Sir, – I can’t pretend not to have been insulted by Seán Byrne’s remarks regarding my Leaving Cert year’s maths skills (“Students exposed by fall in Leaving Cert standards”, Opinion, August, 22nd). Most particularly, I was frustrated by his condescending comment that German students could add up their points “without an iPhone app” unlike their ignorant Irish counterparts.
I would invite Mr Byrne to attempt to add up Leaving Cert points in the following situation: It’s 6am and you’ve been kept awake all night by nightmares of scoring 80 points and needing to repeat. The paper declaring your results is illegible because your hand is shaking uncontrollably. Meanwhile your mother, father and younger siblings are all staring at you, waiting for the announcement that you will or will not get your course. Half of the people around you are screaming several decibels higher than normal because they got enough points for commerce, and your childhood friend is sobbing relentlessly at your side because she just missed out on veterinary medicine. And your granny is on the phone, asking shrilly whether or not the candle she lit for you at Mass last June worked.
In this situation, what we want is to add up our points as fast as possible with no human error involved. I’m terribly sorry to have let the side down. I also doubt an extra several months in school would have helped in this situation, as we don’t do a module called “Basic arithmetic under extreme stress”. – Yours, etc,
ANNIE KEEGAN,
Stillorgan Park,
Blackrock, Co Dublin.
Sir, – Seán Byrne (Opinion, August 22nd) hits the nail on the head. When we were doing the Leaving Cert in the mid-1970s, we were expected to compose essay answers out of our own heads to questions in English, Irish and history, as part of homework, five days a week. Unoriginal or half-baked analyses were not acceptable to our teachers.
While this regime was demanding, it was satisfying and even enjoyable. Because we had had to think about it quite hard, the material became easier to remember. Therefore, we could cover the whole syllabus, so there was much less interest in what “must” come up in a given year. We had to do very little rote learning, thank God, and the emphasis was always on quality of thought over quantity of foolscap in any exam.
It seems, looking back, that we were given the necessary skills for college, from first year in secondary school. I can’t remember anyone having difficulty taking notes, unless the lecturer was inordinately fast or soft-spoken. Exams made us nervous of course, but most of us did fine. It helped, too, that we were all taught joined-up writing so we could cover pages at speed, and that many of us had been able to do Latin, which helps to order ideas as well as to make it simple to pick up grammar in any other language.
We took it for granted we had to produce clear, logical and original material in class and in exams. What on earth is the point of any system which does not reward original analysis, but gives credit instead for outstanding regurgitation of someone else’s ideas?
A cynic might reply that such a system makes it easy for our political and economic masters to dominate us, as few of its victims would be able to challenge effectively whatever mediocrity or downright outrage it suited them to impose upon us. I don’t want to believe this, but I do think we must lose no more time if we wish to reverse the downward drift away from critical analysis and original thought towards an unthinking, docile acceptance of others’ ideas in all circumstances. We owe our precious youth no less. – Yours, etc,
CAROLINE COUNIHAN,
Glenina, Ennis, Co Clare.
Sir, – Seán Byrne (Opinion, August 22nd) rightly points out that higher mathematics students should not require an app to calculate their points, and the NCCA should probably show the Earth rotating in the conventional direction. However, in the heat of the moment, we often make silly mistakes.
To pick one example, the article says that the fact that Irish students spend fewer days in school, compared to their international counterparts, is linked to a decline in Leaving Cert performance. This is clearly a non sequitur – the number of days students outside Ireland spend in school is largely irrelevant to past, present and future Leaving Cert performance. The number of days Irish students spend in secondary school per year hasn't changed significantly since at least the mid-1980s.
Indeed, with the increase in the use of Transition Year, the days that students spend in secondary school may have increased, overall. I’d be happy to write a calculator for Mr Byrne, to help us double- check the numbers. – Yours, etc,
Dr DAVID MALONE,
Leinster Street East,
North Strand, Dublin 3.