Madam, - I was depressed by the article under the Education Today banner in your edition of September 20th, with the headline "There's no point in knowing about stuff that's not going to come up in exams".
I am reluctant to denigrate a resourceful and dedicated student who has achieved maximum points in the Leaving Certificate examinations, and prefer to focus on the awfulness of an educational system in which it is possible for one of its highest achievers to be so brutally dismissive of a broad view of learning.
It is an indictment of the system rather than the individual student that she speaks with pride of a ruthless approach to her examinations, based primarily on learning by rote, and repudiation of anything unconnected to the narrow strictures of the curriculum.
This is a philistine arena in which there is no space to cherish the civilising values offered by literature and the arts, no room for the intellectual stimulation provided by enquiry into the sciences, no place for the cultural riches inherent in the study of languages, history and philosophy. In sum, an educational void in which the most successful students are those who know best how to exploit a flawed system.
I have known some very gifted teachers. They were never less than diligent in preparing their pupils for public examinations, but their greatest talent was the ability to cultivate a sense of intellectual curiosity and stimulate an all-encompassing love of knowledge and learning. It is a dismal world in which such attributes are dismissed as superfluous.
I wish your featured student well in her actuarial studies, but commend to her a quotation from Oscar Wilde: "What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." - Yours, etc,
ALAN SWEETMAN, Doris Street, Dublin 4.
Madam, - Thank God Ruth Borland is going to be an actuary. I would hate to see somebody with her attitude going into medicine. A love of learning has taken a distant second place behind points. - Yours, etc,
JOHN F DOYLE, Mill Road, Midleton, Co Cork.