Schools guide for dunces

[Letter to the Editor, The Sunday Times, 30.Sept.2018]

the (not) definitive Schools Guide in Ireland and the Animal School

the book of Leo Buscaglia where the story of The Animal School was published.

 The news

"Laurel Hill Coláiste FCJ, Limerick is the top secondary school in Ireland for a record fifth successive year, the Sunday Times Best Schools Guide 2018 has revealed. 96.4% of the girls progress to university from the Gaelcholáiste, the Sunday Times reports. The annual Sunday Times survey is the definitive guide to the country’s top 400 secondary schools. It measures the progression of all second-level students over a three-year period – from 2015 to 2017 – to universities and institutes of technology".

How the guide was compiled
The progression of students to third-level study from all 714 state-funded secondary schools in the Republic of Ireland was examined. Data were collected from 27 3rd level Institutions in the Republic and two in NI.

The only criterion used for this guide is the "average proportion of pupils gaining places in autumn 2015, 2016 and 2017 at one of the nine universities on the island if Ireland, main teacher training colleges, Royal College of Surgeons or National College of Art and Design" (according to the Sunday Times, Ireland, 23/9/2018).

Parameters like the variety of extra-curriculum activities, the number of foreign languages, sport and civic achievements have not been used as ranking criteria.

The monolithic approach in constructing this (not) definitive schools guide brings to mind the case of  The Animal School — a story of Leo Buscaglia, as published in his book "Living, Loving and Learning".

In Leo's school, the animals got together in the forest one day and decided to start a school. 

(exact extract from the book)

"There was a rabbit, a bird, a squirrel, a fish and an eel, and they formed a Board of Education.

The rabbit insisted that running be in the curriculum.

The bird insisted that flying be in the curriculum.

The fish insisted that swimming be in the curriculum, and the squirrel insisted that perpendicular tree climbing be in the curriculum.

They put all of these things together and wrote a Curriculum Guide.

Then they insisted that all of the animals take all of the subjects.

Although the rabbit was getting an A in running perpendicular tree climbing was a real problem for him; he kept falling over backwards.

Pretty soon he got to be sort of brain damaged, and he couldn’t run any more. He found that instead of making an A in running, he was making a C and, of course, he always made an F in perpendicular tree climbing.

The bird was really beautiful at flying, but when it came to burrowing in the ground, he couldn’t do so well.

He kept breaking his beak and wings.

Pretty soon he was making a C in flying as well as an F in burrowing, and he had a hell of a time with perpendicular tree climbing.

The moral of the story is that the animal who was valedictorian of the class was a mentally retarded eel who did everything in a halfway fashion.

But the educators were all happy because everybody was taking all of the subjects, and it was called a broad-based education".


Dr Ioannis Zabetakis (MRSC, MEd)