Madam, - Education Editor Sean Flynn tells us that "the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (made up of all the education partners) hopes to involve schools, employer body IBEC and other business interests in a major public debate on changes to the subject" (The Irish Times, August 16th). They are talking about mathematics.
They are worried about the widespread avoidance of maths by teenagers, and the high failure rates among those who attempt it. Even the calibre of the small percentage who succeed and go on to third-level studies is weak - owing, their lecturers say, to "their inability to cope with basic concepts and skills".
I am afraid it is too late. Because the damage is done by the early teens, most of the students now in the pipeline are quite unable to cope with the abstract concepts of mathematics. Mathematical concepts, like religious one, cannot be visualised. Related skills ask us to reason on the basis of what is unseeable.
The thinking of our VDU-reared youngsters is much tied to what is visual. They would be helped if primary schooling used its eight years to drill them for fluent religious and arithmetical thinking on the basis of sound associations for words (including numbers and other mathematical symbols). Primary teaching does the opposite. It tries to develop fluency on the basis of visual associations. It goes with the VDU tide instead of against it.
Having sown the seeds, we are set to reap quite a whirlwind. Dumbing down exams and other assessment devices will not help in the least. It will only mask the problem, defer use of the only possible cure - and cost billions in public and private money, in addition to the cost in terms of human stress. - Yours, etc,
JOE FOYLE, Ranelagh, Dublin 6.