TV review: A Rebel Education is proper Cork drama
Paul Burke, Principal Carrigaline Community School, in A Rebel Education: Inside Carrigaline Community School.
There is proper drama in
And not just because it has actor Shane Casey from The Young Offenders talking to the students about mental resilience. (He could be worth his own show on the topic off the back of this.)
It’s watchable because of the frank way it deals with kids who are having trouble in school.
There is Kalen, the cheeky pupil down the back, who grins into the camera and says school gets on his nerves.
There’s Allanah, who pretty much left school in her mid-teens but is back at 18, driving herself on.
Or Giselle, an elite teenage athlete who wants to get a sports scholarship in the US without doing loads of study. It’s dramatic because they are likeable, funny people who might not succeed. You want to see how they get on.
There’s a good cast of characters on the teaching side too.
Tadgh O’Donovan doesn’t just have 400,000 followers on TikTok under the name teachwithtadgh, he has a force of nature way about him that makes for great viewing. (Particularly if you are worried about your teen’s social media habits.)
Former student turned music teacher Andy McGrath seems like the nicest guy in the world, even if cheeky Kalen gets under his skin in one prickly scene.
At the centre of it all is principal Paul Burke, with his calm and frank pieces to camera about the realities of marshalling teens in a large school.
Talking about Allanah dropping out, he recalls she was hanging out with the wrong crowd and “we had to go after her”.
So there is drama, but not loads of it. There are plenty of mundane scenes too, when it is just a bunch of people chatting over lunch, saying things like “second years, they’re horrible”. (This is a thing apparently, any teacher will tell you.)
The everyday bits are a reminder that secondary school is mainly boring and repetitive.
Burke checks uniforms on the way in one morning with a resigned tone that says he’s seen it all before.
Giselle’s mother is blissfully unbothered by her daughter’s lack of academic activity — she just wants to show us Giselle’s medals. And who could blame her, there are loads of them. Not to mention loads of ways to succeed in life.
The only problem with A Rebel Education is the name. Someone needs to tell Dublin TV types that Cork doesn’t require rebel or second capital in every sentence.
Other than that, give it a watch.
