Should Irish be optional after Junior Cert?

deise go deo · 23-07-2010 12:01pm

Of course you do. I'm a genius dont you know.

My persona as a fe#kless idiot is just a carefully constructed disguise:cool:

Poll Dubh · 24-07-2010 12:12am

Make English and Maths optional too - what percentage use poetry or calculus after the leaving?

doolox · 24-07-2010 12:21am

Irish should be reduced to 2 classes a week at LC level and Maths increased to allow for more students to do honours maths with a more realistic chance of getting the honour.
We need more scientists and engineers out there to beat the chinese and Russians who are good at those things. We need more people doing higher level Maths successfully.
Irish will not put food on the table.

Krusader · 24-07-2010 12:35am

Not every kid wants to be a scientist/engineer

deise go deo · 24-07-2010 12:15pm

doolox wrote: »

Irish will not put food on the table.

Irish dose put food on lots of peoples tables.:rolleyes:

Thats not the point though. I dont want to see Irish tought to the detriment of other subjects. I think that vast improvments could be made in how it is thought without taking up any more time. It is also possible that with these improvements less overall time would be needed for teaching it. but we would have to wait and see.

MathsManiac · 24-07-2010 9:36pm

Poll Dubh wrote: »

Make English and Maths optional too - what percentage use poetry or calculus after the leaving?

Actually, Maths and English are already optional. Irish is the only compulsory subject after Junior Cert, (i.e., the only subject that the Department of Education and Skills requires you to study in order to be a recognised senior cycle student for funding purposes.)

deise go deo · 24-07-2010 10:15pm

MathsManiac wrote: »

Actually, Maths and English are already optional. Irish is the only compulsory subject after Junior Cert, (i.e., the only subject that the Department of Education and Skills requires you to study in order to be a recognised senior cycle student for funding purposes.)

I dont know about you, but in my school if you asked not to do maths as an ''option'' (not that it ever happened) the teacher would probably just look at you with a blank face and tell you to go away.:rolleyes:

MathsManiac · 26-07-2010 10:11pm

deise go deo wrote: »

I dont know about you, but in my school if you asked not to do maths as an ''option'' (not that it ever happened) the teacher would probably just look at you with a blank face and tell you to go away.:rolleyes:

Indeed. Schools can have whatever policies they want in relation to their curricula, as long as they meet the Department's criteria. My understanding of this discussion, though, is that it is about what government policy should be. I was simply making the point that, as far as the state is concerned, Irish is the only subject that you have to study after Junor Cert in order to be a recognised senior cycle student.

The decisions of individual schools is a matter for their boards of management. Their policies are, of course, informed by the universities' policies on entry requirements, which often, but not always, include maths and English. Such entrance policies are entirely under the control of the universities themselves, and not the state.

I guess the point I was really getting at was that any references to maths and English in this debate are a bit of a red herring, since they are already technically not compulsory. A better guess about what might happen if Irish ceased to be compulsory in the senior cycle of second-level schools and for NUI matriculation would be to look at what happened to Latin when it ceased to be mandatory for NUI matriculation. It's now studied by just over a hundred students a year. The fate of Irish mightn't be so extreme, but you'd have to wonder.

deise go deo · 26-07-2010 10:38pm

Well concidering the popularity of gaelscoileanna I doubt we would see a massive evaporation of Irish. So what would you like to see happen to Irish?

MathsManiac · 27-07-2010 9:28am

deise go deo wrote: »

Well concidering the popularity of gaelscoileanna I doubt we would see a massive evaporation of Irish. So what would you like to see happen to Irish?

I'm rather ambivalent about it. On the one hand, I have a difficulty with the state compelling 17 and 18 year olds to study a subject that neither they nor their parents want them to study. On the other hand, I do think there would be a huge drop in the numbers doing it if it became optional - I think that would be a shame, and I think that lots of those people might regret in later life not having as much Irish as they might have had.

On balance, though, I think I favour making it optional after 16. If any school subject can't win you over after ten years, then compulsion isn't the answer. And ten years of study of the subject, if done properly, should be sufficient to bring people to a sufficient standard to meet the baseline cultural targets for the broad population.

deise go deo · 27-07-2010 10:32am

Well it looks like thats where we are headed anyway, what you suggested is broadly in line with Fine Gael policy, I guess I just see it as the thin end of the wedge so to speak.

MathsManiac · 27-07-2010 11:18am

Ah, but Fine Gael policy at the tail end of 2005, when this thread started, might not be FG policy in 2011 or 2012. And things have a habit of getting a bit more complicated when you get into government!

deise go deo · 27-07-2010 11:21am

MathsManiac wrote: »

Ah, but Fine Gael policy at the tail end of 2005, when this thread started, might not be FG policy in 2011 or 2012. And things have a habit of getting a bit more complicated when you get into government!

True but there will be quite a few angry people if they dont do anything with it, almoast anything would be better than it is now.

Krusader · 27-07-2010 12:08pm

If FG tried to make Irish optional, there would be protests on the streets, the Irish speaking community are strong and passion about the language

Ní neart go cur le chéile!

snooleen · 05-08-2010 1:17pm

The Irish course is being changed for both Leaving and Junior cert! I'm not completely sure about this but know for definite that the oral will be 40%, which I was delighted to hear. If students actually learn how to apeak Irish, they'll have great craic. Probably 90% of students who have gone to the Gaeltacht come back with a new passion for Irish, or at least for speaking it. Imagine the difference in grades, a lot of people with a good grasp of the language and no knowledge of poetry or stories would have 30-40% already in the bag with the oral! And as I've just done my LC, I can say from experience that the people who went and just learned off a big trawl for every possible question will be absolutely screwed. In class these people would struggle as our teacher often asked them a strange unexpected question in practise like, 'describe your shoes' or something like that which sounds quite simple, but these people panicked and struggled with the question. I'm not saying that it's a good thing that these people will either have more to learn off or else won't do as well in the oral as they could have, but it's great that it gives others with a natural talent more ability to succeed. These learny-offy people can learn off everything else in the other parts! eg. poetry, essay vocab!