Jennifer Horgan: A loving system puts children at the centre of education

Jennifer Horgan. Picture: Larry Cummins

WHAT do you think of when you hear the word ‘system’?

I think of steel pipes, something with a fixed structure designed to remain in place or I think of something written, mapped out — a ledger of some kind, all lines and columns and categories. A system on paper has no blurs or blotches; it’s clearly structured.

However, what if I put another word before it? What, let’s say, if I insert the word ‘loving’ for instance? What if I were to say that I want a loving system of education in Ireland? Does it sound like an oxymoron? Well, it shouldn’t.

The great thing about love is that it’s both fixed and flexible. It’s designed to move with the vacillations and complexities of our lives — but it is also constant.

What a wonderful starting point that would be for our system of education — to have at its centre, something that’s both responsive and resolute.

And love is simple. As my school’s guidance counsellor says, it’s about creating “soft places to land” for young people, rather than supporting hard places for them to manage.

I went to see the Kenneth Branagh film Belfast this week with my sixth years, to celebrate the end of their mock Leaving Cert exams. In a scene near the start of the film, young protagonist Buddy watches wide-eyed as his teacher arranges children to reflect their most recent exam results. Top marks up front. Bottom marks at the back.

Buddy, eager to sit next to his love interest up top, asks his Grandad for help in maths.

The teacher in the scene represents a system. It’s clear and brutal. The children in those shifting seats absorb every judgement, equating their self-worth with their position in that room.

I mentioned the scene to my husband when I came home.

“Oh ya, we’d the same thing in our chemistry class. Our teacher said we had to face up to the Leaving Cert and that at least by sitting according to our most recent marks we knew where we were.”

“He said the classroom was like the country. Sometimes, he’d get us to sit in silence and look around. He’d tell us to reflect on our own position, how we felt about it, the ways we might change or maintain it. He talked a lot about strategies.”

My husband’s teacher was right about the Leaving Cert then, and sadly he’s still right about it now.

His system of classroom management mirrors what the Leaving Cert does on a national scale, profiling and categorising young people based on a narrow set of arbitrarily devised markers. It’s a small system replicating a bigger one that we’ve all come to accept as normal.

However, there’s no love in it.

It’s a large part of what makes the classroom scenes work in Belfast. Buddy’s pre-adolescent adoration of the girl up front is full of joy, personality and vulnerability. His teacher is stony. She is a woman made of steel pipes and lined ledgers.

Talk of an imminent citizens' assembly on education is getting louder — voices are gathering. According to a few sources it’s likely to occur next year and could provide a real opportunity for us to question and re-build our system.

I hope this assembly will hold the child — and love — at its centre. I certainly hope this hugely important assembly won’t become a smaller version of our current system, stifling innovation and feeling, letting us all down.

David Farrell, professor of politics at University College Dublin, believes we’re lagging behind other countries in how we run our citizens’ assemblies. He writes this week: “Path-dependency has set in, with the senior civil servant of one assembly passing on the baton and the lessons they’ve learned to the civil servant leading on the next one.”

This description reminds me of Buddy’s teacher and my husband’s teacher, 30 years apart, passing the same shaped baton, doing the same thing, over and over, without thought and without feeling.

I’m bad at meetings. I’d probably be the worst person to have at any assembly. However, one thing I would contribute if I could is a giant poster of a red heart. I’d hang it on the wall with the words ‘A Loving System’ on top because, really, all we need is love — to get us started at least.

It’s the perfect ingredient for our system of education, strong and flexible.

A loving system would put children at the centre of education, giving them the freedom to move, explore, and in the case of young Buddy, sit right next to that certain someone too.