The students who sit today's Leaving Certificate English papers are a historic group: the first to be examined in the revised Leaving Certificate syllabus. This new syllabus has had a very long gestation, the last major revision having taken place in the late 1960s. Indeed, as discerning readers may remember, the poetry anthology Soundings, edited by the late Professor Augustine Martin and first published in 1969, was humbly subtitled an "interim anthology", yet continued in use without revision for more than 30 years.
The new syllabus is a wise combination of new and old: Shakespeare (contrary to rumour and controversy) is still with us, as is the 19th-century novel, poetry by Shakespeare, Keats, Dickinson, etc. But many other writers have at last been introduced: Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, Michael Longley, Elizabeth Bishop, Chinua Achebe, Seamus Deane, David Malouf, Jennifer Johnston and many others. These "newcomers" are most obvious and most necessary in the poetry selection, the absence of Heaney, Boland and others from the Leaving Certificate course having long been an educational embarrassment.
In future years, the syllabus will have a "rolling" aspect, with some changes in selected texts and authors from year to year: in the area of poetry, students and teachers can look forward to work by Derek Mahon, Sylvia Plath and Kazuo Ishiguro, among others.
As part of their literature paper, students are also now required to tackle a "comparative question" with reference to three texts from a long list of authors and a fertile variety of genres: short stories, novels, autobiographies, plays and film. This last inclusion - with films including My Left Foot, Dances with Wolves and The Third Man - has not been without debate: some have argued that a literature syllabus is not the place to study film, others have critiqued the choice of films; yet the undeniable appeal of film to students is a clear (and not unproblematic) sign of the changing climate within which we now teach and learn.
Underlying these changes of author and text are some trends: wider choices, not only for teachers but also for students; more contemporary material; new comparative dimensions.
The syllabus, if opened up to its full potential, should allow scope for students to reflect on the range of writers encountered, and to articulate more confidently their own responses.
Already there are welcome signs that the principles of choice and comparison are confounding some of the more Gradgrindian approaches to education regrettably present in a few parts of the system. Yet, if these positive trends are to become meaningful developments, it is vital that the principle of choice be a real one and that an unchanging canon of so-called "easy" or "safe" authors or texts not return through the back door. The teachers and students who have completed this first cycle of the revised syllabus are sincerely to be congratulated.
The commitment asked of - and delivered by - teachers in introducing this new curriculum, and in revising some of their own canons and practices, is an achievement all too frequently lost sight of in the turbulence of recent months. From my conversations with teachers' groups in Waterford, Cork, Dublin and elsewhere in the State, the rewards are already obvious in the interest and engagement reported from students, and are also evident in teachers' own encounters with this new material.
Their work has shown clearly the importance of continuing support and resources for teachers, not just via the updating of a syllabus, but more profoundly through professional rejuvenation and development - a process which must continue as the syllabus "rolls" onwards.
Dr Margaret Kelleher is a lecturer in the Department of English, NUI Maynooth; she is the editor of Making It New: Essays on the Revised Leaving Certificate Syllabus (2000)
