Too often the result of the Leaving Cert is the infantilisation of students

WHEN you are asked ‘How are you?’ it’s a greeting. 

Not an invitation to offer a detailed personal health analysis. You can, without offending the questioner, keep to yourself that you haven’t been sleeping well, that the new medicine prescribed by the GP doesn’t agree with you, that you have doubts about your gluten tolerance and that you’ve gone off onions, because of symptoms nobody but you needs to know about.

It’s the same when someone asks you about your children’s Leaving Cert results. The questioner hopes for a brief answer because, to them, it’s a civil greeting; no more than that. It may, to you, look like an invitation to share, but it isn’t. The correct answer to the question is ‘Great. We’re happy.’ Or ‘All good.’ Once that chirpily brief response has been delivered, it’s time to change the subject, because no innocent bystander needs to hear a subject-by-subject points rundown. Even less do they need such a rundown if they haven’t asked you anything at all. Yet parents in the last few days have taken to texting their friends — uninvited — with the complete details of their Leaving Cert student’s outcomes.