The education system has been hijacked by third-level institutions and employers, according to Father Peter McVerry. Instead of young people learning to value themselves and others for who they are, universities and employers' lobbies determined what they learned and where.
Father McVerry was speaking at a Dublin Employment Pact seminar yesterday on "Striking the Balance" within our education system. He said, "Students may select subjects, not according to their interests, but according to the subjects' potential to provide them with a good grade. Parents encourage their children to study subjects which will be useful to their future job prospects, rather than merely educational.
"The result is a points system which leaves many students, even bright students, feeling that they are failures because they have not achieved, according to the criteria laid down by those who now control the education system, namely third-level institutions and multinational employers."
A points system that was "oppressive even to those at the top" created "enormous pressure on young people at a time in their lives when they should be protected from such pressure. Young people who drop out - and perhaps those who work long hours when they should be more profitably studying - are asking us to look long and hard at the education system which we have imposed on them.
"They are asking basic questions about the purpose of the education system, about the academic bias within the education system, about the morality of imposing such pressures on children just to satisfy the needs of third-level institutions and employers. They are asking questions - and answering them with their feet - about the quality of our education system.
"Those who have been successful within the education system are most likely to equate quantity with results. They got so many points, ergo they have succeeded. Those who have dropped out are questioning the quality of the education system and this identification of quality with results.
"Maybe part of the problem is that in order to ask hard questions about the education system, you must, ironically, have succeeded within the education system," he concluded.
Meanwhile, an Economic and Social Research Institute study presented to the conference showed that while second-level students working 15 hours or more a week did significantly less well in exams.
However, students who did some part-time working were also less likely to experience unemployment when they left school.
Students whose parents were unemployed were less likely to hang on to their jobs.
The researchers, Ms Selina McCoy and Ms Emer Smyth, also found that, when baby-sitting was excluded from part-time work definitions, boys tended to work more hours and at more intensive jobs than girls.