Textbook learning best method for education

TEACHER gatherings this week are likely to hear much of the “small classes” cure for ills in classrooms.

I suggest that we do not need that and the related “special needs teachers” cure to preclude and cure those ills - they are yet further examples of the wasteful throwing of billions of euro of our public and private money at a problem.

The solution, I suggest, is the abandonment of the policy reflected in these recent words of a primary teacher: “Let’s get away from a textbook-orientated programme and use the children’s environment as a source for teaching.”