This week, Din-do ran an article by Kim Bielenberg about literacy levels amongst Irish students. He quoted economist Moore McDowell (yeah, yer man’s brother) who described some of his own students as barely semi-literate.
Dr. Martin O’Grady was also quoted: It is a big problem. Many students don’t even put capital letters at the start of sentences. They don’t know the difference between ‘their’ and ‘there’. They mix up ‘quiet’ with ‘quite’, and ‘being’ and ‘been’. (Sounds to me like Mr. Anonymous who comments regularly on all our blogs).
I am far from being a grammatical purist and don’t try to be, but I do try to use it’s-its, you’re-your and there-their correctly and I know where the shift key is.
As most of you know, I am a mature (read old) student. So I can bear witness to these poor standards. Luckily most of the group projects I have done have been with Chinese and Indian nationals, who write excellent English, so I have been spared the angst of having to collaborate on technical papers with illiterate Irish students.
However, I can also bear witness to another instance of illiteracy that Kim failed to mention. That of the lecturers. Of the six I had this academic year, only two knew the basics, such as the difference between there and their. If these lecturers were recently qualified Ph.D.’s or junior staff they could possibly be categorised as students, but they weren’t. Not that this would be an excuse.
So Kim, the next time you are interviewing Mr. McDowell and Dr. O’Grady, ask them about their colleagues too.
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Ah god, you’ve got to be joking! Lecturers now - four out of six?
At a pub quiz last year here in the US my team got a question wrong on identifying a particular country with an horrendously high illiteracy level - because the answer was the US and being American they refused to believe me even when I implored them, and I don’t go casually around imploring I can tell you.
Maybe I’ll look into teaching when I return home.
Y’know the way The Swearing Gentleman is job-seeking at the moment? The amount of recruitment agency ads that start with “Our client is looking for staff for it’s hotel” is horrific. It makes me seethe and stuff.
Maybe I shouldn’t add my comment, due to my imperfect English lingo, but I will. Also it may look like I have been complying on Ireland recently, but it is not. I am trying to see both good and bad sides
and I am quite fine here in Ireland 
I share my opinion with other immigrants from continental Europe, especially with some people from Spain. Well… it seems to us that both Irish and British education system are at much lower level than continental ones. You can’t stay alive and pass through the high school if you don’t know the grammars and spelling rules of your own language. So during my school years I was struggling to keep myself in the row, due to my problems with spelling. So for instance, you can’t pass mature exams with more than 3 misspelings.
There are other differences, and I can say it is good or bad. In Poland, most of the universities provide mainly 5 years Master courses, and people got used to it and most of them doing masters degrees. But bachelor degree works fine in Ireland and it is regarded as a high education degree, so you don’t need to spent 5 years at university, and you can start earning money much faster than in Poland (and you have opportunities).
My explanation to those differences is a completely different education system tradition. In Poland, we have to know almost everything about everything, so during the school years we have to learn a lot of knowledge that many of us will never use. For example while I was in a high school I had a physics and chemistry courses at the same level as my father in law had during the 1st year of studying at Institute of Technology. I have forgotten much of that because I have never needed it during my life so far.
There is another difference… lack of money for Polish education system, lack of money for student projects.
Sorry if I have wrong regard of Irish education system. I am still learning Ireland
Eolaí - I don’t think you would have the patience to be a teacher here. Read this. You will be shocked at the shite teachers are required to give good grades for.
Your Ladyship - your right. there a disgrace them agencies. its a wonder their getting any replies. Seriously, though - There has to be a few quid to be made proof reading stuff like that. It’s at the stage now that those who can actually spell and construct a sentence are few and far between. The supply is low, now all that’s needed is the demand.
MacKozer - You are more than welcome! You are 100% correct. Top marks, kumpel! I walked out of my first set of masters exams in January 2006 thinking I had barely scrapped a 2.2. I got 1.1. I shouldn’t complain, but I know I didn’t deserve it. If it had been 10 years ago, I would not have scored as well. The standards have slipped dangerously low in the Irish education system.
That’s fierce upsetting stuff - and something that it seems a policy decision could go some way towards fixing.
Over here in the US I get very tired of Irish people boasting how world-beatingly brilliant the Irish education system is. I know it’s somewhat motivated by seeing how poor the American system functions, but it’s oblivious to how things are working today.
And it’s great and humbling to hear MacKozer’s perspective.
I failed my degree, or what would have been my degree - and deservedly so.
Ta failte romhat Eolai.
To be honest, I can’t imagine the level of US education system, but it is true that many of the US Americans I met were just stupid (sorry for being rude).
It is fact, that on US universities you can find academic staff from the Europe, Japan and China. Many of Polish scientists work in US for Uni, and ITs
Anyway, there is one good word about Irish (compared to British nations). Relatively large number of Irish can speak fluent or at least communicate in the other European languages - German, French, Spanish or Italian. You can’t find so many Scots or English (I don’t know any Walsh) who know any 2nd lingo.