Tommy Collison

On Wednesday I was given the huge honour of being a small part of the Leviathan “Can Education Save Ireland?” hosted by the Northside Learning Hub in Dolan’s Pub/Warehouse in Limerick.

The whole night was superbly organized with great music and comedy interspersing the two panel discussions – I was part of the first of two discussions.

Our debate tended to focus on how if education was altered slightly -less focus on the learning huge bouts of information that need to be learned off- and more emphasis was put on projects and dealing with people. It’s why it was general consensus among the panel that the Young Scientist competition was one of the most important events of the school year from that perspective.

The second panel – which I wasn’t on – focussed more on teachers and how class size, disinterest (on both the behalf of the pupil and the teacher) and inconsistency can harm a teacher’s attempts to teach. That and the fact that the 10% of bad teachers make the job much harder for the 90% of good teachers. Unions and teacher trainers were somewhat heckled and the quote those who can’t do teach and those who can’t teach administrate was brought up and I was slightly disappointed to the find that the School of Rock version (those who can’t teach – teach gym) is not in fact the actual version. This is almost as bad as the time I found out that stickittothemaneoisis was not actually a real disease.

All in all it was a fantastic night and I thoroughly enjoyed my time. Be sure to check out Leviathan’s website for up-and-coming debates and thanks to my fellow panellists, Leviathan, Dolan’s, those who provided the music and Jennifer & all the Northside Learning Hub crew for a fantastic night!