13 minute read
Mary’sMusings
Mary’s Musings
In her latest observations Mary looks forward to a family Christmas and reading some good books, applauds our science and maths students and takes a philosophical view of the confidence and supply agreement
On Christmas Day I am invited to my son Aengus and his wife Lisa in Athlone with my four lovely grandchildren, ranging in age from 9-17.
Hello again to all the readers of this lovely magazine.
I hope you have come through the autumn/ early winter days well. We have had such a variety of weather, ranging from bitterly cold to very mild and in between lots of rain and gales. However, Christmas is approaching, and all our thoughts are bound up in that. I hope the weather will be suitable for those who will be travelling to be at home with their own people, or travelling to events over the Christmas season. children, ranging in age from 9-17. We will have great fun and much laughter all together. Lisa’s Mum, who is a widow too, will be down to stay with her, and also her sister and husband and two children, so it will be a packed household.
In Dublin, my son Feargal and his wife Maeve and their two children will have Christmas Day at home, and then on December 27, they come down to here to be in Athlone and stay until New Year’s Eve when they will go off to Cork to Maeve’s parents who live there.
30 Senior Times l January - February 2020 l www.seniortimes.ie I, like everyone else, am busy preparing for Christmas. I am so lucky in that I have a small but very loving family. On Christmas Day, I am invited to my son Aengus and his wife Lisa, who live in Athlone with my four lovely grandSo all in all, it will be a busy time of family and children, of talking, catching up with the news, hearing about how school is going, but, above all, of so much love between us all. I am so happy to be part of a loving family, and my wish would be that everyone who reads these pages will have love in their lives also over the Christmas period, in some form or another. After all, the whole story of Christmas is that of an infant born in a stable in Bethlehem. I constantly tell that to my grandchildren, and how right it is that they do not lose track of what all the festivity and joy and love is about.
So, what has been going on in the last number of weeks? Well, I was invited down to Maura and Daithi’s Today Show in Cork. I’m sure many of the readers look at it; it is a very good production by RTÉ for over two hours on each weekday. They have a variety of visitors, commentators, sports news, political news, cooking, fashion, anything you would want – it will so easily while away a couple of hours on an afternoon.
I found The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood absorbing and elegantly read. After Christmas, I hope to return to review her follow-up book, The Testaments
I am looking forwarding to reading Hilary Clinton’s latest book Gutsy Women. I have read many reviews of it and I have seen Hillary Clinton speaking on the BBC about it, so I am hopeful of a really good, thorough read.
Cork RTÉ would like me to come down more often and do the book reviews, but it’s a long, long way from Athlone to Cork. However, I went there back in November, and had a lovely time. I reviewed The Handmaid’s Tale, the book by Margaret Atwood. There was myself and Anton Savage on the panel, and he was not a fan of the book and I was strongly in favour of it. I felt it was beautifully and elegantly written. Even though many had told me of its depiction as a series on RTÉ, I had never seen it, but I became very engrossed in the book. For some reason, Anton did not at all like the book; he felt it was all inaction, and we had a very strong but robust debate on that theme.
After Christmas, I hope to return to review her follow-up book, The Testaments, for which Margaret Atwood has shared the Booker Prize. We will see who my fellow reviewer will be on that occasion. I am sure many of the readers, like me, are lining up their Christmas books. As I told you in the autumn, I have finished David Cameron’s book For the Record, and it was, as I anticipated, a terrific read.
I know one of my Christmas gifts from one of my sons is Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s latest book Gutsy Women. I have read many reviews of it and I have seen Hillary Clinton speaking on the BBC about it, so I am hopeful of a really good, thorough read.
After all, Hillary should know what propelled her, as a gutsy woman, into the American presidential race!!
programme. We had great fun and it remains to be seen how the show will turn out, but I am told that it was interesting. I hope maybe some of you might get a chance to look at it. I am always going on and on about my grandchildren; at least you will be able to see two of them, if you catch it on TV.
I want to tell the readers about an interesting TV interlude I had recently. RTÉ are putting on an hour-long programme called Christmas Past in the week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. They have asked eight so-called ‘public people’ with their families to sit on a couch and talk about Christmas past and Christmas to come. They invited me with two of my grandchildren, so off we sailed together – Scott, aged 9, and Sarah, aged 14 – to participate in the Over in the UK, the General Election motors on, and the outcome is not as yet clear between the Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn and the Conservatives led by Boris Johnson. Like many of you, I have watched the debates on BBC and Channel 4, and they make for good viewing. For us here in Ireland, Brexit still remains an unknown quantity. It is not so much that we admire Boris Johnson and the Conservatives, but if they gain power, Brexit, in whatever guise it takes, will come through at the end of January. Senior Times l January - February 2020 l www.seniortimes.ie 31
There is good news on the maths and science front, in that our young people ranked above average according to re recent OECD report
32 Senior Times l January - February 2020 l www.seniortimes.ie So at least that is another bogey laid to rest, I hope. Here in Ireland, we had a narrow squeak to avoid a General Election, just in the last few weeks. If the vote had succeeded in Dáil Éireann, it would have meant that many of our doors would have been knocked upon over the Christmas period by people soliciting our votes. I can only envisage the kind of welcome they would receive as they went about that task. However, that danger has passed. But there is no doubt, and it has already been decided, that in the spring there will be a General Election. Now, as the readers will know, I have not gone deeply into politics in any of the columns I have written for this magazine. However, of course my whole life has been coloured by politics, and it remains for me an abiding passion. Many of the people in my party (Fianna Fáil) would have been upset at the Confidence and Supply arrangement which Micheál Martin entered into with Enda Kenny and then Leo Varadkar, in order to put a government in place. I have never been a great enthusiast for this line, and yet it has given us a stable type of democracy when much of the world has been plagued by dissent and discord. So spring of 2020 – anois teacht an earraigh – will see the General Election in Ireland, and of course I will be following all of that, and hopefully sharing much of it with the readers of this magazine. As I am compiling this, good news has come through on the education front for Ireland. My life has been consumed by both politics and education, and I am always alert to what is the latest in either field. The good news to which I refer is the OECD Report on second-level students in Ireland between the ages of 14-16. Of all of the OECD countries, we rank third in our literacy and numeracy. Now, that is a marvellous achievement, and a very worthy tribute to all of our teachers, particularly those in the primary schools where it all begins. Equally, there is good news on the maths and science front, in that our young people rank above average in those subjects too. But the attendant not-so-good news is that our study of the STEM subjects has fallen back, and that is not good for the onward march of Ireland as a nation on the world stage. Be that as it may, I think it is great that in our literacy and numeracy, we are way ahead, only surpassed in all of the OECD countries by Finland and Estonia. It makes you think, doesn’t it? Estonia is a small country, not that long freed from Soviet dominance, and yet has such a good educational record. Those OECD results certainly led me to think about the changes which are being mooted for the Junior Cert and Leaving Cert curriculum and assessment. Now, let me very clear; I set up the NCCA (National Council for Curriculum and Assessment) back in 1989 when I was Minister for Education, to bring about very necessary changes in those fields. However, I feel the ‘innovation’ has gone far enough. Are we in danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and of sacrificing standards in the cause of advanced ways of teaching and learning?
Many of the people in my party (Fianna Fáil) would have been upset at the Confidence and Supply arrangement which Micheál Martin entered into with Enda Kenny and then Leo Varadkar, in order to put a government in place. I have never been a great enthusiast for this line, and yet it has given us a stable type of democracy when much of the world has been plagued by dissent and discord.
I pose these questions in the full realisation that there is an internal debate going on within educational circles as to whether we have gone far enough in the field of innovation and a fresh look at the curriculum. To my mind, we have gone far enough, we have made the necessary changes, and please, please leave the Leaving Certificate alone.
It is our lodestar examination, and one that has gained recognition throughout the world. After all, the recent OECD results show that, and we should stick now with the path which we have laid out.
These are my opinions only. But I do think perhaps over the Christmas period, when we will all be talking together as families, that we should think about education in a very meaningful way. Think about the strides we have made, think of the excellent teachers we have in this country who have been verified and validated now by these OECD results, and just take it easy on innovation and reform!!
I would like to wish all the readers of this lovely Senior Times magazine every happiness and joy and love over the Christmas period. I hope you get a little time to yourself, and I hope you get time to think about life and to plan for the spring and summer. Above all, I hope you have a restful period and that we can all together face into 2020 with renewed optimism and courage.
Happy Christmas to all – go easy and mind yourself.
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