If exam papers can be regarded as having a masculine or feminine appeal, yesterday morning's higher-level junior Cert English paper definitely leaned towards the feminine. First, there was a passage entitled My First Dance, taken from a newspaper article by Maeve Binchy. Then question 2 in section 3 required students to imagine they were agony aunts for a teen magazine. Finally, the magazine page relating to the media studies question was clearly more girl than boy-oriented.
Did it matter? Not really, according to John McGabhann, a teacher at Tallaght Community School in Dublin, and the TUI's subject representative. Boys secretly enjoy teen magazines every bit as much as girls, he said.
There was no easy route for students sitting yesterday morning's higher, ordinary or foundation-level Junior Cert English papers. The higher paper was "fairly challenging", the ordinary paper "quite difficult", while the foundation paper was "more demanding than previous papers", McGabhann said.
However, Sheila Parsons, who teaches at Skerries Community School, Co Dublin, disagreed. She found all the papers well geared to their particular levels. "They required the use of skills as opposed to the regurgitation of knowledge," she said. "They enable students to be self-confident about their personal opinions."
The media studies section, which involved a Department of Education and Science information leaflet on heavy schoolbags, caused a tad of controversy. Sheila Parsons wondered whether the Department was giving students a subliminal message that it really did care about their welfare. The leaflet contained a message from and a photograph of the former Minister for Education and Science, Mr Micheal Martin.
Mr PJ Sheehy, who teaches at CBS Arklow, Co Wicklow, was concerned that the question: On this leaflet, who is the Minister for Education and Science? might lead students to believe that Mr Martin was still the Education Minister.
Yesterday afternoon's Junior Cert English higher-level paper 2 was well received. "There was nothing you could find fault with," said John McGabhann. It was, though, a long paper which took a long time to read through. "The biggest difficulty students have is to get it finished," he said.
Sheila Parsons particularly liked the fiction section (3) - an extract from Hugh Leonard's Home Before Night. The extract involved a young boy called Jack, his father and his dog. Question one required students to comment on the scene described in the passage (the father was attempting to drown the dog) and the range of emotions experienced by the father. Ms Parsons said the questions were restrained and failed to exploit students' potential. "It would have been better to ask questions about the child, she said. "Students would have enjoyed that."
