Talking Education: Nuala Jackson

sligo | education | event notice Monday March 16, 2009 14:59 by robert - sligo school project council soha2000 at gmx dot net soha2000@gmx.net

“You’ve learned to speak,
you’ve learned to tie your shoelaces,
the Leaving Certificate is nothing.”

Since 1998 more than 400 happy and thriving Early School Leavers have achieved academic qualification through the XLC-project in Waterford. All have moved from the margins of alienation and social exclusion to become contributing members of society in work, apprenticeship, or college.

While XLC works with teenagers, all of those who come into trouble in the mainstream school system have a history that starts far earlier than in secondary school.

Public talk
M.C.R. Community Centre
Thursday,
26th of March, 8 p.m.

Entrance from Mail Coach Road via car park between Borza and public phone cell. No entry-fee, donations welcome.
For more details contact: 071 9150428.

Nuala will focus on the idea of ‘child-centredness’ in education, a term that is used by nearly every educational institution in the country nowadays, be it crèche, primary or secondary school.

“It’s not like a normal school. They don’t have to come to school if they don’t want to. We take people on the assumption that it is their Leaving Cert and it is them who are doing it. We ask them to pick all the subjects they like. I (…) believed that children weren’t lazy, idle, unmotivated, all the usual list of adjectives the oppressor puts on the oppressed.”

Nuala says about the XLC-project,
“We have:
The happiest students.
The best tutors, who love their work.
The best learning outcomes.
Focused co-operative students.
Partnership of learning in small groups.
No compulsion.
No sanctions.
No discipline problems.
One for all and all for one, a family ethos.”