Madam, - The spate of recent articles on the pressures facing Leaving Certificate candidates is entirely missing the point. If one were to believe certain comments regarding the "unreasonable" and "punishing" schedule of the examinations, one would be fooled into thinking that, post-Leaving Cert, life is never so "unfair" as to schedule several major stressful events in close succession.
A cursory look at the post-school world, however, reveals the opposite to be true.
Third-level students, for example, also study a range of subjects that are later examined during a pre-determined, brief examination period. Moreover, are we to have special pleading for professionals in any field who find themselves "unlucky" enough to face inconvenient coincident deadlines, such as producing several reports and giving a seminar or presentation in the same week?
Far more worthy of debate is the nature of the Leaving Cert syllabus - in particular, how it fails to stimulate young people into thinking independently and creatively. As someone with experience of teaching university undergraduates, I see that these qualities are sorely lacking in the majority of our incoming students.
The ability simply to regurgitate facts and figures is not enough to enable someone to succeed at third level and is certainly not a quality that potential employers in research labs, businesses or industry are looking for.
Instead of arguing over whether Maths Paper II should be at the beginning or end of the exam period, our teachers and politicians should be more concerned about the skills that the Leaving Cert as a whole is failing to give our young people and the potential damage to the attractiveness of our workforce for the foreign industry and business that is so vital to our economy. - Yours, etc,
MARIA McNAMARA, Greenmount Lawns, Terenure, Dublin 6.