Cancel culture doesn’t extend to State exams

THE Championship. Cancelled. The Six Nations. Cancelled. The Euros. Cancelled. Wimbledon. Glastonbury. The Olympics. Your cousin’s wedding. That date with the girl/ boy you’ve fancied for aeons. All cancelled.

The Irish Leaving Cert. Going ahead as planned - and by ‘ hook or by crook’ no less.

Leo Varadkar has said a number of options for this year’s State exams are being explored, but cancellation is not one of them. Elite-level athletes, musical icons and yes, your cousin, may have had their hopes and dreams spoiled by the coronavirus, but when it comes to our children’s education, absolutely nothing will get in the way.

Some would say with good reason. After all, you don’t get thousands of people congregating in stadiums to see Irish teenagers take their exams, not unless they’re really good. And the 126,000 students due to sit their exams this year could surely be spread around the various halls and classrooms which make up the average Irish school. It is feasible, it is doable.

But a lot of things are feasible at the moment, a lot of things are doable. However, we’ve been told not to do them, told it’s too dangerous, too risky. Not only that, we’ve been told this is really only the beginning, that this period of lockdown will extend beyond Easter, perhaps into the early days of summer. Even the optimists among us are estimating another two months of this, at the very least.

And yet amid all this conservatism, the repeated reminders to not let our guard down, the students unfortunate enough to be sitting their exams in 2020 are being given an entirely different directive.

They’re being told everything is on-schedule, that the most important weeks of their young lives will not be affected by the ongoing presence of Covid-19. Well, actually no, that’s not quite true. They’ve been told the weeks they thought would be the most important might be some different weeks, they might be in July or August, or sometime around then, but definitely before September so they can all be ready for the start of the college year. So everything is crystal clear then. Under normal circumstances not having a set date for the Leaving and Junior Certs would be a recipe for disaster. But when you consider that the schools have now been shut for three weeks, that students have been left to their own devices at the most crucial point of the year it’s inconceivable how anyone could speak with such authority on the matter.

Teachers across the country have been liaising with their students, many operating regular timetables, emailing student’s work, conducting classes via FaceTime. And by and large the response has been good, students have shown they can work under their initiative, that remote working comes easier to them than it does their parents.

However, those students are the ones lucky enough to have high-speed broadband in their homes. They’re the ones lucky enough to have their own lapop. Lucky enough to have parents who understand the importance of their exams. To have enough food to eat every day.

They’re the ones who haven’t spent the last three weeks babysitting their younger siblings, or hiding in their room waiting for another argument to blow over.

In all likelihood they’re the ones who were already receiving additional lessons, grinds, tutoring, whatever it takes to ensure they achieve the marks needed to secure a place on their course of choice. Time out of school won’t affect these students as much as it will others.

To put it into context, some Principals are currently working to ensure their students can still avail of school dinners while they’re out of class. They know those dinners constitute the only proper meal the kids get on a daily basis. Now tell me how are those students supposed to prepare for their exams at the same rate as everyone else?

Yet all this could be moot. It could simply be an elaborate ruse on the part of the Taoiseach. He might be lying through his teeth, telling the kids the exams are happening so they won’t go buckwild. After all, young people are not to be trusted. Given free rein they’ll ignore their teacher’s emails, laugh in the face of online learning and take to the streets in feral groups of five, spitting and coughing their way through the summer.