Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 141 posts

Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

#91

Post by spywaregorilla »

SoftTalker wrote: post #56
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #5

Sounds 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!

> tests, tests and more tests Same in the USA. The old student question "will this be on the test?" is now also asked by teachers and administrators. If the answer is "no" they skip it.

That's not unreasonable if you have good tests that hit the right elements. My experience about 10 years ago with the AP exams were very positive. The tests were good, and even though the classes were taught to the test, they were some of the best classes I ever took.

Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

#92

Post by marcus_holmes »

Loughla wrote: post #77
wiredfool wrote: post #19

In Ireland -- with one kid in Junior Cert and one who did Junior Cert, then had an external Transition Year, then self studied for A levels, and one who's done home school/self study through GCSE and now doing A levels. It's an optional, definitely not universal thing. Not all schools offer it, and even then I get the impression that it's well less than half the students take the opportunity. The implementation is al…

What are A levels, by the way? I hear this a lot on British television but have no context.

Britain used to have "Ordinary level" (O levels) at age ~16 and "Advanced level" exams (A levels) at ~18. Students usually studied 5-8 O levels and then either left school to pursue a career or went on to study (usually) 3 A levels and go to university.

O levels got replaced back in the 80's. A levels never got renamed.

Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

#93

Post by SamBam »

Loughla wrote: post #77
wiredfool wrote: post #19

In Ireland -- with one kid in Junior Cert and one who did Junior Cert, then had an external Transition Year, then self studied for A levels, and one who's done home school/self study through GCSE and now doing A levels. It's an optional, definitely not universal thing. Not all schools offer it, and even then I get the impression that it's well less than half the students take the opportunity. The implementation is al…

What are A levels, by the way? I hear this a lot on British television but have no context.

Kind of like APs, except that you typically study only 3, sometimes 4 subjects for the final two years of high school and then take final exams.

So for my final two years of high school, I only studies math, physics and bio.

In the same way that an AP can sometimes give you a semester's credit at a university, an A-Level can sometimes give you a full year's credit. (Only in US universities, though. In the UK you're expected to have done them, so you don't get extra credit. Though, for the same reason, a bachelors degree in the UK is typically only three years, not four.)

Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

#94

Post by giobox »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #92
Loughla wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are A levels, by the way? I hear this a lot on British television but have no context.

Britain used to have "Ordinary level" (O levels) at age ~16 and "Advanced level" exams (A levels) at ~18. Students usually studied 5-8 O levels and then either left school to pursue a career or went on to study (usually) 3 A levels and go to university. O levels got replaced back in the 80's. A levels never got renamed.

This was certainly the case in most of Britain. Scotland has a separate education system from England and has today and historically offered different high school level qualifications ("Highers" etc).

Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

#95

Post by kiliantics »

jan_Inkepa wrote: post #53
sollewitt wrote: post #26

In 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…

School for me (in Ireland) was more or less a race to get out of school (+ concomitant bullying) and into university to study what I was interested in (maths - at that point I wasn't able to advance any further on my own and there was nobody who could help/guide me further where I lived) - the idea of adding a year on felt like it would be a waste. In retrospect, yeah I think I made a good call. Happy to see other pe…

I think OP must have grown up in a pretty affluent neighbourhood. (How many schools have programmes with epidemiological institutes?) If I had done TY in the school I went to with the others in my cohort that did, my experience would have likely been much closer to theirs than to OP's: rarely attending school, drinking, smoking weed, and in some cases not returning back to school at all to finish the leaving cert.

I was much happier getting out of school as soon as I possibly could like yourself.

Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

#96

Post by l2silver »

cmcconomy wrote: post #33

In Quebec you find a similar program; elementary school is K-6, and high school is 7-11. Following this you can optionally attend an interstitial educational system called "CEGEP". It's government funded and costs next to nothing. CEGEP has two streams, pre-university or professional. For the latter, you learn skills like aircraft mechanics. For the former, you pick a stream that bulks up what would normally be first…

I'm very jealous of the cegep program, as a resident of neighbouring Ontario. For all my Quebec friends, it just seemed like an amazing way to test different experiences before committing to a degree. In addition, the work you do in cegep counts towards a bachelor's degree, so french students end up finishing their degrees without losing a year.

Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

#97

Post by lackstein »

cmcconomy wrote: post #33

In Quebec you find a similar program; elementary school is K-6, and high school is 7-11. Following this you can optionally attend an interstitial educational system called "CEGEP". It's government funded and costs next to nothing. CEGEP has two streams, pre-university or professional. For the latter, you learn skills like aircraft mechanics. For the former, you pick a stream that bulks up what would normally be first…

I went through the CEGEP system in Quebec and honestly credit it with giving me the skills necessary to be successful in university. My high school was very lenient and gave me a lot of flexibility to work on personal projects, and overall that worked out great but I was definitely lacking the grit necessary to dive deep into topics I couldn’t quickly understand.

CEGEP provided an excellent transitionary structure where you had both more responsibility for your actions and results, and also a forgiving safety net. You’re forced to do near-university-level study of subjects in an environment where the professors are able to hold your hand a bit more, will tolerate late assignments, and if you screw up it won’t permanently tank your future academic prospects.

The tuition at CEGEP was free. You just paid a few fees to the school and the student union, which added up to about $120/semester at the time. This made it a lot more palatable to try out a math- or science-heavy stream and switch out of it if you decided it wasn’t something you’d want to continue in university. The gen ed classes were also great.

Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

#98

Post by h_tbob »

Everybody mocks me when I say this. But the most productive people in the world spent their time doing what they thought was fun.

It’s like our biology is smarter than us. If it’s fun our brains are telling us there’s something about it we need. It’s like when you think a girl is cute for the first time. There’s no logic in it to you, but it’s the most logical thing in the world, that’s why it’s fun.

Hans Zimmer used to just like play with all kinds of stuff when he was young just to see what it would sound like.

I listened to an intel exec (after pat came back) and he talked about how he was disassembling and reassembling the house electronics as a kid.

Or me - I would just code for fun and my dad got me some books on it. I hardly ever did any school on it.

If we let kids just do what they want and have fun, I think they would get good at what they love and have fulfilling careers.

If you have to do what your told your whole life - who even wants to live it?

So maybe we just let kids have their freedom. I know it sounds crazy but what if we applied the rights to life liberty and pursuit of happiness to them? I think they would amaze us. Kids are so clever, I think we would have so much creativity our minds would be blown!

To conclude I think that we have a dearth of people who know what to do. So many employees and fewer small businesses. I think if we give kids freedom, the chance to figure out what they like doing, and how to do it, as adults they will be able to start businesses better and manage them.

Just my thoughts!

Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

#99

Post by roenxi »

h_tbob wrote: post #98

Everybody mocks me when I say this. But the most productive people in the world spent their time doing what they thought was fun. It’s like our biology is smarter than us. If it’s fun our brains are telling us there’s something about it we need. It’s like when you think a girl is cute for the first time. There’s no logic in it to you, but it’s the most logical thing in the world, that’s why it’s fun. Hans Zimmer used…

You haven't accounted for selection bias there. It is quite likely most people don't find a productive activity fun and it is a much better plan to try and be somewhat wealthy doing something that inspires a neutral feeling rather than poor. Much like the girl you find cute on first glance, if you change your mind later then it'd have been a real mistake to over-commit on first impressions.

If there are 10 people who want to be plumbers but the economy is signalling it needs 20 plumbers then it'd be best if 10 people who don't enjoy plumbing all that much do it for the money. If there are 100 people who want to make a living as an artist and only demand for 1 it'd be better if most of them overruled their instincts and found something more useful to do. Paint as a hobby and live as something else.

Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

#100

Post by bobthepanda »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #91
SoftTalker wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tests, tests and more tests Same in the USA. The old student question "will this be on the test?" is now also asked by teachers and administrators. If the answer is "no" they skip it.

That's not unreasonable if you have good tests that hit the right elements. My experience about 10 years ago with the AP exams were very positive. The tests were good, and even though the classes were taught to the test, they were some of the best classes I ever took.

the problem, at least in the US, is that the tests and standards have tightened up without necessarily giving the teachers better training or better productivity tools to teach them, and now their job evaluations also depend on it, so now everybody is optimizing for the test. Usually to the detriment of subjects not on standardized testing like the arts or physical education or anything resembling a break time.

Throw in the fact that in much of the country, teachers have to do things like pull second jobs to get by and beg parents for basic supplies like scissors and paper towels, and it's no wonder everything is falling apart.

Post reply on HN