That wouldn’t be cool enough. Nothing beats a bit of Catholic church bashing to make you cool.
Listen to this prick. Your hypocritical trap is making you look like a right fool here. You need to take a back seat here on this forum big mouth and cool your jets.
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Well the Catholic church did carry out systematic rape and abuse for nearly 90 years and it was covered up all the way to the top…it does the same in Africa today… You can hardly blame people for wanting to challenge an organisation that sodomised young boys and tortured young girls for giving in to their own sexual desires. Then there’s the whole laughable side of it , you know, the invisible man in the sky… The all knowing all powerful God who watched on as his servants bent young lads over a desk and raped them. It’s a sick, sick club you subscribe to but you’re free to do it and you won’t get any judgement from me, pal.
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A mature view @ChocolateMice. It’s admirable the way you don’t try to ram your (dis)beliefs down my throat.
No doubt the church have done a lot wrong, but they’ve done an awful lot for society too over the last 2016 years.
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First off, thanks for replying… Secondly, that’s a fairly balanced post… I agree that kids need to engage in my project style assignments… The state can only do so much but second level schools really need to develop critical thinking skills in students and engage with modern topics of politics/health/ethics etc to give students some idea of the world they will be entering post second level…kids might be more ready to make decisions at 18 then, but again, I agree, in that you should spend your first year doing a host of topics that you won’t major in to grow up and experience other areas before majoring in your field. It would make the transition easier and the year might let students think about what they’d really like to do…I wanted to say more but I’m on mobile so I can’t be fucked.
They have, and they haven’t taken a bob for it…
Well spiritual guidance doesn’t come cheap …
Apparently not…up until the 70s you were read from the altar in front of the whole community if you didn’t give the satisfactory amount for this guidance… It didn’t matter that your kids were starving and you couldn’t afford shit, the Church needed paying for its guidance. A wonderful group of lads…
Like any snapshot of society. Some good. Some bad.
I presume you mean articles 42 (education) and 44 (religion) of the Constitution, and the Education Act?
This has been before the courts. They’re technically not refusing entry. That Supreme Court decision in Sinnott setting an arbitrary age limit of 18 for primary education is a fucking disgrace too.
I’m all for it. How about the government give back the taxes to non-Catholics so they can fund their own schools. Bit fucked up don’t you think that you should have to pay for a school that would discriminate against you when it comes to entry.
So you have no problem with tax payers being forced to pay for teachers in schools that would deny their own children entry based on religious grounds? A bit fucked up don’t you think?
The tax paying parents of students in these schools (80% of taxpayers) are paying those wages. Do you think atheists are the only tax payers in the country? Catholics are also paying the costs of educate together schools and they don’t bitch about it.
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I’ve no doubt a non Catholic school should be able to avail of tax reliefs and help when setting up. Maybe they can for all I I know.
Re: your second point.
Ireland is a catholic country. If you feel that strongly about educating your children in a non Catholic school. Maybe move to a country or an area within Ireland that caters for your needs ?
How anyone, or a small number of individuals can walk into a school and demand that religion be stopped to suit the minority because the said minority doesn’t agree with it, is beyond all reasonable thought.
Ok, first things first. You’ve given specifics in one way. A specific list of the things that you think are shit. It’s all negativity and there is no discussion or analysis @dubhagusban.
I am a qualified teacher but don’t work as a teacher. I do visit a lot of schools and meet a lot of teachers and a lot more students. You’re comments don’t upset me or touch a nerve but I despair of your attitude. I think you haven’t a breeze what you’re talking about half the time and most of your points are gleamed from shit ass radio debates and angry teachers who are friends of yours. Their anger may well be justified but they started teaching at a crazy time in terms of whats happening within both education in general and within staffrooms so I don’t think it provides you with either a fair or honest view of what teachers are thinking.
So here we go.
The leaving cert has it’s pros and cons. It is excellent in that it is extremely fair. It measures students equally.based on performance, chiefly to award points used for further education. The practical subjects in my experience are excellent and provide great grounding for students to further themselves in those areas. The huge uptake in Ag Science in schools around the country is excellent and that subject in particular has an excellent emphasis on practical knowledge and experience.
I would prefer that some of the more traditional subjects had a wider focus and that all subjects had more course/project work involved. I have direct experience of the English system and the IB system. The English A level system is a huge steaming pile of shit in my opinion. The IB system is for the most part a fantastic system in my view. It has an emphasis on coursework, practicals and even moral responsibility and activity(students must complete a certain amount of community/voluntary/charity work to pass). A big problems with these systems is their use of predicted grading by teachers for their equivalent of points. It places or can place enormous pressure on teachers and can also lead to a high level of teachers leading students very heavily, much like teachers handing out notes for rote learning here. So no, I don’t think ‘The leaving Cert is shit’ is a valid comment.
The Church control of primary schools and primary school teaching is a non-issue for me. I think for the most part this is a practicality of a legacy issue in that if the orders controlling schools were to turn them over to the state there would be chaos. In almost every one of those schools the religious representation on boards etc is dwindling and while there has been cases historically certainly of jobs going to people who were religious and less well qualified I think this happens less and less now. I know at least 4 primary teachers none of whom would cite religious interference as having any bearing on their job. The biggest problem here was the stipulation that half an hour a day be given over to religious teaching. This is gone/going now thanks to Labour, I believe.
I like Languages. Any language not spoken is utterly pointless and disappears quickly for most people. For example I got a B1 in German in my leaving and would struggle to have a decent conversation in it now because I havent used it in 20 years.(Although I did have a superb conversation with a german lady over christmas, I’d a few pints so I rocked it). We teach for the test particularly in languages, so students learn the language they need to pass. This is no different to any other country. What is different is the amount of schools now who facilitate long term student swaps through various exchange programmes to deliver huge benefits to the pupils involved. Mostly transition years, but any kid who spends 6 months in Spain/Germany/France generally comes home with excellent improvements. This exchange programme is quite widespread now although it usually involves only a handful of students from each school (max I know of is about 15 in any year).
This I would say is our major problem with the teaching of Irish. It is societal. There has been over the last 2 generations a widespread hatred for Irish amongst large portions of the population. This still exists and manifests itself in parents fighting to get their kids exemptions in order to concentrate on other subjects which is fucking lunacy imo. I would like to think that the tide is changing but I’m not sure. Still students learn what they need to get through exams and I’m constantly amazed by the ability to learn off long phrases without understanding their full meanings. Ask any 17-23 year old the question ‘An bhfuil aon áiseanna sa cheantar?’ and you’ll get my drift. I do think that while there are much more students enrolling in Gaeilscoileanna, the quality of the Irish possessed by most primary school teachers is way below what it used to be and that this will have an effect. I do think that there are huge benefits of children being taught 2 languages while growing up. I believe it makes languages in general much easier from then on. I would keep the teachimg of Irish mandatory for this reason. Why not have them learn our language? I think it adds value societally and educationally. So to surmise, our utter failure as you describe it is not dissimilar to many countries experience of teaching languages. However other countries see a huge value in learning English, as they see it having massive economic benefit for them. Our problem lies in the practice more than the teaching.
Maths. I think our handle on maths is decent. We teach basics that people will need at pass level and our higher level course is excellent in terms of its scope and breadth. I’ve already outlined why I think the shift to project Maths was a good idea. Our system pales in comparison to certain cultures e.g.Korea who put huge emphasis on maths. I have met shitloads of Korean kids who were ridiculously good at maths. It was to the detriment of most of their other subjects though. And they had fucking shit lives though. They finished school at 4pm and went to Korean school at 5.30-9.30. The world needs maths geniuses, but we don’t need everyone to be a maths genius.
The college entry system. Meh. Points are fair and unfair as outlined in my previous posts. More and more courses are moving to give qualifying points to interviews/portfolios/previous interest/ experience etc. Still not enough but what we are doing is educating our young people that they have a lot more options overseas. People are paid to travel Ireland giving seminars on foreign options and encouraging students to open their minds on what colleges to apply for. We have certain geographical issues with college. It is depressing how many D4 kids only want to go to UCD and it is absolutely, unbelievably incredible how many Cork kids only want to go to UCC.
Special needs support is poor and is one of the most unfair aspects of our system. Richer schools can provide support that other schools can only dream of. Of course we have laws and guidelines but in reality, this often comes down to two things. Resources and the capability of the person responsible for running the disability side of a school. The cuts made in this area were shameful and need to be reversed. However, funding is returning. I was recently in the community School in Tullow which has just had a new wing built with a full autism unit. I strongly believe the disabled kids should be educated alongside able bodied for the good of our society. I have a brother who worked in the special needs section of a local school for some time who was delighted at the systems they had in place. Likewise I think that the problem of English ability for many of the foreign ethnicity students in many schools need far more resources.
Access to education. I’m not sure exactly what you mean here. What I would say is that I think it is horrendous how our system has developed privileged schools along unprivileged, particularly in cities. There are ‘good schools’ and ‘bad schools’ and literally enrolling in the wrong one can mean disastrous things for a child’s education(I’m talking second level). A case in point would be the town of Dungarvan. There are huge differences in terms of outcome for kids who go to different schools there. In terms of resources and expectations this is one of the most unequal aspects of our education system and it would possibly be the first thing I would change if I had a magic wand for education. There is a critical mass for ‘trouble’, be it behavioural, societal or economic. Basically fucking all the tough/troubled/poor/traveller kids in together has horrendous consequences. One thing that is excellent in our DEIS (disadvantaged) schools is the JCSP library project. This is a network of librarians round the country who do absolutely trojan work in providing alternative education experiences and support for students who really need it. Their work has to be seen to be believed.
Anyway I think that covers most of your 'what about this, huh, huh, bullshit?
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They probably voted yes for the queers and think they can bully us into every minority cause now.
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Sorry Farmer traffic in Cork was shit tonight. Took nearly three hours to drive from Castletownbere to Cork.
I wouldn’t drag it down to calling people queers and muddying the waters here.
It does annoy me no end to listen to a small minority trying to bully the majority (80%) with no other reasoning other than they themselves don’t like it.
Sure I live in a democratic state and though there’s aspects of the constitution I don’t like I have to abide by these aspects because it’s a majority decision.
It’s childish and selfish and tyrannical to go about the place screaming and throwing stuff out of the pram because you don’t agree with some aspects of the state you live in.