Thingmote: A Column of Free Association Continued Correspondence on the Education Issue

Professor Chris Morash Columnist

So, the thing is… yet another month has crept by, and I haven’t had a chance to write my column. Again. This time around, I had planned what was shaping up to be a fascinating article on the preponderance of obscure spherical metal objects on the campus. However, I found myself distracted by the recent sad news that the State Examinations Commission has what is apparently the world’s worst case of institutional long covid, and will not be able to provide Leaving Cert results in time for the start of the 2023-24 academic year (and possibly not for the next three years). This led me to dig back through the stacks of paper on my desk to a letter I received from a student here in Trinity last term, which I had passed along for publication in the second issue of this year’s University Times.

Ah, here it is: it’s from Maeve Drapier (JS Economics), and she is suggesting that we abolish the Leaving Certificate, reform of the State Examinations Commission, and use the savings (about €70million) to help fund the universities. If you don’t have the article to hand, I would suggest that you dig it out from the bottom of the cat litter tray. However, re-reading it led me to another, much more disturbing piece of correspondence, which arrived after Maeve’s letter had been published. Under the current circumstances, I really feel that I must share it with University Times readers…

T hingmote, a chara,

As a secondary school teacher for the past thirty-seven years, I am well able to recognise stupid. However, seldom have I seen such a sterling example of stupidity as Maeve Drapier’s recent letter to this column, published in the University Times. In her letter, Ms. Drapier – who I understand is an Economics student at Trinity, God help us – advocates abolishing the Leaving Certificate, and reforming the State Examinations Commission, and giving the money that would be saved directly to the universities to manage their own admissions.

I am led to understand that this sort of carry-on is tolerated elsewhere in the world.

Clearly there are a few basic realities that Ms. Drapier fails to comprehend. A cornerstone of the Irish education system is the sacred principle that Irish Teachers Cannot Assess their Own Students. This is what makes our educational system the envy of the world. And why is this? The reason is simple. If Irish teachers were to be allowed to mark the work of their own students, teachers would be subjected to Intolerable Pressures.

Do I need to spell out what I am saying here? I’m not just talking about the odd Hogan Stand ticket tucked under an apple on the teacher’s desk. No, no, no. I’m talking about big dirty envelopes, choked full of tens and twenties and even fifties to help little Seosamh or Gubnait get their points for Veterinary Science. It simply doesn’t bear thinking about.

Thank God, as things stand we are mercifully free of such temptations. Everyone knows that the operations of the State Examinations Commission are so utterly obscure as to be incorruptible. Does anyone in the country really know what goes on in the months’-long process of adjusting and readjusting Leaving Certificate marks – a process so far beyond human understanding that it now stretches from June into October? How could anyone even begin to think about meddling with something so inexplicable? And therein lies your salvation.

Now, Ms. Drapier: did you ever stop for a moment to think what would happen if that bulwark of integrity were to be whisked away, and the universities were to look after their own admissions? Clearly not. I will tell you what would happen. All that wicked temptation would slither up to the gates of the universities themselves. And then you would be in a fine pickle. I bet you never thought of that, did you?

Le meas, Bean ni Cuill

I must confess that when I first read this letter, I was shocked. Never for a moment had it occurred to me that the Mammies and Daddies of Ireland were so prone to corruption (being one myself). I refuse to believe it. However, since the correspondence is directed in the first instance to a student, Maeve Drapier (JS, Economics), I feel it only right to let her respond.

Dear Thingmote,

Like your good self, I was a wee bit surprised when I read the letter from our Ms. Wood. I, too, find it difficult to believe that we live in such a sneaky world. However, my Economics training has taught me to take a cheerier view, so I’ve done a few calculations.

Some of these numbers will need to be firmed up a bit. However, let’s think for a moment about how much money every year is poured into all of the busy little enterprises that have popped up around the Leaving Certificate points race – all of the grind schools, private tuition, etc., etc. For instance, a year at the Institute of Education alone costs €9,950. Of course, not every parent spends that much. Some spend more over the three years of the senior cycle, some spend less. But if we take even a round slice of that – say a third – and multiply it by the 70,000 students who applied for third level courses last year, you find yourself with a nice plump bundle of cash every year: a conservative estimate of €210 million of private expenditure every year spent on getting into university.

Now, imagine of all that lovely cash no longer being spent on grind schools and the like. Instead, imagine it sloshing around in BT bags in the backseats of the hybrid SUVs of the nation’s Mammies and Daddies, just looking for a way to ease the way to college for their little darlings. And what if it found its way directly into the hands of the universities – little bundles discretely thrown over the wall into the Provost’s Garden at night, for instance.

Think what the universities could do with such lovely bunches of Euros. Affordable student housing, for one thing. Just imagine a future in which the student experience did not involve sleeping in the back of a Ford Fiesta for eight months. It’s certainly an idea worth thinking about as an alternative to some silly idea that there should be more state funding for student housing!

Maeve Drapier (JS, Economics)

Dear Maeve. I am now even more shocked than I was earlier. Under no circumstances would the universities would countenance such a plan. Better a hundred students sleep in the backseats of Ford Fiestas – a hundred students in the same Ford Fiesta, for that matter – than a single brown envelope appear in the Provost’s dahlias. I am going to urge that you be kept away from the pages of the University Times in future unless you can be more reasonable. [She’s not the only one we’ll be keeping away from now on. Ed.]

Professor Chris Morash is Trinity’s Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing and a former Vice-Provost. He returns this year to continue writing his column, known as “Thingmote”, following a very successful run last year. The thingmote was a mound of earth which served as a meeting space in Medieval Dublin. It was located just outside where Front Gate is now.