Letters to the Editor: Education should be about creating options
Research by the HEA and other bodies shows that a high proportion of graduates don’t pursue a career related to their formal qualifications.
The Leaving Certificate results are out today.
I am now 55 years old and I have completed three Leaving Certs in my time. On that basis, I think that most of the coverage of the Leaving Certificate results is hype and is very unhelpful to students, teachers, and parents.
I completed my first Leaving Cert when I was 18 years old and, to be honest, it didn’t mean very much to me at the time.
I completed the other two as a mature student (in my twenties), because I wanted to go to college. I might never have succeeded in my return to education, had it not been for the experience of completing that first Leaving Cert.
Later on, still in my twenties, I completed a university degree. I have been teaching for the past 20 years, as well as doing an interesting variety of other skilled work, along the way.
What all this has taught me is that education is (or should be) about creating options and there are always options out there.
Life also involves a lot of trial and error and it’s important to remember that the only real “failure” (in life) is the failure to try, to take a risk, to have a go at a career, or to follow a calling which you think is worthwhile, whatever that happens to be.
Research by the Higher Education Authority shows that parents, especially mothers, have the most influence on their children’s choice of third-level course.
Other research, by the HEA and other bodies shows that a high proportion of graduates don’t pursue a career related to their formal qualifications.
These findings should be deeply reflected upon, especially at this time.
Every experience in life has the potential to educate us and you can never have too much education, whatever its source. That includes the exams process in its current form.
This morning will bring the long-awaited Leaving Cert 2021 results. As parents we wish all the very best to students and their families.
We acknowledge the great work undertaken these last two years by our young people, parents, teachers, the minister, and the Department of Education.
The one major complaint that we hear again and again from fellow parents has been the lack of information on any evaluation of the experiment that was Leaving Cert 2020 including the many injustices.
We urge the minister to ensure that a full professional evaluation of 2021’s even greater experiment begins immediately and be published within a realistic timetable.
Your brilliant supplement, , stirred a very distant memory.
It was the morning of a Good Friday somewhere in the late 1970s. I had been socialising in the manner of one in his mid-twenties in Dublin City.
Holy Thursday was an occasion of some excess in those days; a dry day on the morrow was not overly appreciated.
I had stayed in the flat of some work colleagues who hailed from “the country”, as it was then described.
I found myself in Donnybrook looking for a bus home.
That time, was the only broadsheet published on Good Friday and I decided that a read would be no harm on the journey home.
In I went to the shop and your man behind the counter was sporting a Sunday’s Well RFC jumper.
“I’ll take a copy of ‘De Paper’,” says I to him in as best a Cork accent that a southside Dub could muster.
“De Paper, Boy!” he shot back.
Suitably chastised, I paid and made a hasty retreat.
is back, fáilte roimh Tubbs. We will have a memorable All-Ireland senior football final, with a colourful and thrilling build-up to September 11.
Come on RTÉ, this is a special year, there will be at least 40,000 in Croke Park so with cautious approach, we want that pre-match platform of exciting debate, nostalgic accounts from GAA greats and of course forecasts of who will lay hands on Sam Maguire 2021.
I write in relation to your article last month — Ireland’s empty towns: Tackling empty and derelict buildings in The Kingdom (Irish Examiner, August 12).
I just don’t understand why the Government doesn’t incentivise the refurbishment of over-shop units in all towns and cities throughout Ireland.
Such properties could be exempt from the full rigours of BER allowing the BER standard to be B or better; SEAI grants would apply.
There would be a number of advantages to taking on this approach: Town centres and city centres would be revitalised; increased footfalls in shops, pubs and restaurants, and potential for reduction in commutes and incentivising remote working.
They could also help in reducing the environmental impacts from new-builds which are massive.
I am becoming frequently reminded of a great article I once read entitled ‘The dark at the end of the tunnel’.
Our government is so disorganised that it is even difficult to know who to complain to.
But perhaps such evasiveness is a major part of their plan to stay in power — as long as productive workers can give them enough money.
I believe every fair-minded person has to agree that the Biden administration’s “plan” for the Afghanistan withdrawal has, by any rating measure, been a tragic disaster.
While all Americans have agreed on its timely necessity, Joe Biden’s insistence on being able to say “I did it my way” has already led to, as many leading figures contend, truly avoidable tragic consequences.
Media reaction, in general, to his abject leadership in this critical issue has been quite mild.
Now if that had been during Donald Trump’s tenure, I’ve no doubt that every media platform would have wall-to-wall coverage denigrating his plan.
Mr Trump did have a comprehensive plan for American withdrawal in the event of his re-election.
Unlike Biden, his signed deal with the Taliban had clear red-line provisos that, in the event of their reneging on their promises, they would feel the full force of the US army’s backlash.
In his strategy, civilian personnel would be airlifted first, then the extensive and expensive weaponry (all of which now lies in Taliban hands), and finally the army personnel themselves would have withdrawn.
In this article Declan Colley refers to his charger as “a regular 11 kW home charge point” — Opel Mokka-e: An EV that tests the limits of range anxiety (Irish Examiner, August 29)
If indeed he has an 11kW charger, he is a very fortunate man, because for most Irish homes even 7kW may be a stretch.
A ‘normal home’ in Ireland has a single phase supply — probably limited to circa 60kW. Whilst it is possible to get this increased, there are costs associated with that.
So in reality 32 amps is around the maximum ‘normal’ people can have — that equates to about 7kW depending on the power factor of the charger: wattage equals volts x amps x power factor (between 0 and 1 depending on efficiency — ie, heat loss of charger).
This is a huge problem and will get worse as more EVs are purchased.
Additionally and worryingly our current grid is incapable of supporting millions of EVs without major upgrades (or closure of multiple data centres).
What is the Government doing to address the issue?
