Politics and Society LC

Bobtheman

Has anybody taught this? How do they find it?

gaiscioch

It's a genuinely fantastic course, with a broad range - environmental issues (Seán McDonagh, etc) sustainability (Vanda Shiva, etc), theories on development (Gunder Frank versus Whitman Rostow, etc), identity and nationalism (Benedict Anderson, etc), Cosmopolitanism (Appiah), Media (Chomsky, etc), liberalism (John Locke, JS Mill, etc), authoritarianism (Hobbes, modern Saudi Arabia), right-wing libertarianism (Robert Nozick), Feminism (Sylvia Walby), Education (Kathleen Lynch, Paole Friere), colonialism (Edward Said, Samuel Huntington, etc). For gender equality, they could definitely do a section on men's higher suicide rates, earlier deaths, and greater loss from family breakdowns so there's very much a pc blindspot there by equating gender equality with women's rights. I just hope the SEC examiners understand that they are not synonymous. I find that the strongest students academically in the school choose it, but so too do the weakest (probably because they did relatively well in CSPE in the JC) with not much in the middle so it's a bit odd in that respect.

There are 17 key philosophers all students must know and if, for instance, a "discursive essay" (a 3-page essay, which awards 35% of the mark to your conclusion) question on Irish electoral reform comes up a student should know two or three philosophers (e.g. James Madison's "delegates" versus Edmund Burke's "trustees") for each "discursive essay". Here's biographies on them all: https://www.scoilnet.ie/uploads/resources/32068/31810.pdf

There are two discursive essays to write in the exam, and they constitute 50% of the exam paper, 40% of the course (20% of the course is awarded for completion of a Citizenship Project Report/CPR, and in January of 5th year all students are given a choice to do one CPR out of four options).

The downside is that the SEC does not reveal the breakdown of each question in Section B (database questions) so students don't know how much time they should devote to each subsection and, when the marking scheme is revealed they find the supposedly 10-mark question was worth 50 marks, and so forth. I'm not sure why the SEC refuse to give that transparency, but it is unfair to the students. Further, the SEC marking is, in my experience, decidedly inconsistent. The Chief Examiner in the subject needs to, first, issue sample 100% H1-standard Discursive essays so teachers/students know the required standard and, second, exercise consistency in marking the Discursive Essays. As a teacher I have cleared students' CPRs for a strong H1 standard, following the marking scheme, and then in the results it is not clear at all why one student has received a H2 while the other has not. The SEC needs to explain these things to teachers as it is unfair to students. I appreciate it is a newish subject, but this year will be the sixth year it has been examined in the LC so the initial teething problems should be resolved.

Lastly, aside from a Folens book specifically on the 17 Key Thinkers (https://shop.folens.ie/books/theories-action), only a single publisher, Educate.ie, publishes a course book (https://educate.ie/power-and-people-leaving-cert-politics-and-society-skills-book-and-reflective-journal). This was last published in 2018, but the curriculum specification was updated in 2019. It needs to be updated now that the authors have much more knowledge of how the course is laying out and what sort of questions the SEC is asking. There is a very active P&S teachers organisation, PASTAI, which is helpful even if they often don't know any better re the above issues because the SEC Chief Examiner will not tell us: https://pastai.ie/

As for numbers sitting the Leaving Certificate Politics and Society paper, ChatGPT has this answer so don't blame me if it's incorrect: "As an AI language model, I don't have access to real-time data, and my training only goes up until 2021. However, according to the official statistics from the State Examinations Commission of Ireland, the number of students who sat the Leaving Certificate Politics and Society exam in 2021 was 2,875. Unfortunately, I don't have access to data for the 2022 exam session."

Bobtheman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120399677#Comment_120399677

This is brilliant. Really detailed. I'm still thinking it over. I might follow up with a question at future point