Primaryeducation comesunderfire

January 1979

Children attending primary schools in Wexford are receiving such a bad education that many cannot spell properly and are unable to do simple sums, a member of Wexford Corporation claimed this week.

He said that he was ‘amazed, disgusted and disappointed’ at the low standard of education that children have when they leave primary school.

Councillor Jim Jenkins, a leading businessman, said the three R’s – Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic – are ‘grossly neglected’ in Wexford schools.

He has been in business in the town for thirty years, he said, and in that time the situation has grown progressively worse. ‘Something is wrong with our primary education system,’ he said.

Councillor Jenkins told a meeting of the Town of Wexford VEC that he recently interviewed a sixteen-year-old boy who was looking for a job in his department store.

‘He couldn’t tell me what nine multiplied by eight was. And he said that four by five is thirty. All this is typical. He was not a stupid boy. This is because he got such a poor education,’ Councillor Jenkins added.

Referring to spelling, the Fine Gael Councillor said that in a neighbouring town to Wexford, girls couldn’t spell.

‘ This is atrocious,’ he remarked. ‘We all slip up in spelling sometimes but it is unbelievably bad among school children.’

A person who cannot read or write properly is a deprived person, Rev. Noel Hartley, Adm., said. There will come a time in life when he or she needs these skills.

The Mayor, Ald. Peter Roche, said that he too agreed with Cllr. Jenkins. All the members had heard of boys and girls applying for second level places in the Technical School and they could not spell, read or write.

But other members felt that these basic skills were not all that important.

Councillor John Roche said that years ago, people aimed for white collar jobs. ‘But now the man in the street has got sense. People working in dungarees all week now come out on Friday evening with more people than people with clean hands. People working in factories have a skill in their hands and can make big money out of it,’ he said.