As a teacher, I just want to congratulate all the students who got their Leaving Cert results. Be they what you were looking or not, look forward with courage - think about your choices carefully and don't be afraid of the challenges ahead.
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"There is nothing to fear but fear itself" - FDR
Sounds like common sense to me!
Maths is seriously overrated as a Subject.
Most of what they teach you is absolutely of no use in the real world - keeps Teachers in jobs mostly!
However the catch is that if they lower the Maths requirement then more LC students will be eligible for 3rd level courses. So unless the number of places is upped and the funds are there to finance that you will just end up with more bottlenecks somewhere else and the intrroduction of some other block on entry.
Europa Conventus Delenda Est
The mind boggles. This in a country that maintains that high tech industries such as pharmacuticals will form the basis of economic activity in the decades to come.Originally Posted by Catalpa
The decision to promote the Gaelic language is a political one, rightly or wrongly.
The decision to de-prioritise maths is plan stupidity.
I really think that after the Junior Cert there should be no compulsary subjects. In the same way that we don't force kids to do science subjects incase they decide to become a doctor, we shouldn't force kids to do maths in case they decide to do engineering, maths etc at college. It's about putting more control in kids hands and getting them to make decisions that affect them.
A greater range of subjects would be nice as well - I very much believe that Philosophy, Law and Politics should be taught at Leaving Cert.
Ultimately we should aim to make the Leaving Cert a reflection of students abilities and strengths...no longer should it be a case that an employer looks as your points and little else...it should be more a case of an employer looking at the subjects you chose and your relative strengths in them.
As well as that, a tailored points system should be introduced, e.g. give extra points for honours maths where maths is required, if you had leaving cert law as a subject, give extra points to someone wishing to study law on the basis of their LC law exam etc. UL give a blanket bonus for honours maths (an extra 40 points for an A1 I believe, or so it was in my day) which is a bit silly because if you're applying to do English and History - very numeric, very maths inclined but not at all verbal, not very good at thinking about things in a more abstract sense etc, and probably less suited to English and History than someone who got an A1 in both subjects at leaving cert but got a C in pass maths, yet you get bumped up on the basis of a subject largely irelevant to the subject at hand.
I think the really important stuff is done in primary school.
What use is the entire leaving cert syllabus in the real world?
I can't ever remember finding any uses for hardly anything I learned in secondary school. It was all irrelevant to real life.
What good is learning inorganic chemistry, the physics of lenses, english poems, shakespeare and half learning foreign languages?
No use.
If we'd learned how to handle credit cards, get a loan, deal with bureaucracies, calculate interest, rates of return,taxes, health and safety, how a house's plumbing and electrics are set up, how to mix cement, build a partition etc etc, that would have been useful. Give us all an exam in it at the end of secondary school and anyone who wants to go to academia can use the marks from that to get in. Cos I don't think that much of the stuff from secondary school is relevant to there either.
Well, calculating interest rates and taxes features in both Junior Cert Maths and Business Studies and at Leaving Cert Business, with the latter including issues such as credit cards, loans etc. Practical subjects such as Construction Studies, Metalwork, Woodwork and home Economics at leaving cert provide information on building and managing a home.
Of course, for those who believe that an education is more than just tangible facts that help you in the real world, the opportunity to learn Shakespearean plays or a foreign language or (as I would like it) difference schools of legal thought, or philosophy. Learning something not because you need to, but because it makes you a more rounded individual.
Depends on what you do to pay the rent each month. I did Maths, Physics and Economics for A Level, now I'm a self-employed computer programmer, and elements of all three are useful for me daily in earning a crust. But I always preferred the set-up in the south, friends from Donegal doing the Leaving and studying 6 or 7 subjects. 3 is too few to be well-rounded.
But "relevance to real life" is not, and never was, the point of primary and secondary education. The point of them is to first of all give people the basic level of literacy and numeracy they'll need to survive - and then to broaden their little minds with all sorts of subjects. It's about the power of imagination, the desire to learn new things for the sake of knowing them and the sheer joy of knowledge, about being able to research new topics, analyse problems, think things through for yourself.
In theory, at least. The Leaving Cert points race tends to distract from that, and maybe that's what we need to get back to in debate about education. Primary and Secondary education is about broadening the mind, stretching the mental muscles, equipping children with the tools to approach new issues and information and be able to cope with the big, complex, confusing and completely insane world of adults.
It's not about churning out compliant unthinking drones for the world of business....and in any event such an approach is completely counter-productive. Unthinking tools moulded for specific purposes break or become obsolete quickly when circumstances change. What employers actually need is workers who can think, analyze, learn, and adapt. Management, bless their cold shrivelled little hearts, just can't see that.
Je suis un loo-lah
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