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Reflections on the Impact and Importance of International and Global Education
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Musings on Japanese and Ryukyu Budo
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 The False Soul of Budō: Ilyenkov, Jacobs, and the Myth of Moral Transformation
Dedicated to all who journey toward—and help to form—the soul of budō “One is not born a person but becomes one.” — Evald Ilyenkov (in Jacobs, 2024, p. 4) Across the global martial arts community—from the dōjō of the Japan Karate Association to the worldwide branches of Aikikai—one promise unites otherwise divided organisations: training will make you a better person. Promotional brochures speak of “character,” “discipline,” and “respect” as natural consequences of practice. Yet such rhetoric, however well-intentioned, has long since ossified into ideology. The ethical claim of budō has been reduced to a consumer guarantee, a marketing slogan assuring parents that violence will ennoble their children. What remains is a mask of morality, not its substance. Masks and Faces Isabel Jacobs’ essay On the Soul: Ilyenkov’s Theory of Personality (2024) offers a remarkable lens through which to re-examine this moral mythology. Drawing on the Soviet philosopher Evald Ilyenkov, she reminds us that “a person is not born with inherent qualities; their body and mind are formed through experience and social activity” (p. 1). In Ilyenkov’s dialectical anthropology, personality (lichnost’) is not a private moral kernel but a social creation--“a knot of relations that arise between individuals in collective activity” (p. 4). An ethical being is therefore never an inner possession; it is a mode of participation. By that measure, the idea that budō can individually bestow Virtue is an illusion. A karateka does not “become good” through repetition of kata any more than a bureaucrat becomes just by memorising a code of conduct. Ilyenkov’s image of the mask (persona) and face (litso) is particularly apt. “And it also happens that the mask becomes so firmly affixed,” he wrote, “that [one’s] former personality slowly atrophies from disuse” (p. 1). The modern martial arts world is filled with such masks—ritual bows, moral slogans, the façade of humility—beneath which lie ordinary rivalries and commercial ambition. The tragedy is not hypocrisy per se but alienation: when gestures meant to express ethical life harden into empty performance, the face of practice disappears. What survives is the moral costume of budō. The Soul of the Dōjō Contrast this with the ethical seriousness of the ancients whom modern budō so readily invokes. Confucius warned, “To see what is right and not do it is want of courage” (Analects 2:24). Virtue (ren) was never politeness or docility; it was courageous moral discernment enacted through right relationship. Likewise, Takuan Sōhō, in The Unfettered Mind, cautioned the swordsman that “the mind must not be fixed anywhere”—ethical freedom being inseparable from mental clarity. Both thinkers understood self-cultivation as ceaseless labour, the ongoing negotiation between impulse and reason, self and other. By comparison, the modern dōjō’s moral instruction—“be respectful,” “show spirit”—appears thin, procedural, and essentially detached from reflection on what goodness entails. Jacobs’ discussion of Ilyenkov’s concept of the soul illuminates why this hollowness matters. “The soul,” she notes, “is located not inside an individual body, but precisely outside it—in the system of real relationships … binding them as if into one body” (p. 6). The true “soul” of budō, then, is not hidden in the heart of the lone practitioner but emerges in the relational field of training: senpai and kōhai, teacher and student, attacker and receiver, all joined in the dialectic of embodied trust. Yet under capitalist conditions, that collective soul is commodified. The dōjō becomes a service provider; the practitioner, a consumer of Virtue. In Ilyenkov’s terms, this is pseudomaterialism—a mechanical imitation of ethical practice divorced from the labour of mutual recognition. Hands, Labour, and Phronesis For Ilyenkov, thinking and becoming are hand-work. “It is not the brain that thinks,” he writes, “but an individual entwined in a net of social relations, always mediated by material objects” (p. 13). In this light, kata and kumite—understood here not as competitive sparring but as any moment of training with another, any time two hands meet—are not moral rituals in themselves; they are opportunities for phronesis—the practical wisdom Aristotle described as the capacity “to decide what to do in light of what there is most reason to do” (Nicomachean Ethics VI.5). The bow, the strike, the parry, the shared rhythm of breath and timing—all are ethical materials through which reason can take form, but only if the practitioner engages them consciously and collectively. Without that dialogue, movement decays into etiquette, and etiquette into spectacle. Toward the Soul of Budō The ethical promise of budō has never been about moral elevation but about encounter—an unending practice through which one meets both the world and the self without illusion. Read through Jacobs’ Ilyenkov, this practice becomes a kind of phronesis: the lived, practical wisdom that arises only in relation, through the collective shaping of body, mind, and circumstance. Moral growth in martial arts is neither automatic nor inward—it is dialectical, a social and material creation born of struggle, reflection, and care. To practise budō ethically is to work, hand and mind together, within a community of others striving toward what Confucius called yi—rightness of action, not righteousness of appearance. Budō will not make us better people on its own. But practised as the collective labour of recognition—as an art of relation rather than a commodity of Virtue—it may still teach us to see, in Ilyenkov’s words, “through the eyes of another person, through the eyes of all other people” (Jacobs, 2024, p. 14). Only there, in that mutual gaze, does the true face of budō appear. Postscript This idea has been germinating in my mind since my budō teacher, Miyase-sensei, first planted it there over fifteen years ago. Sensei is gone, yet I continue to learn from the kindness he embodied and from his unwavering commitment to excellence. What he taught through presence, patience, and precision remains a living reminder that the soul of budō is formed not in words, but in the quiet discipline of care. References
多くの武道団体や道場は、稽古によって「良い人間」になれると主張する。しかし、著者はそれを理念的・商業的なスローガンに過ぎないとみなし、倫理的実践の空洞化を指摘する。イリェンコフによれば、人間の人格（личность）は生まれつき備わるものではなく、社会的活動のなかで形成される「関係の結び目（knot）」である。したがって、徳や人格は個人の内面にあるのではなく、他者との共同的な行為を通して生まれるものである。 この観点からすれば、武道の本質的な修行とは、孤立した自己鍛錬ではなく、関係的・社会的な実践である。型（kata）や組手（kumite）は、競技的な技術ではなく、二人の身体と心が交わる瞬間、つまり「二つの手が出会う」場として理解されるべきである。そこにおいて初めて、アリストテレスが説いた実践的知（phronesis）——状況に応じて最も妥当な行為を判断する知恵——が生まれる。 また、孔子の「義（yi）」や沢庵宗彭の「心はどこにも止まってはならぬ」という教えを引用しつつ、著者は古代思想における道徳的修養の深さを現代武道の表層的な「礼節」教育と対比する。真の「武道の魂」は、個人の内面に宿るのではなく、師弟・先輩後輩・稽古相手など、他者との関係性のなかで形づくられる「共同的思考の身体」であると結論づける。 本稿は、武道を「より良い人間になる手段」としてではなく、人間と人間が共に人格を形成し合う社会的・倫理的な営みとして再評価するよう呼びかける。著者は、武道が「他者の眼を通して世界を見る」力を与えるときにこそ、その真の顔—--the true face of budō——が現れると説く。
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 How Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek shaped the earliest Christian names — and what is lost and found in translation. When I was growing up in 1970s Catholic Ireland, our First Communion preparation was steeped in rhythm and repetition. We learned the “three prayers before” and the “three prayers after” Communion — short, heartfelt acts of faith, hope, and thanksgiving, recited in the half-whispered piety of school chapels. I remember them vividly still. There was a sense of order in those prayers, a linguistic and spiritual patterning that made the sacred familiar. In many ways, those childhood cadences shaped how I later came to think about language itself — how words, repeated and translated, form bridges between worlds. That recollection resurfaced recently when I began to think again about the names that shaped the early Church. We so often take them for granted: Jesus, Peter, James, John. Yet every one of these names is the endpoint of a linguistic journey — translated, transliterated, softened and reshaped as Christianity moved from a small Semitic-speaking community in first-century Palestine to the Greek- and Latin-speaking world of the empire. In recovering the original forms of those names, we rediscover not only linguistic history but the deep humanity of early Christianity itself: multilingual, hybrid, and ever in translation. The Name of Jesus: from Yehoshua to Yeshua to Iēsous The name we say as Jesus has travelled an extraordinary path. Its root lies in the Hebrew Yehoshua (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ) — “Yahweh is salvation.” That name, familiar to readers of the Old Testament as Joshua, belonged to the successor of Moses who led the Israelites into the Promised Land. Over time, in the spoken Aramaic of Galilee, the name was shortened to Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ), the everyday form that Mary, Joseph, and his neighbours would have used. When the Gospels were later written in Greek, Yeshua was rendered as Iēsous (Ἰησοῦς), since Greek lacked a “sh” sound and required a masculine ending. Latin writers then transliterated this as Iesus, which in turn became Jesus once the letter “J” emerged in late medieval English. Thus, the name’s lineage runs: Yehoshua → Yeshua → Iēsous → Iesus → Jesus. When we say “Jesus,” we are therefore speaking an English descendant of an Aramaic name, itself rooted in Hebrew. Theologically, this connection is striking. Just as Joshua of the Old Testament led God’s people into the promised land, so Jesus of the New Testament leads humanity into salvation. The name itself encodes that continuity of purpose. In daily life, though, there was nothing exotic about it. “Yeshua” was a common Galilean name. Mary would have called across the courtyard, “Yeshua, bar Yosef!” — “Jesus, son of Joseph!” To hear the name in its original language is to recover the ordinariness of the Incarnation: divinity spoken in the language of market stalls and village homes. Names in a Multilingual World The same linguistic complexity shapes the names of the Twelve Apostles. Galilee in the first century was a place of overlapping tongues — Aramaic in daily speech, Hebrew in Scripture and prayer, Greek in trade and administration, and some Latin in military and legal contexts. As a result, many apostles bore both Semitic and Greek names, reflecting the bilingual world in which they lived. Andrew (Greek Andreas) and Philip (Greek Philippos, “lover of horses”) carry overtly Greek names, while others, such as Peter (Kefa, meaning “rock”), retain Semitic roots. The following table offers an overview of the best-attested forms: English NameOriginal (Aramaic / Hebrew)Meaning / Note JesusYeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ)“God saves” — everyday Aramaic form of Yehoshua. Peter Kefa (כֵּיפָא)“Rock.” Greek Petros is a translation of Kefa. AndrewAndreas (Greek) “Manly.” A Hellenised name, possibly reflecting bilingual identity. James (the Greater) Ya‘aqov bar ZZebdi. Literally“Jacob, son of Zebedee.” “James” evolved from Iacobus → Jacome → James. John Yohanan (יוֹחָנָן)“God is gracious.” Common in both Hebrew and Aramaic. PhilipPhilippos (Greek)“Lover of horses.” Bartholomew Bar-Talmai (בַּר-תַּלְמַי)“Son of Talmai.” Possibly the same person as Nathanael (Netan’el, “Gift of God”). Thomas (Didymus) Toma (תּוֹמָא)“Twin.” Greek Didymos means the same. Matthew (Levi) Mattai / Mattityahu“Gift of Yahweh.” Tax collector and evangelist. James (the Less) Ya‘aqov bar Halfai“Jacob, son of Alphaeus.” Distinguished by family line. Thaddeus / Jude Yehuda Taddai“Praise” or “thanksgiving.” Sometimes “Judas son of James.” Simon the Zealot Shim‘on ha-Qan‘an“Simon the Zealous.” From qan‘an (“zealous”), not “Canaanite.” Judas Iscariot Yehuda Ish Qeriyot“Judah, man of Kerioth.” His epithet identifies his hometown. Two Judases, Not One The repetition of the name Judas (from Yehuda, meaning “praise”) caused early confusion. There were, in fact, two men named Judas among the Twelve:
This is a clear example of how translation carries memory: the same name, differently rendered, encodes two moral trajectories. Jesus and Joshua, James and Jacob A similar confusion surrounds Jesus, Joshua, James, and Jacob. As noted, Jesus derives from Yeshua / Yehoshua — the same name as Joshua, son of Nun. In English, we use “Joshua” for the Old Testament figure and “Jesus” for the New Testament figure, though the original names were identical. Likewise, James is historically Jacob. The Hebrew Ya‘aqov became Greek Iakobos, then Latin Iacobus and finally “James” through French and English phonetic shifts. Thus, both James the Greater and James the Less were literally “Jacob, son of Zebedee” and “Jacob, son of Alphaeus.” Our English Bibles preserve a double translation: “Jacob” in the Old Testament, “James” in the New, though the name itself never changed. These linguistic quirks remind us how deeply translation shapes theology. “Jesus” and “Joshua,” “James” and “Jacob” — all are linguistic cousins, their differences the product of history rather than meaning. “Christ Jesus” or “Jesus Christ”? Another subtlety arises with the title Christ. “Christ” is not a surname but a title — the Greek Christos (Χριστός) meaning “Anointed One,” a direct translation of the Hebrew / Aramaic Mashiach / Mshiha (מְשִׁיחָא) — Messiah. In Aramaic and Hebrew syntax, titles typically precede the personal name: Mshiha Yeshua — “Messiah Jesus.” When the early Church translated this into Greek, the order was often reversed to match Greek idiom: Iēsous Christos — “Jesus the Christ.” Interestingly, Paul sometimes retained the Semitic order: Christos Iēsous — “Christ Jesus” — a phrasing that appears in several of his letters. This is more than stylistic preference. It reflects Paul’s theological emphasis: he speaks from the perspective of the risen Messiah revealed as Jesus, rather than the earthly Jesus later recognised as Messiah. Both forms are valid, but “Christ Jesus” preserves the Aramaic pattern underlying Christian confession. Paul: Apostle, But Not of the Twelve Paul’s own name (Paulos, Latin Paulus, meaning “small” or “humble”) illustrates yet another dimension of linguistic transition. Born Saul of Tarsus (Sha’ul in Hebrew), he was both Jewish and Roman. After his conversion, he adopted his Roman name, Paulus, as he began to preach among Greek-speaking Gentiles. He is frequently called “the Apostle Paul”, yet strictly speaking, he was not one of the Twelve. Those twelve were appointed directly by Jesus during His ministry, symbolising the twelve tribes of Israel. Paul, by contrast, was commissioned by the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. He calls himself “an apostle not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:1). Early Christians thus distinguished between the Twelve Apostles and apostles by vocation, such as Paul, Barnabas, and later Junia. The Greek title apostolos means “one who is sent.” In this broader sense, Paul’s apostleship is unquestioned — but he remains outside the symbolic Twelve. Names as Carriers of Faith To trace these linguistic paths is to rediscover how profoundly early Christianity was shaped by translation. The Gospel was born in Aramaic, written in Greek, canonised in Latin, and preached in the vernacular tongues of Europe. Each stage left traces on the words we still use. To say Jesus Christ in English is to speak a phrase that has journeyed across four languages and two millennia. Behind it lies Yeshua Mshiha — the sound of first-century Galilee; then Iēsous Christos — the language of the Septuagint and Paul; and Iesus Christus — the Latin of Jerome and Augustine. Every layer testifies to faith translated, adapted, and handed on. Language, like liturgy, never stands still. The prayers whispered before Communion in 1970s Ireland were already distant echoes of older tongues. Yet, just as those simple Irish devotions carried the essence of gratitude and awe, so too the translated names — Jesus, Peter, John — carry the living resonance of the originals. In recovering their proper forms — Yeshua, Kefa, Yohanan — we are reminded that faith is always embodied in human speech, local accents, and changing idioms. The divine Word, after all, became flesh and language. Dr James M. Hatch (c) 2025
 A tentative reflection on opacity, agency, and control First Impressions I write this tentatively, as someone just beginning to explore the Irish education system. No doubt I am overlooking central issues and perhaps misinterpreting others. Yet, with fresh eyes, specific patterns stand out, especially when I compare the Leaving Certificate to the International Baccalaureate Diploma, which I am more familiar with. The more I think about it, the more assessment systems resemble arcades. Students queue up, coins in hand, and step into brightly lit machines with explicit promises: if you play well enough, you will win. Parents and teachers stand around, watching anxiously and willing them on. But as anyone who has ever played an arcade claw machine knows, the rules are rarely as fixed or as fair as they appear. The claw is weak, the odds are stacked, and most players leave with little to show for their effort. The spectacle keeps running because the illusion of fairness is convincing — and because there is always someone making a profit, though not the players themselves. Opacity and Gatekeeping The Leaving Cert, on the surface, offers a clear pathway: perform well in your terminal examinations, and the CAO ladder will reward you with progression into higher education. It looks like a fair game. But pull back the curtain and the rules are far murkier. Students — and often their teachers — are left in considerable uncertainty about how marks are actually derived. Marking schemes are broad to the point of vagueness, and examiner conversations behind closed doors often decide borderline cases; substantial discretion lies with those holding the marking pen. Here, the metaphor of the arcade becomes especially apt. Students play earnestly, convinced that the controls respond to their skill, while in truth the odds are carefully managed elsewhere. The system rewards a few, but it does so in a way that maintains the spectacle, rather than by opening genuine opportunity to all. Harsh though this may sound, the mathematics of grade distributions, especially when filtered through shifting political agendas and post-marking adjustments, suggest that the game is less about merit than about maintaining the credibility of the arcade itself. Seen through this lens, the Leaving Cert exemplifies what Bourdieu might call the reproduction of stratification: the forms of capital most valued are docility, memorisation, and a knack for anticipating what the examiner expects. Those who can master the game’s hidden codes advance, while others are left as proof that the system is “rigorous.” The divide between those who set the rules and those who play them could scarcely be more apparent. The Illusion of Alternatives International alternatives such as the IB Diploma are sometimes held up as more transparent or student-centred. Indeed, the IB publishes its rubrics openly and distributes marks across coursework, essays, and oral tasks. In theory, this creates more agency. In practice, however, the syllabi are so content-heavy that inquiry often collapses into a formula. Schools under pressure to deliver results quickly discover that students succeed by following the safe paths — producing essays and projects that replicate past models rather than taking intellectual risks. If the Leaving Cert is an arcade with opaque rules, the IB is another machine in the same hall: the lighting is different, the game looks more sophisticated, but the principle is unchanged. Someone is profiting — reputationally or financially — from the illusion of fairness. Students may feel they have more levers to pull, but the outcome remains tightly managed, and the real agency lies not with the players but with the designers. The Irony of Coverage Both systems ultimately lead to the same irony. They present themselves as games of skill, but the pressure of content coverage and the weight of terminal assessment leave little space for exploration. In the IB, Theory of Knowledge and the Extended Essay should encourage independent thinking. In reality, they are too often folded into the same cycle of deadlines, templates, and coached answers. Long holidays in many international schools — three weeks at Christmas and ten in summer — compress the year further, making it even harder to focus on inquiry. In the Leaving Cert, the bind is no less tight. Vast content requirements, rigid exam structures, and nearly three months of summer break mean that the need for comprehensive coverage drives both students and teachers. Only two year groups — Third and Sixth Year — sit external state examinations, yet the calendar of the entire system revolves around their demands. Whether this pattern reflects agricultural legacies or the logistical needs of mass marking, the effect is the same: schooling becomes about delivery, not dialogue. Both games, then, demand performance under conditions that prioritise coverage and compliance. Both create the spectacle of opportunity. And in both, the arcade profits from keeping players hooked, not from enabling them all to win. A Foucauldian Reflection This leaves me with one further consideration, shaped by my training in Foucault. These educational “games” have been played for so long that I wonder whether the participants are even conscious of the panopticon they have collectively generated, with its structures of surveillance and normalisation. More troubling still, there seems to be a kind of myopia at work: a deep investment in the very discourses that sustain the arcade, such that their constructed and contingent nature is no longer visible. What is presented as natural, inevitable, and “real” may in fact be the outcome of historical choices and institutional logics. And so I return to the arcade. The lights flash, the machines whirr, and the players line up, believing their skill alone will determine the outcome. Yet the real power lies not with the players but with the designers — those who decide how strong the claw is, how often it will grip, and how the prizes are distributed. Students continue to play because they must. Parents and teachers continue to encourage them because the arcade is the only hall in town. But someone is consistently profiting, and it is rarely those who put in the coins. アイルランドのリービングサートとIBを比較し、試験制度を「アーケードゲーム」に喩えて考察。公平に見えて実は不透明で、従順さと暗記を報酬し、真の探究よりも外的評価を優先する構造を批判する。  As a teacher in Ireland, I have now completed Garda vetting three times in six months. Each time I was required to submit every address I have lived at since birth, across multiple countries, with no gaps. Each time the same information went back into the same database. Each time, hours of my life disappeared into forms.
I am not alone. Colleagues across schools, youth groups, and sports clubs share the same frustration. Garda vetting was designed to protect children. But has it become more of a paper-shuffling exercise than a safeguarding measure? The Case for Vetting To be clear: vetting matters. The National Vetting Bureau (NVB) exists for a vital reason — to ensure children and vulnerable adults are protected. Vetting checks don’t just cover criminal convictions; they can include “specified information” such as credible Garda intelligence about risk. That means someone with a troubling history may be flagged even if they haven’t been convicted in court. Teachers, youth workers, and coaches overwhelmingly agree that children must be safeguarded. Organisations such as the GAA actively pushed for vetting because they recognised it as a layer of defence against predators. When vetting fails or is bypassed — as in the recent case where a private company placed unvetted staff with vulnerable children — the public rightly reacts with alarm. Tusla immediately cut ties with the provider. That alone shows how seriously Ireland takes the vetting regime. There have also been real improvements. The old paper-based system once took months to process applications. Today, thanks to the eVetting platform and expanded NVB staff, most applications are turned around in about four days. In 2025, further reforms introduced EU-wide criminal record checks for those who lived abroad and centralised vetting for the early childhood sector. These are not the moves of a system standing still; they are serious attempts to modernise safeguarding. The Problems in Practice And yet — for those of us on the ground, the system often feels like ritual without reason. Every new employer or voluntary organisation must request its own vetting disclosure, even if the applicant was vetted days earlier elsewhere. Legally, vetting is position-specific and cannot be transferred. In practice, this means endless duplication: the same data being checked against the same database, again and again. Does this add to child safety? The evidence is thin. The argument is that “fresh” vetting ensures no gaps — that new information might appear between one role and another. In reality, most teachers and coaches are simply running the same loop. It protects institutions by ensuring each has a disclosure on file. But does it protect children better? That is much harder to prove. The wider failures of Irish child protection raise the stakes. The recent tragedy in Donabate, where the remains of a young boy went unnoticed for years despite agency contact, revealed how poorly communication can work between organisations. Tusla, schools, Gardaí — none of them joined the dots. The same culture of fragmentation underlies vetting. Each body has its paperwork. None of it adds up to a truly centralised, live safeguard. A Broader Culture of Neglect The vetting issue sits within a troubling pattern in Irish public life: children’s needs are not treated as central. The National Children’s Hospital — meant to be a flagship investment in young people’s health — has become a fiasco of delays and spiralling costs. Meanwhile, recent revelations of unnecessary hip operations in Dublin hospitals show failures of governance and oversight in children’s healthcare. Across these cases, the theme is the same: systems that prioritise compliance, appearances, and liability, while real children fall through the cracks. Towards a Better System Calling a spade a spade: Ireland’s Garda vetting system protects against some risks, but in its current fragmented form, it also wastes enormous time and public money. Reforms are underway — review groups have proposed more streamlined re-vetting and transferability across roles — but progress is slow. What would truly protect children is a live central clearance system. Employers could instantly check whether a teacher, youth worker, or coach remains cleared, with updates if new information arises. That would be efficient, centralised, and genuinely protective. Instead, we shuffle paper, tick boxes, and cling to a process that reassures on the surface but fails in depth. As James Joyce once put it: “Do you know what Ireland is? … Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.” Until we move from ritual to reality, Ireland will remain a place where institutions consume energy, money, and goodwill — and children remain secondary. 日本語要約アイルランドのガルダ審査制度は、子どもを守るための重要な仕組みです。犯罪歴だけでなく、警察情報も考慮されるため、危険な人物が教育や福祉の現場に入ることを防ぎます。電子化によって処理期間も大幅に短縮され、EU 域内での追加確認も導入されました。 しかし、制度は実務的に重複と非効率を生み出しています。教師やボランティアは、役職ごとに同じ情報を何度も提出しなければならず、各組織が別々に記録を持つことで全体像が見えません。最近のドナベイト事件に見られるように、機関同士の連携不足は致命的な結果を招きかねません。 真に必要なのは、危険人物や状況を一元管理する「中央ライブ・システム」です。現行制度は形式的な「安心感」を与えるにすぎず、子どもの安全を最優先にする文化的転換が求められています。  September 25, 2025
Returning to Ireland after years of teaching and leading abroad, one structural detail of Irish secondary schooling has shocked me more than any other: the brevity of lessons. Most schools still operate on 40-minute class periods, which — once you subtract roll call, materials out, and the lack of formal movement time — often leaves barely 35 minutes of genuine learning. From International Leadership to Irish Classrooms In Canada, where I began my teaching career, the average period was closer to 70–75 minutes. Later, as a school leader in international contexts shaped by the International Baccalaureate (IB), I came to appreciate how timetable structures are not neutral. They encode values. A school that allocates 75 minutes to teachers is signalling a commitment to depth, reflection, collaboration, and sustained inquiry. I recall lengthy leadership meetings in IB schools where we debated scheduling as a pedagogical approach. Should we double-block humanities to allow extended discussion? Should science run in longer stretches for practical work? The central question was always: what length of lesson makes meaningful learning possible? Rarely was the assumption that short, fragmented bursts could deliver deep engagement. Placed against that background, the Irish timetable feels jarringly old-fashioned. Policy Aims vs. Classroom Reality And yet, what Irish policy documents promise sounds thoroughly modern. The Junior Cycle Framework (2015) emphasises active learning, student voice, and the development of eight Key Skills. The Leaving Certificate is defended in terms of critical literacy, democratic citizenship, and preparation for lifelong learning. On paper, the vision is progressive. But policy rhetoric collides with classroom reality. What can be meaningfully achieved in 35 minutes? Teachers know the pressure: a brisk starter, a hurried core activity, a homework scribbled in haste. Students feel the rush too, especially those with additional learning needs or who are still developing their English skills. Depth gives way to coverage; curiosity to compliance. The result could be potentially a pedagogy of box-ticking rather than learning. Research Evidence from Europe Research in Europe confirms these concerns. A study of an Extended School Time project in lower secondary education found that when students had an eight-hour contact day, their curiosity, creativity, and sense of belonging improved — results that are impossible to replicate in 35-minute slices (eu-jer.com). The OECD also reminds us that how instructional time is structured — not just how much of it there is — directly affects student alertness, fatigue, and learning capacity (oecd.org). Meanwhile, recent research shows that longer classes help narrow learning gaps between students of different abilities by giving teachers the time to provide personalised, step-by-step instruction (researchgate.net). In short, more extended periods not only benefit average learners but also actively support those who need it the most. The Strain on Teachers Teachers are squeezed too. With limited planning time, it becomes almost impossible to design differentiated or student-specific lessons. Studies across Europe and the US show that many secondary teachers receive less than 50 minutes of planning per day, and often just a token slot for collaborative work. In such conditions, it is little wonder that Irish classrooms fall back on textbooks and uniform pacing: when the system leaves no room to prepare anything else, both teachers and students are undersold. The Burden on School Leaders and AdministratorsIt is essential to say that much of this is not the fault of teachers or school leaders. In fact, support administrators and senior management are often the ones left to translate broad government visions into daily reality. A policy framework written in the luxury of Dublin’s fair city can look elegant on paper: a neat set of outcomes, key skills, and aspirational rhetoric. But the local contexts of Irish schools differ dramatically. Rural schools face challenges of transport, staffing, and mixed-ability classes. Urban schools balance large enrolments, complex student needs, and space limitations. Administrators must adapt the Department’s template to make it workable, often with limited resources and under intense pressure for accountability. The result is that policy intentions and classroom practice diverge sharply. Where Dublin policymakers envision student-centred inquiry, school leaders may struggle to ensure timetable coverage, subject allocation, and sufficient teachers for supervision. Structural constraints — like the 40-minute class period and the three-month summer break — persist not because leaders believe in them, but because these are the tools they are given. Who Benefits from Short Lessons? The uncomfortable truth is that short periods are administratively convenient. They make timetables symmetrical. They allow every subject to maintain its scheduled time slot. They preserve a neat rhythm to the day and echo tradition. But do they serve learners? Or teachers? They serve the system. What students learn instead is to switch rapidly, to accept fragmentation, and to tolerate a surface-level engagement. For the most vulnerable learners, this structure is especially unforgiving. Beyond the Classroom: Summer and the Leaving Cert The contradictions run deeper. Irish schools also retain a three-month summer break, one of the longest in Europe. The OECD and EU have repeatedly noted that extended holidays can lead to learning loss, particularly for disadvantaged students. Yet the system persists, partly because the tertiary sector drives the rhythm of secondary schooling. The Leaving Certificate exam dominates the year. Everything else — from lesson length to holiday structure — is bent around preparing for this single, high-stakes gateway to university. In this sense, short lessons and long holidays are symptoms of the same underlying condition: a system designed not around the learner, but around the administrative convenience of progression to higher education. The Need for Courageous Change Some schools have already started experimenting with hour-long lessons, often prompted by Junior Cycle reforms or post-COVID rethinks. This is not just a cosmetic change. It represents a significant shift in aligning structures with values. Longer lessons create the space for inquiry, feedback, differentiation, and reflection — the very qualities the system claims to prize. This progress should give us hope for a more effective and engaging educational system. Having led schools internationally, I know that these changes are not only possible but also necessary. They require courage, collective vision, and a willingness to move beyond tradition for its own sake. Without them, Irish education risks taking a progressive game while structurally ensuring rushed superficiality. The need for systemic change is urgent and cannot be ignored. Until the contradiction is resolved, too many of us remain caught in a daily pattern that is not one of teaching and learning, but rather one of teaching and rushing. This is not just a problem for the system, but it directly affects each one of us, our students, and the quality of education we provide. Looking Ahead This reflection on class length and structural inertia is part of a larger unease. Another paradox has struck me since my return: Irish reform documents happily borrow the language of the International Baccalaureate — inquiry, reflection, and global citizenship — yet the system itself makes it a battle for internationally experienced teachers to have their years abroad properly recognised. That uneasy dance between borrowed gloss and withheld recognition deserves its own exploration. I will return to that theme in a future post. 日本語要約アイルランドの中等教育に戻ってきた筆者は、授業時間の短さに衝撃を受けた。多くの学校では依然として 40分授業が一般的で、実際には出席確認や準備時間を差し引くと 35分程度しか学習に充てられない。これは学習の深まりを妨げ、教師には教材を使い回す以外の余裕がなく、特に学習支援が必要な生徒や英語を追加言語として学ぶ生徒にとって不利である。 一方で、**ジュニア・サイクル（2015）**やリービング・サートの政策文書は、探究的学習や批判的思考、創造性を強調している。しかし、現実の授業構造はその理想と矛盾している。研究によれば、より長い授業時間は生徒の学習成果を高め、能力差の縮小にも寄与する。教師にとっても、短時間授業と限られた準備時間は負担となり、個別化された指導を難しくしている。 さらに、アイルランドの学校は 3か月の夏休みを維持しており、これは欧州でも最長級である。これは学習の遅れを助長する可能性が高く、背後には大学進学制度、とりわけリービング・サート試験が教育全体のリズムを支配しているという現実がある。 結論として、アイルランドの教育は「学びを深める」と標榜しながら、実際には「急ぎの授業」によって生徒・教師・保護者を過小評価している。より長い授業時間や柔軟な時間割構造への転換が求められている。 次回は、アイルランドの教育改革が 国際バカロレア（IB） の言語や理念を取り入れながら、国外で培った教育経験を十分に認めないという矛盾について論じる予定である。 |
James M. HatchInternational Educator who happens to be passionate about Chito Ryu Karate. Born in Ireland, educated in Canada, matured in Japan Archives
July 2025
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