There is a rule of human nature so immutable that it should have been inscribed in stone for Adam and Eve to behold and to remember as they were banished from Eden. It is this: do not expect the truth voluntarily from the unaccountable. It is the instinct of the unaccountable to fudge and to hide, usually accompanied with high and pious noises, writes Kevin Myers
This is a human trait, not one associated with any particular profession or people. It is the mark of kings and clowns, plumbers and ploughmen, journalists and jewellers. We do not answer for our actions unless we are obliged to by law or by political pressure.
So teachers were not behaving in a particularly delinquent way when, down the decades, they justified the cloak of secrecy over one of the few calculable measures of their productivity. Indeed, infinitely less excusable than the conduct of the teachers is that of the media and our political classes, who lazily tolerated this ignoble culture of secrecy.
How is this possible? The teaching profession is a voracious consumer of taxpayers' money; and in return for their colossal investment in education, in teachers' salaries and pensions, the taxpayers are surely entitled to know what they are getting in return; such as, for example, how many university undergraduates a particular school might produce annually.
Patronising logic
Yet we were denied this truth, on the spurious grounds that it was only part of the truth; and to have that knowledge in the absence of any other knowledge - so the teachers' argument went - would create simply more confusion than awareness. Such patronising logic - that part-truth is dangerous and unlit ignorance infinitely preferable - is usually used by governments to justify their pathological attachment to secrecy: but here we had teachers' leaders saying the same thing, as Charlie Lennon still was, over and over, last weekend.
That teachers should use such an argument to justify concealment of any information of public concern is astounding only if you forget the lapidary message which Adam and Eve fled so tearfully past: Do not expect the truth voluntarily from the unaccountable.
Teachers have become unaccountable, and so conceited in their unaccountability that they justified it with an argument which ran counter to the very method by which they teach. Partial truth is dangerous, they averred, as justification of the secrecy surrounding the performance of schools.
Mountainous falsehood
Yet is not each lesson in school a revelation of partial truth? Is not teaching an incremental revelation of some greater whole, which in any event can never be understood in its entirety - well, not this side of the gates of paradise, anyway? Is not teaching itself a refutation of the argument that because you cannot know simply everything, then it's simply better for Diddums not to know anything at all? Yet for years the teaching profession got away with this great big fat laziness-inducing lie, a mountainous falsehood behind which could slumber the torpid, the incompetent, the undedicated, the time-watchers. And any attempt to discover individual schools' exam results was denounced as irrelevant or counter-productive. Hush, Diddums, we know best.
With education thus officially endorsing utter ignorance in preference to partial enlightenment, a philosophical nihilism became an unquestioned dogma behind education policy. It is no wonder that with this doctrine of non-enquiry, and a consensual, indeed, almost enthusiastically-endorsed culture of public non-knowledge about how well schools were doing, it also became impossible to see that some schools were performing very badly indeed.
One quarter of all children in this State leave secondary school functionally illiterate; yet the truth is even worse than that. Since illiteracy is not spread equally, we know a huge percentage of working class school-leavers cannot read or write properly after over a decade of schooling. (Though it has to be admitted that for over a half of that decade, the schools were shut and the teachers on paid holidays).
This illiteracy of so many is a guarantee of poverty, of squandered potential, of unmarried motherhood, of addiction and of witless, recidivist crime, ad infinitum.
Our failure to educate the children of the poor and the unskilled is the great scandal of this State. When I wrote about this recently, in the context of the better results girls achieved over boys in their Leaving Certs, and saying that the gender discrepancy was far less important than the one of class, Kathy Sheridan denounced me in this newspaper, using that sneering whinge which feminists often resort to. Needless to say, my remarks about the fate of the unlettered working classes didn't get a mention in her gender-obsessed tirade.
Full disclosure
Yet the sex of our successful students counts infinitely less than the abject failure of our unsuccessful ones. The publication of how many university places any particular school achieves is only the first step towards full disclosure of what is going on in our schools; for of far greater importance is the measure of how we treat the less fortunate. You can make this a moral issue, which makes it very emotionally satisfying: but much more compelling is that other solipsism - self-interest.
Investment in educating the poor is pure selfishness. It means that less money is required tomorrow in prisons and policing. It means safer streets, a more prosperous economy, a more versatile workforce and a more vibrant culture. All of this starts only when we know where our educational system is failing us. It's time to be selfish. It's time for Diddums to discover how and where our schooling is going wrong.