unbelievable?

MiCr0

just saw this in the paper http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2000/0817/index.htm

9 A1's in the LC ffs

Blitzkrieger

I know a guy who got 7. Not the sharpest tool in the box but he studied like a knut. He had no friends and always had a huge bag full of books with him. He's now studying chemical engineering and expects a starting salary of at least 40,000 a year. Maybe I should of bin 'is friend

Excelsior

it is so sad. she could have gotten into biochemistry in oxford with 3a's. i wouldn't let my kid devote their life to an examination process like that that has no merit beyond its competition appeal.

Shiminay

Well, I learned how to play guitar for my Leaving Cert...

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All the best,

Dav
@B^)
My page of stuff

El_Presidente

Well done to her.

Hobbes

Personally I think the LC just proves you can put up with a ****load of stress and studying. Beyond that, LC means jack if your looking for a job. Collage that's about it.

Anyway I never sat my LC, and look at me now. Just like many other famous rich Irish people who never sat thier LC.

Paladin

Although I applaud her achievement, Id feel that my time would be better spent learning useful stuff.

By that I dont mean bunging the LC, I mean studying enough to get me the points i need, and learn the subjects I need for my future career, and in the spare time continue my learning of visual basic, and how to play the guitar.
Im sure that other people would have different hobbies to that, but to put in all that effort to get 9 A1's....
its poor time management imho, unless she had a photographic memory and hardly had to do a rap (which is unlikely since ppl with photographic memorys invariably suffer when it comes to mental computation or problems, a by product of so much brain power being devoted to memory I guess, but I suppose its possible she beats the odds there too )

Baz_

Also what level where the subjects, no mention in the article, and well the difference between pass and honours is absolutely astounding (hurrah for pass)

Excelsior

all higher level. it is very poor time management as someone else said.

1/3 of her grades would have secured her course.

oh well, she can look forward to less money than a crack programmer will earn too.

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It is so lonely here in my indecipherable tower of speech impedimency

Jak

Well done to her.

The leaving Cert is a **** lotta stress and I recall thinking it was a waste of time ... but it's difficult for everyone .. and in the end unfair system or otherwise, at present you have to compete for what you want. For the two years of my LC, we were in every morning at 9am and we left at 9.45pm from evening study. That included Sports from 4pm to 6pm. It was a *****, but my weekends were my own and in retrospect I'm glad to have done it.

I'd agree with concerns about people sacrificing Social Life and other skills for study ... but it is perfectly possible to do it all - It just takes a bit of time management.

As for her looking forward to earning less than a crack programmer .. well there is money in other fields than Programming .. and I'd say she can expect to earn more than the average punter.

JAK.

Blitzkrieger

Ah, I remeber the bad ol' day's of my LC. All of 3 and a half years ago now. It seems like a lifetime ago. I rember that first shiver of horror as I picked up the english book for the first time and wondered why the hell I was doing honors, then thinking it's only 3 hours 'till the exam and I'd better get to work

I believe Civ2 and Battle Isle 2 were devoted most of my time during the LC

It is actually possible to do well with a minimum of work. I can't imagine how it would be worth doing all the extra work she must have done for an A1 compared to my B2 for 2-ish hours work.

GreenHell

**** leaving cert year starting in 3 weeks **** **** aaaahhhh

Molly

yeuch 5th year i won't be able to work at all after transition year

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F00K THOSE SNIPERS WHO STEAL OUR GRENADES AND HAVE SNIPER WARS

havok*

Lc should be abolished completly.
If i had have know whata waste of time it was i would have never set it.
glad i did'nd waste more time studyin for it.
education system in tiz country is a fuppin joke:/

Shiminay

While not a great way to decide one's future, can anyone here suggest a way to improve it? As for abolishing it completely, what would be used to replace it? How would we decide onm how people get into college in an effective and cost efficient way? Continuous Assessment is a good idea, but would be difficult to implement in Ireland's over-crowded classes.

I didn't do any real work for mine, but I never saw it as a waste of time. I knew that in order to get any kind of good job, I'd need to go to college and that meant Leaving Cert.

And as for a joke of an education system, well, I think we have a good system, it's just the people in it are not so hot. Ireland has one of the most highly educated polulations in the world. We get a lot of non-nationals sending their kids to Ireland for school (those that can afford it that is). It could be worse - we could be in America!

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All the best,

Dav
@B^)
My page of stuff

havok*

The lc aint a test of knowladge, it's a test of who has the best memory and the best @ handling stress.
From my own experirance u DON'T need a lc to get onto a good course, or to get a good job. i've never been asked for mine and never will.
lets put this another way,
I failed my lc.
It now just over a year l8r
i'm on 18,000 a year.
i have my own car,
i've had offers already from ppl to leave ireland to come werk for them.
any of this due to my lc?? - no?
needed? - no
lc should be abolished cos it's not an accurate assasment on 1's knowledge or worth.

[This message has been edited by havok* (edited 22-08-2000).]

havok*

Take it!

Paladin

Originally posted by havok*:
The lc aint a test of knowladge, it's a test of who has the best memory

uuuuuh, I think that is a test of knowledge really. Whay is knowledge if not information that you remember?

I think what you mean is that the leaving cert is not a great test of ability or intelligence. These things are actually better tested with iq tests and problem solving games (like da ol rubix cube)

You can be a total misfit, not too bright, as clumsy as a 2 legged horse, but study hard and you can be a doctor that could operate on people! (yes I know there are more stringent interviews to actually become a doctor but for the point of this argument tis ok )

I wouldnt however, support an abolishion of the leaving cert. It does get the job done in a sense.
And I personally am not too worried about it (doing it this coming year) partially since Im confident about my ability (arrogent my friends tell me which is prolly true ) but Im also not stressed by it because I realise that its not the end of the world, and its perfectly possible to get a decent well paying job without it, as Havok shows. I also know of at least 3 multi-millionaires in my area who never did a LC.

Stephen

Igh... I'm doing my LC this coming year and all

Jak

I want my Doctor to be able to remember things and handle stress and pressure well.

havok*

Every1 to there own i suppose.
I've just have very bad experances wiz secondry school wiv fuppin megalomaniac teachers. which is the reson i think the systems a joke btw( Kharn )
I should go back and laff @ them all now

Excelsior

Whay is knowledge if not information that you remember?

knowledge is information with a context. information is data with a context. i didn't learn that during the lc. in fact, i learnt very little. i worked at a mediocre level from february and came out okay- but it doesn't equate with my ability.

to me though that doesn't matter. all examinations are inherently subjective- just the lc shows up certain faults that maybe are not so vital, such as cramming ability. the matter for me is what i was thought. only history gave me an understanding of the subject i was doing. i did calculus for three years and wasn't once told what it was. to me it was dx/dy buut now in college i realise that it is one of the most incredible tools nature has given man. my lc calculus was data. not knowledge.

in english beautiful things like dylan thomas and yeats and orwell were on my syllabus. but we murdered them with quote learning and photocopied crib sheets. summary after summary, interpratation after interpratation.

in german i can read till the cows come home. i can listen to other people talk, but can i speak the language? hell no! i can ask the quickest way to the train station and that is about it. same, to a lesser degree with irish. (remember brendán de roíste lads?)

accounting! what part of their souls did the education department sell to devil to come up with that disgusting subject...
the list goes on. there was no life skills. there was no computer coding. there was very little project work. there was no team work. we didn't have training in any of the things that matter. religion class is such a joke. you cant teach religion! replace it with philosophy.

the lc needs to be extended. we need to stay in school longer and get taught cooler things. we need project, team and continuous assesment work. we need to be challenged. the irish system will fail because in a world where kid's attentions are bitterly fought over, the school system can't hope to focus them. also because of its dogged determination to keep computers out of schools.

if i was minister i would ignore the lc problem and focus initially o pre-school. 3-5 year olds. get them in to teach them how to learn. then start work on the lc overhaul we so badly need.

rant done,
sorry if it rambles.

/me goes to write a challenge-ie column!

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It is so lonely here in my indecipherable tower of speech impedimency

Shiminay

I agree with what you've said there Havok about going back and laughing at them - only they're still earning more money than me - in a couple of years, I'll drive up to their houses in my BMW M3 with the roof down and I'll point and laugh

As I said in the previous post - the system isn't too bad, it's just the people involved (i.e. Teachers) who are a problem.

But, I won't blame the teachers for everything. I'd hate to be a teacher in a school now. You can't even raise your voice to someone or you're in for a load of grief.
A Music teacher once got taken for sexual assault on a struend because he touched her on the hands in order to show her how she should be playing the piano - WTF like?!?!?!
We had a Maths teacher in Secondary School who used to grab our arms, twist them round, start punching us in the chest or back while we were trying to tell him the answer of whatever it was he was asking. This may seem extreme, but it was never meant in a bad way. We all knew he was havin' the craic. In First Year, it hurt, in Leaving Cert, it was an annoyance cause you couldn't tell him the answer because he kept smacking the wind out of ya while you were trying to speak! Anyway, one day, he came in and had a rather serious look on his face. Basically, he wanted to ask us if any of us thought it was anything more (i.e. was he being a little too rough). As Leaving Certs, we weren't to bothered by it and anyway, he was a really good Maths Teacher. Obviously, some dumb ass kid had gone back to Mammy or Daddy saying that the Teacher was beating them up. Fluffed up man!

It's stuff like that that makes Teachers stop caring and so, makes them less of a teacher and more of a drone who sits at the top of the class and reads stuff out.

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All the best,

Dav
@B^)
My page of stuff

[This message has been edited by Kharn (edited 23-08-2000).]

Blitzkrieger

I think the LC should teach typo as a language. You'd have to be fluent to read these posts

lol - I remeber religion class. Everybody would go on the lang and sneak up to the football pitch. Not just our class - the whole year! Sometimes the teacher would even come up and we'd just ignore him and keep playing. One time he came on to the pitch to try to grab the ball and slipped, falling flat on his back in the middle of the mud in front of the goal. If it was summer we'd pile into a few cars (ever seen seven people in a mini?) and head to the beach

They actually changed the name of the class to social studies for the last year. What was the text book they used to hand out? (cos no1 would buy the stupid thing) "Go With God" or some tripe.

Part of the social studies course (as well as the biology) for JC was sex ed. One particularly gifted female teacher (who for some reason always used to wear really tight pants that went right up her ass-cheeks) decided to teach it to first years in their first class! It seemed kind of embarassing at the end of 2nd year when I knew everybody in the class, but to be a little kiddie all alone in a new school, talking about sperm in front of a bunch of strangers! Nightmare

You can imagine them rubbing their hands together with glee thinking "We're in for some fun in this school lads"

Loads of parents complained about it. They were told it was on the course but they didn't expect to have to deal with it first day!

A goldfish has more common sense then some teachers.


As for a solution to the points system - why not let everybody into college? Most courses are advertised with something like : "99% of graduates find employment in their chosen field". That's cos most of the wasters drop out in first year. We've had 4 people out of about 90 drop out. They were well able to get good grades but they didn't want to do the work. They spent all their time hanging around doing absolutly nothing.

Clearly not a perfect solution tho

BossArky

Leaving Cert is all about the last few weeks, if you can cram then you can get by.You could think about it as the best preparation for college that you'll get

People complain alot about the points system, but as far as I can see it is the best way.If continous assesment was brought in then you'd have to do more exams or worry more about results during the year instead of heaping the lot into a week or two before the actual LC as it is today.

It is possible to do well through cramming.Teacher & lecturers, etc just discourage it because students with lower iq would be led to believe that it is possible for everyone..and it's not.Some people are just naturaly thick.

Shinji

Yes but havok, for all that, you STILL can't spell

(j/k)

The Leaving Cert isn't perfect; but I've been pretty close to the education system in Ireland and in the UK, from both a student and a teacher perspective, and I can tell you now that the Irish system p1sses all over the UK one...

However, the Leaving Cert isn't the be-all and end-all of education that the media and the schools make out. For a small but significant number of people, it's a waste of time. Personally, I didn't do anything for my Leaving (my results weren't bad, but not mad good either), but not a single person has ever questioned my exam results. 2 years of study for the Leaving Cert now constitutes a grand total of 2 lines on my CV ("Leaving Certificate 1999, Passed with Honours in 7 subjects"), and no employer has ever so much as mentioned them.

Ja,
Rob

Pretence

The Leaving Cert is only a stepping stone in the education system. Thirty years ago a good LC meant something, now you need some further form of qualification whatever that may be.

The LC may not help you to get there for some, but for a lot it opens a door to options. However unfair it may be.....

It has an importance not as much as some people think though.

LegacyUser

Rob, in all fairness, they're probably just scared of your hair.

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It's about a society in freefall....

BossArky

but they may have asked if you didn't have it.

havok*

I'z tinks i'z cun spel juzt ok

Mills

Talking about examinations decreasing in importance..... what about the Junior cert? At least the leaving matters for college........Junior cert makes not one bit of difference to anything. Yet still our teachers encouraged us to study for hours every night for months in advance. Naturally I ignored this and left it all to the 2 weeks superceding the exams, and did quite well for it. After 1 week of getting the results not 1 person has mentioned it to me in the years since. The worst thing I found was that just before the exams the teachers were telling us how important it was and to work hard and study lots, and the day after the results..... Right now to start your leaving cert course, by the way, the junior cert didn't matter, at all. Oh dear, I have gone on a bit haven't I?

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I am inflatible !