Education at second-level faces serious challenges. Some 40 per cent of pupils either drop out or perform poorly in the State exams. For many male adolescents, second-level can be a form of involuntary incarceration. We need to respond to the reality of today's teenagers argues Tom Collins

The process of educational planning is a fraught one. Today's generation of second-level children have a life expectancy that extends well into the final quarter of this century and, with advances in medicine and healthcare, a significant minority, at least, can expect to make it into the 22nd century.

When one considers that many of today's teachers were trained in the last quarter of the last century - and some even before that - it seems rather a big ask to expect a 20th-century generation to prescribe for a 21st-century generation. The fact that the school-going population in Ireland is now drawn from a multiplicity of different nationalities is an additional new challenge.

Schools need to find vehicles that enable all children to learn to succeed. This must be the animating principle in all educational planning. A focus on all children means that success of one cannot be at the expense of another.

The second-level school system in Ireland is a demanding environment. The majority of children succeed in it. However, a sizeable group - as high as 40 per cent - do not. Some 20 per cent of students drop out after the Junior Cert. A further 20 per cent perform very poorly in State exams, typically "failing" subjects such as Irish and maths at ordinary level.

For this group, the overwhelming legacy of their schooling will be a sense of failure. With a sense of personal inadequacy and ineffectiveness so deeply embedded at such a formative life stage, there is a poor foundation for dealing with the many other life-cycle and career challenges that will unfold in the future.

How is educational planning responding to these problems?

Educational planning in the Republic is becoming ever more pragmatic. Policy, even on curriculum change, can be often driven by economic imperatives.

The OECD Report on Higher Education in Ireland, for instance, published last year, sees the purpose of higher education in Ireland as largely one of prioritising national prosperity. Wider concepts of higher education as a critical presence in society merit hardly a mention.

There are clear dangers in this over-pragmatic approach when it removes both student and teacher from the centre of the learning process. Both student and teacher are now driven by a force that neither has had any role in devising or creating - the syllabus. In this situation, both are disempowered.

The parameters for intellectual discovery, for passionate engagement with the subject matter, for lateral exploration of related areas and for learning about the self are immediately greatly restricted.

What is remarkable in such a context is how well so many teachers and schoolchildren manage it and overcome it. This, really, is the ultimate tribute to the teaching profession in Ireland - at all levels - that, in spite of everything, the school is a happy and fulfilling environment for so many.

Our experience with mass second-level education, however, is relatively short-lived. The generation of second-level teachers now approaching retirement are the first to have experienced it in this State.

For a social phenomenon in such an embryonic state, therefore, it is hardly surprising that it is still a long way from being perfected.

For many adolescents, second-level schooling can be a form of involuntary incarceration to which their parents or previous generations were not subject. Many find themselves in an environment that may be socially alien or intimidating.

Sometimes they are dealing with a curriculum which they may have difficulty relating to or engaging with. It is hardly surprising that they will reject it. This is a much more complex problem than merely one of classroom discipline.

The adolescent male from a working-class background is probably the most likely to reject this experience. (That said, the trauma experienced by many teenage girls should also be recognised.) But the particular needs of young males in their interaction with second-level education are only now beginning to emerge in the public consciousness.

At conferring ceremonies at third-level, mothers tell me that part of the joy they take from the ceremony is that it is the first time they have seen their sons "dressed up" since First Communion. Young males in Ireland are accustomed to dressing down - and to being dressed down. They are more likely to fail and underachieve in second-level, less likely to go on to third-level, more likely to be involved in disruptive, anti-social or criminal behaviour. They are also more likely to die from accidents or to commit suicide.

The question that educationalists need to address is whether these trends are merely peripheral problems - or whether they point to something much more serious.

There are wider societal trends at work.

As we move forward with mass second-level education it is conceivable that the school will become the central and dominant building block in child development, with the family and neighbourhood playing less and less of a role.

Family life, meanwhile, is being undermined by the long working hours of parents, televisions in every room and the new on-line culture. Increasingly, the child is looking to the school for social interaction.

Child development needs - emotional, social, physical and aesthetic - once addressed in the family or community context are no longer addressed there. The school is likely to be the first public forum in which the impact of this deficit becomes evident.

Faced with this kind of challenge, it is likely that second-level education into the future will have far more important things to deal with than the syllabus alone.

The recent hurricane in Louisiana in the US, and the social devastation it exposed, has shown us that a society can become rich while not becoming enriched. While schools can probably always improve on what they do, and can sometimes do different things to what they normally do, they can rarely do everything that society asks them to do. If the broader society neglects its own well-being, it should not look to the school to save it.

Dr Tom Collins, is the director of Dundalk Institute of Technology (DKIT). He was recently appointed professor of education at NUI Maynooth, a post he will take up in January