I have been meaning to write so many posts lately but can’t find the time. But I think I might be able to squeze a few words in honour of Fintan O’Toole’s article yesterday.

The reason our young people don’t care about maths and science is that we have smugly neglected ICT education, writes  FINTAN O’TOOLE

Now beside the fact that Fintan O’Toole using the word smugly is highly ironic I do have more.

The gap between the number of points required for entry to science in UCD (300) and to law in the same university (500) is evidence of a society whose aspirations have been weirdly unaffected by 15 years as the poster child of the global economy. Barristers are still infinitely cooler than boffins.

I always cringe when I see the word cool written in a newspapers I really do. It is awfully condesening to think that the majority of 17 and 18 year olds in this country are so stupid that they chose their lifes career path on what is cool or what is not. If you want to know why Law is 500 and science is 300 I will tell you. Money.

How many scientists do you see swanning around in mercs and wearing gucci? Very few but we are bombard of images of Barristers and Wealth( WHats that guy who lives in the Sunday Independents Life Magazine). Law is considered the path to financial well being while students have enough between the ears to know science is not the path to take for that.  Look at the top courses medicine, dentistry, actuary etc etc . They all have the tag of producing well paying jobs. Or in the case of teaching good holidays and a secure job. Science does not provide that. Students are voting with their heads.

What lies behind this is the delusional nature of our “knowledge society”. The smugness and indolence of governments over the last decade have fed into a fundamental failure to turn Ireland into a society in which technological thinking is really part of everyday culture.

Coming from a writer who reviews the arts in a paper that has loads of arts coverage, indeed has arts supplements and one page a week on science and no science supplements. Is it any wonder? Science is ignored by the media and thus leaves people unaware of it. Go to the UK they have the sky at night, Horizon and David Attenborough. What sort of coverage do we give science? Crap is what.

The above are partly the reasons for the low scores in science subjects in the Leaving but they are not the main. The main problem is that science and Maths are the hardest subjects. Everything else can be rote learned. Not much understanding is required to do a paper.  Take history . I learned essays on various topics and wrote the ones that came up.  You can’t do the same in Maths and science.  The questions can throw up to much variation. You can learn derivations  off rote  but that is not the bulk of the paper. Maths requires  understanding.

Basically the poor results in Maths are not a symptom of the way Maths is thought but the way everything else is examined. Learning in schools is now for “the paper” not for knowledge of the subject. Which is fair enough that is the name of the game.  Replace Maths paper with questions asking say 5 out of 40 set derivations and watch the results shoot up. But Fintan  will not look at that part of the subject instead we get tired old hobbyhorses about Eircom and smugness.