What do you think of the Irish Education you received?

BoozyBabe

I don't know which thread this is suited to, but I'll tell you my story anyhow, as I think it's pretty typical of a lot of people in Ireland. (Sorry it's so long)

I can remember being in a classroom at primary school, which meant I was in baby infants, high infants, or 1st class.
Irish was fun. I loved it. Everything in the room had a flashcard stuck beside it with it's Irish name on it, i.e. clar dubh, fuinneog, cofra, etc, etc, etc.
We could only refer to those things in Irish.
Irish was learned through songs, rhymes, storyboards & general conversation. If we wanted to go to the toilet, outside, etc, we had to ask it in Irish.
It was exciting & I loved going home & telling my mam what I'd learned.
It was incorporated more through play than strict lessons.

Then I moved into the next class room:- 2nd & 3rd class.
Again, the flash cards were there, we learned songs, were spoken to a lot in Irish & had to meet & greet & ask permissions etc, in Irish.
It became a bit more structured than simply fun though.

Then I moved to the next classroom, 4th to 6th class, which was the beginning of the end for my Irish.
It was never spoken; there were no flash cards, songs, fun poems or anything like that.
Irish was basically homework:- "read page ... & answer the questions". The homework would be corrected, you'd get a mark, & the next lesson was more homework.
In class however, day after day on the blackboard were lists like, dom, duit, dó, dí, agam, agat aige, aicí, orm, ort.......
Endless lists to be learned off by heart.
Explanations of the differences were never explained, use in sentences was never practised, etc, just boring list after list.
Thus was the beginning of my complete frustration & contempt for the language & my interest dwindled to zero.

I moved to secondary school & with entrance tests used as a rough guide, I was placed in the higher-level class. The teacher I had was excellent, so passionate & enthusiastic, but she only spoke in Irish & only allowed Irish to be spoken in her class. As my Irish was not up to par, I had to move down to ordinary level, as I was really struggling (& didn't feel passionately enough about it to work at it)

Thus begins the next chapter of my Irish failure.
4 years with an absolutely incompetent teacher, who barely taught a days Irish in the whole time I was there.
He had no control over the class; therefore, it was a class to mess in, not to learn, so we didn't.

At the end of that, though I did manage to pass, I feel I had less Irish than I did when in 4th class at Primary school.

I despised the language & despised even more the fact that this pointless language was being shoved down our throats & we had no choice but to learn it. It made me so angry.

In the years that have passed, I'm now more annoyed that after been made learn the language for 13 years, I've no grasp of it whatsoever, absolutely none!!!!! Why????? How?????
I'm so annoyed that I can't speak the language.
I'm so desperately trying to learn the language, but there's very little support.
I'm from an area where fluency in Irish wouldn't even reach 3% (I'd imagine). Absolutely no one can speak it (bar teachers). Therefore, there are no discussion groups to join, no festivals, no interest groups even. I did an 8-week VEC night course, the only thing on offer. It was very basic Irish. Once completed, there is nowhere for me to further my conversational skills. One woman in the class was taking part for the 4th time. She thought she was great because she knew everything, but what good's that to her, she's not progressing in any way & there's no support out there for her to do so.

I've every book, CD's etc under the sun for learning the language, but it's just not the same as having conversations with other people.

To change this, we have to look to the children. There's no point trying to revive Irish in the adult generation. They either realise they've got this far without needing it, they're not going to waste their time on it now, or they'd like to know a bit more, but don't have the time available to learn it.
Those who don't fall into either of those categories are going to learn it for themselves anyway, without being coerced.

As I said, I feel Irish was fine for the 1st 3 years (though I think you don't even learn it for at least one of them)
It was ok from the 4th & 5th year, though already starting to get a bit monotonous & after that it was a complete disaster.

I went through 13 years of Irish education & it wasn't until a few months ago, by reading for myself, did I learn about slender & broad vowels & how they change spelling of words, why you use fadas, masculine & feminine words & how these are affected differently by words preceding them, aspiration & lenitation, etc, etc, etc

I mean, I knew NONE of this, it was NEVER explained. No doubt I was given longs lists of words & there spellings in the different tenses & told to learn them off, but this was never related back to anything, & patterns to aid learning were never discussed.

I do feel it's so sad when the government make such an effort in providing lessons for us to learn the language, that the vast majority of us never acquire it.
What to France, Spain & Germany etc, do differently when teaching English to their students?
Imagine if their success rate was as low..

But anyway, on a final note, how the learning is structured in our education system needs to be changed & more facilities need to be made available to adults who wish to improve if we're ever to improve the level of fluency in this country!!!

Rant over.
(If you've made it this far, well done you!!!)


So, any opinions, ideas, stories of your own?

PurpleFistMixer

I think the teacher you get makes a huge difference. You were clearly very unlucky with the teachers you got.
In third class, Irish for me consisted of an hour of teilgeoir in the mornings and it was so so old fashioned... Made it an absolute chore.
However, in 4th and 6th class I had a teacher who was very enthusiastic and positive towards Irish, she taught us a lot, showed us that Irish isn't just an old relic.

In secondary school I've now had the same teacher for four years and, well, I've gone from trying to drop Irish to wanting to become fluent, so she must be doing something right! I think the problem with second level irish-teaching is that there's too much pressure on us to get stuff done, that we don't have the time to have fun with the language. Maybe it's just the reluctance in my class, but we rarely ever converse in the language at all. It's an honours class and pretty much everyone has good grammar skills, etc., fully capable of writing essays on issues and whatnot but for some reason, nobody is happy to speak it.

Mrs. MacGyver

I had a great experience of irish in primary and secondary school. In primary school there were all sorts of interactive games like pedestals which made learning fun and interesting, grammar rules were also explained really well.

In secondary I had one brilliant dedicated teacher whose worths her weight in gold, really inspiring. Actually ended up teaching in a secondary school through irish for a while! I still use irish in the job i'm in now and we even have an irish conversation group that meets about once a month to keep it alive. I'm glad i had a positive experience in that regard.

ImpossibleDuck

I am in 4th year at the minute.

My irish education in primary school was fantastic and i went into secondary school with, in my opinion, better Irish than most other first years.

But then thats when it happens, in 1st and 2nd year I had an AWFUL irish teacher. I learned nothing and went into 3rd year with high hopes because she got pregnant and wouldnt be teaching me. I decided to do HL irish because i love the language despite not having a great grasp of it. Anyway, i got a new teacher and i was taught so much in that year. I went from being an average Ordinary Level student in 1st and 2nd year to getting a B in HL for my Junior Cert, thats a B in only 1 school year of proper teaching.

But now i've got a pretty crap teacher again so i have to pretty much teach myself but im still gonna do HL for my Leaving Cert.

krankykitty

My Irish is appalling, although I studied it from entering school at 4/5 up until leaving cert. I only did French for the three years of junior cycle however from that I would know enough French to be able to do basic things like buy a train ticket or make a transaction in a shop. I can't say the same for my 12 years of learning Irish!

I think the fundamental difference is that Irish is not taught like a foreign language, which it should be. It's ridiculous to expect kids to be analysing poetry and prose in Irish when they can't string a sentence together - they end up just learning by rote stock answers for exams, with little understanding or working knowledge of the language.

Mr.Nice Guy

My memories of learning Irish are not good. I was put off by the manner in which it was taught at primary which seemed to consist of constant chanting of words like such as liom, leat leis....agam, agat, aige..., orm, ort, air, etc....To this day I remember them but until I recently picked up a Teach Yourself Irish book I'd no real understanding of how these words are to be applied to construct sentences. Rather than instilling a love of Irish I came out of primary simply knowing basic phrases - chuaigh me go dtí an siopa etc. There was no oral Irish and no encouragement to try and speak the language in class or even to try with parents at home.

Secondary was not much better. The teacher in first year would actually write words in Irish on the board and then ask us to look them up in the dictionary and translate them. Frequently he'd do this while he'd go off somewhere. It's now that I've been reading some EFL learning books I realise what a lazy and poor method this is to try and teach a language. In second year this guy also advised me to stay in his class (which was to be ordinary level) and to not go into the honours class despite me getting a good honour score in the necessary test. He said he didn't think I was ready. Only me and one other chap got an honour which says a lot. He thought the other guy was ready for it but not me yet I was eager to get out of there and many of my friends were in the honours class so I did leave (and I ended up doing better that year than the chap he felt was more suited).

For the first few years I found the classes tough going and didn't enjoy the language at all. When I went to 4th year my views on the language changed because it was presented in a more relaxed way (typical fourth year eh? ) -we did plays, there was little pressure and I actually became eager to do well. The next two years prior to the Leaving it was tough going for me doing honours. I wasn't sure to drop down or not but I gambled and stuck with it despite people who I felt were good dropping down in the last few weeks before the exam. What struck me was how much I enjoyed the practice for the oral exam and how I felt I learned more about the language then than at any other time I had learnt it. I realised this was the most time I had spent actually conversing with the language than at any other point in the previous 12 years. This both saddened and frustrated me. I seemed to be getting somewhere just as my school education was wrapping up. I ended up getting an honour and I believe got one of the best grades in my year so I was quite pleased.

I went to college and tried to join an Irish language group to keep my interest going but I recall they said they hadn't room for the one I was interested in and told me to check back again in a few weeks, but I never did. Only recently did I decide to make a go at learning it again. I remember deliberating in Easons over whether to get an Irish learning book or a French once (because I'm trying to learn both) and there was this kid with his Dad who saw an Irish learning book on the shelf and the kid remarked there was no point in learning Irish. This saddened me and the kid made my mind up because I bought the Irish one and have made it halfway through so far. Some stuff has stuck and some hasn't. I still need to join a speaking group because I haven't had the chance as yet.

My personal experience leaves me feeling unsure over whether compulsory Irish is the answer. There's another thread on here about that. What concerns me about dropping it at Leaving Cert level is that in my case I disliked doing it up to 4th year, and had I had the chance to drop it I might well have done so. The problem as I see it is that there is not enough love for the language promoted in primary because there is a heavy emphasis on drilling rules into young kids that they will not be able to make proper sense of when they're older. I think a language needs a context in order for it to sink in and by just dealing with the 'mechanics' of the language you are only really scratching the surface. There should be conversations, roleplay, games etc. Kids would view it more positively in my view if this happened. In secondary, things could be dealt with more seriously, although I agree with the poster above that prose and poetry is too excessive.

I am another who did French for 6 years and came out of school with about as much knowledge of that language as my own one which I studied for 12 years. That tells me there is something deeply, deeply wrong with the system of Irish language teaching in the country and I think radical changes need to be adopted to improve matters.

This post was way longer than I intended btw but there's my two cents. :cool:

conor.hogan.2

Terrible but so was my Geography (j.c) and Physics (L.C).

WesternNight

I went to all-Irish primary and secondary schools, so I guess my Irish education was different to most. Everything was conducted through Irish (except English class) and that was just the natural order of things so when it came to Irish class it was just like all the other subjects. I didn't grow up to hate the language, which I'm thankful for

doolox

I come from an English speaking area. Both my parents were from English speaking areas of County Galway. I had no advantage of hearing or speaking Irish at home and the attitude around my neighbourhood was to get through Irish classes as quickly and painlessly as possible. There was little or no value attached to Irish by my parents, neighbours or people in high influential positions such as business or law etc. Only the educational establishment seemed interested in promoting or enriching the language in any way.

I see my 13 years of Irish language education as a complete waste of time.

I should have been doing more Maths to increase my chances in a more demanding world.
I should have been doing more public speaking and debating etc in my native Language, English so as to be able to communicate more effectively and be better at sales etc in a more demanding world.

I should have been doing more critical analysis of messages received, especially from political and other public opinion makers to avoid the mistakes made by me and a lot of other Irish people in the past. Would the recent property bubble have occurred if the Irish peoples ability for structured and critical analysis and thinking had been as well developed as our physical infrastructure in recent years

By devoting 10% of its training budget to a dead language the Irish nation are handicapping themselves in key areas needed to survive the challenges of the future. It seems that the Irish political establishment do not want to tackle this problem in any meaningful way. Witness the latest FG proposal to make Irish optional. It caused a furore in Western areas esp. Galway where the local economy relies heavily on summer schools to make up for the deficiency in spoken Irish among teachers in the English-speaking areas of the country. Instead of tackling this deficiency the govt. have spent millions subsidising the accommodation of schoolchildren in Gaeltacht areas to learn Irish. For what reason? When vital Health and Education requirements such as special needs assistants etc are being cut why does the govt spend millions on teaching Irish?????

Surely this should be the first area to cut back.

The people of Galway West are perfectly aware that making Irish optional will cut numbers drastically and they will lose out economically in the short to medium term. Other groups such as taxi drivers and fishermen have lost out badly to new politacal decisions and little regard was paid to them. Like these groups they cannot be expected to make a rational decision on the question of compulsory Irish and are perfectly entitled to defend their interests. It is up to the Government to defend the interests of ALL the people and make Irish an optional subject at Leaving Cert level and no longer necessary for entry the Universities.

Krusader

Yes let's kill anything that is culturally ours for a quick buck :rolleyes:

Have you ever considered that this country makes bad decisions because maybe we are lacking something within ourselves, something that neither money or success can buy. The way we bow down to our EU overlords and implement their policies without batting an eyelid like a good little lap dog.
A very smart man wrote this recently:

Without a clear identity there will be no unity or vision for the future.Given that the Irish accents and speech are being compromised by media influence our language is the only really unique thing we possess. without it we will be a people without a soul or direction pulled deep into the folds of the Anglo world, a watered down version of British or American. Meanwhile the Latins, French, Germans and Scandinavians will continue on their own terms. There is a good correlation between lack of identity and addiction. There is a paralysis in Ireland where we sit back waiting for ideas and direction from other countries rather than driving forward with a vision.

These words are true within Gaeilge lies our identity, without it we will be less of a country and the world will think less of us for willfully destroying it.
How could we be respected in the world, how could we respect ourselves if we allow it

The fact that we'd rather money and greed than our own national tongue makes me feel that this country is rotten to the core

dory

BoozyBabe wrote: »

What to France, Spain & Germany etc, do differently when teaching English to their students?
Imagine if their success rate was as low..

I've often wondered this, and it's something I've asked my colleagues about a lot (work in the UN so have lots of different backgrounds in the office). Finland have 3 hours of English a day, if I remember correctly. I must ask everyone again what they do and compile a list.

PurpleFistMixer wrote: »

Irish for me consisted of an hour of teilgeoir in the mornings and it was so so old fashioned

I had totally blocked that out, and you just reminded me of staring at that bloody thing and repeating like some kind of animal. Argh!!


My own experience: terrible primary school - was actually taught a lot of incorrect things! Went into secondary barely able to string a sentence together, but it was an Irish speaking secondary so I was soon able to chat away as Gaeilge.

I love the language, but the way it's being taught is crucifying it. I know Conradh na Gaeilge are trying to get the syllabus changed, but I want to know why it isn't being changed sooner, why no one is bringing this up in the run up to the election. We'll all go on about taking Irish off the LC obligatory list, but we're pretty silent on the other political parties willing to let Irish self-distruct with every teenager who passes through the system with a hate for the way it was taught.

deirdremf

doolox wrote: »

I come from an English speaking area. Both my parents were from English speaking areas of County Galway. I had no advantage of hearing or speaking Irish at home and the attitude around my neighbourhood was to get through Irish classes as quickly and painlessly as possible.

I had much the same experience, but in a different county.

There was little or no value attached to Irish by my parents, neighbours or people in high influential positions such as business or law etc.

One of my parents was anti, one pro.

Only the educational establishment seemed interested in promoting or enriching the language in any way.
I see my 13 years of Irish language education as a complete waste of time.

I went through primary without learning much, or liking it much. My teachers in secondary were better, but I was in the lower half of the class always. In 5th and 6th years, my teacher actually kindled some interest in the subject - and I went to Irish college 3 times, where I had fun, and probably learned to speak a bit.
Although I didn't do great at Irish at school, I managed to become fluent in it later, and now I couldn't do my job without knowing Irish.
I'm glad that I overcame my early bad experience with the language, and the feelings of negativity that came with it.

I should have been doing more Maths to increase my chances in a more demanding world.
I should have been doing more public speaking and debating etc in my native Language, English so as to be able to communicate more effectively and be better at sales etc in a more demanding world.

Maybe you are right. Study at home would have been a possibility, and a debating society. No-one stopped you did they? You're not blaming Irish for the fact that you didn't study other subjects harder at school are you?

I should have been doing more critical analysis of messages received, especially from political and other public opinion makers to avoid the mistakes made by me and a lot of other Irish people in the past. Would the recent property bubble have occurred if the Irish peoples ability for structured and critical analysis and thinking had been as well developed as our physical infrastructure in recent years

Maybe the bubble wouldn't have happened - but most English-speaking countries had a bubble too. Remember that the crash began with sub-prime in the US. Maybe that's cos of the number of Irish people over there whose ancestors once had some Irish?:rolleyes:

By devoting 10% of its training budget to a dead language the Irish nation are handicapping themselves in key areas needed to survive the challenges of the future. It seems that the Irish political establishment do not want to tackle this problem in any meaningful way. Witness the latest FG proposal to make Irish optional. It caused a furore in Western areas esp. Galway where the local economy relies heavily on summer schools to make up for the deficiency in spoken Irish among teachers in the English-speaking areas of the country. Instead of tackling this deficiency the govt. have spent millions subsidising the accommodation of schoolchildren in Gaeltacht areas to learn Irish. For what reason? When vital Health and Education requirements such as special needs assistants etc are being cut why does the govt spend millions on teaching Irish?????

What makes you think Irish is dead? I know people in every part of Ireland who speak it, and who are bringing up their families in Irish. I bet somebody in your wider family is among them!

Surely this should be the first area to cut back.

The people of Galway West are perfectly aware that making Irish optional will cut numbers drastically and they will lose out economically in the short to medium term. Other groups such as taxi drivers and fishermen have lost out badly to new politacal decisions and little regard was paid to them. Like these groups they cannot be expected to make a rational decision on the question of compulsory Irish and are perfectly entitled to defend their interests. It is up to the Government to defend the interests of ALL the people and make Irish an optional subject at Leaving Cert level and no longer necessary for entry the Universities.

I think you are in cloud-cookoo land there. The government has antagonised one group after the other in the last ten years or so.
That's why they are in the doldrums today.
If the next government continues in the same vein, they will get the bums rush too - but as people are already pissed off, they will not have much leeway to make mistakes.

Enkidu

BoozyBabe wrote: »

I went through 13 years of Irish education & it wasn't until a few months ago, by reading for myself, did I learn about slender & broad vowels & how they change spelling of words, why you use fadas, masculine & feminine words & how these are affected differently by words preceding them, aspiration & lenitation, etc, etc, etc

I mean, I knew NONE of this, it was NEVER explained.

In my mind this is the worst aspect of Irish teaching. Basically there are three simple things which would really help the quality of people's Irish:
1) Irish has gender. The amount of people who come out of honours Irish not knowing this, leads me to suspect that many teachers do not know it.
2) The phonology in general, for example ch is not k and the Irish r is not the English r.
3) Exactly what broad and slender is about, the simple fact that Irish has two sets of consonants.

Salty

I was very lucky with my Irish education. All of my primary school teachers were very enthusiastic about the language, and all aspects, verbs and tenses, uimhireacha, réamhfhocala, caol agus leathan etc were all explained fully and many examples given of how they affect the language and where they are used. I didn't attend a Gaelscoil, but we were encouraged to address our teachers in Irish, to ask for things in Irish, when giving a message to another class, we had to say "gabh mo leathscéal a mhúinteoir" rather than excuse me. Things like this mean I started secondary school with a competance in the language which equaled those who had attended Gaelscoileanna.

Secondary school was a different story, the teachers were not as enthusiastic, and I was shocked at the poor standard of many of my classmates. I continued to work hard at it though. I'm in 6th year now, and I have an excellent teacher, and I am expecting to get A in my exams. Here's hoping all my work will pay off

The Scientician

Prior to 4th class I recall it being varied how much Irish we learned and practiced. IIRC our teacher in 2nd class was a native speaker and she used to spend a lot of time teaching us Irish songs etc.

From 4th to 6th class I had the same teacher and she emphasised the language too, we learned a lot of grammar most of which I still recall as we learned it by rote.

In secondary school my Irish education varied from terrible to excellent depending on teacher. In 2nd and 3rd year I had a teacher who could speak less Irish than several of us students. At the end of 1st and 2nd year I attended an Irish college in the Gaeltacht for 3 weeks each summer which really helped establish any grounding I have.

In 5th year we had a very uninspiring and slow teacher, but in 6th year the higher level teacher put on optional extra classes in Irish which were great. They were informal so we'd sit around drinking tea and talking rubbish in Irish. I finished school in 1999 and I think nowadays I probably can speak Irish worse than at that point.

gsnapp

The education itself is fine my problem is with alot of the techers not every teacher but a small manority especially my maths teacher who gave me hell and told me i would be on the dole forever, but now im a third year computer programmer currently on work experiance and not so long ago I meet this particular teacer in a shop and it was the greatest moment of my life to tell her how wrong she was and walk away.

prististanice

Hmmm...it's a really interesting topic. I totally agree with what has been said about learning reams and lists of words and phrases without any explanation. It's 100% true that a lot of people leave Leaving Certificate without knowing that Irish nouns have genders...another mystery for a lot of students is the genitive case which, once you get your head around it is really not that complicated. But teachers won't spend time on these kinds of things because there are quotes from poems that need to be learned off by heart or passages to be copied from one text book into a hard-backed notebook or other meaningless and pointless exercises.

I think that the original poster is DEAD RIGHT to feel angry and cheated...it's not your fault that you're Irish is so basic. Children are like sponges and will soak up ANYTHING. But the problem is that even if the curriculum and standard of teaching is above par (which is DEFINITELY not the case), the child will still go home and think, talk and listen to English. I find that this is even the case with a lot of my friends who attended Gaelscoileanna. They may very well speak Irish during the day but usually their standard of spelling, grammar and vocabulary is rather weak. Of course this isn't the case with every student that attends a Gaelscoil but I have noticed this in a lot of cases. There just simply isn't enough culture for Irish people to immerse themselves in the language...fair enough TG4 does have some EXCELLENT shows (particularly for children) there isn't really any popular culture (songs, movies, teenage soaps, popular books, comics, magazines etc...) I do feel that a lot of strides have been made since I attended school (now you can see facebook and google as Gaeilge and the quality of Irish-language programming is better). However, I think it is a mistake for people to focus on whether or not Irish will be compulsory for the final 2 years of secondary school...it's not gonna be a death knell for a language most people can't speak anyway. If, as one poster said, one can learn the same amount of French at an older age and for half the amount of time, then surely 2 years won't make much difference. I think the important thing is to reform the curriculum - have more modern material on the syllabus and...perhaps it would be better to separate Irish literature and Irish grammar (a lot of countries, for example Russia, have two separate courses in High School - Russian Language and Russian Literature) so perhaps keep one part compulsory and the other not.

However, I think if one has an interest in the language, it really doesn't matter what type of teacher you have because there are so many resources now with the internet for a student to learn for themselves. The problem with our education system is we're never really taught to think for ourselves...students will sit in an empty room for hours on end because their timetable says a class is there instead of using their initiative and leaving for fear of "punishment". Likewise with learning, students will not study or do anything extra as what would be the point as it might not be in the paper at the end of 3 years...they wait for a teacher to instruct them what they need to do...

Thinspired

A lot of it is down to the teacher, I have to say. I was lucky enough to have the same one all through secondary school and I remember she dedicated one class period a week to conversational Irish when we were seniors. You could waffle away to your friends about anything for 50 minutes so long as it was in Irish. She'd skulk around and stop at a desk every so often to ask about fadhb na ndrugai or whatever.

Bottom line was we all, even the people who were quite weak with spelling, structuring essays etc got comfortable with speaking in Irish, and even ended up enjoying it :eek: So everyone's overall grades were pulled up by their oral Irish exam.

I remember the oral Irish examiner asking me what gaelscoil I'd been to and he asked the same of several others in my class. He couldn't believe our standard. And we couldn't believe our results

Krusader

Thinspired wrote: »

A lot of it is down to the teacher, I have to say. I was lucky enough to have the same one all through secondary school and I remember she dedicated one class period a week to conversational Irish when we were seniors. You could waffle away to your friends about anything for 50 minutes so long as it was in Irish. She'd skulk around and stop at a desk every so often to ask about fadhb na ndrugai or whatever.

Bottom line was we all, even the people who were quite weak with spelling, structuring essays etc got comfortable with speaking in Irish, and even ended up enjoying it :eek: So everyone's overall grades were pulled up by their oral Irish exam.

I remember the oral Irish examiner asking me what gaelscoil I'd been to and he asked the same of several others in my class. He couldn't believe our standard. And we couldn't believe our results

If only we all had teachers like that