The day after the Leaving Cert results were made public the headline in the supplement in this newspaper was "Welcome to the rest of your life". A nice message if you've just breezed through the exams and collected all the points you wanted. The future's bright; the world is your oyster.
If, however, you haven't done so well; if you are a few, or many, points short of the course you were hoping for then this headline becomes a grim reminder. It tells you - unwittingly perhaps - that the Leaving Cert is the most important event in your life and you've just messed it up.
It is precisely this concept, the all-pervading importance of the Leaving Cert, that these students have had rammed down their throats for the past two years. And now that the results have arrived the pressure gets worse. Let me give you a couple of examples.
One student I know got her results - five points short of her first choice but still a wonderful result. Her parents were away on holiday so her father rang home to find out how she had got on. When he heard, he launched into a verbal assault about the fact that she hadn't scored highly enough to secure her first (and perhaps his) choice. No congratulations on her remarkable results, no commiserations over how close she'd had come. To say she was upset would be a massive understatement.
Sometimes that pressure comes from within rather than without. Another girl repeated her Leaving Cert because she was short of points to study medicine last year. This time she increased her total by 20 but is still five points short. Rather than consider any other career she is going to repeat for the second time with no guarantee that she will succeed next time.
These stories are not untypical. Every August our 17- and 18-year-olds face the same ordeal. It is an ordeal predicated on two flawed ideas, that the Leaving Cert is a matter of life and death, and that it is possible to measure people using academic results.
Looking back on when my eldest son sat his Leaving Cert, the over-riding memory I have is how there was no future beyond the exams and the results. His life would run up until the envelope with those grades arrived. Beyond that point there was no point in planning. You could fill out your CAO form. You could hope to achieve this course or that but, in reality, you couldn't hit play until the end of August. And you wouldn't know what would happen when you got to press that button.
I am not trying to argue that the Leaving Cert is not important. But the emphasis placed on its importance is too great. Students are given the impression that their results will shape the rest of their lives and that the decisions they make will govern their futures. That simply isn't so.
Now, more than ever, people switch jobs as their careers develop and as they develop. It is estimated that modern workers will work for six or seven different companies throughout their careers. The concept of the job for life is redundant, pardon the pun. Employment contracts are getting shorter, particularly in growth areas like computing. Pharmaceutical companies no longer hire chemistry graduates exclusively. They now pursue computing, biology and business degree-holders just as tenaciously.
Five years after leaving school the details of your Leaving Cert results should not even be included on your CV. Prospective employers want to see relevant work experience.
At job interviews they want to know that you can work in a team or on your own, that you can communicate clearly or work flexible hours. Your A in honours maths won't cut much ice. The Leaving Cert is important for your first step in your career ladder but that is all.
The second problem is the points system itself. It has been adjusted so that it more accurately reflects your academic achievements, and that is, in itself, a good thing. But it does not reflect your suitability for a given career. The answer to the question "Who are you?" is not "I am 320 points in the Leaving Cert". It is part of the answer but only a very small part. And your points only facilitate you getting involved in the popularity contest of university admissions.
At the moment medicine and dentistry require the highest points simply because they are the most popular courses. It has nothing whatsoever to do with your ability to complete either course or, more importantly, whether you will be a good cardiovascular surgeon or orthodontist.
When I went to third-level the queue for arts in UCG was a mile long. By contrast the queue for medicine was far shorter, and a number of good friends of mine switched to the shorter line. This didn't result in us producing any more competent or incompetent doctors then than now. That might seem counter-intuitive until you examine the skills a good medic really needs.
Good diagnoses are based not just on retaining a database of diseases and conditions in one's head but on the ability to listen to what the patient is telling you, on an understanding of how people think and react. On the ability to understand that what one person might describe as a mildly painful inconvenience another will characterise as mortal agony.
I do not want necessarily to scrap the points system altogether, but I do want our education process to take more account of the less measurable aspects of what makes us people. It must be possible to include an interview, or similar screening programme, as part of the admissions policy for certain courses.
Yes, this would create a large amount of extra work for our third-level institutions, and it would be vital that those carrying out the interviews be trained properly. But, if we are to continue to pride ourselves on having one of the best education systems in the world, then we will have to invest in it.
For as long as I can remember this has been a seasonal debate. By the end of October it will be allowed to slip from everyone's agenda. We shouldn't let it slip because its repercussions stretch well beyond the unfortunate teenagers we put through the wringer every August. If we can help our young people to get started on the right career track, if we can prepare them for the jobs they both want and are most suited to do, the country cannot but benefit.