Sir, – After having spent more than 20 years teaching Leaving Certificate English, and seeing my last son from the class of 2014 go through the honours English paper, I am more than ever intensely frustrated with the exam and with the media commentary on same.
Older readers will remember Honours Paper 1 (Language), which included literary essays from such lusciously named writers as Lamb, Bacon, and Hazlitt. For many, this was the only exposure young readers got to quality essay writing. No modern essayists replaced them. Students today (and their parents) can be heard saying “Sure you can’t prepare for Paper 1”. Is this a desirable “learning outcome” after a two-year course, which marks the completion of one’s secondary education?
Paper 2 (Literature) is where I have a real problem. This is a game of poetry roulette. Bookmakers should get in on it! A terrifying guessing game occurs each year, which I believe could be greatly remedied by the inclusion of printed poems, such as in the Ordinary Level English Paper and indeed in the honours Irish literature paper. In the UK’s A-level and GCSE exams, students may bring their poetry anthology into the exam hall and I quote, “Copies of the poetry anthology taken into the examination room must be clean: that is, free from annotation.”
Here are the roulette rules! There are eight poets each year on the course and four questions. As a minimum students must study at least five poets – say 40 poems. Some gamblers only do the female poets; others only do the Irish poets. Is gambling part of the hidden curriculum?
Then there is the rote or quote learning that ensues. I regularly encountered students who knew quotes verbatim but didn’t know what they meant! Part of the problem is their minds are so addled with trying to memorise quotes that, forgive the pun, they lose the plot.
The current system encourages the rote-learning of quotes, to the detriment of enjoying literature. If the poems were printed on the exam paper or students could reference a clean anthology, an examiner could quickly distinguish the real students who know and enjoy the syllabus from the gamblers.
If I set the paper, I would just offer one to two poets each year out of the eight. The students would have to prepare almost all the poets in advance. Hello poetry. Goodbye roulette. If we simply made this one change, we might see students actually enjoy poetry. It is awful to hear students say after the exam “Thank God, I’ll never have to learn that again!” as they throw their poetry book aside for the bonfire they are planning.
Is this another “learning outcome” the Department of Education envisaged? – Yours, etc,
JOAN DONELAN
CARROLL,
Iona Road,
Glasnevin,
Dublin 9.