Wise To Change Schools?

RetroRainbow · 05-09-2007 9:50pm #1

I'm just after starting fifth year in an all Irish school, and am a bit worried. I'm sure it would be much, much easier to get more points in an all English school (I need 520), but I'm not sure if it's wise to change so suddenly.
Thoughts?

JC 2K3 · 05-09-2007 10:27pm

How would it be easier in an English speaking school? Do you struggle with Irish?

You get bonus points because of Irish also, which is pretty useful.

Naikon · 05-09-2007 10:37pm

JC 2K3 wrote:

You get bonus points because of Irish also, which is pretty useful.

And totally ridiculous tbh

JC 2K3 · 05-09-2007 10:50pm

Well, welcome to Ireland. It's been the agenda of the government since 1921 to encourage Irish.

In any case, I think all Gaelscoils are public schools, so its not like anyone's being denied the right to learn subjects through Irish if they so wish.

Also, anyone can tick the "Gaeilge" box on their Maths paper and as long as they have the very basic Irish necessary to write down the few words required in the Maths exam(OL standard really) they'll get bonus points. I don't see why anyone wouldn't do it.

Naikon · 05-09-2007 10:59pm

JC 2K3 wrote:

Well, welcome to Ireland. It's been the agenda of the government since 1921 to encourage Irish.

In any case, I think all Gaelscoils are public schools, so its not like anyone's being denied the right to learn subjects through Irish if they so wish.

I can sort of understand where Gaelscoils are coming from, but it is a little unfair to give irish speakers an automatic advantage over everyone else.
Gaelscoils are generally far better at teaching Irish with the constant exposure of the language unlike the other school's.

I suppose anybody could learn through Irish if they want to even in an english school, but most people probably wouldn't have the determination to do it themselves.

JC 2K3 · 05-09-2007 11:12pm

I justify it by the fact that private schools exist.

If there's a form of inequality in our education system based on money then I don't feel guilty taking advantage of a form of inequality based on what language I take my Leaving Cert in.

carlowboy · 06-09-2007 12:32am

Naikon wrote:

I can sort of understand where Gaelscoils are coming from, but it is a little unfair to give irish speakers an automatic advantage over everyone else.
Gaelscoils are generally far better at teaching Irish with the constant exposure of the language unlike the other school's.

I suppose anybody could learn through Irish if they want to even in an english school, but most people probably wouldn't have the determination to do it themselves.

Naikon, don't knock it til you tried it. Its waaaay harder to learn things as gaeilge than in English. Every single text book I had apart from Irish and English were in English as there was no irish alternative. It was such a pain in the ass getting irish terms and translating notes.

That makes it deserve the extra marks. And I'm posting as someone who started in a Gaelscoil at the age of 4.

MasterSun · 06-09-2007 9:00am

I can't speak Irish nor French, even through i lived in Connemara for a short time.

JC 2K3 · 06-09-2007 10:04am

carlowboy wrote:

Naikon, don't knock it til you tried it. Its waaaay harder to learn things as gaeilge than in English. Every single text book I had apart from Irish and English were in English as there was no irish alternative. It was such a pain in the ass getting irish terms and translating notes.

That makes it deserve the extra marks. And I'm posting as someone who started in a Gaelscoil at the age of 4.

I'm posting as someone who went to an English speaking primary school, and I found learning things in Irish no trouble at all.....

TheInvisibleFie · 06-09-2007 7:44pm

Naikon wrote:

I can sort of understand where Gaelscoils are coming from, but it is a little unfair to give irish speakers an automatic advantage over everyone else.
Gaelscoils are generally far better at teaching Irish with the constant exposure of the language unlike the other school's.

I suppose anybody could learn through Irish if they want to even in an english school, but most people probably wouldn't have the determination to do it themselves.

They're not really getting an advantage. I think it's more about getting things equal. Even if they've been going to the Gaelscoil since they were four they still have to do an exam under stress in a language that's not their own. And it's not like they get much extra marks. It's 10% of whatever they get wrong.

carlowboy · 06-09-2007 8:03pm

JC 2K3 wrote:

I'm posting as someone who went to an English speaking primary school, and I found learning things in Irish no trouble at all.....

Were your textbooks in irish? Its pretty tedious translating notes.

PurpleFistMixer · 06-09-2007 10:12pm

JC 2K3 wrote:

I justify it by the fact that private schools exist.

If there's a form of inequality in our education system based on money then I don't feel guilty taking advantage of a form of inequality based on what language I take my Leaving Cert in.

Going to a private school isn't an automatic points bonus.

I've nothing against the Irish bonus, go irish, etc., but just felt that needed to be said...

JC 2K3 · 07-09-2007 12:11pm

carlowboy wrote:

Were your textbooks in irish? Its pretty tedious translating notes.

Most of my textbooks were in English. What do you mean by "translating notes"?

PurpleFistMixer wrote:

Going to a private school isn't an automatic points bonus.

Yeah, but it's a form of discrimination and in the minds of many(not mine) it IS an automatic points bonus(because there've got supposedly better teachers/facilities etc.)

TheInvisibleFie · 07-09-2007 1:04pm

JC 2K3 wrote:

Most of my textbooks were in English. What do you mean by "translating notes"?

He said earlier on that most of the books for courses were in English. This means that pupils n Gaelscoileanna are getting information in one language which they have to translate and write about in another language. It means soecific business and scientific terms have to be translated

.Yeah, but it's a form of discrimination and in the minds of many(not mine) it IS an automatic points bonus(because there've got supposedly better teachers/facilities etc.)

Emphasis on the word soupoedly. Private schools are able to mess up the figures by telling parents whose children have problems with learning that their school isn't able to handle the problem so they need to go somewhere else.

JC 2K3 · 07-09-2007 2:12pm

TheInvisibleFie wrote:

He said earlier on that most of the books for courses were in English. This means that pupils n Gaelscoileanna are getting information in one language which they have to translate and write about in another language. It means soecific business and scientific terms have to be translated

Well, "notes" != "terms", I wasn't sure what he meant.

In any case, I never found going to a dictionary every now and then all that annoying. And in any case, if you forget a term on the day you can just write the English word down in quotation marks, and unless you do it far too often, they won't take your Irish bonus away from you.

carlowboy · 07-09-2007 4:08pm

And also, there isn't exactly an abundance of teachers who are capable to teach through Irish, I remember several times some teachers didn't have any irish at all so we had to translate notes ourselves and do tests through irish which was a total pain as most of the terms that had to be translated couldn't be found in any dictionaries.

JC 2K3 · 07-09-2007 4:39pm

Why would you translate notes though? Why not just study the English ones and English textbooks and optionally make your own notes in Irish?

Also, you should have gotten yourself a thick De Bhaldraithe dictionary, not just a crappy pocket Collins one. Pretty much all the terms I looked up in it were there.

carlowboy · 07-09-2007 4:43pm

We have the official an Gúm ones but the words simply aren't there for Biology terms for example. My mother had to order a special Biology dictionary that was out of print last year for when she taught my class.

TheInvisibleFie · 07-09-2007 9:05pm

JC 2K3 wrote:

Why would you translate notes though? Why not just study the English ones and English textbooks and optionally make your own notes in Irish?

Also, you should have gotten yourself a thick De Bhaldraithe dictionary, not just a crappy pocket Collins one. Pretty much all the terms I looked up in it were there.

Normally students make notes when studying for exams. So if they were doing the exam in Irish it would make sense to make notes in Irish. This would be made more difficult by having to look up words in the dictionary say for the parts of the heart.

JC 2K3 · 07-09-2007 10:01pm

carlowboy wrote:

We have the official an Gúm ones but the words simply aren't there for Biology terms for example. My mother had to order a special Biology dictionary that was out of print last year for when she taught my class.

Well I didn't do Biology, but had to look up a couple of words every now and then in subjects like Physics, Chemistry and History, and this was not my experience at all, though I can't comment on your situation.

TheInvisibleFie wrote:

Normally students make notes when studying for exams. So if they were doing the exam in Irish it would make sense to make notes in Irish. This would be made more difficult by having to look up words in the dictionary say for the parts of the heart.

Well, this might sound pedantic now, but I actually didn't know what he meant when he said "translating notes", which isn't the same thing as "making notes in a language other than the textbook you're using".
And again, that wasn't my experience. I felt having to look up the odd word in the dictionary was of negligible hinderence to my study.

carlowboy · 08-09-2007 12:39am

I meant translating notes from a textbook....

Anyway, back to the topic... in the end, Half of my year got 500 plus in the end. 15 out of 30 odd, 10 of which were 520+ so I can't see how the OP is going with his/her point.

ZorbaTehZ · 08-09-2007 12:50am

Mostly any term that we needed as a class, was given to us by teachers - for everything else, there's de Bhaldraithe. The difficulty in doing a subject through Irish is way overrated by people imo.

carlowboy · 08-09-2007 10:17am

ZorbaTehZ wrote:

Mostly any term that we needed as a class, was given to us by teachers - for everything else, there's de Bhaldraithe. The difficulty in doing a subject through Irish is way overrated by people imo.

It's not difficult but it deserves the bonus IMO.

gaeilgegrinds · 08-09-2007 12:02pm

Those extra points are well deserved. Both teachers and students have lots of extra work to do in a Gaelscoil.

JC 2K3 · 08-09-2007 2:57pm

carlowboy wrote:

I meant translating notes from a textbook....

Why on Earth would you do that?

The way I studied would be to make my own notes in Irish using an English textbook and translating terms on the fly...

Davidius · 08-09-2007 7:16pm

The main problem with the Irish bonus is that it's giving marks for something that's usually completely irrelevent to the subject. IE, it's not an accurate reflection of how well you actually know the subject. I can understand the motive behind it but I think it's out of place.

Naikon · 09-09-2007 12:05pm

Davidius wrote:

The main problem with the Irish bonus is that it's giving marks for something that's usually completely irrelevent to the subject. IE, it's not an accurate reflection of how well you actually know the subject. I can understand the motive behind it but I think it's out of place.

QFT.

Wise To Change Schools?

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