Quinn: Schools spend too much time on religion and Irish

MadsL

My name is URL wrote: »

Is it still the case that students can obtain higher points in their Leaving Cert if they take Irish exam papers? I never really understood that one.

As someone whose daughter is doing her exams through Irish, I see her sometime struggle in conversations with me with the fact that a lot of technical language (ie Maths, Science) she just doesn't have in English, that makes the passive learning that she gets outside of school (TV, media) more challenging. There are no huge obstacles, but do make it more difficult to do it that way. Teachers would help if they gave English equivalents for technical words, but often forget.

Why should anyone's education be worth more than others just because they completed a few exams in the native language? That's something that should be done away with right now if it hasn't been already.

Wouldn't you say that someone who completed their education through French whilst a native English speaker has a (X value) better education as they are now fluent in two languages?

BrokenArrows

Religion should be thought as a generic topic covering all major religions and not a Catholic class. It should be a class so kids understand the belief systems of the world. It shouldn't be an exam subject. It should certainly take up less time than other subjects.

Irish should be thought up to J Cert but be an optional choice for leaving certificate.

csallmighty

csallmighty wrote: »

"A relatively useful dead language."

I talk nonsense most of the time, but that post was actually painful to read.

The point was in jest. If a language is going to be taught, then let it be a modern one: French, or Spanish, or whatever. If a dead language must be taught, and Irish is essentially a dead language, then I'd put one of numerous other languages in Irish's place. As far as I'm concerned, Irish is only taught for nationalistic reasons; I see no other use for it.

books4sale

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

I'd like Irish to be preserved but taught in a manner which will ensure fluency among students. How do the Germans and Dutch teach English so effectively? A decent percentage of their populations are either fluent or have a good command of the English language.

Are you saying that you want everyone in this country using Irish on a daily basis like they use German in Germany.

I wonder sometimes what kind of fantasy 'Noddy lands' some lads live in.

BrokenArrows

gallag wrote: »

Give me a break lol, I am on my phone.

Why do people think that being on a phone excuses spelling and grammar mistakes?

gallag

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

I'd like Irish to be preserved but taught in a manner which will ensure fluency among students. How do the Germans and Dutch teach English so effectively? A decent percentage of their populations are either fluent or have a good command of the English language.

Mabey the German and dutch kids realize that learning English will help in gainful employment and not just make their parents feel warm and fuzzy with an anti British undertone (as displayed in this thread)

MadsL

csallmighty wrote: »

I explained it was meant as a joke. But if you look into it, without the our native language what makes us different from British? Nothing.

Well, there's the inability of Irish politicians to resign in disgrace for one.

books4sale

csallmighty wrote: »

Where did you get 90% from?

I'm guessing, cause i've never heard anyone use Irish outside of Galway expect some flutes down in Oz who could only string three words together....very badly!

Lelantos

BrokenArrows wrote: »

Why do people think that being on a phone excuses spelling and grammar mistakes?

Big thumbs, small keys & predictive text are the bane of us phone users

Jimoslimos

gallag wrote: »

Mabey the German and dutch kids realize that learning English will help in gainful employment and not just make their parents feel warm and fuzzy with an anti British undertone (as displayed in this thread)

Kids don't think like that anywhere. And if you think anti-British sentiment is bad amongst the Irish you should see some of the hatred the Dutch have for Germany.

MadsL

BrokenArrows wrote: »

Religion should be thought as a generic topic covering all major religions and not a Catholic class. It should be a class so kids understand the belief systems of the world. It shouldn't be an exam subject. It should certainly take up less time than other subjects.

Because no-one wants to study world religions at an academic level?? Wut?
Should we also exclude History from the exams as it is too subjective?

Lelantos

books4sale wrote: »

I'm guessing, cause i've never heard anyone use Irish outside of Galway expect some flutes down in Oz who could only string three words together....very badly!

There are quite a few Gaeltacht areas in Ireland besides Galway. Mayo, Donegal, Meath & a lot of Munster.

Ficheall

Just as a matter of interest - what subjects do people think are taught well in our schools?

pmcmahon wrote: »

You'll still get an A if you learn an essay where you house goes on fire and you end up at a U2 concert,and have the ability to write a postcard to your imaginary friends Sile and Sean.

Exactly like French or German.
Or indeed, most exams at college level. Learn it off and you're sorted.


The way Irish is taught needs an overhaul, aye, but the most detrimental thing to the Irish language is not its uselessness, nor its difficulty, nor the poor standard of teaching, but the attitude Irish people have towards to it.

djPSB

chughes wrote: »

What is a national language? Is it the language the majority of people speak on a daily basis?

Blaming the Brits is a bit pointless also. We have been independent for 90 years now. I think we can safely say that the mess is now of our own making.

See long ago before the Brits invaded, Irish people spoke Irish.

Eramen

I'm going to have to go against the grain here.

It's not Irish and religion that is the problem with poor testing by students. Rather it's the actual teaching methodology as regards to language, maths, science and the failure to implement a proper subject hierarchy (for example, mathematics is clearly more important than many subjects one might think of).

The teaching programme is muddled, with little emphasis on physical abilities, communication, vocational training, science, liberal arts. It doesn't bode well for general knowledge or future work purposes.

Also mixed classes of children of different ability never work out well, with troublemakers and people with a distinct lack of talent (who may have talent for other things mind you, they must be directed to them) being allowed to hold back children of particular value. Students with a learning interest must come first.

Lastly there is the lack of disciplinary approach for both teachers and students which leads to the worsening results we are seeing. Poor teachers = poor results. At the same time, not heaping the blame on teachers here, parents have to become more active in the educational needs of their children and provide their best means of support to them. In reality teachers are only 33% of the learning process. 33% is the student. 33% is the parents. We desperately need new avenues for parental involvement in teaching beyond the biyearly parent-teacher meeting.

To say that religion or Irish is to blame is pure dogmatism in its own right. Perhaps if our students learned anthropology they could tell you that this current ideological trend is simply a product of historical culture.. nothing to do with facts. It's because religion is a fact in the real world that it must be taught in educational facilities. I'd rather our young take a look at it than to restrain them with the ideological leanings of one sort or another.

Again, I'd reiterate my other points - you can take religion and Irish out and put more of something else in, but it won't change the result. Let's begin to look at the real complications and not befuddle ourselves with another lame mule argument.

byhookorbycrook

books4sale wrote: »

I'm guessing, cause i've never heard anyone use Irish outside of Galway expect some flutes down in Oz who could only string three words together....very badly!

Errrrr....have you ever been to West Kerry, Erris,Rathcairn,Ring, Ballingeary ??Have you heard of Gaelscoileanna?

Science is being taught in primary schools since the introducation of the revised curriculum. The modern language pilot project was shelved about a year ago.

csallmighty

books4sale wrote: »

I'm guessing, cause i've never heard anyone use Irish outside of Galway expect some flutes down in Oz who could only string three words together....very badly!

Fair point, I'm from a Gaeltacht area so I think the opposite, that there are far more Irish speakers than there actually are.

Lelantos

djPSB wrote: »

See long ago before the Brits invaded, Irish people spoke Irish.

We are a nation that has been shaped by our invaders, the celtic, (old Irish) is a language brought by invaders. It morphed over many centuries into what we now class as our native (or dead) language

Rodin

books4sale wrote: »

I'm guessing, cause i've never heard anyone use Irish outside of Galway expect some flutes down in Oz who could only string three words together....very badly!

Then you need to travel a bit!
Large areas of Donegal are gaeltacht areas

Shryke

MadsL wrote: »

Wouldn't you say that someone who completed their education through French whilst a native English speaker has a (X value) better education as they are now fluent in two languages?

Being fluent in 2 languages has no bearing on subject knowledge and it does not mean they have a better education in a specific subject. 2 exclusive things, being good at a subject, speaking a language.
There are specific language subjects for a student to show a good grade in if that's their aim.

araic88

Louthdrog wrote: »

Im a science/maths teacher now. This thread has made me realize that I never studied any form of science at primary school level (Only left primary school in 2004). The closest would have been "Nature" which usually involved bringing in leaves and displaying them on a table. Never actually looked at anything scientific until first year in secondary school.

The current primary curriculum was only launched in 1999 though, and from what I hear the science inservice for teachers wasn't great. Good intentions but not the best roll-out. I was lucky that the curriculum science lecturer I had in college (late 2000's) was great and showed that lessons don't have to be daunting/take forever/require fancy resources lots of schools don't have. Now it's one of my favourite subjects to teach.
Can't say the same of religion to be fair :rolleyes: Especially when literally nearly half the children in my class aren't catholic.
I agree that there should be less time spent on religion in schools (especially the sacraments, if the parents can spend €€€€ they can help prepare the kiddies and bring them to mass.

Also, you may be right about never doing science other than nature in primary school. But maybe your teachers didnt spell it out enough -a child asked me happily a while ago why we were doing art at maths time ...we were making 3D shapes

My last waffley point - my classroom still has the ridiculous 1900s wooden desks & benches (complete with ink wells!) so even though I like teaching science, decent experiments/group activities are tricky to organise. It's one thing for the lovely RQ to want more/better science but is he going to facilitate this too?

bodice ripper

doesn't the picture look like he has just realised that the other person in the lift has a knife?

Canard

We had religion for JC, it was interesting and all you people talking about "brainwashing" are being small-minded and ignorant. You learn about morality (and not in a sanctimonious way), world religions and things like that. In LC religion we didn't do an actual syllabus because it wasn't the exam subject, and it was a nice break from actual stressful classes. On a similar note, actual LC religion has nothing to do with Christianity really and little to do with religion on the whole. A lot of it is philosophy.

While I hate Irish as much as the next person for having wasted 14 years of my life, it's not difficult (or certainly not as difficult as it's made out to be) and while I have had experience of it being taught badly, if you actually care that much it's not difficult to take out a grammar book and fix it yourself. The main thing is that people complain they were never taught basics, but they'd also complain if "after 14 years we were only taught basics over and over!!", so you can't win. Poetry and prose may be tiresome, but what's the point of studying it in a real world context when it's pretty much dead? I have to say I actually enjoyed it, it brings the language a bit of character. An Triail comes to mind.

My main problem would be that Irish starts at age 4, and any other languages much later. I learned Spanish in 5th and 6th class but it was taught worse than Irish. It'd make much more sense to start Irish in secondary school.

A little ironically, I didn't really have the choice of doing any LC science subjects because, besides the limited choice of biology and phys/chem (i.e. no physics or chemistry class by themselves), it was taught horribly. On the other hand, my school's language department was quite good (French and Spanish LC classes), but again, only one HL maths class in which no one did spectacularly. People have different abilities and no amount of extra maths classes can save someone without the aptitude, whereas someone with linguistic aptitude can do well in things like Irish which, while rather useless, engages your brain for similar things like French, Spanish or German, so I wouldn't say it's all bad...

mackerski

csallmighty wrote: »

...if we're going to give up our native language.

...I cant even manage to string a sentence together as gaeilge anymore

Doesn't sound a lot like your native language so.

Wibbs

Rodin wrote: »

If someone has been 'learning' Irish for 12 years and can barely say their name, age, and where they come from only, then they must be simple.

Or quite simply they deep down don't consider the language as part of their culture.

djPSB wrote: »

Irish is our National language and would still be our spoken language only for the Brits invaded.

You can say that about numerous languages throughout history if you go far back enough. As has been pointed out Irish itself came on the back of an invasion(cultural or actual, the jury's out). No one speaks "pict" or whatever was here previously. French came from the Italians getting all invady as they were wont to do for a time, as did Spanish. Hell English came from the low countries into a land that was speaking Pictish, British(form of Welsh IIRC), Latin (from those pesky Italians again) and yes even Irish in the northerly parts of their land.

I think it would be sad to see it die out completely.

This is a worry I see/hear from Irish language supporters on a regular basis. Funny enough speaking as someone who does not support the language the way it's being supported currently I see bugger all danger of Irish being even close to dying out. After major contractions since the 18th century and major contractions in usage since the foundation of the state even with all the compulsion and support, the language still hovers around 15-20% and I have no doubt that if you removed all it's crutches tomorrow it would stay at that level. It may even grow at a non forced grass roots level.

Solair

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Disastrous idea. Competition is how you get these organizations to perform well, if you merge them then they each effectively have a monopoly in the area and standards will go straight out the window.

What competition?

They're all paid for by the tax payer (with a bit of fund raising from parents in some cases).

Standards are low in terms of choice of subjects, quality of buildings, lack of PE facilities, lack of science facilities, lack of sports grounds, lack of psychological support services, lack of libraries... I could go on...

Conchir

Thank god someone has said this.

I'm sick to death of sitting in religion classes 120 minutes a week, where most of the time we "watch" a film of some sort. It's such a waste of time, but at least it's improved slightly; in 2nd Year, I had 5 religion classes a week.

I don't really have a problem with having Irish as a subject in school, however I think it should be changed. I'm expected to sit exams where I write about 600 words on something like "The Olympic Games, a New Outlook on Sport" or "The Link Between Drink, Drugs and Death on the Roads in Ireland". These are reasonable enough essay titles for English, but I'm fluent in English. I couldn't hold more than 5 minutes conversation as Gaeilge, yet I have to write about these topics? Irish is taught like a first language, where in reality it's a foreign language for most students. In contrast, I can speak and write a hell of a lot more in French after only 5 years learning, simply because it's taught differently (and correctly, imo). The Irish course should be changed drastically, or scrapped altogether.

BrendaN_f

slarkin123 wrote: »

I think religion should be kept out every public school. If parents are that pushed about kids having a religious education then the church should set Upanishads Sunday school type of thing. Preparation for holy communion and confirmation takes up way too much time which could have been spent on more beneficial subjects to the children.

Irish on the other hand i feel should stay. Its part of our culture and it would be sad to lose it. My dilemma when sending my first child to school was i wanted them to be fluent in their own language but every Irish school had a catholic ethos. They are in an Irish school now and i find in 3rd class most of their homework consists of learning religious prayers for communion. I had approached the principal about the possibility of my child not making her communion and it was seen as a big no no.

catholicism is also part of irish culture. both should be scrapped

Alessandra

At primary level the children are not being exposed to science on a practical level.

There is also a lack of creativity within the curriculum overall. Teachers are being constrained to follow textbooks rather than planning and delivering lessons they have prepared in relation to the needs of their class.

Having worked in both systems, I can see that UK (as well as other countries ahead of us) offer a far more inclusive and well-rounded education overall.

araic88

Eramen wrote: »

I'm going to have to go against the grain here.

It's not Irish and religion that is the problem with poor testing by students. Rather it's the actual teaching methodology as regards to language, maths, science and the failure to implement a proper subject hierarchy (for example, mathematics is clearly more important than many subjects one might think of).

The teaching programme is muddled, with little emphasis on physical abilities, communication, vocational training, science, liberal arts. It doesn't bode well for general knowledge or future work purposes.

Also mixed classes of children of different ability never work out well, with troublemakers and people with a distinct lack of talent (who may have talent for other things mind you, they must be directed to them) being allowed to hold children of particular value back. Students with a learning interest must come first.

I'm confused - the teaching programme is muddled, and should have a better hierarchy but should also have more emphasis on all these other things?? Tbh, this sounds like our parents' council who was very determined the school's results would improve, yet squawked when the staff suggested skipping the Christmas plays this year as getting them ready takes so bloody long.

I find your final paragraph really surprising. I hope you never have a child with a distinct lack of talent. I also can't really tell to what area of education you're referring to - almost all secondary schools do stream classes where possible/appropriate. Do you mean primary school children???

I spent a year of college studying abroad; for teaching practice I had a class of 10 year olds who the principal described as "the children who will grow up to work in shops, do manual labour and so on..." and another of the "bright" kids who were so competitive and stressed out. I don't know who I pitied more. Also, when I asked do children move up/down streams I was told it is possible to, but in reality it rarely happens.

In these regards I really prefer our system here. And didn't the results today suggest we're not doing so badly anyway?!!