"And now we're going to train them up the way they ought to go...."

national | consumer issues | opinion/analysis Saturday July 01, 2006 16:05 by Sean Crudden - impero sean.crudden at iol dot ie Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth. 087 9739945

Guidance and Choice in Second Level Education

Is the curriculum at second level largely dated and irrelevant? Does the Leaving Certificate Exam serve any worthy educational purpose any longer? Has it, even, any practical benefit worth the considerable cost?

Sean Crudden

The fact that 20% of students drop out of the system before the Leaving Cert and a further 20% achieve very poor results in the same exam should ring alarm bells in the public mind about our education system at second level. Technical education and education for children with disabilities have been mainstreamed. Still the system, corseted by the Leaving Certificate exam, is academic, inflexible and largely unresponsive to individual needs. It is weak, too, on encouraging creativity. And even where the system should have strengths - in maths and science - standards, apparently, have been declining in recent years.

We seem to expect that our children will be compliant and dependent on our judgement as well as responsive to our wishes as parents. In a recent editorial in The Irish Times the editor, for example, seemed to think that the choice of school for a start should be made by the parent (parents?). Disregarding the personal autonomy of children (or old people) is in my opinion guaranteed to produce one of two possible results - either a craven obedience or, eventually, outright rebellion.

No. Children are a dwindling resource. To get the best out of that resource it is necessary to go back to the open-ended ideas of guidance more prevalent in the 1960’s. Give children more space and freedom and more personal support and let each individual develop in a more relaxed way in her own time and at her own pace. Relax the unproductive and unhealthy constraints within our school system. Go back, if necessary, to smaller schools where each individual student is known, valued, included.

The only reason I ever mention The Inspectorate of The Department of Education is to excoriate it. The publication of "whole-school" reports on the web last week created a stir. But people should look at these reports coldly. Are they just a pretty fiction to please the school marmish minister? What do schools inspectors really know about schools anyway? Are they better placed to report on schools than teachers (or head teachers) or pupils (or ex-pupils)? Do some of them confuse a lovey-dovey atmosphere with good education at second level. Where are the warts, the conflict, the depression, the pressure, the bullying, the boredom - the whole contemptible arsenal which the inspectors are really sponsoring and which is, largely, moidering children?