Sure, we know the final hurdle is a test of one type of intelligence. But wouldn't golf lessons be far more useful, writes ANN MARIE HOURIHANE
IT IS hardly surprising that girls have out-performed boys in most subjects in this year’s Leaving Cert. There are a number of reasons why it is unsurprising. A. Everybody knows that girls are smarter than boys (yay!). B. Girls outperform boys in the major examinations of other countries. C. This happens every blooming year. Discuss.
Describe the education system of the future. Yes, it is a depressing subject, but this question is compulsory.
First of all, let us turn our attention to two separate matters, which may meet in the Venn diagram of the Irish educational system, and comprise that shadowy bit where the circles intersect – always a wonderful opportunity for the dutiful and slightly neurotic pencil shading at which female students excel. These two topics are i) if girls are so damn smart, why are they not ruling the world, and getting untold privileges – such as equal pay, to choose just the wildest example? And ii) if the educational authorities are so worried about girls consistently outperforming boys in the Leaving Cert, why don’t they change the exam?
But let’s just take a half-day’s holiday here to praise the Republic’s exam system itself, which gives grown-ups an excellent excuse not to talk about education in general, or what we might want for our young people before we grind their brains to consumerist dust. Instead it allows us to obsess about results and places to an unhealthy but strangely satisfying degree. This is a very female tendency. The exam system bears many similarities to dieting – those mad and ever-changing rules, the elation, the despair – and it shares an all-important points system with Weightwatchers.
It is a bit more difficult to get those people who are not sitting the Leaving, and are not related to anyone who is, interested in it. However, things have come to a pretty pass when it takes American companies worrying about the standard of science and mathematics in our schools to get the topic discussed on the news. We are raising worker bees for foreign-owned factories, and no one seems to find this peculiar. Do you agree with this statement?
Consider this for a moment: what type of intelligence does the Leaving Cert test? Recently there have been new discoveries about the development of the adolescent brain – and it looks pretty scary in there. New theories have emerged about intelligence and how it is measured. It seems there are quite a few different types of intelligence – maybe seven, or more – which we all possess.
The single type of intelligence tested in the Leaving is the old-fashioned get-into-the-bank type of conscientiousness, at which girls have always excelled. Caution, conventionality, intelligence and conservatism – these are the qualities that will get you through the Leaving, but they’ll hardly build a smart economy, whatever that is. Oh, and don’t forget, for the Leaving you also need a good memory.
There is no room for children of either gender whose intelligence is of a different type. The Leaving Cert is an exam for people who are good at exams. No one seems to find this peculiar. Can we see a pattern emerging? No, me neither. But I was never the visual type.
We’ll skip over the thousands of demoralised children – and their frantic, or simply depressed, parents – who did not pass the Leaving or sit the examination at all. Their good times start now, we hope. And we’ll also skip over the children who had to sweat blood to scrape through the ordinary maths paper, and indeed the whole of the Leaving Cert. The plight of both groups has been cogently examined elsewhere, to absolutely no avail.
Last Saturday, my colleague Breda O’Brien wrote about one initiative, based in Waterford, designed to help children excluded from the education system. It is receiving zero support from the Department of Education. How do you think this situation could be changed?
I see that we have made the elementary mistake of spending too much time on question two. We hardly have the space to explore the reasons why girls, the superheroes of the Leaving, do not go on to rule the world.
It would be nice to think that girls are simply too intelligent and well-balanced to want to rule the world. After all, what is education for, if not for a happy life? However, we also think that girls, no matter how academically brilliant, are brought down by a combination of self-doubt and an uncaring workplace system.
This may be an unpopular viewpoint, but there is actually an argument for bringing academically brilliant girls out of the education system, and teaching them golf instead, at the age, say, of 16. The skill of golf would provide them with far more business contacts than their blooming 540-point Leaving Cert result ever will. Golf is the best method of networking, the main skill needed in the Ireland of today. This golf curriculum would also save the taxpayer a fortune in teachers’ salaries. I think we’ll get an A on that one.