School Days Over

There is a town in Western Central France called Oradour Sur Glane. It has been preserved as an abandoned village since World War II when all 642 inhabitants were marched to the town square and massacred by German troops. President Charles De Gaulle ordered that it be left exactly as it stood on 10^th June 1944, as a permanent memorial and museum. It attracts a swarm of tourists every year, this once busy farming community, now an eery ghost town, frozen in time.

Similarly frozen is the Man Child’s desk in his bedroom. Log tables lie opened, pens unlidded, notes on an Irish play spread on one corner of the table. A calendar of exam dates is pinned to a cork board, beside lists of English poetry and beneath it is a ticket for Dermot Kennedy’s Malahide Castle, now cancelled, concert next month. The floor is strewn with music scores and history essays. His desk is as it was last Thursday evening when he got the news that his leaving cert wouldn’t be going ahead.

I’ll be honest, I’m glad it’s cancelled. We were all training for a marathon that was due to begin on 3^rd June, postponing it until 29^th July would require a reserve fuel tank that I don’t think any of us had. I know I wasn’t due to sit my leaving cert, but it kind of felt that way. How can I put this, he’s my firstborn. I have spent years listening to other women talk of the endless support and eggshell walking around their state exam candidates and I was fully set to be that woman. I would have hearty breakfasts and packed lunches ready, there would be fresh baking when he got in from exams. I was even looking forward to buying those special packs of various pens and essentials marketed at exam students.

He has been a good student, in fact I was amazed how well he stayed motivated during lockdown, a credit to the school for keeping the engine running. Though I know there was a further knuckledown coming as the exams got closer, at least that’s the illusion we were all working under.

Most students are delighted that the Leaving has been cancelled. They are the KLASS of 2020, a bullet-dodging gang who will never know what it is like to wake up in a cold sweat having dreamt that you were sitting an exam you hadn’t prepared for. Will they expect an easy ride all their lives, Indiana Jones types who came to the precipice of danger but always find an escape route?

In 1979, there was a huge backlog of applications for people wanting to sit their driving test. The government declared an amnesty for anyone who was on their second provisional and gave them their licence without the time-wasting hullaballoo of doing the test. 45,000 drivers availed of it, one of whom was my father, sitting in the passenger seat beside him, I’m not sure how wise a decision that was.

I know that in August, when the results come out, there will undoubtedly be tears, kids whose calculated grades don’t match their ability. Maybe in this year when everything is so topsy-turvy, we can finally rethink these torturous exams and dream up something better. While we have been busy educating them, we have maybe missed out on preparing them for life. Or perhaps the only way you can prepare for life is to live it, young shoulders have never favoured old heads.

Amidst the delight in not having to sit the exams, the Man Child and his friends are sad to be missing all the end of school celebrations. Their graduation night, the football match against the teachers, the quiet few days in Spain (I’m glad they dodged that bullet). Though the school assures them they will give them a proper farewell when they can. It would be good to give them closure on 14 years of school.

It was only the other day that we were getting the Boy Child ready for his first day in primary school, the tracksuit that had plenty of growing in it, the annual September photo by the hall door, the afternoons of homework with Len and Jen and practicing forming letters. The Thursday revision for Friday spelling tests, the school projects that required trips to craft shops for coloured card. The school tours, playdates, friendships, fallouts and renewals. The move onto secondary, new subjects, new friends, longer days, deeper voice. The school where he grew into a teenager and the teachers who reassured us that it’s all normal. The school musical, the bonding with the girls school, the sudden interest in clothes and hygiene. The dawn of 6^th year and the home stretch in sight, the gym after school and then onto the library. The competitiveness of boys amongst their friends, the comradery, the parties.

Yes, school is about learning, but mostly it’s about growing up. Coping with this strange time and making sense of their lives in a new world will enhance their resilience, a skill that if they master, they’ll be ready for anything.