'I only had to get two honours and turn up at college'

MY LEAVING CERT:While entering college and changing course was easier, school in the 1960s was no party, writes BRENDAN GUILDEA

THE YEAR I did my Leaving there was a teachers’ strike. That wasn’t so bad, as it turned out. We all went home and studied. It was quite liberating. It was an eventful exam year – there were two leaks and both English and maths had to be repeated. Luck was on my side – I had made a mistake on the first paper. I did not repeat it on the second.

That was 1969. It’s a different ball game now. I only had to get a couple of honours and then turn up at college. You could buy a matriculation for £80. I had the apocryphal friend who did commerce instead of arts because the queue was shorter. It wasn’t a stressful business.

Lots of people didn’t do the Leaving back then. In my class, only 22 out of 40 sat the exam. Lots of people left after the Junior Cert, but it wasn’t regarded at dropping out. They just went working. Once you knew how to read and write, what was the point of staying on? That was a common attitude.

I remember doing well in Latin. Lots of guys in my school did Latin because the teacher was kind of cool. That is, he didn’t going in for hitting people, which was unusual at the time.

Irish, on the other hand, did not come naturally to me at all. Or art.

However, a couple of weeks before the exam the teacher quite openly ordered bread and a knife for the art room. We knew then what we’d be drawing in the Leaving so we all spent plenty of time practising loaf shapes. That’s how I passed! Things were more for relaxed for sure.

I chose English at college. I lasted two weeks. I really enjoyed Milton at school, but then I met Joyce at university and it was game over. I changed to archaeology because there were lots of nice girls in that subject. It was so easy to change back then. Now you’d have to start all over again.

Schools are different places now. There’s much more pressure over exams, but students actually like school. It’s not such a tough place anymore. Students have choices to study subjects they like. They have counsellors.

The maths syllabus is a lot different. When I did the Leaving, the honours maths course was very hard. There was a stage when Leaving Cert maths was harder than the material on a second-year degree course! It’s not as bad now. Well, it can’t be – many more people stay in school and many more take maths. We can’t all be rocket scientists.

Despite that, there’s much more ambition among students now. In my class, there was one guy who knew what he wanted to be – a primary teacher. He needed three honours. He was the only one under pressure.

Girls who wanted to be teachers had it even harder. They had to get four honours.

Comparing my Leaving to this year’s cohort, I can see advantages and disadvantages to both. School wasn’t such a pleasant environment in the 1960s. There was very little choice in the subject you did and you just sat quiet and did what you were told. However, if you made it through the Leaving Cert, there wasn’t a lot of pressure on and you could pretty much choose whatever course you wanted. Not sure which is the better deal!

Brendan Guildea is a former maths teacher in Skerries Community College, Co Dublin