Need to redefine high-level jobs

Alwayson

Re 200 jobs announced in Paypal today "Minister for Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation Richard Bruton said Paypal is a world class company and has shown in west Dublin that Ireland still has competitive strengths, including skills in technology and languages. Those are the skills that will rebuild the economy, he said, and it was a very important vote of confidence in Ireland."

What is this guy on? Its the same spiel as his predecessor. These jobs are in customer services and "operations". Since when has Ireland been competitive in languages? Our linguistic abilities are poor so these jobs are presumably for people who can speak languages. 80% of Google's staff in Ireland are also "good at languages" if you get my drift. In their case all the intellectual work which could actually help rebuild the economy such as product development are done in Zurich.

If we are going to rebuild the economy based on language skills, then we better start producing fluent multi-lingual graduates asap.

douglashyde

Most of Google's staff in Dublin are not Irish and speak fluent English along with other languages.

Regarding Paypal, most of these jobs will require a college degree. Regarding the minister's point on PayPal - I can't see what's your problem? Paypal "is a world class company" it has "competitive strengths", including "skills in technology and languages."

Alwayson

He said "Paypal is a world class company and has shown in west Dublin that Ireland still has competitive strengths, including skills in technology and languages" He is talking about Ireland having competitive strengths in technology and languages, not Paypal. We do not have competitive strenths in languages, unless it is as a broker. I do not believe we are in a position to rebuild the economy based on this model. It worries me that this is view given the situation we are in.

douglashyde

Alwayson wrote: »

He said "Paypal is a world class company and has shown in west Dublin that Ireland still has competitive strengths, including skills in technology and languages" He is talking about Ireland having competitive strengths in technology and languages, not Paypal. We do not have competitive strenths in languages, unless it is as a broker. I do not believe we are in a position to rebuild the economy based on this model. It worries me that this is view given the situation we are in.

fair enough.

I do agree with you to an extend. Ireland does need to develop certain skill sets, most importantly in maths and language.

However, at the end of the day, 200 jobs have been created, thats corporation tax, income tax, increased spending in Ireland, lower unemployment = lower social welfare bill.

Alwayson

I agree that all jobs are valuable but its the strategy behind job creation that worries me. When Bruton launched the new Wagawama in Dundrum a few months ago he said "The development was great news and a very welcome vote of confidence. Dundrum is a world leader in terms of shopping experience and we can build our economy on that sort of excellence". Replace Dundrum with Paypal and its almost exactly the same quote as the one he made today. Call it a case of the King's new clothes but I find this cut-and-paste strategy hugely worrying.

ei.sdraob

Apparently these are mostly the same jobs that were announced not so long ago by paypal/ebay and then FF govt, they are still looking for people with certain languages

There are plenty of companies looking for people with english and european language but our education system still wastes dozen or more years per student teaching a language with little use in the real world outside the public service and small isolated communities in the country...

Alwayson

My daughter was born abroad and spoke four European languages by the time she was eight. She has been back in Ireland for ten years and now she speaks only one.

OMD

Alwayson wrote: »

My daughter was born abroad and spoke four European languages by the time she was eight. She has been back in Ireland for ten years and now she speaks only one.

Is it Ireland though or English speaking countries in general? I have no figures but I always guessed that people with English as a first language always seem worse than others at speaking more languages. If you go around Europe or Asia massive numbers can speak at least 1 extra language and often more than 1. You don't get the same in UK, Australia, USA or even the supposedly Bi-lingual Canada.

BUNK1982

It's a fair point - the majority of the jobs created by multi-nationals that come with much government fanfare require languages.

The only saving grace is that there are so many of these shared services centres in Ireland that there is a pool/ eco-system of suitable candidates, though the majority aren't Irish. That said I think this is a missed opportunity for Ireland as we are by definition a bi-lingual state.

If we only spent as much time and effort teaching French/ German/ Spanish in primary school as we spend on the cattacism!!

waxon-waxoff

This job announcement is of more relevance to Spain or France than Ireland since thats where the applicants will come from. This wont take anybody off the dole here. As somebody already said Google are the same, around a thousand employees and only a small number are Irish. Europeans learn English in school as they need it for better job prospects. Irish people learn foreign languages looking at a menu in Lanzorote.

Same with IT. Ive a mate who works in software and he says most of the workers are Indian or eastern Europeans. This is an area which seems to be largely recession proof and has vacancies yet Irish people are not filling them. Maybe its a skills deficit or maybe its the wages on offer. It would be good if the government announced some jobs that Irish people could actually do.

Permabear

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RichardAnd

BUNK1982 wrote: »

If we only spent as much time and effort teaching French/ German/ Spanish in primary school as we spend on the cattacism!!

Irish is taught to children for 12 years of their lives and this has been the case for many, many years. However in spite of this, only a fraction of the Irish population can speak Irish to a fluent level. Now one could blame the system for this and most certainly, the system has more than a few glaring problems but such poor results seem to be indicative of something else; most Irish people have no interest in learning Irish. Would this hold true if French or Spanish has been taught in place of Irish for the last 50 years?

My own opinion on this is that poor language skills are a symptom of a country with a poor standard of learning. Sure, we have thousands of graduates and qualifications are as ubiquitous as hang-overs on a sunday morning but when you strip off all the dapper, the ugly truth seems to me that very few people here actually like learning at all...

It comes up here quite often that we need to start teaching Maths properly, tutor kids in proper English language skills and ensure they leave school with a proper second language and not just "an cupla focal". Now all this is very true but I think that the problem is not simply the lack of these lessons but I think the core issue is the very pedagogy of our education system itself.

If we could somehow impart a love of learning into children and produce people with a thirst for knowlege as opposed to the all too common school leaver with not an inquisitive cell within their facebook and iPod loaded minds, then we might have a shot at this smart economy mantra. Until then, I would expect articles telling us the unpalitable fact that thousands of us are fit for pushing wheel barrows and little else to continue

A Primal Nut

Alwayson wrote: »

I agree that all jobs are valuable but its the strategy behind job creation that worries me. When Bruton launched the new Wagawama in Dundrum a few months ago he said "The development was great news and a very welcome vote of confidence. Dundrum is a world leader in terms of shopping experience and we can build our economy on that sort of excellence". Replace Dundrum with Paypal and its almost exactly the same quote as the one he made today. Call it a case of the King's new clothes but I find this cut-and-paste strategy hugely worrying.

Comparing what was said when Paypal announced jobs with what said when Wagawama announced jobs; all that proves is these speeches are just feel-good self-congratulory talk when jobs are announced. Don't think its indicative of any strategy.

sunshinediver

Permabear wrote: »

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I think it's wrong to blame Irish for this, sure most of our population can't even speak that. The US and Uk and other native english speaking countries have just as shocking second language abilities as ourselves.

English is the primary language in the western world. If you speak english you can survive quite well, there's no onus on you or necessity to learn another. Kids in France or Germany and other european countries are constatly exposed to the english language primarily thru' the media and popular culture. Irish kids can get by 90% of the time just knowing english.

Generally people don't learn/do what they don't have to.

ei.sdraob

I think this is great strategy by companies, they get free publicity and advertising and politicians get to wave their flag about, rinse and repeat.

Permabear

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sunshinediver

Permabear wrote: »

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I didn't mean to imply that you were blaming Irish soley for the problem and I understand you point of view. Certainly exposing kids to a foreign language at an early age makes a huge difference and this should be implemented but not at the expense of Irish. I cannot speak fluent Irish but I do think its important for kids to learn Irish as it is our national language and is part of our culture and without some form of "compulsory teaching" it would surely die out and part of our culture with it.

I do however have serious issues with how this "compulsory teaching" is carried out, the whole program needs to be overhauled completetly with most emphasis on speaking the language with a "fun" element, as opposed to painful grammer and verb learning of the past. I think if this approach was adopted it would also save massive amounts of classroom time that could be used for teaching other languages which should be available at primary level.

Just as regards the original topic I would like to see a breakdown of all the "high skilled jobs" attracted to Ireland over the last couple of years, from what I can see most involve customer service and call centres, not world class RnD centres. While these jobs are certainly good for the economy (no arguement there) they are far from "highly skilled" in my mind.

jester77

You are not going to learn a language in the class room, simple as. Yes, you'll get a grasp of the fundamentals, but that is about it. To gain a decent understanding of a language you really need to be speaking it outside of the classroom and this is where the Irish system fails, even with our native language. You speak it for around 30 mins a day in the class and that's it. You have no other exposure to it until you are in the classroom again.

The Europeans have the advantage that they are exposed to a lot of Western media (music, film, tv, etc) that are in English and as a result have a higher exposure to English than any native English speaking person will ever have to a European language.

Somewhere the Irish system fails is in exchange programs. A lot of the Germans I know spent a year of their high school studying in an English speaking country. Most Germans I work with also spent part of their Uni course in other countries as well. If Irish students want to become more proficient at a language, then this is a route they should be going down.

jimmycrackcorm

Even if we mandated an alternative language than Irish in primary schools we would end up with school leavers with the equivalent level of another language as they have with Irish presently.

If we were serious about this then we'd start pushing for schools that use immersion language teaching along the lines of Gaelscoils.

_Kaiser_

We lived in Holland for a few years in the mid-late 80s and as such I went to (several) primary schools over there.

Every other kid in that class could speak fluent Dutch and English and in most cases at least 1 or 2 other languages - at 9/10 years old!

It's those kids (and ones that came after them) that we are now competing with for jobs like this. While our own waste time on Irish (and Religion), our European neighbours are learning the languages and skills to fill jobs in our own country.

Irish (nor Religion) has no place in schools. By all means, if you want little Johnny or Mary to learn our "national language" then take the initiative and teach them yourself, or hire tutors, or send them to a Gaeltact school, but the rest of the (increasingly diverse I might add!) kids deserve a chance to learn things that might actually be useful to them in getting a job - especially as they'll probably be still paying the tab for your Celtic Tiger hangover anyway!

nesf

Permabear wrote: »

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Really, by the time they enter primary school they're well past their prime language learning wise. You need to grab kids in pre-school and preferably earlier if you want to take advantage of our natural language learning abilities.

Think about it, if immersion worked as well at 5 as it did at 2 then we'd have a hell of a lot more Irish speakers in this country.

Permabear

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nesf

Permabear wrote: »

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I'd agree that foreign language learning should start as soon as possible but I'm not sure primary school is the best place to start. It's not feasible to offer foreign language services (and you need a variety of languages not just one) in rural areas really and in the cities we already have private services offering summer language camps and similar for even preschoolers.

You'd be better off grabbing the kids at 2 and a half (standard preschool age) and putting them in an all-Irish environment from that stage and get them as close to bilingual as possible. This will dramatically improve their foreign language learning ability when they hit secondary.

Permabear

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_Kaiser_

Permabear wrote: »

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Indeed - let's face it, Irish is a practically dead language and wasting any more time on it through our education system is a waste of time and resources that we don't have if we expect the kids to be able to compete for jobs.

Better if they learned French or German as early as possible.

nesf

Permabear wrote: »

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It's a matter of practicality. We've a hell of a lot more people able to teach Irish to young children than a foreign language. Teaching a foreign language in primary schools would require the retraining of all teachers in the system (completely impractical) or the hiring of additional staff trained in both how to teach young children and how to teach foreign languages (less impractical but again we do not have a large pool of these people to draw from).

We have, on the other hand, been training people to teach Irish to young children for generations, making it a far more reasonable option.

nesf

Kaiser2000 wrote: »

Indeed - let's face it, Irish is a practically dead language

A dead language is a language with no native speakers left. Irish has many problems but it's a good few generations off being a dead language.

_Kaiser_

nesf wrote: »

A dead language is a language with no native speakers left. Irish has many problems but it's a good few generations off being a dead language.

Ah we can go round and round on this argument if ya like

The facts are that Irish is on (state-funded I might add) life support for decades now, and is of no practical value to anyone in either everyday life or their career (unless they're employed to translate documents that no one will buy/read). I'd put Irish in the same bracket as say Latin at this stage.

If it were TRUELY a primary "national language" then I'd agree with the efforts to support it, but it's had it's day/chance and in 2011 we are an English-speaking nation that has to compete for jobs that require fluency in languages that we could and SHOULD be teaching our kids as early as possible.

As I said above, if you really want your child to learn Irish then by all means do teach them it - yourself, or by hiring tutors, or Irish summer camps and what not - but you owe it to them not to hamper their real chances of success because of your own rose-tinted (and unrealistic) view of the Irish language's position in our society.

_Kaiser_

nesf wrote: »

It's a matter of practicality. We've a hell of a lot more people able to teach Irish to young children than a foreign language. Teaching a foreign language in primary schools would require the retraining of all teachers in the system (completely impractical) or the hiring of additional staff trained in both how to teach young children and how to teach foreign languages (less impractical but again we do not have a large pool of these people to draw from).

We have, on the other hand, been training people to teach Irish to young children for generations, making it a far more reasonable option.

Just to pick up on this one too..

Your argument then is that because we already have teaching staff trained to teach Irish, we might as well let them because asking them to reskill is too hard/not practical??

I'm sorry but that's rubbish and god-forbid teacher's have to move with the times and upskill/retrain (like the rest of us - and I say that as a former PS worker that worked in the education sector and in IT, which requires constant upskilling).

One of the biggest problems we have in this country is taking the "easy option" all the time - and we saw how well that's worked out in the last few years haven't we?

Just because something is harder to do doesn't mean we shouldn't do it anyway.

nesf

Kaiser2000 wrote: »

Ah we can go round and round on this argument if ya like

The facts are that Irish is on (state-funded I might add) life support for decades now, and is of no practical value to anyone in either everyday life or their career (unless they're employed to translate documents that no one will buy/read). I'd put Irish in the same bracket as say Latin at this stage.

If it were TRUELY a primary "national language" then I'd agree with the efforts to support it, but it's had it's day/chance and in 2011 we are an English-speaking nation that has to compete for jobs that require fluency in languages that we could and SHOULD be teaching our kids as early as possible.

As I said above, if you really want your child to learn Irish then by all means do teach them it - yourself, or by hiring tutors, or Irish summer camps and what not - but you owe it to them not to hamper their real chances of success because of your own rose-tinted (and unrealistic) view of the Irish language's position in our society.

I'm not unsympathetic to your views, I think kids should be taught foreign languages from a very early age (and I'm going to do this with my own kids soon enough).

What I take issue with is this bull**** notion that Irish is like Latin and is almost dead when there are quite a large (for a minority language in a country this size) native speaker population around the place. It's extremely disrespectful towards people for whom the language is their native tongue.

nesf

Kaiser2000 wrote: »

Just to pick up on this one too..

Your argument then is that because we already have teaching staff trained to teach Irish, we might as well let them because asking them to reskill is too hard/not practical??

I'm sorry but that's rubbish and god-forbid teacher's have to move with the times and upskill/retrain (like the rest of us - and I say that as a former PS worker that worked in the education sector and in IT, which requires constant upskilling).

One of the biggest problems we have in this country is taking the "easy option" all the time - and we saw how well that's worked out in the last few years haven't we?

Just because something is harder to do doesn't mean we shouldn't do it anyway.

It's not so much that it's the easy option but that we have the infrastructure to do it already in place. We lack this infrastructure and experience for foreign languages. We really don't have a lot of money right now to build new infrastructure so we need to work with what we've got already. There are also substantial side benefits from having a second language when it comes to foreign language acquisition so it is not like teaching them Irish from a young age will not help them learn German or French later on at second level where we have the structures in place to teach them.

You may not like or approve of the path taken so far but the path taken does shape our future to a large extent. I'd prefer to see French or German taught at primary level in conjunction with Irish but that's not likely to happen within 20 years at least.

Manach

Slightly OT, but in defence of Ancient languages such as Latin/Ancient Greek, an adult can acquire a working knowledge of them in a 3-month time-frame (personal experience).
Also, if a 2nd language was to be introduced at primary level, perhaps an Asian language like Japanese/Chinese/Arabic might also be considered, given how important these markets are?

_Kaiser_

nesf wrote: »

What I take issue with is this bull**** notion that Irish is like Latin and is almost dead when there are quite a large (for a minority language in a country this size) native speaker population around the place. It's extremely disrespectful towards people for whom the language is their native tongue.

No-one is saying that Irish should be "stamped out" but as you admit yourself, it IS a minority language, and we simply don't have the resources that we allocate to it every year - certainly not when people are dying on hospital trolleys, and people are being evicted from their homes and so on - and not when it's costing us jobs and competitiveness.

Also by that argument (and although I have no idea of the figures involved), should we start teaching Polish, Chinese and what not (as mandatory subjects) in schools as well as we have quite a number of native speakers of those languages too - actually Chinese mightn't be a bad idea if you hold the view that ultimately the shift will be in that direction anyway!

I get where you're coming from insofar as your respect for the language and desire to keep it alive, but I think that given the real state of the language nationally, that desire can't be at the expense of the things we really DO need to move forward.

nesf

Kaiser2000 wrote: »

No-one is saying that Irish should be "stamped out" but as you admit yourself, it IS a minority language, and we simply don't have the resources that we allocate to it every year - certainly not when people are dying on hospital trolleys, and people are being evicted from their homes and so on - and not when it's costing us jobs and competitiveness.

Also by that argument (and although I have no idea of the figures involved), should we start teaching Polish, Chinese and what not (as mandatory subjects) in schools as well as we have quite a number of native speakers of those languages too - actually Chinese mightn't be a bad idea if you hold the view that ultimately the shift will be in that direction anyway!

I get where you're coming from insofar as your respect for the language and desire to keep it alive, but I think that given the real state of the language nationally, that desire can't be at the expense of the things we really DO need to move forward.

I accept that but I think there is a strong cultural argument for teaching the language in schools (I personally disagree with it being compulsory at second level). Having Irish isn't useful in an economic sense but then, neither are the vast majority of school subjects for the vast majority of people. I mean, we all complain if second level maths standards go down but second level maths is only relevant to a vanishingly small number of jobs in the economy. Beyond basic arithmetic most people don't use any of it. Ditto English, ditto Nature in Primary, etc. Education at first and second level is far more about cultural significance than it is about economic significance. We educate children in these things because we think it's a good thing for them to be exposed to not because we actually think it'll be relevant in their lives later on for the vast majority of them.

Again, if we teach a foreign language at school from an early age, it'll only be of relevance to a small minority of people and for most of them they'll have to take it at third level to develop enough skill to be marketable in the area just like the situation right now.

_Kaiser_

nesf wrote: »

It's not so much that it's the easy option but that we have the infrastructure to do it already in place. We lack this infrastructure and experience for foreign languages. We really don't have a lot of money right now to build new infrastructure so we need to work with what we've got already.

I'm sorry but I do have to still disagree here.

In my role (as I mentioned) I have to constantly learn new things and adapt to new methods of doing this AND (as I'm getting older) I have to compete against graduades with fresh degrees as well.

It's not even so much as we don't have the money (although that is true too) as we don't have the political will to force change on - in this case - the teaching profession.

To my mind, as with most other careers, you either adapt or you get eliminated (paraphrasing Gordon Gecko here ) and if Irish teachers aren't willing to move with the times and the needs of their students and the country then they should be replaced. We shouldn't just continue as is because it's easier/cheaper/better than facing down the unions etc

You say we don't have the resources to teach foreign languages here - true, but there's a whole continent of people that can do it if our own aren't prepared to step up and that's after all what IS happening in places like Google.

There are also substantial side benefits from having a second language when it comes to foreign language acquisition so it is not like teaching them Irish from a young age will not help them learn German or French later on at second level where we have the structures in place to teach them.

OK I can see the merit in this, but I think it's coloured by your own wish to see Irish maintain its official support. There's only so many hours in a school day, and it could be argued that kids have enough on their plate as it is.

There's simply no value in teaching them Irish over devoting that time to other mainstream languages - and every kid knows that Irish is not going to be of any use to them anyway which probably partly explains the poor results year on year.

You may not like or approve of the path taken so far but the path taken does shape our future to a large extent. I'd prefer to see French or German taught at primary level in conjunction with Irish but that's not likely to happen within 20 years at least.

I think we both know that if Irish was made optional then very few people would take it, and I think that's why you advocate maintaining it as a madatory subject, because you know that really WOULD be the end of the language.

But is it right to force kids (who can see for themselves the pointlessness of the exercise) to learn a language just so we can say "we have our own language"

Permabear

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nesf

Kaiser2000 wrote: »

I'm sorry but I do have to still disagree here.

In my role (as I mentioned) I have to constantly learn new things and adapt to new methods of doing this AND (as I'm getting older) I have to compete against graduades with fresh degrees as well.

It's not even so much as we don't have the money (although that is true too) as we don't have the political will to force change on - in this case - the teaching profession.

To my mind, as with most other careers, you either adapt or you get eliminated (paraphrasing Gordon Gecko here ) and if Irish teachers aren't willing to move with the times and the needs of their students and the country then they should be replaced. We shouldn't just continue as is because it's easier/cheaper/better than facing down the unions etc

You say we don't have the resources to teach foreign languages here - true, but there's a whole continent of people that can do it if our own aren't prepared to step up and that's after all what IS happening in places like Google.


OK I can see the merit in this, but I think it's coloured by your own wish to see Irish maintain its official support. There's only so many hours in a school day, and it could be argued that kids have enough on their plate as it is.

There's simply no value in teaching them Irish over devoting that time to other mainstream languages - and every kid knows that Irish is not going to be of any use to them anyway which probably partly explains the poor results year on year.



I think we both know that if Irish was made optional then very few people would take it, and I think that's why you advocate maintaining it as a madatory subject, because you know that really WOULD be the end of the language.

But is it right to force kids (who can see for themselves the pointlessness of the exercise) to learn a language just so we can say "we have our own language"

I return to my argument on the cultural benefits of teaching the language as the main reason to teach it in schools. This is a value judgement and I think it's best for us to agree to disagree here since we're starting from different base points (i.e. you feel it's a waste of time to teach Irish at all, I feel it's got some merit).

At the end of the day it comes down to the people's wishes being interpreted by the political class as to what cultural reasons are dominant in the teaching of subjects in schools.

nesf

Permabear wrote: »

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Eh, you genuinely think there's a lot of people who are trained to take very young native English speakers and train them to speak French or German in France or Germany? Eh, what? Language teaching just does not work that way.

Permabear wrote: »

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This would be why I'm sceptical of teaching them foreign languages within the current primary system. Full immersion from a much younger age is the only way to make progress.

Permabear

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nesf

Permabear wrote: »

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I never said there wasn't cultural reasons for learning foreign languages and it's entirely obvious that we don't teach foreign languages in schools precisely because we teach Irish at primary level. Most kids will learn only one extra language at primary level, here for historical and cultural reasons it happens to be Irish. You don't agree with the historical reasons, that's fine but acting like we're doing something deficient is wrong, we just choose a different language to teach, it's not that we don't teach any extra language at primary level.

We're just not going to agree on this, let's not waste our time arguing in circles. Neither of us can be "right" when it comes to which language is more culturally relevant.

Permabear wrote: »

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Eh, where have I said that the standard of teaching Irish at primary level is good, or even acceptable?

I think you're vastly overestimating how easy it would be to recruit a nation's worth of foreign language teachers by the way.

nesf

nesf wrote: »

It's a matter of practicality. We've a hell of a lot more people able to teach Irish to young children than a foreign language. Teaching a foreign language in primary schools would require the retraining of all teachers in the system (completely impractical) or the hiring of additional staff trained in both how to teach young children and how to teach foreign languages (less impractical but again we do not have a large pool of these people to draw from).

We have, on the other hand, been training people to teach Irish to young children for generations, making it a far more reasonable option.

nesf wrote: »

Eh, where have I said that the standard of teaching Irish at primary level is good, or even acceptable?
.

You said we've more people trained to teach it and for a lot longer, implying they have some measure of skill at it which shouldn't be put aside in favour of teachers of other languages...

later12

Permabear wrote: »

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That's not quite as outrageous as it seems. We are in something of a unique situation in that (i) there are only two countries in the EU where English - which of course is the important world language - has an official status. We are the one of only two Eurozone members (Cyprus also) who actually use it in daily life. But also (ii) we have our own language, which although a second language, taught in primary schools, potentially fostering language skills, doesn't technically count as a foreign language.

I personally would be very much opposed to offering a third language at primary school level. It is our grasp of English, and our status as the only Eurozone member with English as an official language which makes us so attractive, not our lack of Spanish or Italian which makes us look bad. We happen to have plenty of humanities and languages grads in this country, if anyone wants to take a look at the dole queues.

Furthermore, it is far more important to strengthen the sciences and maths at primary level as opposed to going back down Disaster Street and encouraging people into the (all very nice, but pretty useless from a macroeconomic p.o.v) humanities.

In fact it's slightly bizarre that this thread relates to 'high level employment' and we seem to be discussing the humanities.

Permabear

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later10

later10 wrote: »

In fact it's slightly bizarre that this thread relates to 'high level employment' and we seem to be discussing the humanities.

Here's a reminder so:
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/breaking-news/ukandireland/paypal-creating-100-jobs-in-dublin-14647961.html

and will be open to those fluent in English and a second European language.

A quick job search will show many, many jobs in ireland with a second european language as a requirement. I don't know why you're dismissing that

later10 wrote:

I personally would be very much opposed to offering a third language at primary school level.

We don't want a third language taught, we want a more relevant second language taught. And one that's taught properly, not coming out of over 12 years of education with about 2 words of it.
For all our "many years of teaching students irish", they're not doing a good job at all.

supermonkey

Perhaps the students are doing a poor job of learning Irish rather than the teachers doing a bad job of teaching Irish.

Nothing is stopping our 400,000 unemployed moving to Scandanavia or Germany and getting a **** job and learning German. They don't.

The most popular choice in secondary school is French not German.

English is the language of commerce and money and pornography and Hollywood.
Irish is the language of the soul.

Those who don't care about the Irish language are not truly Irish (I know that this will sound like trolling but I'm going to say it anyway).

Permabear

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supermonkey

Why do we spend so much time teaching English. It is a Feindsprache and utterly valueless except as a means of amassing wealth.
We certainly don't need to read the works of the non existent Shakespeare or the apologist for genocide Spencer!

Permabear

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supermonkey

supermonkey wrote: »

Why do we spend so much time teaching English. It is a Feindsprache and utterly valueless except as a means of amassing wealth.

Okay, we'll teach them communism via sign language and irish, will that do you?

We certainly don't need to read the works of the non existent Shakespeare

What are you even on about?

supermonkey

We need to teach kids English to function in international commerce. That means a sort of pidgin is all that is needed.

Forget Shakespeare that's a complete red herring and so is the stuff about the Irish soul

schalten Sie ihn aus und dann schalten sie ihn aus
eteindre l'ordinateur allumez l'ordinateur

Also if you study German you spend years learning about Goethe and Schille and Rilke usw but we just need to know how to say balance sheet and network card

later12

bluewolf wrote: »

Here's a reminder so:
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/breaking-news/ukandireland/paypal-creating-100-jobs-in-dublin-14647961.html

No I did read the 100 new jobs in paypal bit - that's all very well, but it's 100 jobs in paypal. Ireland needs to get serious about manufacturing and industry... not paypal. I'm not saying that we need to ignore foreign langauges, but that there are more than enough students studying arts as it is. I don't think we need more.

A quick job search will show many, many jobs in ireland with a second european language as a requirement. I don't know why you're dismissing that

A quick job search will actually show that there aren't really a lot of jobs on offer in Ireland at all. There is a strong case for arguing that if we had more science and maths graduates, that situation would be less likely to persist.

And yes, actually, this is an either/ or situation. We have very limited funding available, in theory, for education spending in this country. I would rather see these funds directed towards manufacturing and export friendly industrial sciences than towards the arts.