The Leaving Cert and Leaving Cert Applied students will be in the throes of it now, with the end in sight of a lifetime’s education. The learning they’ve received in the last 18 or 19 years, however, far supersedes what they’ll have learned in textbooks. Books will only have scraped the surface of what they need to know to get through life, and contain almost none of what they’ll need to survive.
The most valuable skills they’ll have learned came from navigating friendships and romantic relationships, and the end of both of these. They’ll have spent years managing interactions with teachers they didn’t like, and with teachers they thought didn’t like them. Some students will have hated these last few years, going home to difficult households or struggling in school to follow a mandated curriculum. It is a fact that some will have spent these years going home from school to be carers for siblings or parents or grandparents, others will have gone day after day back to homes of privilege, others to ones of poverty in either money or love, or both.
Romeo and Juliet isn’t on the Junior Cert curriculum this year, but if it were these young minds might have come across the great Baz Luhrmann (and a young Leonardo diCaprio, never a bad thing); in 1997 (before almost any of these students were born) Mr Luhrmann reminded us of Mary Theresa Schmich’s invaluable and ageless words of wisdom: wear sunscreen, and don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life: ‘the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives; some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t’.
That last line is important: as far as things have come with valuing apprenticeships, internships, and earn-while-you-learn schemes, there is still this interminable obsession with points and the CAO system as an indicator of ‘success’. Success is not measured in points, nor is intelligence, ability, or willingness. This is not to make less of any students who do achieve the top marks; it is a remarkable thing, and should be celebrated, but just as we elders tell the poorer-performing students that results aren’t everything, we need to remind the ‘successful’ ones of the same thing.
Another qualifier, and this comes with age but let us wear ourselves down repeating it regardless, is success is not happiness. Further to that, happiness is not a permanent, static state; life goes up and down and it should. It’s a long road with no turns, and those broken hearts borne in school will go a long, long way towards giving solace when things don’t go your way when you’re 25, or 40, or 80.
Nothing lasts forever and so dear students, do the exam and put down the pen and put it all behind you, but don’t forget the lessons you’ve learned.
