In John Quinn's book, My Education, Tony O'Reilly says this about his school days at Belvedere College: "I suppose I showed some early signs of being an entrepreneur there. I ran a penny library, which taught me a little about inventory control, in that nobody returned the books!"
He also learned, he said, that initial prosperity, when everybody paid him their penny, doesn't make for "longevity of the enterprise". New dot-coms, take heed.
Some of the ideas floating around the staffroom during the recent series of intermissions concerned what our students will do without us. Will they learn some new skill? Will they work - as in getting paid? Take up a new interest? Read something not prescribed? Many, it was thought, will surf the Net. So much for the students . . .
It might be asked what did the teachers do when they had no students to teach? A truthful answer is impossible. It can only sound impossibly goodygoody or like a self-serving, yawn-inducing apologia. What can be said is that the usual late November frazzle in the timetable is more muted than usual.
By week three of the month the Christmas, drama/musical productions are taking shape; mini-company enterprises are on the conveyor belt, and the rush to complete part one of Transition Year is on. Tempers will be shortening and Negative Capability, so lauded by Keats as the condition necessary for creativity, will have given way to much irritable reaching after facts. Facts about absences from maths, English, science, Irish or French, in order to complete, compete and participate, may be elicited in a manner reminiscent of the RUC's Castlereagh interrogation centre.
The interregnum makes for a calmer school atmosphere. Marking of projects, A4 essays and copy-books; resources, tapes, acetates, discs, wallcharts and confiscated mobiles are, this year, under starter's orders again.
O'Reilly said he learned more than how to pass exams at school. Here he is: ". . . we had a very substantial musical training, through Gilbert and Sullivan operas; we had an excellent chess club, which I enjoyed; we had cycling clubs and camera clubs and, of course, the inevitable debating societies plus the academic world."
Readers know that most schools provided a similar list of activities. I just wonder how it was all done and who supervised? And neither rugby nor hockey, soccer nor Gaelic, tennis nor cricket are even on the list.
