Sir, - Your coverage of the Leaving Certificate results was the usual mixture of deploring the pressure to which the exam subjects young people and celebrating the achievements of the "straight A" students. As in previous years, one of these prodigies studied at a profit-making grind school for which you provided valuable free advertising.
I wonder how many of the students who achieve the points in the Leaving Certificate necessary for such intellectually exciting careers as pharmacy or corporate law can identify six flowers found in an Irish meadow (if they could find a meadow that has not been eliminated by environmentally destructive agriculture), identify three Irish butterflies, or name and locate three constellations in the night sky. How many of them read for pleasure or understand the origins of an expression such as "the labours of Hercules". (Having used this phrase in a discussion with a group of third level students recently, I was somewhat dispirited to find that none of them understood the reference.) I have also discovered that a great many third level students, perhaps the majority, do not know the outlines of even 20th century Irish or world history. Of course such ignorance may not be a barrier to advancement in business and politics.
I noted with interest that in two of the schools which featured very impressive Leaving Certificate results, neither art nor music were offered and neither of these subjects were taken by any of the "straight A" students. It is to be hoped that our future pharmacists and corporate lawyers will eventually discover some of the dimensions of intellectual and cultural life to which their second level "education" failed to introduce them. - Yours, etc.,
Sean Byrne,
Sutton Park, Dublin 13.