Folklore?
Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives
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Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives
#22Sounds like a great idea. In England, I've seen education get consistently more rigid and inflexible over the years. All about tests, tests and more tests. Teachers leave the profession, children turn off. And as it consistently fails to produce better results, the answer is always to do more of what has failed. Bring something like this to England, please!
The other 5 years of schooling at that level is all about the tests.
Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives
#2320 years ago it was considered a 'doss year' (waste/screw-around etc.), and the general perception was that it was for those that require a little more time in the oven developmentally before proceeding to the next stage. I was a child then so I don't know if that was true, but certainly the majority of people who took it were not academically inclined.
Which seems fair enough. There’s already a year difference between the youngest and oldest student in any given class; if you want your children to do well, make sure they’re among the oldest. The problem is it might come too late to change their self-perception. A year is a lot of time when you’re nine
TY is typically at 15ish.
Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives
#24Patrick Collison (Stripe) credits the Transition Year in Ireland for his computer interest
" Ireland actually has this interesting thing called “transition year,” this year between two major exams of high school or at least Ireland’s high school equivalent.Transition year is a formally designated year that’s optional, where you can go and pursue things that you might not otherwise naturally tend to pursue, and the school tends to be much more permissive of going and spending three months abroad or going and doing some work experience in this area or whatever the case may be. And so, in that year, I basically decided to spend as much of it as possible programming, and so I did that.”"
https://networkcapital.beehiiv.com/p/stripe-ceo-patrick-coll...
Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives
#25> What he really wanted to close was the cultural gap between rich and poor
This sounds great!
> Then there is the financial aspect of TY: some parents just can’t afford it.
oh for fuck's sake
Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives
#26In TY in 1998 I:
worked at an architect's, an archeologist's, a hospital, an epidemiological research institute where I got to use _my own computer_ all day - decided I needed to work with computers, got a summer job there.
earned the President's Award medal
had one class where we stripped an engine over the term
got my first aid certificate
learned how to develop film
took night classes touch typing (on an electric typewriter)
took part in the Irish language school music competition
took German
was in a play
got an award at the Young Scientist
I really developed as a person. I hadn't ever really stopped to think what my life would be like without that development but I suspect it was very beneficial. It certainly wasn't a "doss" - and it started to grow a self determination muscle - find your own work experience, find projects you want to try etc.
Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives
#27My child is too young for school but my partner and I expect to homeschool. We've talked about gap years in the childs early/mid teens for travel/backpacking/nature excursions. I wish fellowship and apprentice work was more commonplace in the younger years too. Get out of the classroom and experience the real world.
Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives
#28[flagged]
I ran it through ChatGPT with a prompt to remove "unnecessary linguistic complications" Niall Hare, a 63-year-old headteacher in Dublin, explains the importance of bike maintenance and philosophy in Irish culture while discussing what students do during their "transition year" (TY), which is the optional fourth year of the Irish secondary school system. After completing a three-year junior cycle, students can either…
Thanks for providing that. I did read the article, but that is actually a pretty good summary.
I do agree with the other commenter -- despite all of the downvotes they got -- I did find that article especially cumbersome to read. A browser button to rewrite articles in different styles could actually be useful.
Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say so, it doesn't develop any discussion or conversation, it's bike shedding. Even more that overall quality is a question of judgment, I read the article perfectly fine and the writing style wasn't a distraction. What do you think we gain in the discussion by debating the quality of writing (which was entirely passable) instead of the substance of it? To me it's quite clear: absolutely nothing.
'Bike shedding', in the context of the current Irish bike shed controversy - heh
What is the Irish bike shed controversy?
Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting. I suggest you re-read this list: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I wouldn't call the quality and readability of the written text "tangential", it's not about the CSS styling. I don't think it's quite as bad as the above commenter seems to think it is, but they're welcome to that opinion.
> I wouldn't call the quality and readability of the written text "tangential"
The topic in this comment section is the "transition year" in Irish secondary schools. The format of the website which introduces that topic is tangential to that topic. I don't know where one would get the idea that a tangent that's not about CSS styling is not a tangent.