We have, in our Academy, been discussing some pupils past and present, and we are united in the conviction that the Leaving Certificate exam has become a doddle, a walk-over, a piece of cake. The reason for this conclusion is that some of our alumni, whose prospects of academic success were very bleak indeed when they soldiered under our tutelage, have emerged at the other end of The Murder Machine bearing diplomas - and even university degrees. These are the pupils, who, for their eight years of primary school, stood daily by the teacher's desk reading and spelling and counting and regrouping with unmitigating relentlessness. Like the donkey that was one day old, we "prayed that God might be good" to them, but never in our wildest dreams did we think that they would persevere to the bitter end, and actually "sit" the Leaving. Praise God, and nil desperendum. We had been reminiscing because "the old order changeth yielding place to new", and for the first time in history we have a remedial teacher. He is dapper and dandy, and he comes to us twice a week. He carries a large bulging gladstone bag and is armed with folders and files and flexible flash cards.
He uses words like "diagnostic" and "dyspraxia" with the customary ease of habitual practice, and he treats us and his disciples with the urbane benevolence of a family doctor. For us it is a new beginning, and we look forward to the fruits of his labour.
Meanwhile at the other end of the academic spectrum, our IT scholarship continues apace. Our staff technophile has acquired a new soulmate, through, of all things, a recent "Alive-O" hooley, and they are swapping software, and exchanging emails with great enthusiasm and alacrity. Life in the fast lane!
Meanwhile we have each one of us received a mini-library containing all 23 volumes of the primary school curriculum, beautifully bound and artistically presented. It doesn't seem so long ago since some of us elder lemons were happily perusing our two brand new brown volumes.
Life goes on. And as I browse through the English handbook some lines of the perennial Robert Frost leap out at me: "The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep."
