School Rejection and its Amelioration

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Abstract
Some results from a survey carried out among a nationally representative sample of 4,000 pupils, most of whom had passed the school leaving age, and 1,200 teachers in the Republic of Ireland are summarized. About a third of the pupils seemed to be disenchanted with school, and larger proportions were unhappy with certain school subjects and with schools’ ability to achieve some of their main goals. By their own admission most teachers do not do much to work towards the educational goals which most teachers, pupils, parents and ex‐pupils believe to be the most important. On the other hand they are not entirely convinced of the value of the goal they work hardest to reach, which is examination attainment. They believe that this confers few benefits on their pupils other than the ability to enter a better job. It is argued that the data suggest that teachers do not work towards the goals they themselves believe to be most important and that they do little to tackle the problem of disenchantment because of the constraints which the social selective functions of education bring to bear on them, because they have adopted a ‘single factor’ model of the intellect, because they have an undifferentiated concept of pupils and their values and interests, because they are unaware of pupils’ values and interests, and because they do not really know how to achieve the goals which they believe to be most important. Teachers themselves are not to blame for this state of affairs. Researchers have failed to supply them with a more appropriate model of the intellect, with an examination system which gives both teachers and pupils recognition for working towards the most important goals of education, with an adequate understanding of the nature of these competencies and the way in which they are to be fostered, or with means of ascertaining pupils’ values and interests so as to be able to gear educational programmes to those values and interests.

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