Madam, - Like, I am sure, the majority of your readers, I wish Ruth Borland well in her actuarial and financial studies at UCD.
She obtained maximum points in the Leaving Certificate but I was appalled by her totally utilitarian attitude to her school courses, as reflected in your headline, "There's no point in knowing about stuff [ sic] that's not going to come up in exams" (Education Today, September 20th).
Isn't there? Whatever happened to knowledge for its own sake? The pleasure of discovery? The special enjoyment of extra-curricular activity and its literally recreational capacity - activity which Ms Borland herself admits she abandoned prior to her examination?
It particularly saddened me, as a teacher of English, to discover that the kind of reductive pragmatism articulated by Ms Borland could be rewarded with an A1 in that subject. Whatever happened to imagination? My namesake Edmund Burke was perhaps more prophetic than he knew when he declared: "The age of sophists, economists and calculators is come upon us".
In fairness, however, to her and her teachers, Ms Borland may be doing no more than outlining the deadening formula for so-called success in such a debased system. - Yours, etc,
PATRICK BURKE, Achill Road, Dublin 9.
Madam, - Louise Holden's article on 600-point Leaving Cert student Ruth Borland made depressing reading. To achieve maximum points, Ms Borland forsook old friends, her old school and her sporting interests. She studied an average of 45 hours a week outside class time. She discovered that "doing well in the Leaving is about learning the formula for each exam and practising it endlessly".
Anything not directly related to a sample answer was a source of frustration for her. Woe to any teacher who strayed from this endless drill and repetition.
This gloomy scenario, where the student learns off the sample answers provided by the examiners, prompts the question of whether or not a Leaving Cert student actually ever needs to read an original text in any subject.
At a time when we are on our second attempt at a child-centred primary curriculum, not without some success, surely it is time to address the serious inadequacies of our second-level system, where the mindless, pre-learned sample answer has precedence over any notion of what education should be. - Is mise,
SÉAMIE Ó NÉILL, Knockcullen Drive, Dublin 16.
Madam, - Thank you for your motivating article about the Leaving Cert student Ruth Borland. I return to my studies now with renewed vigour, as I can't stand the idea of a girl doing better than me. - Yours, etc,
JONATHAN WYSE, Kilteragh Road, Dublin 18.