Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And yet, yesterday, tens of thousands of students were corralled into rooms while they go through the Leaving and Junior Cert examination systems.
These are systems that have been acknowledged by no less than the current Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn as completely outdated, unfit for purpose, and an unnecessary, stressful, counterproductive, and burdensome strain on bright young minds.
Major strides
Quinn, in fairness, has made major strides in reforming our education system. He has arguably done more than any Minister for Education in living memory: reducing religious dominance of the education system; announcing the abolition of the Junior Cert; reducing the bloated and unorganised fiefdoms that are Ireland's institutes of technology.
Small comfort
That is small comfort for the poor students who have just begun the State exams. My very bright nephew is one such pupil; he asks why he has slogged his guts out with mindless rote learning for the Junior Certificate when the whole exam is going to be abolished in a few years anyway, to be replaced with a system of continuous assessment, and curricula and examinations set by teachers at a local level.
Because, I want to tell him, things have to move slowly in Ireland.
Fear of change
Teachers, like other Irish people, are afraid of change and of radical innovation. That's certainly the message that has come from teachers' unions over the past year.
Speaker after speaker has lined up to declare that the high-stakes, pressurised Junior Cert exam – built around how many facts and information can be memorised and regurgitated in a few hours – was a grand aul lark.
So, they ask, why would we want to replace it with a system that allows students some involvement in curriculum design? Sadly, it’s almost as though teachers don’t have any faith in their students.
Quinn has approached the reforms with sensitivity and respect, and has avoided railroading them through.
So it will take until 2020 – eight years – for the reforms to kick in.
Archaic exam
In the meantime, kids, suck it up: the adults, who have now effectively told you that your Junior Cert exam is archaic and ridiculous, know better.
Reforms are also being made to the Leaving Cert, including a reduction in grade bands and an end to predictability of content. Big whoop.
These changes are cosmetic: the Leaving Certificate does not prepare students for the independent thinking required at third-level, and lags far behind a more progressive and sensible system like the International Baccalaureate. But we’re stuck with that too.
The problem boils down to this: Quinn’s agenda aims to encourage students to think for themselves, rather than repeat what they are told to think.
Notwithstanding the myth of the rebel Irish, this sits uneasily with a nation that has, in fact, generally been more comfortable to think what we are told to think by our religious betters, our political betters, our financial betters. And where would we be if the next generation learnt how to think?
