Sir, – Not that myself or too many other English teachers have much of a clue as to the new Junior Cert course that we have been “teaching” for the past year, having received all of a day’s in-service training, but here’s one thing – at this one day of in-service training, I was told that there would be no more essay-writing as there is “not enough time”.
Students will, however, be marked by their teachers, in front of their classmates, on an oral presentation that they will give to class.
No provision is to be given for that very natural teenage condition, the dread of public performance. The most important skill in English that the students develop at this stage of their lives, composition, is being swept away.
As for my other core subject, history, it is to become, more or less, history. – Yours, etc,
PATRICK MURPHY,
Kilkenny.