my modest contribution to the PISA-embarrassment debate. In case you havent heard: Luxembourg students were shamed within an inch of their lives in a test series undertaken by the Programme for International Student Assessment. We came in at a staggering 30^th position, but can at least seek solace in the fact that we nevertheless managed to beat Mexico and Brazil.

For those in a hurry, go straight to my final paragraph.

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Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the things you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned.

Thomas Henry Huxley

Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave.

Baron Henry Peter Brougham

Im beginning to wonder whether I might not be the only one in this country to look upon Luxembourgs abysmal showing in the recent PISA test with something resembling gleeful satisfaction. And why wouldnt I? Not only have the results confirmed my own, fiercely-defended, suspicions, but they have also opened up a can of worms that a great many of those intimately associated with our education system would have guarded with their lives only to make sure the lid wouldnt accidentally come off. Perhaps they are among those who have already expressed their view in an RTL poll that our pupils are not lagging behind those in most other developed countries.

When the now infamous tests were conducted in 2000, I was a beleaguered student English teacher a couple of weeks shy of my practical examination. Telling the pupils in question about the impending assessment struck me as an extra annoyance, mainly because they were a sweet but unruly bunch, and anything out of the ordinary was apt to cause a commotion. As I knew that the least disruption of normal proceedings would be held against me in my own examination I was desperate to avoid upsetting them by fair means or foul: hence, I did my best to play down the importance of the assessment and assure them that there was absolutely no reason to be uptight. I obviously should have known better, as they never bothered about regular test papers either  despite the fact that the latter, of course, counted. Having thus mastered the disruption, I re-appraised my desires, which were that I would complete my teacher training as soon as possible, and that our youngsters would be their usual happy-go-lucky selves in the PISA test, and make a tremendous botch as well as the national headlines, so that we would at last be jolted out of our complacency.

As it turned out, both my wishes were granted, at least up to a point. I went down a storm, while the test results are of course history, albeit relatively contemporary history. As for our complacency, let us hope that it is shattered for good. I am purposely blending the personal with the public, my navel-gazing and petty success with the crushing defeat of the education system I was now as it were wedded to, as I wish to make a point I judge crucial to the present debates. Until quite recently, it has been inadmissible for a teacher, let alone a student teacher, to come clean about his or her real every-day problems. My worst nightmare during my first year of teaching was not being able to control the pupils sufficiently to get them to work effectively. Certainly, we went to our mandatory lectures and seminars, but it soon became abundantly clear that a good deal of the specialists who were lavishing their wisdom upon us had either never entered a common classroom except as students, or were for some reason or another lapsed teachers. The third category were those who had obviously become professional educators to get even with an institution that they may not have been very successful in at an earlier stage in their lives.

Moreover, the admission of any disciplinary problems was an absolute no-go area. I for one was greatly relieved when I discovered, at the end of my first year, that far from being the only one who was hard put to cope with the racket in the classroom (and I did have a class I would not even claim to be able to control today  s**t happens!), we were all chafing under an agonising impression of being the inefficient and despicable laughing-stocks of the nation. Made insecure by constant admonitions on the part of our experts to avoid authority, we felt inept as our last resort was invariably the good old and oh-so reactionary punishment.

What few of us who, like myself, confided in their elders and betters were often told either to make sure nobody would find out until after our final exam, or to start looking for another job, as we simply did not have that certain je ne sais quoi. I, for one, was told by my kindly coordinator to reconsider my choice of profession as I was oozing aggressiveness and would prove a liability in the classroom. Speaking as someone who loves her job, and who truly cares for her young charges, I believe I may now thank that person for the well-meant advice. The lasting revulsion it engendered has probably taught me more about the respect and tact I owe to my own pupils than anything the specialists might have said.

Which brings us to that second bugbear of mine, the aforementioned complacency, which, at least for the moment, is lying very low, indeed  and not before time! Complacent and self-righteous creature that I am, Ill once more yield to the temptation of pointing the finger of blame at some of the experts. For, indeed, when we were arrayed for not being able to control the pupils by enthralling them with the wonderful things we had to impart to them, a common reproach was that we alienated them by expecting too much. Note-taking is a thing of the past, as is the necessity of knowing a non essential and redundant term, such as adulation. The argument, in the latter case, was that the word admiration would serve them admirably. (For the record, I later came to realise that they could not think of it when the need arose.) I did then  and, in fact, still do  beg to differ, however. Word-power does after all go hand in hand with wealth of ideas, and in a society where Britney Spears and Planet RTL are hailed as pinnacles of culture, and a favourite Internet portal cum school chat board for students is www.party.lu one simply cannot have enough words at ones disposal to talk about hero-worship.

Yet it seems presumptuous to single out such an elaborate term, when the words I got asked during test paper in a 9TE  the good ones  last week included because, boring, only, apple, tooth, only, sofa, have a shower, a wall, windows, read, etc. We will be addressing the hairy question of why this is so in a minute; for the moment, suffice it to raise another question mark: are we really asking too much? And does it really make sense to squander much quality time putting forward wonderful reasons why we should move from content teaching to the communication skills so highly valued in todays labour market when we get censured for expecting even the most elementary knowledge?

In this connection, one must also bear in mind that we are dealing with a nation which, not so long ago, still prided itself on its superior linguistic competence. And while it is no doubt true that our pupils must carry that extra burden of learning only languages they are not native to, it is equally true that there was a time when we did live up to the challenge. What has remained is gratuitous delusion and conceit. A delightfully ironical case in point was when I attended a series of conferences on education in the third millennium held in Luxembourg, two years ago, and one of the Luxembourg speakers had just finished an eloquent speech on why it is so important to speak at least three foreign languages, and on how well positioned Luxembourgers were in that respect, when the same speaker had to dismiss an audience question on the (graciously avowed) grounds of insufficient linguistic competency!

Let us face it: a lot but by no means all of the nations who put us in our place in the PISA test speak a mother tongue that is more widely used than ours. I remember being told, while at the University Centre in Luxembourg City, that although a grounding in English Renaissance poetry could not do us any harm, any British tutor would be impressed if we knew so much as the basic sonnet form. As it turned out, my British fellow students knew all about that, and many things besides! So much for our much-vaunted superiority to that country, in terms of all things educational. Moreover, many is the time Ive heard a compatriot explain that accuracy in English was unnecessary, Americans, Australians and New Zealanders not being capable of it either. Seeing also as the winning country has a language that is anything but universal, and given that our decline is a relatively recent thing, all is not lost. Before we examine possible reasons, then, we must once and for all put it out of our heads that one of them could possibly be inordinate expectations.

All things considered, therefore, going back to basics is certainly one vital step, if only in as much as this may give us some invaluable insight into why these basics are to all appearances such an insurmountable hurdle. Is it because of laziness on the part of the pupils? Should we blame the irresponsibility of the parents or the breakdown of the traditional family? Could it be that teachers are concerned with little more than their wages and their allegedly so ludicrously long holidays? Society has doubtless changed  to the detriment of those unfortunate youngsters exposed to the pernicious influences of television, the Internet, computer games, and all the false and ultimately destructive values these are holding up, simply because it is good for business. It also goes without saying that these restless children who refuse to see the necessity, let alone the beauty, of a job well done are hardly likely to make an appreciative and motivating audience for their increasingly stressed out teachers, who see their numbers dwindling as their job grows less attractive for all the multiple advantages still unfairly imputed to it. Furthermore, the ensuing lethargy of some teachers places even more stress on others, while also making headmasters prone to make greater demands on these latter, who, as a result, may end up just as burnt out as their colleagues.

Needless to say, the shortage of teachers has reached dimensions where we could no longer survive without the assistance of unqualified teachers and educators, the more so since they often strike one as far more motivated than many a properly trained specimen. I have heard a student English teacher wisecrack that she could hardly expect her students to read seeing as she hardly ever picked up a book herself if it could be helped. Nonetheless, it stands to reason that if we set any store by our system, especially the new teacher training course launched two years ago, with a view to lessening some of the problems I was still chafing under  something which, alas, has been notoriously unsuccessful so far, those in charge not having changed much  we must ask ourselves whether we seriously wish to evolve towards a school where just about anybody can take charge of teaching, including those who have been tried and found wanting. This illogicality appears to be even more marked in classical secondary schools, which sometimes appear to be more out of reach to the qualified than to the unqualified teacher! In Australia, one of the top-rated countries in the PISA study, nobody is allowed to teach in any school unless they have completed a training course in the state they wish to work in. But then of course, our unsuccessful candidates may well have been rejected for admitting to teething disciplinary problems, for having had a particularly rough class, or for having expected too much.

Everything considered, I have every faith that if we apply a minimum of common sense, we will unquestionably recover all our lost ground. We already have an excellent Minister of Education, and we are crestfallen and in a rather healthy frame of mind. What we need, however, more than a finicky new curriculum, are more realistically prepared teachers, who will eventually come cheaper than the present ones, a clear policy on staff recruitment and appointments instead of the present favouritism, the right to insist on discipline, and to offer quality teaching, and headmasters willing to enforce this and mete out evenly balanced tasks, at the very risk of becoming unpopular in some quarters. After all, those who have no critics are usually sadly lacking in the courage to speak out. I, for my part, will be quite flattered if I get accused  yet again  of aggressiveness. Believe it or not, Im doing this for my pupils, and am in absolutely no doubt of their appreciation and support.

(Christine Dury, December 2001)