Reunion brings memories of my own Leaving Cert flooding back
ALIFETIME has been lived since we did the Leaving Cert in Tralee CBS in the distant, distant days of 1968. Last weekend, some of us came back to relive some of those feelings from 50 years ago. And to remember.
A number of the returning classmates had not seen one another in half a century. The enormity of this time span was difficult to grasp.
Weeks, months, years, which had often slowly drifted by had somehow zoomed away.
The contradictions in the passage of one day into the next must remain a mystery. And so some of us were determined to mark the half century. This was the ‘Big Five O’ of school reunions. We were crossing a line.
It had been 20 years since the last such get-together. So there was more grey in the hair – in some cases less of it – among those who gathered outside the still familiar brownstone building.
We were coming back to the place of adolescent trials and triumphs. There were handshakes and much peering at faces and features, trying to put a name on a former classmate.
A slightly worn brown ledger was produced from the school archive. There, recorded in exquisite handwriting, were all our names in Irish. Also noted were the marks achieved in that fateful Leaving Cert marathon. For some of those trying to grapple with emotions stirred by the return to a place pivotal to their formative years, old agonies returned.
They recalled some Christian Brothers who seemed to rage with their own sense of discontent and unhappiness. They had little appetite or aptitude for teaching.
We now know all too many had been persuaded they had a “vocation” when they were scarcely out of childhood. Inevitably, some found themselves trapped in a confined and stultifying life not of their choosing, their unhappiness put into sharper focus by the innate optimism of the young adolescents in their charge.
It must have been heart-breaking for them to see their own dreams of fulfilment recede with each passing year. Some sought solace in a hard-edged cynicism. No wonder the much maligned practice of corporal punishment was primarily the resort of the bitter and defeated.
And there were lay teachers at that time who were both incompetent and lazy. In a more deferential era, they operated with impunity in the classroom, caring little for the damage done to the life chances of their pupils.
But tribute must be paid to those Christian Brothers and other members of staff who often went beyond the call of duty for their students. A number of Brothers in particular, with a gladness of heart, did all they could to do right by those in their care.
Fr Paul Lawlor, one of three priests from our year who attended the reunion, provided a cultivated and intelligent insight into the way things were back then. In essence, he suggested dark clouds from another time must be allowed to drift away if the present and the future are to be fully embraced.
And so everything must be of its time and place. When we began our odyssey in the school in 1962, Ireland was emerging from the drab 1950s. A lack of jobs and endemic emigration remained a haunting presence. An authoritarian and non-questioning climate was all pervasive.
Nevertheless, old certainties were already breaking down. For some of us, the town’s public library was the real outlet into the wider world.
And the arrival of television was a game-changer, opening up discussion on matters long considered taboo.
In another arena, the 1960s was also a decade which saw the fortunes of the Irish language unnecessarily decline. It was all-pervasive in the school.
If you were deemed good enough for the A rather than the B class, all subjects except English and Latin were taught through Irish. This was not a problem for pupils from surrounding national schools, where the teaching of the language was of a high standard.
For others, it created an unnecessary barrier in their overall education. In some cases, it led to a distaste for the language which would never go away.
There was also a kind of compulsory dreariness – almost mournful – in the contents of the Irish language curriculum. It was rare to find any uplifting content. The focus was too centred on the written rather than the spoken word. The rhythms and the beauty of our native tongue were lost along the way.
Tralee CBS, or ‘The Green’ as it is known to everybody in Kerry, has been transformed over the years.
Now there is a woman school principal, and many female teachers in this one-time bastion of maleness. Many new classrooms have been added over the years, and there are ultra-modern science labs and computer rooms. Ninety per cent of school leavers go on to third level.
Most notable of all is how modern education tries to embrace the wider psychological needs of each student.
And so with our reunion day done, it was time to say our farewells. The Boys of ’68 were once again off on their own pathways.
ISAID goodbye to Conor Fitzgerald, partner in many teen conversations, discussions and arguments. And I especially sought out Johnny Conway. In the few weeks before the Leaving, he took it upon himself to explain to me some of the mysteries of geometry and algebra.
He was generous and gracious with his time and knowledge. It was a crucible in getting me through the Khyber Pass which was the upcoming maths exam. I have always been grateful.
On this occasion when I shook his hand we both lingered a little. For a moment, we were back sitting on a bench in the town park which bestrides The Green. He was explaining the complexities of Pythagoras and related topics.
Jack Lynch was Taoiseach, the Christian Brothers had no recruitment problem, emigration was slowing down, and we were told we could have full employment by the 1970s.
Optimism abounded. Civil rights marches in the US and Northern Ireland surely signalled better times to come. Hippies in San Francisco expounded the youth culture of a generation. The Beatles were in their prime.
And while all this was happening in the wide, wide world, the two guys on the park bench wrestling with the nuances of mathematical theory were 18 years of age.
We were coming back to the place of adolescent trials and triumphs, trying to put names on former classmates