Towards a Better Future

Towards a Better Future: A Review of the Irish School System
purposes that are educationally promising as practical forms of action; purposes, moreover, that
seek to be socially defensible in a universal sense. Among such purposes that can initially be
identified are the following three:
■ uncovering constructive potentials that are native to each individual
■ cultivating such potentials through renewed imaginative engagements with inheritances of
learning and seeking to broaden the range in each case
■ promoting practices of learning that acknowledge and respect differences, and that dispose
learners to seek to benefit others as well as themselves.
To put the matter like this is to say that a learning environment that is truly educational is marked
less by adherence to a particular party, church or group, or indeed to any version of the question
‘what knowledge is of most worth?’ A truly educational learning environment is oriented primarily
to the needs of the students. It seeks to open up a range of study possibilities that answer promisingly
to these needs, while promoting co-operative learning practices and ensuring that competitive
impulses remain healthy. It is marked firstly by a commitment to building and sustaining a vibrant
community of enquiry that is as inclusive as is earnestly practicable. In such a learning environment
teachers characteristically seek to uncover students’ real potentials, and to acknowledge the manifest
plurality of the human condition. This entails further that teachers, as far as possible, need to become
imaginative authors of their own work and discerning, co-operative critics of their own practice. The
kind of orientation for a practitioner ethic that comes to light here distinguishes teachers from a
workforce whose actions are mainly dictated by conformity with unquestioned routine or with
imposed directives. Equally, this ethical orientation distinguishes practitioners’ actions from workplace
cultures that are marked largely by negativity or resistance where proposals for renewing and
enhancing the practice are concerned. In such learning environments, moreover, students are
encouraged and helped to become more fluent, more capable, more active and more responsible
participants in their own learning. The quality of educational experience in such environments
contributes crucially to enhancing the students’ human capacities and to discovering continually
new aspects of their own identity.
SHIFTING PERSPECTIVE:
AN INTERPLAY AS DISTINCT FROM A TRANSMISSION
It is worth taking stock briefly of the path taken to this point, while also anticipating a few turns
that lie ahead. Adequately understood, teaching and learning in formal education have a higher
purpose and responsibility than meeting a society’s demands for economic and social skills. It is not
that the latter are unimportant. However, anything called a social or economic skill is itself properly
nurtured in a healthy learning environment; i.e. focused on the disclosure and cultivation of
capabilities that are linked to a personal sense of identity and enablement. To speak of capabilities in
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