PRESIDENT'S LOG:The system we have is not in a position to deliver the skilled developers of a knowledge economy, writes FERDINAND VON PRONDZYNSKI
A COUPLE OF weeks ago, I was invited by TCD’s Science Gallery to join a group of second-level students from schools around Ireland to discuss the future of secondary education. The students had been brought together to draft a “Charter for 21st Century Learning”, and in doing so, were invited to have a dialogue with people described as “entrepreneurs and education reformers” to work out their views and express some ideas.
I have to say that I regularly get to spend time talking with people from all sorts of backgrounds about education reform, and nowadays I can predict what most of them are going to say. I can do that because, if we’re honest, we all know perfectly well what reforms are needed; it’s just that nobody is doing all that much about it. Previously in these pages I have suggested that we badly need curriculum reform and a complete overhaul of the Leaving Certificate. But on this occasion what caught my attention in the discussions was something different. The students I listened to were not so much concerned about the curriculum (though there was some of that), they were more worried about the way they were being taught and the way they were not being engaged.
What struck me in talking to them was that they were articulate, enthusiastic, intelligent, thoughtful, perceptive, and actually also extraordinarily courteous. But what they were saying was that their educational experience was too often undermined by a system that did not encourage initiative, participation, analysis and evaluation; and that teachers too often were worn down by this system and had become slaves to predictable routine and had given in to cynicism. It was, in short, a description of an education system that was in no position to deliver the skilled developers of a knowledge economy.
I cannot say that the students were complaining: what they were presenting was not a list of accusations, but the expression of disappointment and regret. And what were they disappointed about? At one level, it was about inadequate resources: excessively large classes, not enough computers or outdated equipment. But listening to them I understood that what exercised them much more than any of that was that our system of secondary education did not allow them to show initiative, voice opinions, or practise participation. What they missed most was a sense of mutual respect between themselves and their teachers.
Although they came from a number of different schools, they immediately agreed with each other that too many teachers were not motivated or excited by what they were doing; that teachers stuck rigidly to a formal curriculum and discouraged any deviation from it, even casually (one group said they had been unable to get any teacher to talk about volcanic ash, because it was “not in the Leaving Cert”); that teachers often showed they were bored by their subjects; that extra-curricular activities were not supported; that students were punished for making mistakes (thereby discouraging a willingness to be entrepreneurial and take risks); that the establishment of a forum for dialogue with students was not encouraged.
It would be easy to blame teachers for such conditions, but in reality as a country we have all been asleep while our education system fell behind the times. When Ireland was a rural economy with few resources, low levels of female participation in the labour market, and limited opportunities for high value innovation our education system was just fine. In fact, it showed that it was so by transferring well to third world countries with broadly similar needs, as Catholic missionary orders showed. But the game has changed, and it is no longer fit for purpose; and we know that but seem to be paralysed in the face of this challenge.
We have of course heard a number of recent warnings about the quality of our education, some from industry and some from educationalists. But so far these warnings have not produced a real debate about how we could do it better. We need to accept that we are going the wrong way, and that if Ireland is to be the success story of the next decade as we were in the 1990s, this will need to be fixed. Fixing it is not a matter of tweaking the Leaving Certificate, it is about understanding that right now we have a system that was designed for a long gone era and for a different society, and that it has not adapted. We don’t have much time for this, and yet there isn’t a real sense of urgency in the national debate. It’s time to take this problem seriously.
We have a generation of young people in our schools who instinctively want to do this better. We should listen to them.
Ferdinand von Prondzynski is president of Dublin City University
