QuoteAlso, the PE situation is laughable in some places. I think a lot more needs to be done done in that area, especially in VEC schools.
Irish education system is one of the better ones i've heard of, although the teaching of religion and compulsory Irish are like the blackspot imo.
Also, the PE situation is laughable in some places. I think a lot more needs to be done done in that area, especially in VEC schools.
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It has a decent reputation, but a number of glaring flaws. Superfrank is right on PE, but there's also a massive emphasis placed on rote learning and consequent failures in any attempts to teach any number of other things, particularly critical thinking and oral communication skills.
You can't spell failure without FAI
Our education system is going the way of our telecommunications network post TE; down the toilet. The third level system is all over the shop, but the primary system is a complete shambles, with teachers expected to pay for nearly all of the teaching equipment out of their own pockets. They either will, because it's a vocation, and they'll live on the breadline because of it - particularly now after the budget - of they won't and they'll give a sub-standard education. It's a bloody disgrace that they're put in that position.
Don't even get me started on the portacabins littering the country, and how the money spent on them would have paid for replacement buildings ten times over at this stage; or the level of involvement of the catholic church, which is particularly horrifying in light of the recent report. It's just a mess.
We've 1 P.E class a week and it's at 9.00am Tuesday morning !!Originally Posted by superfrank
I agre with religion, but I think there needs to be a culture shift for the country to move towards non-denominational schools.
Personally I'm all for Irish being taught, I think it's taught badly though (this is second hand info from nieces & nephews still in or recently finished school) and there needs to be much more emphasis on the spoken word and less on language structure and literature.
That's a shocking time to have a PE class. Most kids are only awake an hour or two at most by then and at risk of.... I won't go into it but not good planning.We've 1 P.E class a week and it's at 9.00am Tuesday morning !!
I also agree with Dahamsta
The education system here is an absolute shambles, I agree.
-I think Irish should be taught, but the DOE need to pull their heads out of their holes and realise it's not a first language for the vast majority of the population, so trying to teach people to critically analyse poetry and literature is useless, when they can't ask their way to the shops.
-I don't think English literature for the leaving should be compulsory. I don't think it's something you need, or even something that's particularly useful. It should be an option, maybe take the lit sections of the Irish and English papers and have a separate literature course.
-The Catholic church need to be removed from state education. Religious schools could still have a place in the country for people who want to send their kids to them, but the church should fund them for themselves. My mum is a teacher, and she has a friend working in a catholic state school, who has to keep secret from the school board that she is "living in sin", because she has a very real fear she'll lose her job. Schools like this categorically should not receive funding from the state.
I think the main problem in the education system is just a chronic lack of investment. If you're trying to get out of a recession, or indeed at any time, education should be the last thing to fall victim to cutbacks. I'd even cut back on health care before education.
Overall our education system suffices to survive, but it is rotting from the bottom up. In my old primary school (now a massive remove from one where we had 5 classes in the boys school to more than 15) in the boys section there are a grand total of 2 male teachers on staff, and one is a non-teaching Principal. Sport has gone backwards and many primary schools are in the same boat. There are brilliant female coaches that I've met who are better than male counterparts, but in general teaching terms the unbalanced nature of staff doesn't help overall.
Language teaching is well behind where it should be and I agree with the posts above that it's more important to speak a language than to delve into the intricacies of poetry and drama, leave that for an optional course and University.
The times of the schoolday is largely useless too. There is so much wasted time in a day where a continental method is far more useful. Get the kids in at 8 or 8.30, give them a 20minute break and send them home by 2.30pm. Right now schools resemble daycare more closely than anything else.
My cousin teaches in a pretty good fee paying school in Dublin and she told me that compared to our generation's level (mid-30's) kids at 17 are less capable of writing compositions at any proper level, and their learning processes are so warped from poor development from Primary up that they are entering the workforce handicapped. It is a shocking statistic from the CSO that almost 10% of 20-29 year olds have "great difficulty" reading and writing, but it isn't far from what I've heard back from teacher friends.
Overall we have a good history of education and there is far greater access to 3rd level than ever before, however the dumbing down of many subjects is worrying.
I don't know if the answer is to pour in money or take some away, but respect needs to be put back into the teaching profession to bring things back to a decent level, in my opinion of course.
One thing that particularly annoys me is this attitude of that if people are doing poorly in exams, you make the exam easier so your statistics look nicer. That's not me being flippant, this was actually done with the geography course.
Another thing that particularly annoyed me was the applied maths course in my LC year. People were doing much better than average (mainly because only people who were really keen at maths did the course in the first place), so they started changing the marking scheme after the exam to shift marks towards questions people didn't do so well on, just so they got some nicer numbers to publish.
But most people would still rather watch the X Factor or Big Brother than hear about something truly scandalous like the state of our country's education system.
**spits at Fianna Fáil**
I can't speak for all continental education systems but I know several educational systems in Eastern and Central Europe including Slovakia and Slovenia would have a far more rigorous education on the literary side of the primary language. You would study the entire history of literature from its beginings to modern day being able to discern different periods, know the plot and style of many key texts and biographical information about authors. The amount of literature we have to familiarise ourselves with is quite miniscule by comparison.
Peadar - it's not surprising that such happens, in 1998 there was some blip on papers and higher history looked like dropping "below the acceptable range" and the DOE instructed markers to give special attention to students who were struggling. In one way it's fair, in another it makes no sense. However I do prefer our marking system to most others in the world, Poor Student triggered this in my overlaboured brain.
Poor student, you are so right, in many countries in Europe there is a greater volume of national literature to deal with. However in most it is geared towards the streams who are deemed able to handle it, or that it is appropriate to their eventual destination. I've met Russians who can quote, ad nauseum, Pushkin, Goncharov etc, and others who scratch their heads at the thought of same.
One good thing in our education system (the whole way through to 3rd level first degrees for sure) is the anonymity of marking. If you work hard, do your best and sit a good paper, you get a reflective grade. In (just a couple of egs here) Russia, Serbia, Poland, Lithuania and the USA you can buy your way through the system. Eastern Europe is the worst, however 3rd level in America is attrocious, especially the scholarship brigade, while Canada isn't far behind. In Russia your own teacher grades you the whole way through the system and even this year (according to Moscow Times) the new and improved central grading apparatus ground to a halt because of local corruption. As bad as it is for us, everyone has a fair chance (I duck for cover saying this).
I've spent a good deal of time in Slovenia over the past decade and as someone who has never studied English beyond the Leaving Cert I don't know how many times people of a much lower standard of education name dropped or mentioned a book or even literary period I'd never heard of (although perhaps that says more about me than our respective education systems). That said, I don't think it's something we should necessarily aspire to. Contrary to our own opinion of our Leaving Cert system, such a system which aspires to have the student rote learn the entire history of literature whereas our own system would give a few set texts through which we would explore different literary techniques and perform a more detailed analysis. A more qualitative than quantitative approach in my opinion.
I'd completely agree with you there. The system in the areas that I'm familiar with (Central and Eastern Europe) you are not examined en masse at the end of a module with all who sat the module in that session, instead you have a seemingly infinite amount of opportunities to take exams in different sittings in different semesters at a time of your choosing. You could have someone who is in the 4th year of their degree who still hasn't passed first year stats. The system is not anonomous and a lecturer could hold you back or push you forward dependiing on how they liked or disliked you. People also procrastinate and hold of exams and take forever to finish their degrees. Our 3rd level system is much more structured and straight forward.One good thing in our education system (the whole way through to 3rd level first degrees for sure) is the anonymity of marking. If you work hard, do your best and sit a good paper, you get a reflective grade. In (just a couple of egs here) Russia, Serbia, Poland, Lithuania and the USA you can buy your way through the system. Eastern Europe is the worst, however 3rd level in America is attrocious, especially the scholarship brigade, while Canada isn't far behind. In Russia your own teacher grades you the whole way through the system and even this year (according to Moscow Times) the new and improved central grading apparatus ground to a halt because of local corruption. As bad as it is for us, everyone has a fair chance (I duck for cover saying this).
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