The Occasional, issue 3

So much commentary on Irish education is riddled with clichés. An article for paid subscribers.

VR Headsets and Hard Times.

‘Leader’ magazine from the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals always has interesting material, but it’s not available for the general public.

The autumn issue arrived in the post yesterday, including an article by me that expanded on one for the Irish Times in June, and interesting pieces from Professor Áine Hyland on the extent to which assessment can be equitable, Professor Brendan Tangney with an analysis of AI in education that has a welcome calmness (not the usual boosterism), and a piece by the late poet Michael Coady.

Below, my piece.

The Fortnightly will be back this time next week.

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At the end of March in an article called 'The classroom needs to change. Here’s how', The Irish Times assembled entrepreneurs, educators, cultural figures and scientists who gave their views “on how to future-proof education in Ireland”. It was an article that helpfully exposed a series of presumptions about education that are rarely shared by those of us who actually work in Irish schools.

 Two illustrations had an immediate impact. In bright colour, taking up a quarter of the page, was a stock photo of three schoolgirls wearing VR headsets and laughing ecstatically. Further down were girls from the 1950s, trapped behind their traditional school desks in their grim black-and-white world, passively listening to their teacher.