Welcome to the Irish Parents Review English Curriculum Blog. If you are a parent concerned about what your child is actually being exposed to in the classroom, in their English class, under the guise of a relevant new curriculum, you have come to the right place. We are a team of concerned parents (some of us are also teachers) who have come together to highlight any objectionable, extreme or inappropriate material which is being introduced into the new curriculum for English at both Junior and Leaving (Senior) Cycles. Since 2014, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) has slowly been making some very significant and disturbing changes and additions to the texts (novels, plays and films) now read and studied in the Junior and Senior Cycle classrooms.There is no longer a wide choice of classics or more traditional texts, on the prescribed lists which teachers must choose material from. Instead the selection is widening to include more books and films that incl
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly, currently on theJunior Cycle prescribed list, recommended by the NCCA for 2nd and 3rd years, describes horrifc scenes of bondage and torture and promotes bestiality . In chapters XVI and XVII, a huntress captures and performs “surgery” on people and animals, in which she chops, then fuses their body parts together to form new entities. “I thought how wonderful it would be if I could combine the body of an animal with the intelligence of a human”. No anaesthetic is given. The room in which the torture and “surgery” is carried out is described in graphic detail with tables “ ...stained with blood…….chains and manacles upon them, and leather restraints.To one side of the table was a rack of knives and blades and surgical tools”. All around the room are mounted heads, both of animals and humans. “David turned his head and saw dried meat hanging from hooks at the other end of the room. He could not tell if it came from animals or people”. Bott