So here it is, another evening spent on the computer. Working away, tirelessly procrastinating the leaving cert, and planning my plot to take over the world, as such…
Okay, let me introduce myself properly.. I’m Paul, as you may have gathered. At this stage I’m planning on doing a BEng Electronic engineering in letterkenny. Forecasted points for that is something like 270 points, so achieving a certain amount of points in my leaving cert is the least of my concern. I see the leaving cert as an exercise, the education system constantly trys to funnel my way of thoughts into its fine line, and any deviation creates a lot of friction, we Physics students are taught that friction will create heat, us computer geeks know that heat is bad for your computer.
The underlying theme that I’m trying to get across here is, well, what is the leaving cert? I study and study (well, theoretically, I don’t, but some do) and I work and work towards this final exam, a climax, this is what your 5 years of secondary school has led to, this is what your life is about. and then BOOM, the intense vacuum created by the transient paradox of what turned out to be one of the biggest Anti-Climaxes of your life evacuates all knowledge and creates a void, a void left to be filled by third level education.
Let the arguments begin. The leaving cert is just to give you a foundation knowledge, a generalized view of everything, third level then takes one particular subject, and expands on it, expands on the “general knowledge” gained from secondary school. STOP! you’re wrong, I simply cannot accept this as fact. Let me give an example; I recently started a little project in my spare time - to build a Quadcopter, without going into much detail a quadcopter is simply a square with a rotor blade at each corner. To keep the device stable in flight requires the input of data from accelerometers and gyroscopes, and to make this data usable requires a mathematical algorithm called “Kalman Filtering”. Now, I’m no math wizard, but I know my way round a bit of programming, so in theory I should be able to pick up an algorithm relatively easy. I started reading papers on it and wiki pages and whatnot, it started to talk about derivatives. That’s right, its on the leaving cert course. So I read into the derivative heavy part and what did I find out? THE EDUCATION SYSTEM HASN’T THAUGHT ME A THING ABOUT DIFFERENTIATION.
Hmm, but what happened to the 2 weeks in which we were covering that section.. oh, OK, I was taught how to answer a very specifically worded problem, I was given lots of word associations and other USELESS RUBBISH in order to answer one dumb question on some exam I wont care about in 12 months.. That’s two weeks of my life wasted, 6+ hours of math class gone, and no life skills to show for it. in fact, I could have spent those 6 hours teaching myself, and given myself a really good understanding of the concept. But no, I sat in a room, had my mind channelled into this way of thinking about one exam, held at gunpoint and told to answer the sums this way. What - I ask, is the point in that, I’m not going to ever do any of those specifically worded problems presented to us on the leaving cert in my life, no matter how complex my algorithms get.
So I guess what I’m trying to say, is that in my opinion, the education system has its elbow where its arse should be, and doesn’t know which way is up.
This post was to be about me so lets get back on that train of thought, I work as a freelance photographer, doing work for the local papers and sometimes the national press. On busy days I’ll make more than any of the teachers preaching from someone else’s knowledge in front of me. It infuriates me when teachers degrade me, act condescendingly, immature or teach a subject they have no overall understanding of. How can you expect a student to mature when they are treated like thirteen year olds from 1st year to 6th, treating a 17 year old like a 12 year old causes them to rebel, to prove they are mature! It’s one of the fundamental psychological concepts teachers seem to have a hard time grasping.
Yes, its true, I hate school, but not for no reason, I don’t hate school because “I’d rather be in bed” or “shur none of this is of any use to me“; I hate school for its narrow-mindedness - its failure to see the wider world, the wider view of a subject; I hate it for the stint in peoples personal development that condescending staff behaviour poses on students, I hate the concept, the method and how there is no way to fight it.
The leaving cert is going to be an interesting journey, latest forecasts put my points at around the 440 mark, we’ll see how that works out. frankly, I would settle for a nice meal.
I hope you’ll enjoy my posts, its a great outlet for my frustration that has built - apparently teachers don’t like this kind of thinking. Oh well. Until next time, WATCH OUT!!
Discuss the leaving cert in the forum
I hear a lot of people complaining about the Leaving Cert: “it’s too many subjects!” “it’s just regurgitating information!” “It doesn’t prepare you for life!”. Well I can happily say that I quite like the Leaving Cert. I suppose I’m lucky in that I can learn lots of information quickly and remember it well (but not names, or things to get in the shop, oh no). But what I really like about the Leaving Cert is it’s almost like a game, a large part of doing well is exam technique. Of course in theory that means we should all be getting A1s left right and centre, but I suppose so much exam technique comes down to a teacher’s skill, and thankfully I have some excellent teachers who know the Leaving Cert inside out at this stage.
