Moral values must go up the education agenda, says BRIAN MOONEY

THE CURRENT crisis in Irish society raises serious questions for teachers.

Could we as educators have done more to make our students question the consumerist agenda?

Could we have done more to question the greed evident in the boardrooms and elsewhere?

There is also a much wider question: does our education system have the capacity to modify the kind of behaviour we have seen at the highest levels of leadership in business?

The individuals who ultimately led us down the path of financial ruin were the brightest and best of our students.

What could and should we have done as teachers which might have made each one of them pause and reflect on the implications of their decisions?

Many appeared to be caught up in a wave of greed which spread from their boardrooms to eventually engulf a large percentage of the population.

I am not suggesting that as a society we are bereft of moral values and high ethical standards.

The Irish are an innately generous and caring people. Despite our present difficulties, we retain those values – for the most part – in our personal relationships.

So why have we allowed greed to contaminate other aspects of our society?

Is there a gaping hole at the heart of our education system, where ethics and values should be?

Does the dominance of the CAO points race within our education system and the focus of teachers, management, parents and students on exam success mean that the only ethical principle underpinning our education system is “get ahead, stay ahead”?

Can those of us tasked with educating the next generation of leaders within our society instil within our students higher ethical standards and values?

The great irony, of course, is that we have an education system largely controlled by the Catholic church.

Surely the underlying Christian message within Catholic education – and within the other Christian denominations represented within our education system – should have led us to question the shape and character of the Ireland we allowed to develop over the past decade or so?

As it clearly failed, we must now ask ourselves a key question: does our exam-driven education system allow for any engagement with the deepest questions of meaning and value?

These questions should be at the heart of school life but too often – under the constant exam pressure – they are shunted to the sidelines.

Can we, over the coming years, as the direct involvement of all the churches in our education system diminishes, develop a shared set of values and ethical principles which we can effectively transmit through our education system?

If we can, our education system can become a bulwark against a repeat of the collective madness of the recent boom and burst.

Brian Mooney teaches at Oatlands College, Stillorgan, Co Dublin