John O'Keeffe thinks Irish Education System is crap

[Ataxia]

I agree. One change that should be made is that philosophy should replace the Catholic-centred religion syllabus; Irish should be 75% oral and non-compulsory.

[earlyandoften]

Who is John O'Keefe and why should I take notice of what he says?

[twtone]

Who is John O'Keefe and why should I take notice of what he says?

I never heard of John O'Keefe either. Is he a Kerry footballer?

[earlyandoften]

Who is John O'Keefe and why should I take notice of what he says?

I never heard of John O'Keefe either. Is he a Kerry footballer?

I had a maths teacher called John O'Keefe.

[tic tac man]

Also, we're inclined to think our schools are brilliant in comparison to the US and the UK. There are two problems with this.

1. Why are they so often taken as the best comparators. Neither rate highly on an international scale.

2. I have worked in US schools, within the public system and in some pretty rough neighborhoods; they were, in general, well run institutions where I would be happy to see a child of mine go.

I have also worked in many Irish schools. Most are underfunded, under-resourced and under-staffed. They were, in general, class-ridden, religiously-sodden and extremely conservative. I could almost forgive all that if it wasn't for the smug, self-congratulatory, self-justifying bull************************ that pervades the management.

[riker1969]

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/smiling-in-the-corner-in-the-big-dunces-hat-1393686.html

I couldn't agree with him more. One of the biggest barriers to improvement in Irish education is the general opinion that it is brilliant.

It's not. It's failing in a lot of ways. At third level:

Science is politically weak and underfunded
Humanities is full of out-of-date ideology and religious vested interests
It's all pretty insular, self-satisfied and often simply lazy

Discuss with or without reference to the socio-economic consequences.

Can you read? Just looked at article-it talks about UNIVERSITIES not entire System. Dont get me wrong-there are problems in all sectors but you are misrepresenting the article. He also does not use the term crap. Please make well rounded points rather than point scoring!

[Trampas]

Who is John O'Keefe and why should I take notice of what he says?

I hope I am correct in saying that he runs one of those grind schools in Dublin, which of course would give him an axe to grind, as it were. It would also place an onus on him to declare his interest and I suspect he has.

[KingKane]

Someone from a private third level institution thinks the public third level sector is bad. Wat a soorprize!

[patslatt]

I read a criticism by a distinguished UK professor of the inspection systems for UK universities. His main criticism was that inspections follow very mechanistic approaches in trying to provide quantified,objective data on university education. This makes university departments waste enormous time trying to document what they do in absurd quantified detail in order to please the inspectors,to the point that university education is being severely distorted.

[patslatt]

Also, we're inclined to think our schools are brilliant in comparison to the US and the UK. There are two problems with this.

1. Why are they so often taken as the best comparators. Neither rate highly on an international scale.

2. I have worked in US schools, within the public system and in some pretty rough neighborhoods; they were, in general, well run institutions where I would be happy to see a child of mine go.

I have also worked in many Irish schools. Most are underfunded, under-resourced and under-staffed. They were, in general, class-ridden, religiously-sodden and extremely conservative. I could almost forgive all that if it wasn't for the smug, self-congratulatory, self-justifying ******** that pervades the management.

The literacy results in Irish schools in international comparisons are well ahead of US schools. US schools' performances are burdened by the bureaucracy of state school board ownership,whereas the Irish schools' autonomy allows room for initiative of good teaching staff.

Another factor holding back US schools' performances is the statistically well documented poor academic performances of black and hispanic Americans. Hispanics represent a high percentage of the student population and their performance reflects the poor educational attainment of their parents from Mexico which has one of the world's worst primary education systems.

Many US schools "in some pretty rough neighborhoods" benefit from being financed by property taxes on prosperous commercial and industrial businesses,but there are also many which are poorly financed.

Arguably, less is more,in terms of funding. Lack of generous funding in Irish schools forces parents to take an active interest in schools through fund raising activities,which maybe makes them take more interest in the quality of their local schools' education and their childrens' educational progress. THat said, I think Irish schools would benefit from having specialist literacy and numeracy instructors to assist children falling behind. A programme of this kind is now being rolled out across the UK.

I'd be interested in why you think Irish schools "... were, in general, class-ridden, religiously-sodden and extremely conservative." As for religious soddeness,a few teachers I have met in Dublin suggest religious teaching is Catholic Lite or Ultrlite compared to the indoctrination of generations ago and the periods devoted to religion are often skipped or reduced. I mentioned the word mortal sin in jokes recently to some well educated Dublin Catholics in their early twenties who didn't know what it meant.