Are secondary school students being properly educated?

With the Junior Cert finishing tomorrow, Barbara Scully wonders are we educating our children or merely tutoring them to get maximum results in State exams? To find out she asks the experts.

Students across the nation can officially celebrate as tomorrow is the last exam of Junior Certificate 2014. As I write I am being a very attentive mammy as my 15-year-old Roisin tackles the juggernaut which is the examination process. It really is a juggernaut. With 11 subjects most students sit 15 exams given that English, Irish, Maths and Business all have two papers.

Like all good mammies I worry that she is stressing too much or not stressing at all. Like all good mammies I am smoothing her path along this two week marathon as I drop and collect her from school, make sure she has an adequate packed lunch (with chocolate for stress and sagging energy) and her favourite dinners in the evening. I make tea and buns and ferry them upstairs to her at 9pm when I tell her enough of the books. She seems to be working away and she is not showing any signs of being overly stressed and for that I am very grateful.

After the Irish exam I collected her and we discussed how it had gone during the short journey home. “Well the essay was very hard,” she said. “Aw,” said I, “why was that?” — trying to strike the right note of concern without judgement. She explained that she had a great essay all prepared — all learned off by heart. It was about a fire. She felt that it would fit any scenario that the examiners were likely to come up with, based on her, and no doubt her teacher’s, survey of past papers and experience. I was trying to concentrate on my driving while also attempting to get my head around what I was hearing. “What do you mean,” I asked innocently. She outlined that for the essay you are usually asked about ‘the worst day of your life’ or ‘what happened on your holidays’ or something similar. A fire, she felt, could easily be stitched into such situations. “But wouldn’t you know it,” she explained “the essays choices were either ‘something funny that happened on your holidays’ or ‘something that happened during a football match’. I couldn’t work a fire into either. So I had to make it up — right then, from scratch.”

As my brain nearly exploded with the implications of this, I muttered “Oh, that’s a shame”. I was still mulling over the impact of discovering that my child, who did higher level Irish, had learnt off an essay to merely regurgitate it when I was struck the newspaper reporting concerning the English paper. According to reports, Leaving Certificate students were confronted with Seamus Heaney not once but twice — on both papers. His unscheduled appearance on paper 2 caused ‘huge surprise’. My brain finally exploded.

Now I know I am old and I sat my Leaving Cert way back in 1979, but I spent every single exam being surprised, sometimes pleasantly but mostly not. As far as I can remember the only things I had learned off were Shakespearean speeches and mathematical theorems.

So I began to wonder — are we actually educating our children or have we arrived at a place where we are merely tutoring them in how to get maximum results in exams? Well, I suppose, that depends on how we define education. The Oxford English Dictionary says that education is “the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university”. It also says that an education is “an enlightening experience”. But how much ‘enlightening’ are children getting in our current system with its huge focus on the points system to gain entry to third level?

Pat Doyle is a physics teacher in The Institute of Education with close on 30 years teaching experience. “A common misconception is that education in schools and passing state exams are two separate entities,” he said. “School education starts around the age of four and continues for 13 or 14 years. The Leaving Certificate acts as a guide to teachers and students rather than a target. If a student is inclined towards a third-level education then surely it is the duty of the teacher to assist them in that endeavour.”

Pat makes a fair point but it raises the other big question. What about the student who doesn’t want to go to third level? Not everyone likes studying and exams. I didn’t. I couldn’t wait to get to work way back in 1979. And, yes, I accept that most students didn’t go to college back then. But my eldest daughter left school in 2006 and about a month before she sat her Leaving Cert she announced that she had had enough of the books and wanted to get straight into work. It was a brave decision and one I found difficult to come to terms with initially. Should I be insisting she continue her education or let her make her own way and her own mistake if that what it was? I am glad to report that after a couple of false starts she found her place — in the travel business and has just been promoted to manager of her agency.

But would she have fared as well if she were leaving school this year? I asked Tony Donohue, head of education policy at IBEQ, if there are opportunities for school leavers to go straight into business and learn on the job as it were.

“Probably not,” was the short answer. However, Tony said “there is a missed opportunity of ‘learn and earn’ models of further education which may be more appropriate for someone who learns more experientially.” He explained that the current apprenticeship schemes encompass 25 trades, mostly around the construction industry, and these could be expanded to include a range of jobs, such as retail, hospitality, travel, etc. “From an employer’s point of view this would be very valuable,” he said, but we seem to have become so fixated on the points race and progressing to higher education that further education and apprenticeships don’t enjoy parity of esteem.

I still wonder if we are just teaching our children to become parrots instead of encouraging them to think for themselves. Is this why we now seem to have such a passive country?

I also wonder if it is my generation who are to blame for pushing this madness where every school leaver must attain a degree often with such a jolly disregard for what it is that makes their hearts sing.

Most of my generation didn’t have this opportunity, so are we now overcompensating by pushing our children into college?

Nelson Mandela said “education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. I can’t argue with that. But surely the quality and thrust of that education is important? Am I wrong in thinking that tailoring that education to the young person’s interests and passions is of paramount importance?

I have now got three years in which to work this conundrum out. And I guess I had better read up on CAO and the points system too. Oh my head hurts.