Quinn: Schools spend too much time on religion and Irish

anncoates

After reading this thread, I think that while having primary education in the dread grip of religion and nationalism is bad enough, rendering it a simple, dull checklist for the future employment requirements of corporations isn't a whole lot better.

TheDoc

Carlos_Ray wrote: »

I find it hilarious that the common argument in Ireland against Irish is, " well why don't we learn something useful like French?" The fact is they have the opportunity to learn these languages too, but guess what.... 99% don't.

Made up stat is made up. Most secondary school pupils take a second language. Irish is considered " a second language" in the real world...

They don't learn any language because they are lazy. The fact that Irish is not widely used gives them an excuse... " We'll it's not really useful so I never bothered learning it." Yeah right..... sounds too much like hard work.

Again that's another wild assumption.

I would say the same quote as you, except I took German as its one of the most commonly used languages in trading/economical world.

Leftist

irish should be an option in secondary school. I don't understand how it could be one of the three main subjects.
Some people pick up languages well, some don't. For those of us who don't, pushing us to learn a language that we will never need to use is unacceptable.

religion should be nowhere near schools. It's an opinion and shouldnt be used on childers.

philologos

Dave! wrote: »

Replace Religion with a Critical Thinking class.

You presume these are mutually exclusive without basis

Leftist

philologos wrote: »

You presume these are mutually exclusive without basis

with basis. You're entitled to your bible but in ireland children are forced into following the catholic religious opinion.

philologos

Leftist wrote: »

with basis. You're entitled to your bible but in ireland children are forced into following the catholic religious opinion.

I grew up in Ireland and wasn't forced to follow any religion at school. Perhaps I'm an anomaly.

Critical thinking led me to my current position.

Andersonisgod

I'm not that long out of primary school (final year was 2005). Looking back, the amount of time spent on religion was ridiculous. Practically all of second class was based around preparing g the religious ceremonies for that year. Between learning and then reciting prayers, songs of praise and then being told stories (I remember one day our teacher was out and a brother subbed on for him, the whole day was spent with him telling us a variety of religious stories) and finally when the principal entered the class, as he did everyday, you would have to recite a prayer for him in Irish.

We had a Muslim kid in the school for a couple of years (second and third class) when Religion was being taught he simply had to put his head down and go to sleep. There was no non-participation from the rest of us, this was force fed down our throats from the youngest possible age (pre-school) and to us a man walking on water or turning water into wine was about as natural an everyday occurrence as multiplication.

Religion doesn't belong in the classroom, it especially shouldn't be brainwashed into children.

Leftist

philologos wrote: »

I grew up in Ireland and wasn't forced to follow any religion at school. Perhaps I'm an anomaly.

Critical thinking led me to my current position.

ohh really? did you go to a catholic school?

I smell pure b/s here.

philologos

Leftist wrote: »

ohh really? did you go to a catholic school?

I smell pure b/s here.

No I didn't. I went to a number of CofI schools from primary to secondary, at best we received very light teaching on the parables of Jesus but at no point were people forced to accept Christianity in class. No rituals were carried out during class time. For Catholics confirmations and communion class happened after we all left.

It was only when I got to the end of 5th year at school when I decided to look into Christianity for myself. I read through the whole Bible in a year out of curiosity. Before that point I was entirely agnostic on the matter.

Ush1

Religion class should be got rid of instantly. You can explain parts of it in history class in a passing way as the motivating factors for certain events or whatever.

Should defo be a computers and/or science class in primary also. People under estimate how clever young kids are, sure half of them have iphones and pcs already.

kippy

philologos wrote: »

Why not teach about how computers work? Even if that was the full extent of it, it wouldn't be bad to teach in primary school.

Also philosophy, I don't think is impossible to teach in primary schools.

Definitely in secondary schools. I remember programming stuff out of personal interest while I was a teenager and I don't think the Irish education system recognises computing / programming as a valuable means of education at least as far as the Junior and Leaving Cert are concerned.

Teaching "how computers work"? Seriously - you do realise that is an extremely difficult topic for almost any age group in primary school.

Everyone is getting caught up in all these "IT" subjects for primary and secondary school.
The basic facts of the matter however are that as a nation it would be much more beneficial to replace religion and Irish with more work in Maths, English, Basic science, Arts in primary school than delving into the moving goalposts of IT related topics. Broad basics in IT, perhaps theres a space for that in science but not too specific or indepth.

Replacing Irish with another language makes little sense to me(for multiple reasons), being honest, particularly in primary school. Secondary school, yeah, fair enough, but its not something we should be too focused on.

It is interesting that a large majority of people here advocate parents teaching their kids Irish/Religion in their own time as it doesn't fit into the idealogical requirements of those people (a point I do not disagree with) but also think that it's okay to "push" IT and language related topics on others (not seeing that if you believe a certain topic is more beneficial to you kid, YOU should look to teach them that outside of school)

I can see the logic that people are using here, but it it much more important to improve the fundamental subjects as these will lead to improvements in higher education.

Leftist

philologos wrote: »

No I didn't. .....

I think that was enough. The rest is irrelevant as I mentioned the catholic faith.

Dyr

Can we have a dungeons & dragons class, seems as how we're entertaining fantasy in schools?

philologos

Leftist wrote: »

I think that was enough. The rest is irrelevant as I mentioned the catholic faith.

You presumed wrongly. I corrected you.

Father Damo

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

In the 90s, when the church had slightly more influence on our schools/ country than it does today, we did religion about once a month maximum in my catholic national school. The rules may state we should do it 10% of the time but that stat is clearly bollocks.

philologos

kippy wrote: »

Teaching "how computers work"? Seriously - you do realise that is an extremely difficult topic for almost any age group in primary school.

Everyone is getting caught up in all these "IT" subjects for primary and secondary school.
The basic facts of the matter however are that as a nation it would be much more beneficial to replace religion and Irish with more work in Maths, English, Basic science, Arts in primary school than delving into the moving goalposts of IT related topics. Broad basics in IT, perhaps theres a space for that in science but not too specific or indepth.

Replacing Irish with another language makes little sense to me(for multiple reasons), being honest, particularly in primary school. Secondary school, yeah, fair enough, but its not something we should be too focused on.

It is interesting that a large majority of people here advocate parents teaching their kids Irish/Religion in their own time as it doesn't fit into the idealogical requirements of those people (a point I do not disagree with) but also think that it's okay to "push" IT and language related topics on others (not seeing that if you believe a certain topic is more beneficial to you kid, YOU should look to teach them that outside of school)

I can see the logic that people are using here, but it it much more important to improve the fundamental subjects as these will lead to improvements in higher education.

Teach it at a high level first, get into specifics later. You know like how most subjects are taught.

Computing has never been more important. It's silly not to give it the attention it deserves. I don't agree that it is less important per se.

kippy

philologos wrote: »

Teach it at a high level first, get into specifics later. You know like how most subjects are taught.

Computing has never been more important. It's silly not to give it the attention it deserves. I don't agree that it is less important per se.

So what ages should "computing" as a subject be introduced at and what would the curriculum be?

pickarooney

Is it about time we scrapped English in schools? Everyone already speaks it fluently by the time they start junior infants and learning off a load of old poems is no use to anyone.

kippy

pickarooney wrote: »

Is it about time we scrapped English in schools? Everyone already speaks it fluently by the time they start junior infants and learning off a load of old poems is no use to anyone.

If you were to look at the spelling, grammar and writing style of a number of teenagers you'd think differently.

pickarooney

kippy wrote: »

If you were to look at the spelling, grammar and writing style of a number of teenagers you'd think differently.

These are children who study English in school and yet have no idea how to write it, so really it's a waste of time teaching the subject. They should probably read more books in their spare time.

Min

Despite the education in religion, one would wonder if it shows that even though people get religious education they can still be ignorant when it comes to knowing stuff about religion.
This is reflected in other subjects, people get educated in reading, writing, maths, language and science but can still end up not being less knowledgeable than they should be.

I found the worse thing in schools to be students who didn't want to learn, which affected those of us who wanted to be educated.

kippy

pickarooney wrote: »

These are children who study English in school and yet have no idea how to write it, so really it's a waste of time teaching the subject. They should probably read more books in their spare time.

Nope, these kids need more time with the subject or maybe more focused time as it takes them longer to comprehend what is going on.

Kids work at different levels and different kids have aptitudes for different things, however it is important that all kids have a firm base in English and Maths at the very least. The kids who learn differently/at a slower pace in these subjects need more time spend on them in a more focused way.

Solair

CruelCoin wrote: »

HTML is dead, long live HTML5.

Teaching programming languages at such a young age is generally redundant, as more likely than not, that language will be obsolete by the time the child leaves school.

Eh, HTML 5 is just the latest version of HTML and much closer to pure HTML than many of the recent XHTML side-roads we went down! So actually HTML is very much alive and well.

HTML is also a display/layout markup language, not a programming language.

JavaScript has kind of morphed into a much more full-blown language in recent years though.

If you want to teach kids programming skills, HTML, CSS & JavaScript isn't a bad place to start though as the tools are widely available, loads of online tutorials, loads of stuff they can do and instant results they can use.

coffee_cake

I think Irish should be optional and have other languages as other options.
Definitely agree all the religious indoctrination should be removed, leave it for after school if they want it.

positron

I grew up in India and I was taught 0 minutes of religion in schools.

India's majority religion - Hindus - don't really have any sort of structured religious teaching business. I had a lot of muslim classmates, and some of them were sent to a 'madrassa', which are Islamic religious schools, run by local Islamic mosque. These madrassas were classroom like setups attached to or part of mosques, and operated on earlier in the day so as to not to conflict with the normal school hours. And they had nothing to do with normal schools that everyone attended.

There were also missionary run Christian schools (Roman Catholic, Seventh Day Adventists etc) and there they provided religious education outside normal school hours to children who are interested, again entirely outside normal school hours and nothing to do with the normal school curriculum, syllabus, tests etc.

I am 36 years old, so this is 1980s I am talking about - and in what one would consider a "third world country". When I heard about religious education in schools in Ireland, it took me a long time to adjust my perceptions of the world, people, society and democracy to accept the fact that state approved / paid-for religious education could actually still happen in this day and age, in what is supposedly a modern , developed Western European democracy with high HDI and quality of life.

Haelium

Father Damo wrote: »

we did religion about once a month maximum in my catholic national school.

And I spend most of 6th class doing religion because of our "Confirmations".

You see, there's this thing called an "average", and they're used quite a bit in statistical analysis.

COYW

bluewolf wrote: »

I think Irish should be optional and have other languages as other options.
Definitely agree all the religious indoctrination should be removed, leave it for after school if they want it.

I differ slightly in that I believe that some time should be allowed for religion, in a broad sense at primary school level. By that I mean, all faiths, both christian and non-christian should be covered. I see no harm in giving all children knowledge of the above. It will give those who go on to be "believers" or "non-believers" an understanding of different faiths and views on religion, which does no harm.

In secondary school, religion should be available as a non-compulsory subject with state level examinations. Specific religious education (RC, CoI) should be done outside school hours or in the form of a Sunday school, run by the faith in question, for students of all ages.

Irish should be a choice subject, few would argue with that nowadays. Personally, I would not encourage my children to take Irish, if they had the choice, as I believe that one of the other options would be far more beneficial to them.

On a side note, can anyone tell me if there are any signs that computing, computer programming and software development will be introduced into the curriculum in the near future?

coffee_cake

COYW wrote: »

I differ slightly in that I believe that some time should be allowed for religion, in a broad sense at primary school level. By that I mean, all faiths, both christian and non-christian should be covered.?

I said religious indoctrination, not "all religion".

None of this stuff:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=77163932&postcount=1

kippy

COYW wrote: »

I differ slightly in that I believe that some time should be allowed for religion, in a broad sense at primary school level. By that I mean, all faiths, both christian and non-christian should be covered. I see no harm in giving all children knowledge of the above. It will give those who go on to be "believers" or "non-believers" an understanding of different faiths and views on religion, which does no harm.

In secondary school, religion should be available as a non-compulsory subject with state level examinations. Specific religious education (RC, CoI) should be done outside school hours or in the form of a Sunday school, run by the faith in question.

Children should have a choice between Irish, French, German, Spanish, Polish and Italian at primary and secondary level, as L2. Personally, I would not encourage my children to take Irish, if they had the choice, as I believe that one of the other options would be far more beneficial to them.

On a side note, can anyone tell me if there are any signs that computing, computer programming and software development will be introduced into the curriculum in the near future?

Jebus I really hope that computing, computer programming and/or software development do not find their way onto the curriculum, at least before the ages of 12, any time soon.

I think there are also some very practical and cost issues around offering so many language options, but I agree more language work is required. That said one needs to look at the jobs and pay currently on offer to see that putting all eggs in the language/IT basket is not a smart move either.

laoch na mona

religon fine get rid of it but gaeilge thats part of who we are