-wing media were going absolutely crazy for. Um the pope seems to be very popular right across the political spectrum. I don't know if you had a cho if you had a chance to read it or perhaps a summary of it. Um I think again uh he he it talks about the importance of human dignity and uh the threat that AI could bring to that. Uh are you worried about AI, David, or or I'm a lot more worried about AI than I am about the curriculum. I just want you to know that.

[00:34:14]>> Well, they'll be self reinforcing. Don't you know >> the AI will be doing searches for um topics and those topics will have been researched mainly by people on the left.

[00:34:23]So AI will probably still be feeding you back the great ideas. Um so anyway the curriculum uh which in English basically translates as the grander of humanity it's a uh 40,000word whopper. Have I read it? Yes. But I can't say I've read it exhaustively.

[00:34:39]>> Okay.

[00:34:40]>> Okay. I would have scan read parts of it because it's so long. uh a big chunk of it is to do with the social history of the church social teachings of the church rather going back to Ram Novaram in 1891 which as I say was puppet the 13's response to the industrial revolution and the politics that it was creating at the time and the conditions and >> and the other 14 a very short answer to that will be say the dignity of work and the importance of the work and that was very much the church's focus I think and still is despite what the left-wing media will tell you that it's all they're always you obsessed with sexual ethics. That isn't the case. That's what the left-wing media are obsessed with.

[00:35:16]But the church uh very much focuses and I think originally coined the term social justice.

[00:35:23]>> I mean the the um so if you go towards World War II, um Pope Pius the 12th began using uh the term human dignity a lot. And uh the first constitution that the word dignity appears in in connection with human beings is the Irish constitution of 1937.

[00:35:43]Uh so you do have a lot of history there uh in terms of trying to make um uh human dignity central to all politics.

[00:35:53]Now of course the left would say it's trying to do this but it brings it brings in this horrible kind of class struggle oppressor oppress kind of analysis to bear which is where it all begins to go wrong. But the reason Pope Leo called us, so Pope Leo was after Pope Leo the 13th, so he's the 14th and he wants to bring the church's social teachings to bear. Oh yes. On one of the big new developments, which is obviously artificial intelligence and I mean I read all kinds of stuff about that and all kinds of contradictory stuff that was going to be pretty benign or it's going to be completely apocalyptic and we're all doomed because AI is going to see human beings as energy competitors because AI is very energy hungry. Here's us now using energy to do this. Uh we have to um uh uh do this podcast and AI might decide one day, well Laura and David, but you're using too much of the energy I want to use for data processing. So goodbye and that's the end of us. So that's kind of the apocalyptic version. Um but anyway I mean what I mean I suppose the encyclical can be easily summarized which is um technology must be at the service of human beings and human beings must not be at the service of technology which could eventually again in the apocalyptic scenarios be in the most literal sense. He doesn't um in a he doesn't condemn AI h because that would be too much pain into the stereotype of the church against the modern world. So he's very careful not to do that. It's a very moderate kind of encyclical and it does a couple of unusual and unexpected things. He suddenly gets into a discussion about the church's acceptance of slavery for far too long and it didn't explicitly condemn slavery until about 200 years ago. So he apologizes on behalf of the church for that. He also says just war theory is now outdated but doesn't kind of flesh that out in any way, shape or form.

[00:37:47]>> Okay. So that defense of you going, so you're allowed to be at war to defend yourself, but he doesn't seem to think any other kind of war is justifiable.

[00:37:56]Um, so that needs to be fleshed out and I don't quite know why he decided to put that in there. Surely that deserves separate treatment and maybe if it'll get separate treatment. Um, what slightly surprised me about the encyclical, and this is, you know, you'd appreciate this as a mother. Um, what kind of relationship are we going to have with AI personally? when you have these very sophisticated programs that can talk back to us like Claude.

[00:38:23]>> So you have Claude and Richard Dawkins.

[00:38:26]>> He was chatting with Claude because he has a new book coming out. I think his new first non-fiction book >> and he decided after three or four days of conversing with Claude about his book and all the great ideas Claude was providing that Claude is conscious.

[00:38:41]>> Oh.

[00:38:42]>> Uh yeah. So this is nonsense.

[00:38:44]>> It is Richard Dawkins.

[00:38:46]>> Yeah. So if you can fool Richard Dawkins into thinking there's effectively a consciousness in this machine you're talking to and this thing has an inner life, >> then you can fool an awful lot of people. And I think for a lot of people if you have this endlessly sympathetic empathetic program talking back to you and as somebody I read recently said these things are designed by their programmers to hack human beings empathy circuits by sounding empathetic to us all the time and it'll make us connect and attach to them and talk to them ever more. So if you're a lonely young person >> and this is growing because people are spending too much time online, not forming actual human relationships, your primary relationship ends up being with essentially a sophisticated computer program that's really good at talking back to you, endlessly patient, tells you what you want to hear. Some of the things you want to hear might be actually terrible, terrible advice, but the but the computer what it wants to do is keep you talking to it, keep you using it. So, it's going to tell you the things you want to hear. So, I don't think there was enough actually in the inle.

[00:40:00]And if you have a program that's talking to you that has access to all knowledge, it's going to seem all knowing to you and is also going to seem all wise to you. Now, what does that sound like?

[00:40:13]something that's all wise and all knowing.

[00:40:15]>> Well, yeah. Yeah. Well, God, >> God. So, actually, you end up AI >> especially as it gets ever more sophisticated >> in some people's minds becomes effectively an actual idol.

[00:40:28]>> Okay. Okay. This is all very depressing.

[00:40:31]You've just you've actually this is worse than the first subject. And then you can we can we can I'm conscious of the crime, David. So, you can finish on it even there. It is actually linked in an even more depressing subject which is the uh running theme of low birth rates um which I if AI is going to come along and um actually be your companion now I would have thought is only going to get worse. So this is uh I think there were there were falling birth rates obviously in Ireland that was um and you guys had a study out as well. Um and there was there's another piece there I see in the Telegraph this time. Um I know the the UK has one of the lowest birth rates. It fell from 1.41 children to 1.39.

[00:41:16]Um and every every small difference the replacement relation is about 2.1. So it was already >> um it was already far below replacement.

[00:41:25]Um and then the Ion Institute did um a very chipper survey saying that I think well you can tell me >> they see one one in four young people are probably going to be childless forever.

[00:41:40]>> One in four of generation Zed will never have children. So that is that is one of your forecasts though and I was a bit cranky to you last night saying well you know I've had enough of forecast with with CO. Um so but it it is on a downward trajectory. uh how how I mean the other big question is you know can you do anything about it?

[00:42:01]>> Well I mean on the subject of one in four young people will probably never have children that will probably turn out to be optimistic. Sorry now to be continuing on my pessimism tread, but I'm telling you one in four will probably be optimistic because if you have a fertility rate of 1.5, which is a quarter below replacement, >> there's a lot of people out there will not be having children. The current rate is about 15 or 16% of people who have reached age 45 without children. Um so given um the well doumented decline in dating, the decline in having sex, the decline in marriage rates, the big delay in people actually kind of getting on with their lives and making the big decisions like having children, everybody delaying until they're well into their 30s before kind of getting on with things. There's multiple reasons this is happening, but that is going to result in a hell of a lot more people never having children. And then we see a mad scramble by the time they're nearly 40 to avail of the likes of IVF. Uh so kind of what appears to be going on is h is I mean you were saying yourself there's multiple causes. One of them probably is the housing crisis. Another one is people simply don't want to take on the big commitments of life until they're much older. But we do see this incredible scramble now for IVF. A huge increase in demand for it because actually people still want to have children. they thus are leaving it way too late. Um, and by the way, like we're talking about AI and people's growing relationships with AI and with their phones generally, we all know you can't mate with your phone.

[00:43:37]>> You're not going to be a mate with claw.

[00:43:39]So, there's no child going to be resulting from that. In Britain, by the way, they're they're forecasting that the percentage of young people who will never have children is 30%. And this is not like a COVID forecast because they have best case and worst case scenarios.

[00:43:53]A lot of the time they were essentially guessing because CO was a new thing. We know what the fertility rate is. We know that the trend lines are down. We know that people are massively delaying having children. This is a safe forecast to make. There would have to be a social revolution to change it.

[00:44:10]>> Okay. So, you're Yeah. I mean, I think causes I I I've sorted I've discussed a lot of causes. I'm only now really interested in the causes if we can get a solution because there there's two things I think we need to clarify. Well, one is a a sneaky question. I mean, the first of all, people need to understand that um now we will all be dead before Armageddon happens. But when it comes to fertility rate, it h a fertility collapse can happen really well in terms of historically really quickly because if you have one generation, so you've got obviously you've got a fertile cohort now, right? Say say between well technically, you know, it could be 15, but even say we say between 20 and 30.

[00:44:50]If that cohort do not have children or a greatly reduced number, right, the 20 or 40 year olds now obviously then there's nothing you can do in terms of the next generation because the the people who you will be targeting don't exist. Okay.

[00:45:10]So the uh the the collapse if you if you talk about demographers is really really quick because you know I if you don't if if you can't convince the 20 and 40 year olds say now to have a child then it doesn't matter what you do when in 20 years time because they don't there's there's no there's nobody to convince do you know what I mean so that that is really that is really really serious.

[00:45:34]And secondly, I mean, and I'm just getting the quote now that actually David Quinn's new policy uh proposal is that young people should have more sex.

[00:45:43]>> Yes. So, it is essentially um >> let the liberal I'll let the liberal media know.

[00:45:49]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You see, we're pro- sex, aren't we?

[00:45:52]>> Well, at the end of the day, >> could be. And um I mean I'll just I'll just end on this point because unfortunately I got the Voose but like the big concern for a long time was lots and lots of unplanned pregnancy which obviously was the case and happened but now we have an awful lot of unplanned childlessness.

[00:46:11]>> Yes.

[00:46:11]>> Uh and so this is something that we need to discuss. And is there a magic solution to this? No. But we have to discuss the bloody thing. We discuss climate change all day long. Yes. And there's no easy solution to it. Right.

[00:46:23]Uh and we can um we can argue that the cows go home about just how much climate change is going to be and what exactly is causing it. But something is happening. Um uh and it's it's it's it's something that's discussed all the time.

[00:46:36]RT has dedicated correspondence to this and the demography thing is being barely looked at.

[00:46:43]>> Yes. And so awareness needs to be raised.

[00:46:46]>> And and also I think what annoys me is when it's put to politicians and it was put to a minister I think a few months ago in terms of having a more pro you can call them pro-natalists, but I call them just pro- family policies. He then said, "Oh, well, you know, the evidence says that won't change the fertility rate." No, you should have pro- family policies because they're a moral good.

[00:47:06]have your pro clim your your pro-climate change policies will not change the dial at all in terms of climate change because of what China's doing. But they don't care about that that you still got to live at your carbon tax and you still got to live with all all of their crazy policies. And yet when you say, "Well, can we have some more pro-f family policies?" Oh, no. It won't make any difference. No, I maybe it won't. But the point is that you make a moral choice as to whether or not you support the families that already exist and at least do not build obstacles to those who who don't have children, you know, >> ease the burdens on families.

[00:47:39]>> Yeah, exactly. It's it's it clearly a a personal decision, but it has big policy implications and the very least the government should not do is make having children difficult. And I think there's a number of policies right now, the carbon tax being one of them, which which currently does that. That that that that that's a problem.

[00:48:00]>> Okay. Listen, David, I know you've got to get off. Um and thank you for that.

[00:48:04]That was incredibly informative. It's a little bit little bit depressing, but you know, >> just being realistic, Laura, and just being realistic.

[00:48:12]>> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But >> setting out the facts. I'm not scared of the facts of life. You see? No. No. I mean I mean again, we're accused of being scared of the facts of life. No, we're not. We're presenting them um in in in the full over 18 version.

[00:48:24]>> Yeah. Well, we're realist. So, thanks for that, Dave. We will hopefully we'll have you on again soon.

[00:48:29]>> Thank you.