Did you hear the one about the education minister who consulted young people on how to make exams easier? No kidding. You're probably thinking this happened in, oh, one of those countries with a reputation for excessive nannying, like Sweden, or dismal standards in education, like England. But no. It happened right here in Ireland, writes Michael Parsons.
If you weren't paying attention you might have missed a recent meeting between "Class of 2007", a 100-strong representative group of this year's Leaving Certificate students and the Minister for Education, Mary Hanafin.
Ms Hanafin was seeking their views on how to make the exam less stressful for students taking it in future years. She was reportedly shocked to discover that on one particular day students had to spend "six hours and 20 minutes in the exam hall". She declared: "Never again in their lives will they be asked to write so much over such an extended period of time".
Well, maybe, But every second school-leaver these days seems to aspire to becoming a best-selling novelist or, you guessed it, a journalist. And what do students think writers and hacks do all day long? Dictate streams of consciousness to stenographers? Well, OK, Barbara Cartland did, but then she was one in a million. So surely the Leaving Certificate should be gruelling - to prepare students for the real world.
If we're not careful the next thing we know they'll be asking to have a party or a foreign holiday or a new Prada handbag from Brown Thomas to "celebrate" finishing the exam.
And what's next? Playschool toddlers whinging about how difficult it is to memorise all the words of Oró Sé Do Bheatha Abhaile"? Children demanding luncheon at a posh hotel on the occasion of their First Holy Communion?
Visit any house with children these days and, well, you'll need a stiff drink. "How are the children?" you ask, and before your hostess has even poured you a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon (which might at least numb the pain) you must listen to an update on little Siobhán's reading skills and how the school principal thinks she's "very advanced for her age". Or how Diarmuid has "above average IQ", is "brilliant at chess" and "loves history, don't you, Diarmuid?" To which he grunts in reply: "Whatever."
Well, if you think your 11-year-old is a little genius, consider this. When an elderly English gentleman, Humphrey Stanbury, found a copy of the entrance exam for King Edward's School in Birmingham which his father had sat and passed in 1898, he sent it to the Spectator magazine, which published it as a contribution to the debate on "dumbing down" in modern educational tests.
Note, this was an entrance exam for a secondary school, not a college at Oxford. The geography section asked, among other questions: "Where are silver, platinum, tin, wool, wheat, palm oil, furs and cacao got from". Huh?
And how about this: "Where are Omdurman, Wai-Hei-Wai, Crete, Santiago, and West Key, and what are they noted for?" D'oh?
So you were never any good at geography? Righty-oh, try arithmetic (maths, children): "Five horses and 28 sheep cost £126 14s, and 16 sheep cost £22 8s; find the total cost of 2 horses and 10 sheep".
Stumped? History, then. Ah you love your history, don't you? Always shouting at Chris Tarrant and the hapless eejit who's about to lose £15,000 because he doesn't know the answer to "In which country did the 1916 Rising take place?" Ready? "State what you know of Henry II's quarrel with Becket, the taking of Calais by Edward III, the attempt to make Lady Jane Grey queen, the trial of the Seven Bishops, the Gordon riots". Crikey.
And consider this whopper. "What kings of England began to reign in the years 871, 1135, 1216, 1377, 1422, 1509, 1625, 1685, 1727, 1830?" Gorblimey.
In short, a bright 11-year-old in these islands 100 odd years ago was expected to know the name and dates of every monarch who had ever reigned. How many 11-year-olds could name all taoisigh and their dates of office? And lastly, of course, there was Latin - then a staple of every well-educated child in Ireland and Britain. Here's a sample question. "Give the comparative of noxius, acer, male, diu; the superlative of piger, humilis, fortiter, multum; the English and genitive sing. of solus, uter, quisque". Gordon Bennett.
How many of the brightest about-to-be-undergraduates at Trinity or Belfield, those "little geniuses" who sat the Leaving Certificate this summer could answer questions of similar difficulty without the aid of a computer, calculator, or dictionary?
Any move to dumb down exams or take the pressure off schoolchildren would be a mistake. Children love challenges, don't they? Ad astra.