Suzanne Harrington: All the Leaving Cert does is tell kids who struggle in exams that they’re rubbish

Outdated and unfair, it's time we left the Leaving Cert in the past. 

Leaving Certificate students filling in their exam number on the answer booklet before receiving their first exam paper at Douglas Community School, Cork. Picture: Denis Minihane.

Shout out to everyone who has just done their Leaving Cert, which — checks notes — ends Tuesday. 

This is where, traditionally, you throw your school books in the river and get teenage drunk, after weeks of being pressure-cooked, invigilated, caffeinated. 

After months and years of being told that these few weeks will determine the outcome of your entire life. Will it, though?

Try explaining the Leaving to an alien — an intelligent one. Explain that we require our young people to sit in halls, in silence, frantically trying to recall everything they’ve learned in the past year or two, and write it all down, at speed, coherently but uniformly. Thinking is not required — just memorising and regurgitating and not freaking out in the process.

So then, the alien might quite reasonably ask, are all human minds wired identically, so that everyone can do this equally? Erm, no. Some people can remember things more than others; some can perform well under pressure; others have parents who can get them extra tuition if they’re crap at maths (that was me, by the way. Grinding away at theorems, as though they’d be useful one adult day when juggling bills).

And here’s the thing — I did my Leaving in 1985, when Ireland was run by priests and everything was still illegal. Almost 40 years on, Ireland has changed beyond recognition, blossomed into a fresh and lively place, yet we persist in inflicting this anachronism on our young people. Why?

All it does is tell the kids who struggle in exams that they’re rubbish and will amount to nothing, as the ones who are good at memorising are leap-frogged
forward.

Suzanne Harrington. Picture: Denis Scannell

Why do we persist in this almost Victorian-era categorisation? What happens to the kids whose talents lie elsewhere?

Why do we inflict this anachronistic, outmoded ritual on them, dulling bright minds, stifling creativity, making them hate learning? For what? Something called ‘points’?

From The Late Late Show to the Leaving Cert, First Holy Communion to Confirmation, Ireland likes its rituals. We like them so much that we never change them; when it comes to talk shows or annually dressing our kids up like mini-brides and mini-grooms, it might as well still be 1985, or 1965.

And while rituals are important — which is why everyone, everywhere, has them — what’s even more important is allowing these rituals to evolve in tandem with reality.

Case in point — The Late Late Toy Show, now a cultural institution with matching pyjamas.

But with the Leaving Cert — by its very existence — we have not done that.

It has been in place since 1925. Imagine driving a car from 1925, or going to a restaurant with a 1925 menu.

You just wouldn’t, unless you were doing historic cosplay or making one of those documentaries where people pretend to live in the olden days.

And yet year in, year out, we impose this tired, pointless ritual on our young people — instilling not creative thinking or a love of learning, but everything from perfectionist stress to disengaged disillusion. Where’s the intelligence?