The gospel according to Bill Gates [independent.ie]
- Published: 06 May 2009
Source: independent.ie
Wednesday May 06 2009
In her Transition Year class at Malahide Community School, teacher Susie Hall likes to quote Bill Gates. The Microsoft founder once told a high school the lessons he did not learn in school. They included the following:
RULE 1 Life is not fair; get used to it.
RULE 2 The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.
RULE 2 You will NOT make $40,000 a year right out of school.
RULE 4 If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
RULE 5 Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping; they called it opportunity.
RULE 6 If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes -- learn from them.
RULE 7 Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents' generation, try 'delousing' the closet in your own room.
RULE 8 Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades; they'll give you as many chances as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
RULE 9 Life is not divided into terms. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.
RULE 10 Television is NOT real life. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
RULE 11 Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
Minority schools need equal treatment to survive [Independent.ie]
- Published: 06 May 2009
Source: Independent.ie
By Christopher Woods (Principal of Wesley College, Dublin)
Wednesday May 06 2009
Education in Ireland has travelled some distance since the foundation of the State.
In the early years, many pupils did not complete primary education, they studied a restricted range of subjects and technology consisted of a blackboard and a stick of chalk. Today, we expect most of our pupils to go to third level, there is an enormous subject range and we expect schools to be equipped to the highest standards.
In the early years of the State, religious orders provided most of the teachers. Minority Churches ran a small number of schools. These were for the Methodist, Presbyterian, Quaker and Church of Ireland communities.
When, in 1967, free secondary education was announced, the then Education Minister, Donagh O'Malley, was careful to ensure that these minority faith schools were treated equitably.
Catering for a dispersed population, these schools had to provide boarding facilities and, as a result, had to charge fees. O'Malley recognised this and funded all minority faith voluntary schools in the same way as every other school in the free scheme. This agreement has remained in place until now.
Today we have a host of schools under different management structures. In addition to vocational, community and comprehensive schools, Educate Together schools (at primary level) and gaelscoileanna have now been established.
Such diversity must add to the richness of education provided in this country. O'Malley certainly sought to assist minorities in the 1960s, but is this what the current Minister and his officials want? Are minorities entitled to equal treatment today? In a word, it would appear, the answer is no.
When, in the October Budget, teacher provision was cut in all schools, Minister O'Keeffe decided to take even more from minority faith schools than other schools in the free education scheme. The pupil-teacher ratio was raised to 19:1 for the majority of second-level schools, but went to 20:1 for minority faith schools.
These schools now have fewer teachers than any other sector. The Minister then went on to cut all grants paid directly to these schools for such employees as secretaries and caretakers -- even though other schools in the free scheme will retain these.
Yes, minority faith schools charge fees: they have to if they are to continue to provide boarding facilities for dispersed minority communities. Many Protestant parents make enormous sacrifices to send their children to a school of their choice and the State simply does not provide free education for these families in large swathes of the country.
Parents who send their children to a minority faith school simply do not understand why their communities have been singled out for such treatment. Many of their schools closed or merged with others in the 1960s so that some might remain viable and it remains an open question whether the smaller, rural minority faith schools will survive further measures of this sort.
One thing is certain, without equitable treatment minorities of any sort will not thrive in this country. But maybe that is just what Mr O'Keeffe and his officials in the Department want.
- Christopher Woods (Principal of Wesley College, Dublin)
More than €1m spent renting one school's prefabs [Irish Examiner]
- Published: 06 May 2009
Source: Irish Examiner
MORE than €1 million has been spent on renting prefabs for a growing Meath school where more than half the pupils are taught in temporary classrooms.
Ratoath Junior National School has about 600 pupils but has been waiting a number of years for the go-ahead to build an extension to accommodate its rapidly rising pupil numbers.
But, although school authorities have just been assured by the Department of Education that work should be ready to commence later this year, figures obtained by Fine Gael show the cost of delays in the project.
A response by Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe shows that €1.05m has been spent on prefabs at the school while it has been waiting for the proposed seven-classroom extension.
Another €2m has been spent on nine other schools which, Fine Gael said, had accumulated the highest bills for rented classrooms, although the time scale was unavailable.
Val Murrihy, chairperson of the Ratoath Junior NS board of management, said the prefabs were far from ideal places for learning and many had had to be replaced since they were first put on site about a decade ago.
But a meeting with department officials had left the school confident that work would begin in the autumn on the extension.
The school had just 200 pupils in the late 1990s, but as the population grew locally the senior school moved to a separate home a few years ago and was also expecting to begin work on its own extension soon.
Other schools that were found to have some of the highest prefab rental bills were:
nGaelscoil Longfoirt, Longford: €561,120.
nSt Patrick's Junior NS, Blanchardstown, Dublin 15: €268,942.
nScoil Angela, Thurles, Co Tipperary: €182,158.
nSt John's Infant NS, Kilkenny: €172,290.
Fine Gael education spokesman Brian Hayes said that the Department of Education should stop spending so much money on renting prefabs when it would be cheaper to build classrooms.
About €50m was spent renting school prefabs last year and €30m buying similar accommodation, but Mr O'Keeffe has a review of the costs being carried out by consultants.
O'Keeffe forced to defend special needs cuts [Irish Examiner]
- Published: 06 May 2009
Source: Irish Examiner
THE Government will be forced to defend one of the cuts to special needs students in the Dáil tomorrow when a vote is taken on a Fine Gael motion seeking a reprieve for the 534 affected children.
The party's education spokesman, Brian Hayes, will propose the motion ahead of an hour-and-a-half debate tonight and a further debate tomorrow morning before the vote is taken.
Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe revealed the cut in February. It will save his department €7.5 million a year and result in 128 classes for children with mild general learning disability (MGLD) at 119 schools being axed from next September.
Under criteria in place since 1999, there must be at least nine children with MGLD (formerly known as mild mental handicap) for a school to have such a class but the affected classes have fewer pupils than required.
The Fine Gael motion calls for the retention of these classes for the next school year, pending the outcome of a review of the number of classes in this area. Mr Hayes is proposing that there should be dialogue with education stakeholders and parents of affected children before a decision is made.
Where the number of pupils with MGLD is falling, the party is proposing that classes should be merged or amalgamated where they are in neighbouring schools to allow children to continue to receive the same level of assistance they have had for a number of years.
Following pressure on the Government over a Labour motion to reject the planned axing of the Christmas bonus for social welfare recipients, a number of ministers had to abandon overseas duties to vote for the Government counter-motion. Mr O'Keeffe was among those affected by the move last week, having been due to attend a meeting of EU education ministers in Brussels, but the Government won the vote comfortably by 79 to 68.
The minister said the Fine Gael motion on special classes demonstrates dual policy by the party, as Mr O'Keeffe wishes to see children with MGLD integrated with their peers but the opposition was trying to have things every way.
He said the decision to close the special classes was in response to the application of pupil-teacher ratio criteria that had been in place for a decade, but Fine Gael had never suggested how those criteria could be changed.
Parents and teachers of the children concerned have pleaded with the minister to come and see how the the special classes are taught.
Praise agenda isn't doing young pupils any favours [independent.ie]
- Published: 06 May 2009
Source: independent.ie
Teachers "obsessed with praising" children are in danger of creating a generation of egotistical pupils. That's the message of a leading child psychologist who argues that school staff and parents feel they cannot criticise their children for fear of upsetting them.
Dr Carol Craig, director of the Centre for Confidence and Wellbeing in Glasgow, claims that the need to be positive all the time leaves pupils with an "all about me" mentality.
Criticism of the praise agenda in education is certainly not fashionable.
But it is likely to win support from many teachers in Ireland.
Susie Hall, past president of the ASTI and a teacher at Malahide, said the dominant philosophy now dictates that everybody is a winner no matter what. "It is counter-productive to tell pupils all the time that they are great in order to boost their self-esteem,'' says Hall.
"It is also important to tell them that life can be tough, and that if they want to succeed in life it requires effort.''
Mothers and fathers now often tell teachers that it is "bad for his self-esteem" if their son fails a spelling test, or that their daughter is left "unhappy" by missing out on a part in the school pantomime, said Dr Craig at a recent conference of college leaders.
She argues that the obsession with self-esteem, which has been imported from the United States, is a "fashionable idea" that has gone too far.
And she is urging schools to reclaim their role as educators, not psychologists.
Primary and secondary schools are increasingly charged with teaching social and emotional skills.
But Dr Craig says: "We are wrong in thinking we have to get the 'I' bigger. If we say to people the most important thing is how you feel about yourself then if a child fails maths and feels bad, it is very tempting for them to blame it on others like teachers and parents.
"Parents no longer want to hear if their children have done anything wrong. This is the downside of the self-esteem agenda.
"The problem is that if you tell parents that it is incredibly important that children feel good all the time, we will get people going out of the way to boost children's self-esteem all the time."
She argues that an obsession with children's self-esteem is breeding narcissism.
"Narcissists make terrible relationship partners, parents and employees.
'It's not a positive characteristic. We are in danger of encouraging this.
"And we are kidding ourselves if we think that we aren't going to undermine learning if we restrict criticism."
The recent conference of college leaders heard how a maths teacher in one school had corrected a pupil who had placed a zero in the wrong place. The pupil replied: "Thank you, but I prefer it my way."
Hall says the situation is not helped by the present cult of celebrity. "Students are obsessed with fame and fortune. They see people winning reality shows, and becoming famous, but these people often have not achieved anything of substance.
"I would not like to return to the days when the self-esteem of young people was demolished, but there is no harm in teaching them that life can be tough," she says
Michael Moriarty, general secretary of Irish Vocational Education Association, says the remarks of Dr Craig are extremely topical because of the current recession.
"We have had a generation that has only known success,'' says Moriarty.
"In many cases they do not know the meaning of the word no.''
Although Moriarty believes that young people will have to adjust to the new environment, he says a positive agenda is hugely important.
He is a believer in the Irish saying: "Mol an oige agus tiocfaidh si'' (Praise the young and they will bloom).
Moriarty adds: "In hard times it is even more important to have a positive outlook in order to give young people hope.
"That is why Barack Obama's slogan, 'Yes, we can', has been so appealing.''
