For the first time yesterday people sitting the Junior Cert had as one of their subjects civil, social and political studies.
I hope they do well and that, when they get a few weeks off, they'll turn their knowledge to advantage, giving a hand to some of our civil, social and political leaders, who seem to need it.
There's Bertie Ahern, who's been suffering from loss of memory for years and whose work is constantly hampered by his own or others' mistakes, misunderstandings and errors of judgment.
He regularly promises a new approach to ethics but is stymied by friends and allies, half of whom don't see the point of it while the other half come out with their hands up only when they're caught.
While they're at it, the students could ask their friendly local lobbyist - there's one around every corner and two in the bar - to arrange a meeting with Charlie McCreevy.
Mr McCreevy hasn't got the hang of this new way of going at all. As far as he's concerned, it's a load of ould muck being slung by Fine Gael, Labour and The Irish Times.
If the students had tuned in to Questions and Answers the other night, they'd have heard him giving the hard chaw's version of standards and stuff.
Roughly speaking, as the hard chaws see it, the only reason for talk about standards and stuff is to prevent Fianna Fail from doing what it does best. (In the national interest.)
And when they've taken the measure of the Government, the students might turn their hands to the Opposition; in particular, to the results of the European and local elections.
For a party which has been playing ducks and drakes with the business of government, not to mention consistency and the English language, Fianna Fail has put in a passable performance.
It wasn't quite the performance you'd have imagined from listening to the first broadcast reports. (Raidio na Gaeltachta, featuring some old stagers like Proinsias Mac Aonghusa and Sean O Tuairisc, proved more reliable.)
But, if FF's performance was passable - all things considered - and Fine Gael's lived up to the promise of modest advances in the campaign polls, Labour could do with a long, cold look at its results. The party's overall share of first preference votes in the local elections, 10.6 per cent, was no better than it had been in 1991.
Eight years ago, more than 10 per cent was considered promising: the party was heading for its most impressive performance in a general election. (Fianna Fail was sliding towards one of its worst.)
Labour's organisers must ask why its prospects seemed much brighter then than they do now, in spite of the financial scandals that have left FF looking like Italy's unreconstructed Christian Democrats.
True, Labour's support in urban areas remains strong, especially in Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare. But a fall in rural support, which largely accounts for the loss of more than 20 seats, is not the only source of concern.
Labour's position is under attack by Sinn Fein, the Green Party, the Workers' Party and the Socialists. And both Sinn Fein and the Socialists are beginning to win increasing support in densely working-class constituencies, with an appeal to an electorate which already considers itself hopelessly disadvantaged.
There is a growing sense, which the civil, social and political studies students may be well placed to study, that any fall in the turnout for elections is simply explained by a loss of trust in politics generally.
This suspicion, the argument runs, may have its origins in the behaviour of Charles Haughey and Michael Lowry but continues to spread its contagion among parties with which they have no connection.
Indeed, there is a counterargument which insists that the scandals have made little difference to party support; that at least a significant minority of the electorate is influenced by traditional loyalty and a demand for instant answers to simple questions.
FF and FG, with their appeal to old loyalties and simple answers, fit the bill. Labour, which depends more than either on a programmatic approach, has a more complicated and altogether more challenging message.
It calls for a view of community interests that's far from fashionable, although some members of Fine Gael say that the Just Society thinking, which once gave the party a social-democratic air, still survives.
Like Labour, FG might benefit from more vigorous opposition in the Dail and in a more forceful approach to establishing its own identity.
But FG has always acted as if it cared more for propriety than for success. Indeed it would have won a second seat in Leinster in the European elections if its vote management had been as precise as Fianna Fail's.
Fine Gael and Fianna Fail may not be under immediate attack from the smaller parties, though FF organisers must remember how, in the early 1980s, Sinn Fein deprived Mr Haughey of an overall majority by winning seats in Border areas for hunger strikers.
The memory may be bitter for Fianna Fail; it's more important that Sinn Fein should be persuaded by its success to convince its paramilitary partners in the republican movement that the time for militarism is over.
Any attempt to persist with politics and militarism hand in hand would be disastrous for democracy in this country, North and South.
It would certainly spell a bleak future for the 19,000 who took the civil, social and political studies paper in their examination yesterday.
Many years ago, when the waning interest in politics first attracted attention, I suggested here that a course in civics might help.
Someone from the Department of Education telephoned and several teachers wrote to say the suggestion was unnecessary: civics was already being taught; and they were pleased to report progress. THIS was at best an exaggeration and, at worst, nonsense - as an official of the National Council for Curriculum Assessment (NCCA) finally admitted this week.
The new course, he said, "replaces the old civics programme, which was never examined and which a lot of schools were not implementing in real terms."
The new course has a practical side: students choose projects which examine events at home and abroad. This year the projects included the Belfast Agreement.
The NCCA official said of the course: "The emphasis is now on active, participatory citizenship, with a view to students seeing this whole area not as simply a theoretic subject but as something that they can become involved in.
"It addresses a perceived need within society for young people to be more directly involved in society and with the political process."
It's an exam, more than any other, that this society cannot afford to fail.