Should the Irish Education system be reformed

rebel girl 15 · 27-05-2009 12:21am

stovelid wrote: »

A reduced school-day of 4 hours duration is all that's needed for now.

primary school teachers teach for 915 hours a year, compared with the OECD average of 812, this figure exceeded by three countries of the 30 that make up the OECD - Netherlands, New Zealand and USA

They also have the biggest class sizes with an average of 24.5 students, a figure exceeded by Britain, Japan, Korea and Turkey - the average is 21.5, with Luxembourg having the lowest at 15.6

xOxSinéadxOx · 27-05-2009 12:25am

I didn't do religion for the JC either

rebel girl 15 · 27-05-2009 12:30am

#15 wrote: »

But is there not some dispute as to the validity of that theory? Not all psychologists accept the multiple intelligences theory. Or Gardner's version of it at least. Things like 'naturalist' intelligence are disputed. I think. I'm not an authority on it.

yeah there is, but there is no other theory that changed education like Gardners. I did a college essay on MI theory - Hoerr 2000 states "rather than moulding students to an established curriculum, creating winners and losers, a MI approach means developing curriculum and using instruction that taps into students interests and talents"

I'd be in favour of using an approach based on it, not solely based on it, but taking some of the key ideas behind it

uriah · 27-05-2009 12:31am

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

there is a huge problem in primary schools with Irish - not enough of it is taught and that impacts on secondary schools.

you must be bl'''''dy joking. I could communicate in irish in 6th. class (simple language) but by end of 2nd year had lost most of it. then they tried to get us to learn it off in junior cert. What i learned in primary (where i loved irish and it was fun) got me through secondary (where i learned to hate irish and it was a pain)

Most people i know feel the same about irish in secondary school. Do a survey.

yurmothrintites · 27-05-2009 12:38am

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

I'd love to see more of Howard Gardner's theory implemented. the current system examines 2/3 intelligences - what about the rest of them??

Teachers need to provide opportunities for learning in all of the 8 intelligences. Methods of assessment can could be introduced at primary and secondary level could be student projects, visual learning or presentations, the lists are endless. Instead of receiving a bad report due to incapabilities of carrying out a task say a logical one, a child with a low logical mathematical intelligence should be given the opportunity to be assessed (in some circumstances) in different methods i.e. project, presentation, story, report etc..

Howard Gardner's theory should play a crucial role in assessment IMO.

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

I'm doing a B.Ed in PE and something that we discussed was discovery learning - that the teacher does not tell the students, but instead sets up the environment so that the student will discover the subject topic. And it is something that definately works - Maria Montessori's philosphy was a good line "I watched my children and they taught me how to teach". I heard in France that these types of education are commonplace up to a late age.

The next few lines are bits from a report into Irish in the Primary school - some interesting facts and statemets

Kelleghan et al. (2002) reported on aspects of preservice teacher education and indicated that colleges of education were unhappy with the standard of Irish of most students on entry to teacher education programmes. It was also reported that schools, and the Department of Education and Science, were unhappy with the competency levels in Irish of newly qualified teachers when graduating.

They found that 3% of the teachers had a poor level of spoken Irish, 20% had only a fair ability to speak Irish, 55% had a satisfactory standard and 22% had a high standard of Irish.

Alot of that can be blamed on the students' own experience of being taught through English at primary and secondary school before the new curriculum was introduced. But I have also seen many teachers of he old curriculum who refuse or are incapable of teaching Irish in the ways stated by the NCCA in the 1999 document.

I'm not surprised that there are such low levels of faith by the colleges in their students ability in Irish. There are definately people who sailed through these courses without being properly evaluated in the language.

rebel girl 15 · 27-05-2009 12:42am

uriah wrote: »

you must be bl'''''dy joking. I could communicate in irish in 6th. class (simple language) but by end of 2nd year had lost most of it. then they tried to get us to learn it off in junior cert. What i learned in primary (where i loved irish and it was fun) got me through secondary (where i learned to hate irish and it was a pain)

Most people i know feel the same about irish in secondary school. Do a survey.

from a personal view, I did not get enough Irish in primary school, could not speak it. It depends on the primary schools! I learned more Irish in five months in secondary school, than I did in two years in primary - my friend who went to a different school, had excellent Irish due to the fact that their teacher spent quite a bit of time on Irish, and built on that Irish in secondary

I agree that Irish in secondary school is a pain, due to the prios and poetry IMO, thats why I had suggested dividing up Irish into two subjects, a compulsary language subject, where you have to be able to speak Irish, understand grammer, and a second subject with prois etc

rebel girl 15 · 27-05-2009 12:48am

xOxSinéadxOx wrote: »

I didn't do religion for the JC either

in some schools, it is a compulsary fifth subject, in others it is not - curriculum wise it is not compulsary.

yurmothrintites · 27-05-2009 12:48am

I think they should just drop paper two all together. What actually is the point of it? To show that students can learn off essays on the imagery and themes in 'Níl Aon Ní'? Relate it to real life. At least paper one has some use.

There should be more emphasis on labhairt and less on the trials and tribulations of the pedophile O'Searcaigh and the depressing life of Peig Sayers.

rebel girl 15 · 27-05-2009 12:51am

yurmothrintites wrote: »

I think they should just drop paper two all together. What actually is the point of it? To show that students can learn off essays on the imagery and themes in 'Níl Aon Ní'? Relate it to real life. At least paper one has some use.

There should be more emphasis on labhairt and less on the trials and tribulations of the pedophile O'Searcaigh and the depressing life of Peig Sayers.

+1

I agree totally! I'd love Irish to be about speaking and understanding the language, enjoying it. Its those sort of topics that drive people away from Irish, and they end up resenting the language as a result

ps3man · 27-05-2009 12:55am

The problem with learning languages is that you are thought how to pass a test not to understand or comphrehend the language, they should increase the orals to fifty percent and drop paper two on irish, paper two if anything puts you off the language,

yurmothrintites · 27-05-2009 12:57am

I hear they are raising the percentage of the oral to 50 in the next few years. I could be wrong on the percentage but it is being deemed at last as vital for understanding the language.

Breaktown · 27-05-2009 2:43am

rainbow kirby wrote: »

I also think the LC maths syllabus needs to be restructured - tbh I think way too many people take pass that could have taken honours, but at the very top end most A1 students (myself included, back in the day) are bored out of their skull. Make ordinary level easier (aiming at the B/C/D in OL), introduce an intermediate level (current C/D at higher level and A at ordinary level) and have some kind of super-honours paper (to keep the A1 students awake in class).

An intermediate paper would be a really good idea. I moved to ordinary level in 5th year because I was really struggling with honours. But ordinary level was far too easy. A compromise would be better. I went on to do physics in college and it took a while to catch up with the maths.

dfx- · 27-05-2009 5:05am

I don't necessarily buy this relating it to real life scenario. The Leaving Cert should be tough, it shouldn't be the cashing in of points that it is now and there should be stricter requirements for particular courses at college level. It should be a standard and subject proficiency that the student has to reach, not altering the standard to suit.

If you can get into a third level chemistry course with requirement for Honours LC Chemistry, you really shouldn't have to shown how to do a titration from a lab practice standpoint. Or how to use a pipette or burette. But that is the case as there is no demand on the practical aspect and it's not something grinds can help with. Indeed anywhere that grinds of expected questions helps is a cause for alarm for the standard.

#15 · 27-05-2009 8:35am

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

yeah there is, but there is no other theory that changed education like Gardners. I did a college essay on MI theory - Hoerr 2000 states "rather than moulding students to an established curriculum, creating winners and losers, a MI approach means developing curriculum and using instruction that taps into students interests and talents"

I'd be in favour of using an approach based on it, not solely based on it, but taking some of the key ideas behind it

There already is such an approach at primary level. Maybe not to the extent you would like, but it's there.

stovelid · 27-05-2009 8:54am

stovelid wrote: »

A reduced school-day of 4 hours duration is all that's needed for now.

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

primary school teachers teach for 915 hours a year, compared with the OECD average of 812, this figure exceeded by three countries of the 30 that make up the OECD - Netherlands, New Zealand and USA

They also have the biggest class sizes with an average of 24.5 students, a figure exceeded by Britain, Japan, Korea and Turkey - the average is 21.5, with Luxembourg having the lowest at 15.6

Joke

/dʒoʊk/ Show Spelled [johk] Show IPA noun, verb, joked, jok⋅ing.

–verb (used without object)
1.to speak or act in a playful or merry way: He was always joking with us.
2.to say something in fun or teasing rather than in earnest; be facetious: He didn't really mean it, he was only joking.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock · 27-05-2009 9:00am

I'm of the opinion that the range of subjects should be increased to something a bit wider and not just intellectual based ones.

If we can have P.E. for example, why not meditation/yoga/tai chi? Seriously (and I can here the "rightie" gun-huggers clamouring for their keyboards as I write this) why not something a bit more skill-based.

Anger management (hell knows, a lot of teenagers could use it) if (big if, I know) if it could be taught well.
Practical subjects as well; like learning to drive or learning to type. Learning how to use word processors, spreadsheets and databases.

And here's a massively controversial one: let's actually teach them. As a useful ability and NOT for the sake of passing an exam.

rebel girl 15 · 27-05-2009 10:51am

stovelid wrote: »

Joke

/dʒoʊk/ Show Spelled [johk] Show IPA noun, verb, joked, jok⋅ing.

–verb (used without object)
1.to speak or act in a playful or merry way: He was always joking with us.
2.to say something in fun or teasing rather than in earnest; be facetious: He didn't really mean it, he was only joking.

actaully those figures are not a joke, they are real! and the quote by the INTO was that Irish teaching deliver value for money because they teach more kids for longer

Peep O'Day · 27-05-2009 12:14pm

Ikky Poo2 wrote: »

I'm of the opinion that the range of subjects should be increased to something a bit wider and not just intellectual based ones.

If we can have P.E. for example, why not meditation/yoga/tai chi? Seriously (and I can here the "rightie" gun-huggers clamouring for their keyboards as I write this) why not something a bit more skill-based.

Anger management (hell knows, a lot of teenagers could use it) if (big if, I know) if it could be taught well.
Practical subjects as well; like learning to drive or learning to type. Learning how to use word processors, spreadsheets and databases.

And here's a massively controversial one: let's actually teach them. As a useful ability and NOT for the sake of passing an exam.

the ability to use computers to their capabilities is an essential skill that should be taught, completely agree.
ECDL was in our school but it was after school had finished and during lunch so very few actually done it!

Peep O'Day · 27-05-2009 12:18pm

mercuroman wrote: »

What are your parents for? Do you want schools to potty train as well? Real life skills you learn in "real life" not in school

thank you for reading my entire post :rolleyes:
the vast majority of parents aren't qualified to teach a child how to drive properly, they obviously know how to drive but have far too many bad habits hence why there are so many accidents. parents can speak english, how come they just dont teach their children english in the homeplace? because they aren't qualified to sillybuns, even they they use it in "real "life":rolleyes:

mental07 · 27-05-2009 12:23pm

creggy wrote: »

It's not, I didn't do it for the Junior Cert.

I stand corrected

stovelid · 27-05-2009 12:41pm

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

actaully those figures are not a joke, they are real! and the quote by the INTO was that Irish teaching deliver value for money because they teach more kids for longer

Jesus Chri...oh wait, you're from Cork.

Fair enough.

Zadkiel · 27-05-2009 12:51pm

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

actaully those figures are not a joke, they are real! and the quote by the INTO was that Irish teaching deliver value for money because they teach more kids for longer

The fact that they teach more kids for longer does not mean they deliver value for money.

27-05-2009 12:54pm

Cianos wrote: »

Don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but separating girls and boys needs to be done away with and all schools be mixed. It is a serious stunt on social development for a lot of people and again the only real reason it is in place is because of the church.

A lot of studies have found that students (esp. boys) do better in single-sex classes. But you could still have mixed schools, but have single-sex classes for certain subjects: they're trying that in some UK schools.

Ali27 · 27-05-2009 12:56pm

Yes but they need to be very carefull they don't make it worse instead

27-05-2009 1:06pm

Ikky Poo2 wrote: »

Anger management (hell knows, a lot of teenagers could use it) if (big if, I know) if it could be taught well.

Definitely need to bring in school counsellors, the Yanks have had them for decades. Too many kids end up trying to struggle through alone and end up breaking down at age 20 or so.

Biggins · 27-05-2009 1:18pm

Reformed? Yes.

For a start... Make religious studies optional - not compulsory. Social studies could be altered if only to explain the differences in the religions, not teach their practises.

p1akuw47h5r3it · 28-05-2009 3:38pm

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

Probably is not - but it is definately more difficult taking up a language at 12/13 rather than 4/5.

Ye I would agree with that

Princess Consuela Bananahammock · 28-05-2009 3:59pm

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

Probably is not - but it is definately more difficult taking up a language at 12/13 rather than 4/5.

Most foreign kids start learning English at 10/11 and are reseanably comprehensive within 2/3 years. The difference is they WANT to learn it.

The thing about kids is that, if you get them passionate about something, half your work is done. But education ignores that completely.

ScumLord · 28-05-2009 4:07pm

Children should be taught how to find information for them selfs, they should also be taught how to weed good information from bad information then let lose. Schools just seem to make the most magnificent things mundane.

pieye · 28-05-2009 4:09pm

Ikky Poo2 wrote: »

Most foreign kids start learning English at 10/11 and are reseanably comprehensive within 2/3 years. The difference is they WANT to learn it.

The thing about kids is that, if you get them passionate about something, half your work is done. But education ignores that completely.

If you absolutely surround someone in a language they learn a lot faster than a couple of hours a week, passion can help, but an complete emerson is hardly something an education system can create.

Should the Irish Education system be reformed

Comments