Madam, – It is to be hoped that the discussion arising from the stimulating article by Prof Tom Garvin, (Opinion, May 1st), will continue and develop into a profound and hopefully constructive analysis on the mission of the university in our society today. Such a debate is sorely needed.
Deep changes have certainly taken place within our universities in recent years, particularly so in the structures and procedures for academic management, with the result that the Cardinal Newman- style community of scholars ethos which enlivened the debates at faculty and academic council meetings for these past hundred and more years, has been replaced by a top-down management system where all important academic decisions are sent down from on high.
In UCD, the faculties have been discarded and their departments regrouped into colleges and schools apparently to maximise the research output. To be sure, the curricula are richer than ever, the research output and PhD graduation numbers are in the ascent, as are the positions in the international university rankings where, however, the quality of education is not considered as a criterion.
The prime purpose of our universities is the education of our youth, the turning of 18-year-olds into intellectually more mature 22-year-olds, who will provide the leadership in all the many sectors of our society in the years to come. The goal of research excellence, however worthy, is in danger of overshadowing this mission. In particular, with the increased emphasis on research in those disciplines related to the sciences and to economic development, again very worthy in themselves, the humanities appear to have been sidelined.
It is acknowledged, however, that this is not uniquely an Irish happening; even the great Harvard in the United State is facing similar criticisms from its eminent emeritus professors. In his recently published book, Excellence Without a Soul, Prof Harry R Lewis, former dean of Harvard College, writes “. . .we have forgotten that we teach the humanities to help students understand what it is to be human”.
Surely in the turbulent world we are fast approaching, the prime mission of the universities in the education of our youth is more important than ever before, but is there anyone out there listening? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – While it has been fascinating, no doubt, for readers to see the mixture of nostalgia , righteous anger and plain self-congratulation published by Irish academics under the rubric of Renewing the Republic in recent days, we seem to have drifted some way from that topic. Perhaps the same energy that has been devoted to criticising everything from the decline of spelling to the horrors of feminist criticism and (worse!) student-centred learning could instead be refocused on some of the prosaic problems facing the education sector: eg, underfunding; hiring-freezes at a time of growing student numbers; a Government eager to use the current financial crisis as an opportunity to tear up academic contracts and the Universities Act; and a curious reluctance to accept the various reports (OECD, European Commission Economic Papers) that suggest that Irish third-level education is performing well considering the level of State investment. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Prof Brian Cosgrove would be quite right to be alarmed about the notion that first-year English students in UCD were devising marketing plans for the Globe Theatre – and I would share his alarm. However, the inferences he draws from a single phrase in the article by Professors Mary Daly and Brigid Laffan (Opinion, May 6th) misrepresent the course that I designed and continue to run. Yes, it uses group work. Yes, it focuses on presentation skills. Yes, it uses modes of assessment other than the traditional essay and closed examination. But alongside that it does some very traditional things, of which I imagine Prof Cosgrave would approve. It introduces students to canonical texts by Chaucer and Shakespeare, and teaches them how to read them in their historical context; contrary to what Prof Cosgrove has assumed, the focus is very precisely on textual, stylistic and interpretive skills.
I am a very traditional scholar, and my course uses innovative methods to impart research skills, to foster student responsibility, and to engage students creatively and imaginatively with key writers, precisely because the old method of talking at students was, in my experience, encouraging dependence, conformity and an unwillingness to read texts critically. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – As Robert O’Byrne’s article (May 5th) on Renewing the Republic states, “Ireland belongs to all her citizens and not just those in possession of documents proving their ownership to specific parcels of land”.
How shameful that this aspiration is so often contradicted by facts on the ground. Of these, one aspect that Mr O’Byrne did not mention is the inexplicable (or is it?) disappearance of an informal right of way network.
We had the same jurisdiction as Great Britain until 1922: the same laws on property, the same need for people to walk from their homes to the local village, church or market. In Britain this network has been preserved, augmented, and developed. In Ireland virtually nothing is left. Instead we have an impossibly high legal standard to establish public rights of way, and a vestigial network of legally inferior “permissive paths” for which the State has to pay lucky landowners in thinly disguised “maintenance grants”.
The implications of this for the health of our citizens and for the development of tourism should be obvious – but they are of little interest to a State more concerned to keep powerful interests happy. – Yours, etc,