Being a minister is a test of character. So is passing an end-of-year exam
Never has a politician, when handed the role of minister, grown into it so well from such a standing start. Unimpressive as a back-bencher, she demonstrated a quiet, civil confidence, not to mention considerable grace, under pressure at the teachers’ conferences of last week.
Teachers’ conferences are an advanced form of hazing for ministers, who run the gauntlet of critical speeches from their hosts, frozen silences from the vast and partisan audiences, and media interrogation on how they can stand over whatever has led to the attacks and silences.
They’re forced to accept the invitations to be there, because, if they don’t, they will be empty-chaired and attacked for living in a bubble of high-level advisors who are clueless about the battle-ground that is the schoolroom.
They will also be accused of refusing to listen to elected representatives of the profession. Morton’s Fork it is, right there.
All of which Jan O’Sullivan sustained with such equanimity that it would be fair to assume she was never one of those students who could not do justice to themselves at exams. Me neither. I would arrive on the morning of a major exam, and the first exceptional sight would be cars parked outside the school, each containing one of my classmates, together with a parent, usually their mother.
Now, on your average, non-exam, school day, when classmates were delivered by their mother, they immediately got out of the car in the highest of adolescent dudgeon, occasioned by the argument, on the journey, about the shortness of their skirt, the inadequacy of their homework, the fact that they were SO wearing mascara, even though it was forbidden, and that the latest poster was coming down off the wall of their bedroom that very day.
On the morning of an exam, it was quite different. The student would sit, weeping, in the car, with their mother gently rubbing their neck, or sometimes consoling them in full embrace.
The theory was that the weeping students were an especially sensitive, virtuous, and hard done by sub-group of humanity, made up of those who study hard but fall to pieces at exams, and so fail to do themselves justice.
This paper doesn’t allow me to swear, but if it did, I would use a four-letter word beginning with A. Even at 16, I had the exam-panickers nailed. They were in the minority, for starters.
But the small number divided itself naturally into threes.
The first third of them were extra-clever, and knew if they got themselves to the point of tears, returning home after the examination with hanging heads and bitter shrugs indicative of how badly they had done, they would, when the results came out, get even bigger plaudits for having done well.
The second third hadn’t worked at all and needed emotional cover. They were, in addition to needing cover, genuinely panicked by the prospect of eating their just deserts.
And the final third were incapable of coping with stress.
Of that minority, as time went on, the first group — the ones who were letting on to be distraught to get more credit when the results came out — tended to do well in the workplace, thereby proving it’s still possible to weep your way to the top.
The second and third groups went nowhere much.
All of which goes to prove how dead-on the old system was. The Leaving Cert was based on teachers marking the papers of students who were strangers to them.
If a student came apart under the pressure of the exam and produced rubbish, they received a low mark. A perfectly fair and useful mark.
Most jobs other than filing have pressured moments. A nurse trying to find a vein to inject is under pressure. A pilot in turbulent air is under pressure. A manager in a private company is under pressure to meet sales targets. A firefighter is under pressure — well, you get it.
Each and every one of these people has to muster what they know, and apply it logically, in less-than-conducive circumstances. So a Leaving Cert that established that the student couldn’t cut it also established that the student might not have the capacity to work in a stressful career.
That was useful to the student and useful to potential employers of that student.
Then came the experts with the notion that students should be assessed by their teachers, and that this would form part of their Leaving Cert marks.
This would reward students for good teamwork on projects and counterbalance the traditional, once-off exam pressure. There is no case for counterbalancing that once-off pressure, but questions can also be raised about the teamwork. Many jobs require teamwork. Many jobs do not.
The history of those who found great businesses, make great discoveries, or invent great innovations is thickly dotted with rugged individualists, who neither had, nor needed, the capacity for teamwork. Not saying that teamwork is bad. Just saying that to take it into account in an assessment is to give disproportionate value to one trait at the expense of another.
The teachers going up against Jan O’Sullivan’s expert-driven policy, which favours assessment of students by their own teachers, have listed several objections to it, with one of them saying she’ll go on hunger strike rather than do it. None of the objectors have made much of research about inbuilt prejudice.
One of the best examples of such research was provided by the symphony orchestra accused of being sexist in their selection of violinists.
The powers that be in the orchestra rubbished the suggestion that they preferred male over female violinists. Perish the thought.
They said: “We simply audition prospective members and decide to recruit, or not recruit, based only on the musical skills of each applicant.” Which drew a sustained raspberry from a number of female violinists, who believed they were better than the guys who had been picked.
Eventually, the orchestra changed the format of their auditions. Violinists played their tunes behind a curtain. They even came onstage in stockinged feet, so no clue as to their gender could be provided by the distinctive sound of high heels.
Suddenly, the female violinists were found to be more than adequate for inclusion in the orchestra.
The key difference was that the inbuilt and unacknowledged gender preferences of the selectors had been eliminated.
It would be wilfully naive to hold that teachers do not hold inbuilt and unacknowledged preferences when it comes to their students. If assessment by teachers were to have been part of the Leaving Cert in my day, since I was cordially loathed by almost all of my teachers, no matter how fairmindedly they approached the task, I was goosed.
The kindness of strangers is immeasurably valuable. The judgment of strangers even more so.
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