The education system in Ireland is one of the most magical, magnificent messes our little country has to offer. It’s comical really and it’s also the reason why the majority of Irish graduates are over qualified for the jobs they’re in. It’s a pathetic system that many, if not most of the country has spoken out against, yet every year it claims more and more victims and the people on top don’t care.
It would be wrong of me to say our education system is completely flawed. It’s not, we have a great standard of education in this country and produce some great names from leading universities that go on to do great things. But it’s the rigmarole an 18-year-old has to go through to get to college that is the problem. They’ve been sitting in front of a teacher for 13 years, mollycoddled in every way possible. They live in a routine, from having lunch at an assigned time to putting their hand up to ask for permission to go to the bathroom. And then they are told one day that they have to decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives. “Make the biggest decision of your life but also don’t forget you need permission to pee”.
This system produces many victims, myself being one of them. We chose degrees that we thought were great ideas when we were 18 but now in a few months that career will be a reality and I couldn’t be angrier at 18-year-old me. Don’t get me wrong, at times I love my course and I have the greatest friends and excellent lecturers but it just isn’t for me. But how can I blame her. She was young and in school, she thought she could take on the world with the path she was taking, she wanted to get out of a small town and travel the world and meet interesting people and learn incredible things. But she was 18 and the world seemed a lot smaller than it actually is. The path became a lot longer and the dream slowly faded. Maybe if I had been given a year to explore my options, to go to the colleges, to meet people doing the course or people in the field of work I might have realised that it wasn’t what I really wanted to do but I was too young to know that and I was too focused on doing my Leaving Cert to get to college to actually consider my choices.
The Irish education system failed me. It didn’t give me a chance to figure out my options. Instead, I was encouraged to follow the norm and dive straight into a course that my naïve younger self thought was the right choice for me. I know I’m partly to blame for this but I’m not the only person in this boat. The government needs to understand that the Leaving Cert and CAO system is failing students. It entraps them into degrees they don’t want to do but are too afraid to drop out of because the extortionate price of fees means that it’s just easier to continue with the course. The government need to figure out a new system. They need to give students a year to find out what they want to do, to explore their options with their peers instead of expecting them to do all this along with the biggest exam of their lives. The points system needs to be abolished. The number of points you get in an exam shouldn’t define you. The lack of places in a course shouldn’t be the reason someone doesn’t get to do what they want do. The cost of fees and of going back to college after dropping out shouldn’t be a reason someone has to continue with something they don’t want to do. The government needs to see this and realise that their education system is creating more problems than solving.
I’m lucky that I realised this now and discovered a path in my course that will lead me to where I want to go but for all the people who weren’t as lucky, I can only express how sorry I am that the government failed you and I can only hope that one-day, fees will be abolished and that you can go back and find your calling.