SECOND LEVEL: Young people in our second-level schools are bored with being spoon-fed what we think they need to know - and they're on the verge of rebellion, writes relief language teacher Bettina Peterseil

I am writing this neither to blame nor to criticise or to pass judgment on anybody, but to share an impression in the hope that it may both stimulate and invite discussion about a better, more meaningful future for young people.

For the third year in a row, I have had the opportunity to take a glimpse into the everyday life of a secondary school. Every year, for a few days, I replace a foreign-language teacher. What I notice every year with greater intensity is an atmosphere of almost complete boredom and apathy in the older classes and that of growing, openly demonstrated disgust and rebellion in younger classes.

As an outsider to the system, I was eager to introduce an atmosphere of relaxation, fun and playfulness into the routine of teaching a language of which I am a native speaker. I came with the intention to be helpful to the young people I met. At the end of my stay last year, and even more so this year, I had become painfully aware of the fact that to many of the pupils I was just another particle of a hated system.

I had become part of an ongoing fight between opposing forces: the pupils on one side, who generally could not care less about what they are offered in the way of education; the expectations and pressure of parents and the Department of Education on the other side, who want to fill the young minds with as much knowledge as possible, and in the middle the teachers; trying their very best to push all that is expected into those apathetic minds. Is it surprising that they feel consequently drained and unappreciated?

In my estimation, about 85 per cent of the pupils I have met seemed unwilling and unmotivated to accept what is offered to them with the passion and enthusiasm appropriate at their age.

I am sure that everyone concerned is acting with the very best of intentions, but I was painfully reminded of the boring, dreary days of my own time in school, many years ago, and of my pretence at the time to be present to the education I was being fed, which utterly bored me, which I had never chosen to learn, which was handed down to me not as a choice but as a required necessity.

I was treated as if I was an empty bag, which needed to be filled with knowledge and codes of behaviour in order to function at all in this world and to become a valuable person. It was presumed that being young, I could not know what I wanted and how I wanted to live my life.

My questions after this experience in my own youth and being part of the secondary school recently are: Why are young people still stuffed with all the knowledge they have never chosen and are therefore not motivated to learn? Why are they pressed into such a uniformed way of learning and living? What is to be gained from the utter boredom in which many hours a day are spent?

Why do these young people not come across as vibrant, open, curious, motivated and enthusiastic, as it is their birthright to be? Why is their fire and energy and beauty quenched so early in service to an education system, that only seems to guarantee the continuation of unwilling compliance and repressed spirits?

Are we really so afraid of creativity, questioning minds, diversity, enthusiasm and passion? Is it that we believe that by controlling and repressing them, we are safeguarding a society from their "erratic" and "destructive" energies? Is not just the opposite happening? Are we not, by the way the system works, creating just what we are afraid of?

In my opinion, no colourful schoolbooks and new curricula trying to introduce fun ways to manipulate young minds into what they do not want to learn can disguise the fact that the foundation of the education system is antiquated and just does not seem to work except for a few.

In my opinion, its foundation is based on the belief that young people are nothing but empty vessels, which need filling to become of value - for what and to whom?

Bettina Peterseil is a German woman living in the west of Ireland who has taught her own two children at home.