Mick Clifford: Today's youth have been conditioned to inflate every disappointment into a trauma

Today, the majority of students go on to third level in one guise or another. Surely it is time to both take greater cognisance of the inequalities that persist and devise something that better directs students towards courses that might suit them.

For a while there last week, we had a slice of modern Ireland, wrapped up and delivered across our media.

It all began with a paper in the Leaving Cert that was, by all accounts, very difficult. Paper I higher level maths left educators, parents, and students in a state of despair. One contributor to RTÉ Radio’s Liveline on Monday said that what had unfolded was outrageous.

“There was shock and I think it was a national shock,” she said, adding that there was “trauma on people’s faces”.

Up to 25,000 teenagers were subjected to this assault on their wellbeing. They sketched out the terrible vista in print, on the airwaves, and through social media.

The word “trauma” came up repeatedly. There were several accounts of students leaving the exam hall in tears, and more vomiting in the aftermath of the experience. One maths teacher said that it had been a “vindictive paper”.

The principal of Moate Community School in Westmeath, Tom Lowry, who is a former maths teacher to boot, wrote to the State Examinations Commission (SEC) about it.

“I have one message for the SEC — shame on you,” he wrote. He went on to say he and colleagues reckon that the paper was “the most difficult maths paper in the last 10 years”. 

The reaction in the days after the outrage suggested it was the most difficult maths paper since the abacus was invented.

Does anybody recall this level of trauma after a Leaving Cert paper a decade ago?

Here’s a mother relating to RTÉ’s Liveline whose head must roll: “The minister (for Education) packed a bus with sixth-year students, she got out of the bus and pushed it off a cliff.”

Norma Foley was accused of 'throwing students off a cliff'. Picture: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Who would have thought that Norma Foley could be capable of such murderous intent, even within the confines of a calamitous metaphor?

Apologies were demanded, for both students and parents, but the whole tone of the reaction suggested that maybe an apology would not suffice.

The possibility of a resit began its journey towards a probability. And to cap it all off, we had another contributor to Liveline last Monday who baldly stated: “I do worry for the mental health of these students.”

Disappointment over a difficult exam is entirely understandable, but what kind of a society have we fashioned that elicits such a despairing reaction?

Where did that pressure come from? Who schooled these kids to a point where they genuinely believe that their life has just flashed before their eyes at the hands of an anonymous official who may have had a bad day at the office when she devised this paper? 

What does all this say about helicopter parenting?

Far more importantly, how are these teenagers going to manage real challenges, genuine crises, and sudden shocks, if this is the reaction to an exam paper that will, I have no doubt, mean precious little when the results are published later in the summer?

Yes, this year’s Leaving Cert students did not have the opportunity to sit a Junior Cert, a deficit that will also apply to next year’s cohort. That is a disadvantage, but a little perspective would go a long way.

Covid had a huge impact on education in this and other countries. There are gaps all over the shop in learning and development due to lockdowns. But relatively speaking, the cohort of Leaving Cert students who were deemed fit and appropriate to sit higher level maths was far less affected than those who are described as weaker students.

This group was infinitely luckier than students who had additional needs, probably the cohort that suffered the greatest imposition through isolation and stilted learning opportunities. So let’s not get pretend that the trauma that has been invoked over this maths paper is directly attributable to covid.

Let’s also admit that if this was another, less high-profile element of the state exam, which would have a greater preponderance of students from Deis schools, there would not have been the same outpouring. 

Can you imagine if there had been a humdinger of a paper in pass Irish? Would the airwaves have lit up with outrage? 

Or, let’s imagine those sitting the Leaving Cert Applied had encountered a major block on the road to completion. Would any of it even end up as a thread on social media?

The hullabaloo also highlighted once more the negative features of the Leaving Cert as expressed through the points race.

In a week when there was a serious deficit of common sense, accolades should accrue to one individual who was a rock of the stuff.

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The president of Technology University Dublin (TUD), David Fitzpatrick told the Irish Times that a “pressure cooker” Leaving Cert and points system is not the best entry route for all students to third level, sometimes leading them into courses that “are not the best for them”.

“If you have somebody who gets 625 points in the Leaving Cert and they say they want to go and do something with a much lower points requirement, there’s almost a societal pressure over ‘wasting points’,” he said.

Mr Fitzpatrick advocates for expanding options for students to enter third level outside the points system through routes such as post-Leaving Cert courses and apprenticeships.

Time for a reboot

The points system was devised decades ago to replace the existing regime in which basically money determined who went to college and, to a large degree, what they studied.

The change was rooted in aspirations of fairness and, to a certain extent, it provided that, even though inbuilt inequities in the system — which begin in primary school — remained.

Today, the majority of students go on to third level in one guise or another. Surely it is time to both take greater cognisance of the inequalities that persist and devise something that better directs students towards courses that might suit them.

Today’s youth have huge stresses. Social media, heightened expectations, and a growing generational gap in wealth all exercise pressure on those in the shallows of adulthood.

They have also been conditioned to inflate every disappointment into a trauma.

Instead of any discussion about resitting an exam, it might be far more profitable to consider a reset of values to ensure that today’s children are better equipped to face the growing challenges of tomorrow’s world.