Interviewed by Dr Kate Smyth, AONTAS Strategic Communications Officer
In the run-up to the launch of our “Holding You Back” campaign, which highlights the barriers to learning in Irish society, I spoke to actor, playwright, and screenwriter Emmet Kirwan about his views on the Irish education system.
Emmet is well-known for his 2014 play “Dublin Oldschool”, which was back in the Olympia Theatre this week for its 10-year anniversary. His work often explores issues of class inequality and social justice in Ireland, and we were delighted that he agreed to support our campaign.
Speaking about the “Holding You Back” campaign, Emmet says:
I ask Emmet about his sense of the Irish education system at the moment, and what we need to do to make it more inclusive for everyone, because people are still being left behind.
“A few years ago, I was writing a show called ‘Riot’,” Emmet says, “and I was reading The Rise of the Meritocracy by Michael Young.” Young was a British sociologist, social activist, and politician. He was a leading figure in post-World War Two social reform in Britain.
Emmet tells me that the book got him thinking about the connections between Britain and Ireland in relation to education and meritocracy – a system or society where people are chosen for and move into positions of success, power, and influence based on their demonstrated abilities and merit. But in order for such meritocratic systems to be truly fair and successful, there has to be a level playing field and a level starting point for all.
“To quote Owen Jones, ‘Meritocracies give us better forms of aristocracies’,” Emmet says. “They allow people of incredible privilege to feel virtuous about things they have inherited, and also things they have achieved because of the privileges they benefit greatly from.”
Emmet tells me about how in Britain, after the war, there was a left-wing socialist Government, which brought in policies and services like the NHS, free education, and the Open University. Michael Young’s book, written in 1958, was critical of the idea of meritocracy and imagined a world where the people came together and rose up against this system.
This is the system that, Emmet says, tells people “that if they haven’t achieved something, it’s because they’re lazy or didn’t work hard enough.”
I did some research into Young myself. In 2001, Young wrote in The Guardian of his disappointment that his warning about the dangers of meritocracy have gone unheeded, and that the term has in fact been adopted by people in positions of power.
Young wrote: “With an amazing battery of certificates and degrees at its disposal, education has put its seal of approval on a minority, and its seal of disapproval on the many who fail to shine from the time they are relegated to the bottom streams at the age of seven or before.”
Emmet says that Ireland has been influenced by the British education system. He has spoken repeatedly about class issues here, and the challenges imposed upon people from working-class or minority backgrounds. He says that we have to recognise the reality of the differences in opportunity for people.
Meritocracies, he tells me, have allowed people in positions of power “to say that everybody has an equal opportunity and if you’re not a striver and a maker then you’re a taker, and if you are in that position, it’s because you didn’t work hard enough.
“And we see that in education. If you’re only measuring ‘hard work’, it matters little if the other circumstances around that person’s life do not match the privileged circumstances of another person’s life.
“Nobody is decrying the hard work of, let’s say, someone who is a manager in a company and their partner is, let’s say, a college professor. And their child achieves well and go to a private school, and those parents have worked hard and provided for their child.
“But conversely if there is another child who is in a situation of homelessness, where their parents might be early school leavers or experiencing addiction, or abject levels of poverty, we can’t look at both children and say, you’ve had the exact same opportunities, you’ve had the exact same education system and free third-level education.
So, it’s not a problem that people have better opportunities, but it is a problem when people of those better opportunities look to the other person and say, ‘nobody gave me a hand-out’.”
Emmet says this is an example of people “using meritocracy, essentially as a tool to bludgeon people who have not achieved the same as them.”
Emmet also talked about the concept of exceptionalism, where “a singular child or person from a family that has those challenges and experiences, and achieves well in education, is then held up as a bastion of what can be achieved, and if another person isn’t doing the same then they’re a failure.”
Our CEO Dearbháil Lawless wrote about this in the Journal earlier this year: “People often say, ‘Well I worked and studied, and I managed to get through.’ But accessing education shouldn’t mean you have to struggle through a period of extreme stress or be exceptional. Education should be accessible for everyone, regardless of their circumstances.”
Talking specifically about adult education, which focuses on meeting people where they are at and offering a form of education that suits them – more flexible and more focussed on personal development and wellbeing rather than grades and points – Emmet mentions the benefits for family members and communities.
“It’s not just about doing well for yourself, leaving poverty, and leaving everyone else behind, people also want to bring their families and friends with them. And currently, it happens too much in our education system that we’re rewarding individuals who ‘lift themselves up by their bootstraps’, as bootstrapism goes, and then ignoring other people who aren’t necessarily exceptional but need help to achieve that, because they’re dealing with things like living in a homeless hostel, or living in poverty, or looking after others.”
Much of the “Holding You Back” campaign focuses on the inequalities of access to education, but also on what academic Kathleen Lynch has termed the “inequality of conditions” . People from under-resourced communities or working-class backgrounds do not have the same conditions as people from wealthier backgrounds. This relates to things like stable accommodation, health, transport to get to and from the education centre, access to affordable childcare, mental health supports, and financial stability.
Speaking at our adult education summit last year, Kathleen Lynch said that “in Ireland in recent years we have been privatising necessary public services like childcare, meaning that many people can’t access education because they can’t afford it.”
This also applies to the privileges that come with access to private education, especially at secondary school level.
Emmet says that “there needs to be an acknowledgement [in Irish society] that as long as there is apartheid within the Irish education system, there will be a class apartheid in our society, where people have access to power and privilege in a society that is ready to ignore all of those things and say those things don’t exist. That enrages people. It’s quite hard to listen to that.”
Kathleen Lynch also spoke about the growing “tendency to reduce students, and citizens, to customers”, and that in Ireland in recent years we have been “privatising necessary public services like childcare”, meaning that “many people can’t access education because they can’t afford it.”
She suggested that because we have “changed the definition of a citizen from a person with rights to a person who buys services”, this means we are “deprioritising services that are not market relevant, like mental health”.
On this point Emmet says, “so now it’s not about educating for a more empathetic society. Are we creating workers, or are we creating fully-rounded citizens? Society does benefit when we have people studying a vast array of subjects.
And, he says, we need funding for public services like childcare and mental health because “if the Government is telling people to go back to education and re-train, they need to fund that all the way through.”
Emmet says that the traditional education system is “only really set up for the perfect student.”
“When it comes to adult education, so much energy goes towards retraining. It’s not that easy to go back and re-train four nights a week if you have two kids.”
Emmet speaks about the frustration that comes from the “denial of a person’s experience” of the challenges and barriers to education. It is not enough to just provide free third-level education, without providing the resources and supports for people to access it and stay in it.
He says that he couldn’t have afforded to go to Trinity College Dublin – where he studied theatre and acting at the Samuel Beckett Centre, graduating in 2001 – if he hadn’t lived in Dublin.
“Some people have to travel three or six-hour round trips, every day for their education – one, because they can’t get accommodation because of the housing crisis, and two because of their financial situation.” He also mentions the need for stable family life at home. All of these issues contribute to drop-out levels.
“It’s not that they couldn’t hack it – people drop out for a multitude of other reasons outside of academic ability. If we were able to settle all of those other battles, those people’s experience of education might be quite enjoyable.”
Emmet talks about the need for a change in attitude towards teachers and tutors. We have seen the need for this too, as adult and community education tutors have been protesting recently for better pay and conditions and while progress has been made on this, clear results are yet to be seen. This is an essential issue as research shows that tutors have an essential part in supporting people – including people from working-class or minority backgrounds or people who need more support – to stay in education.
Emmet speaks about the need to value teachers and tutors. “If they all went on strike tomorrow, the fabric of our society would tear apart. We owe them respect.”
We talk about the move towards a more individualist society, and away from a sense of collective and community. Emmet describes “the atomisation of people into units”.
“To use housing as an example, living in a ‘pod’ with ten other people but no one is actually engaging with each other. But collectives benefit society. So we need to encourage people to get to know their neighbours. But with the housing crisis, there’s an entire generation of people who are renters, who are constantly moving, and it’s impossible to put down roots. It benefits Governments when people are in this constant state of flux.”
He believes people are stronger as a community, a collective, when seeking change in a local area.
“You are not an individual. You cannot do anything without the collective help of everybody around you and society as a whole.”
The AONTAS “Holding You Back” campaign One of the main messages of our “Holding You Back” campaign is that adult learning affects everyone, whether they know it or not. Learning is happening in towns and communities across the country. But, because of rising costs, and existing barriers, for many it is out of reach.
Speaking about the campaign, our CEO Dearbháil Lawless stated: “People can’t engage in education unless their basic needs are met, including accommodation, food, and health. Education is a risk for many people. But it should improve people’s circumstances, not create greater financial instability.”
The “Holding You Back” campaign is running from Monday 2nd September to Friday 6th September. Find out more at aontas.com/holdingyouback