Should Irish be made optional at schools.

Mutant z

I think the time has come to make Irish a choice subject as opposed to the compulsory one it currently is whats the point in teaching it when many students are leaving school with barely 2 words of Irish the whole thing seems a complete waste of time. Whats the point putting so much money into a subject which has little relevance to everyday life it would be better spent on PE after all health and fitness is a much bigger part of everyday life than a language which is only spoken in tiny pockets of this country. Why are so few people fluent in speaking Irish despite being taught it at school clearly something isnt working make it optional so that those who want to learn it can and those who dont can opt out of doing it, that i believe is a perfectly reasonable suggestion.

King George VI

No they just need to think of a better way of teaching it to kids and making it more attractive to want to learn. Because my Irish teacher couldn't give a bollocks about whether or not we passed.

It's an important part of our heritage. I'm happy when I see English and Irish language street signs or when I see the Nuacht on RTE. Makes me happy that the state still care about the language and still keep that tradition that is slowly fading from existence.

Mutant z

King George VI wrote: »

No they just need to think of a better way of teaching it to kids and making it more attractive to want to learn. Because my Irish teacher couldn't give a bollocks about whether or not we passed.

Thats the point isnt it why even after being taught it at school most struggle to pick it up when they can with languages such as French there's clearly a lack of interest with most students to really learn it so you wonder why it continues to be a compulsive subject surely there should be a choice on whether someone wants to learn it or not forcing it on people clearly isnt working.

riffmongous

Mutant z wrote: »

Thats the point isnt it why even after being taught it at school most struggle to pick it up when they can with languages such as French there's clearly a lack of interest with most students to really learn it so you wonder why it continues to be a compulsive subject surely there should be a choice on whether someone wants to learn it or not forcing it on people clearly isnt working.

Why do you hate the English language so much?

Fanny Wank

I'd make it optional after the junior cert personally

da gamer

Perhaps the real question ought to be should school be optional in Ireland

Barry Badrinath

The statistics say it is slowly dying.

According to the 2016 CSO figures, 1,761,420 people or 39.8% of the population surveyed were able to speak Irish.

According to the 2011 CSO figures, 1,774,437 people surveyed were able to speak Irish. A drop of over 13,000 people.

I have a basic knowledge of the language but would like to be able to speak more. I think it would be a shame to lose it completely even though I only occasionally use it.

Tbh, the people who were employed to teach me it, didnt really give a fcuk and I was quite happy with that at the time. Just the bare minimum was covered with little to no encouragement to progress. That was 20 odd years go at this stage.

Should it be made optional? I dont think so. I think it should be taught better and respected as our national language.

My OH went to an "all Irish" school and still uses Irish regularly. In my experience, these are the students who really had it "forced" on them but have thrived from it.

There is a difference in the calibre of teacher in an "all Irish" school and a regular school. Thats the issue I think.

2Mad2BeMad

Optional for LC
Would of liked to have learned it myself
But my Irish teacher came in every afternoon from 1-6th year, gave us an a4 page with irish translated to english and told to study that page while he read the Herald.
If the teacher is not bothered, why would us students be.

2Mad2BeMad

Barry Badrinath wrote: »

The statistics say it is slowly dying.

According to the 2016 CSO figures, 1,761,420 people or 39.8% of the population surveyed were able to speak Irish.

According to the 2011 CSO figures, 1,774,437 people surveyed were able to speak Irish. A drop of over 13,000 people.

I have a basic knowledge of the language but would like to be able to speak more. I think it would be a shame to lose it completely even though I only occasionally use it.

Tbh, the people who were employed to teach me it, didnt really give a fcuk and I was quite happy with that at the time. Just the bare minimum was covered with little to no encouragement to progress. That was 20 odd years go at this stage.

Should it be made optional? I dont think so. I think it should be taught better and respected as our national language.

My OH went to an "all Irish" school and still uses Irish regularly. In my experience, these are the students who really had it "forced" on them but have thrived from it.

There is a difference in the calibre of teacher in an "all Irish" school and a regular school. Thats the issue I think.

Don't forget to account for the people who think they class themselves in the catagory of being able to speak Irish but only know a few sentences
Unless I am wrong seen as I can string together a few sentences well then that number is shot by at least 1.
I reckon there is less then a million genuine fluent Irish speakers in this country.

King George VI

2Mad2BeMad wrote: »

Optional for LC
Would of liked to have learned it myself
But my Irish teacher came in every afternoon from 1-6th year, gave us an a4 page with irish translated to english and told to study that page while he read the Herald.
If the teacher is not bothered, why would us students be.

Lucky bastard, mine barely came in at all. He was always pissed.

Mutant z

Fair play to those who do want to learn it and become fluent but most never do and have no interest in it whats the point in trying to force the issue on that group when they will never speak it fluently and most will never encounter it in their day to day lives it seems completely pointless.

Barry Badrinath

2Mad2BeMad wrote: »

Don't forget to account for the people who think they class themselves in the catagory of being able to speak Irish but only know a few sentences
Unless I am wrong seen as I can string together a few sentences well then that number is shot by at least 1.

Thats the flaw with surveys I guess. Sure we could extend that to the Diaspora who can speak Irish but have left Ireland.

Its just the "most accurate" data that I know of, there may be another I am not aware of.

igCorcaigh

Fanny **** wrote: »

I'd make it optional after the junior cert personally

I don't see why any subject should be compulsory after the junior cert.

Are eigenvectors and Shakespearean sonnets so important to the life of a 17 year old?

More time should be made for essential life management skills like cooking, budgeting and civic literacy.

Barry Badrinath

Mutant z wrote: »

Fair play to those who do want to learn it and become fluent but most never do and have no interest in it whats the point in trying to force the issue on that group when they will never speak it fluently and most will never encounter it in their day to day lives it seems completely pointless.

I would wager the majority of people in Ireland encounter the Irish language on a daily basis. It's on street signs, tv, radio, print media, official State documents and forms.

Tbh, its people that have your mind set that are happy to see it fade away. This opinion probably stems from bad tutelage in schools moreso than anything else.

If taught correctly and used regularly then the contempt to learn the language will fade.

The excuse of "its hard, its pointless, I'll never use it" is weak. The same excuses can be made about Religion, Civics, Art, P.E, and pretty much all subjects.

If Irish was taught properly from 1st Class through to the Junior Cert, making it optional afterwards wouldnt be the worst idea.

blanch152

2Mad2BeMad wrote: »

Don't forget to account for the people who think they class themselves in the catagory of being able to speak Irish but only know a few sentences
Unless I am wrong seen as I can string together a few sentences well then that number is shot by at least 1.
I reckon there is less then a million genuine fluent Irish speakers in this country.

Less than a million? Probably much less than that.

http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/releasespublications/documents/population/2017/7._The_Irish_language.pdf

"73,803 said they speak it daily outside the education system, a fall of 3,382 on the 2011 figure. "

The Gaeltachts are dying as well:

"The total population of all Gaeltacht areas in April 2016
was 96,090, down 0.6 per cent from 96,628 in 2011. Of
these, 63,664 or 66.3 per cent, indicated they could
speak Irish, while 20,586 (21.4 % of the total) indicated
they spoke Irish daily outside the education system. This
represents a fall of 11.2 per cent on the 2011 daily Irish
speakers figure of 23,175. "


There is no doubt that the Irish Language Act is failing and that the Government's Irish Language policy doesn't work. However, is that the fault of the government or are their policies just delaying the inevitable decline?

waterfaerie

As both a teacher and a Gaeilgeoir, passionate about the language, I would support it being made optional for the leaving cert. However, I would want English to also be optional so that both languages are treated with equal importance.

In most other countries they have their official language as a compulsory subject but here we have two compulsory languages. If students could choose one of the official languages (Gaeilge or English) it would take a huge amount of pressure off and it would help those choosing Gaeilge to achieve a higher standard. Of course, they should also be allowed to do both if they want as well. Basically, I think one official language + maths should be compulsory and everything else optional.

As for making it optional before that, I don't think that's a good idea but it should be made more enjoyable. Something drastic does need to be done about the way it's taught.

People pushing the idea that it's a useless language is not helpful and is a huge factor in people's unwillingness to learn it. It's a very important part of our culture and it would be very sad to lose it. People's attitudes really need to change in that regard. I'm very proud to be a fluent speaker.

Owta Control

My daughter goes to a primary school where 58% of the pupils are either born outside of Ireland, or have parents born outside of the country...
English can be quite difficult for the child to learn as their native language is spoken at home.. often the children are teaching the parents how to speak English
.... I'm on the parents council and see how difficult that learning Irish is for these children..and even though I personally want the language to flourish...we can't push it upon these kids....the emphasis on Irish has to be scaled back in primary schools...and made a curriculum choice in secondary...just my own personal view

Huntergonzo

I think it should be made optional after primary school, I understand that plenty of people have an emotional attachment to Irish, but it doesn't serve any practical purpose these days. Also it's unfair on students who want to learn Irish to be stuck in a class with a load of other students who have no interest and possibly are disrupting the class, it's an unecessary distraction.

Barry Badrinath

Owta Control wrote: »

My daughter goes to a primary school where 58% of the pupils are either born outside of Ireland, or have parents born outside of the country...
English can be quite difficult for the child to learn as their native language is spoken at home.. often the children are teaching the parents how to speak English
.... I'm on the parents council and see how difficult that learning Irish is for these children..and even though I personally want the language to flourish...we can't push it upon themselves these kids....the emphasis on Irish has to be scaled back in primary schools...and made a curriculum choice in secondary...just my own personal view

So we should actively place less importance of our national language to accomodate other nationalities to learn English while they already kniw their national language?

Give Irish kids one language and let the "new Irish" learn a second? Or are you saying to exclude these kids from learning Irish?

Either way, whatever hope we have of kids learning Irish is diminished by introducing it at second level.

cycle4fun

Mutant z wrote: »

I think the time has come to make Irish a choice subject as opposed to the compulsory one it currently is whats the point in teaching it when many students are leaving school with barely 2 words of Irish the whole thing seems a complete waste of time. Whats the point putting so much money into a subject which has little relevance to everyday life it would be better spent on PE after all health and fitness is a much bigger part of everyday life than a language which is only spoken in tiny pockets of this country. Why are so few people fluent in speaking Irish despite being taught it at school clearly something isnt working make it optional so that those who want to learn it can and those who dont can opt out of doing it, that i believe is a perfectly reasonable suggestion.

Only 8,068 Irish language forms were completed in the last Census, 2016.
That tells you how many people use Irish. What a waste of hundreds of billions of euro.

Owta Control

Barry Badrinath wrote: »

So we should actively place less importance of our national language to accomodate other nationalities to learn English while they already kniw their national language?

Give Irish kids one language and let the "new Irish" learn a second? Or are you saying to exclude these kids from learning Irish?

Either way, whatever hope we have of kids learning Irish is diminished by introducing it at second level.

Didn't say any of that

cycle4fun

cycle4fun wrote: »

Only 8,068 Irish language forms were completed in the last Census, 2016.
That tells you how many people use Irish. What a waste of hundreds of billions of euro.

And that's just on your maths classes...

Sue Pa Key Pa

It's dead, bury the thing

cycle4fun

Deleted User wrote: »

And that's just on your maths classes...

Nothing wrong with my maths classes or education.

"It is estimated that we spend something around €1bn a year just teaching Irish. Other programmes add to that cost. Foras na Gaeilge supports 19 Irish promotion organisations with state funding. Television service TG4 got €32.75m in current funding from Government last year. Its audience stands at something around 2% of the population. Raidió na Gaeltachta has, it is believed, an even smaller audience though official figures are not available. It may be assumed that funding for RnaG pushes the bill for Irish language broadcasting towards the €50m mark for just these two outlets."
http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/ourview/the-irish-language--throwing-good-money-after-bad-225250.html

Add the money spent on translating things in to Irish, printing government signs and publications in to two languages etc.

rainbow kirby

Fanny **** wrote: »

I'd make it optional after the junior cert personally

Agree with this. If you've had it until age 15 you've had most of the benefits in terms of a broad general education. Leaving Cert classes would then mostly be people with a genuine interest.

Mrs OBumble

Owta Control wrote: »

My daughter goes to a primary school where 58% of the pupils are either born outside of Ireland, or have parents born outside of the country...
English can be quite difficult for the child to learn as their native language is spoken at home.. often the children are teaching the parents how to speak English
.... I'm on the parents council and see how difficult that learning Irish is for these children..and even though I personally want the language to flourish...we can't push it upon these kids....the emphasis on Irish has to be scaled back in primary schools...and made a curriculum choice in secondary...just my own personal view

Actually, the children who are strong in their mother tongue and then learn English will be in a stronger position to learn other languages, because they already have the concepts of multiple languages.

So far I've only once seen an African-origin youngster telling an Irish priest how to pronounce something in his own native language once - but I expect to see it more often over time. I almost died from suppressing the LOLs.

Many of the African adults who come here have their tribal language, French, English and maybe some others too. Many Eastern Europeans have their own language and a bit of Russian as well as a bit of English.

Yes, for some kids (with less well educated parents) Irish is difficult.

But leaving them out of it just cuts them out from job and study options down the line.

Barry Badrinath

Owta Control wrote: »

Didn't say any of that

My mistake so.

It appeared that you used immigrant / Irish kids of another origin and their parents as a reason to scale back the teaching of Irish in Primary education.

Based on the idea that they speak their native tongue and are learning / teaching their parents English and should not be expected to learn Irish as a result.

Genuinely not having a go, thats just what it looked like you said.

daheff

Absolutely

Irish, while part of our heritage isn't something that's part of everyday life.

The other thing is that it was fine to teach when the schools only had Irish people (+the odd sasanach).... But nowadays we have so many kids from different countries that it's just not fair or reasonable to expect everybody to have to learn Irish.

For one thing how can parents of these kids help them with their Irish homework? Unless these kids are quite clever we are banishing them to bad grades because of it..... And a substandard education overall(because grades dictate college places...low grades lower chance of college)

Robert Power

Look at countries like Japan, Korea,heck even Poland.
Languages that are utterly useless outside their own countries yet they are all successful functional states.
There is absolutely no reason why Irish shouldn't be fully part of the curriculum and fluency expected.

Mutant z

cycle4fun wrote: »

Only 8,068 Irish language forms were completed in the last Census, 2016.
That tells you how many people use Irish. What a waste of hundreds of billions of euro.

Exactly why waste such an obscene amout of resources when it could be put into something else like the health service perhaps.

whisky_galore

blanch152 wrote: »

Less than a million? Probably much less than that.

http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/releasespublications/documents/population/2017/7._The_Irish_language.pdf

"73,803 said they speak it daily outside the education system, a fall of 3,382 on the 2011 figure. "

The Gaeltachts are dying as well:

"The total population of all Gaeltacht areas in April 2016
was 96,090, down 0.6 per cent from 96,628 in 2011. Of
these, 63,664 or 66.3 per cent, indicated they could
speak Irish, while 20,586 (21.4 % of the total) indicated
they spoke Irish daily outside the education system. This
represents a fall of 11.2 per cent on the 2011 daily Irish
speakers figure of 23,175. "


There is no doubt that the Irish Language Act is failing and that the Government's Irish Language policy doesn't work. However, is that the fault of the government or are their policies just delaying the inevitable decline?

It's not "the government's fault"....it's peoples' fault for not being bothered. Ah shur I do love hearing it being spoken but I couldn't be arsed myself.

Arghus

I don't know if it should be made optional but there should be a serious reassessment of how it's taught. The current situation where a lot of people leave school with barely the ability to string a functional sentence of the language together, after 12 years with it on their curriculum, is an absolute disgrace.

They should focus solely on the nuts and bolts of teaching like they would any other language; in exactly the same manner they teach French, German etc, etc. Once people go to secondary school learning Irish becomes as much about all this other nonsense - bealeoidas, Diarmuid agus Grainne, seanfhocals etc,etc - and the systematic teaching of people in how to speak, write and understand it loses its primary focus in the curriculum. That's a total mistake and a sure fire way to condemn the language to a slow and unloved death. It's a common remark that people know more of whatever foreign language they've studied after five years in secondary school, than they do of Irish after over a decade of it - Irish isn't taught properly in schools.

DEFTLEFTHAND

After the Junior Cert it should be an option subject for senior cycle.

ironictoaster

I learned more Irish 2 weeks prior to my Irish oral exam than my previous 14 years of "studying" Irish. It needs to be treated like a foreign language to allow it to have a chance flourish.

It's madness to force students to study An Triail when they can barely have a conversation in Irish.

Super-Rush

Fvck sake not this again.

eviltwin

It's a disgrace that it's allowed to continue being taught in it's current form resulting in most people studying the language for 14 years and not being able to speak a word.

whisky_galore

Mutant z wrote: »

Exactly why waste such an obscene amout of resources when it could be put into something else like the health service perhaps.

Putting it into the health service is one sure fire way of p*ssing away money...that's one fcuking black hole for cash.

DEFTLEFTHAND

ironictoaster wrote: »

I learned more Irish 2 weeks prior to my Irish oral exam than my previous 14 years of "studying" Irish. It needs to be treated like a foreign language to allow it to have a chance flourish.

It's madness to force students to study An Triail when they can barely have a conversation in Irish.

I spent time in the Gaeltacht and became semi fluent over the 3 week immersion. Once out of that environment and back into the classroom my level regressed quickly.

astrofool

waterfaerie wrote: »

As both a teacher and a Gaeilgeoir, passionate about the language, I would support it being made optional for the leaving cert. However, I would want English to also be optional so that both languages are treated with equal importance.

Irish is the only compulsory subject on the curriculum, and really only because the NUI have it as a requirement, if the NUI didn't require, a lot of kids would drop it like a hot potato, even though "technically" they wouldn't pass their leaving certificate without it. Foreign students applying to NUI don't have to have it, mature students don't need it, BAC Laureate students (including Irish students) don't need it, only Irish public school students need it for application to NUI education.

astrofool

Arghus wrote: »

I don't know if it should be made optional but there should be a serious reassament of how it's taught. The current situation where a lot of people leave school with barely the ability to string a functional sentence of the language together, after 12 years with it on their curriculum, is an absolute disgrace.

This comes up again and again, the teachers of Irish are no worse or better than the teachers of other languages or subjects, changing the courses won't make people more able to speak it as they are apathetic about it in the first place (and this is because those who speak Irish a subset of those who speak English fluently anyway, so it offers no advantage in daily life).

It's not like studying Shakespeare results in a high drop out rate and hatred for English compared to the numbers complaining about An Triail. it isn't taught like French as most people should have 8 years of learning it every day, whereas most students only first learn French in first year of secondary school (and the same primary teachers were able to teach their students English/Maths/History/Geography without much issue during Primary level).

Noveight

This is hammered out 2-3 times a year on AH and I'm pretty sure every angle has been covered.

There's a huge struggle to find Irish teachers atm.

Damien360

Would it not be a whole lot better to teach conversational Irish instead of the perfect Irish we are attempting to teach. To hell with conjugate the verbs, you will correct it in conversation. If you want perfect Irish then go to 3rd level for that.

I help my kids occasionally in Irish and it hasn't changed how it was taught in 30 years. I suffered Peig and have a hatred of it that continues. Even Nuacht readers sound like Arabic readers and we were encouraged to watch it.

We have been saying change or die for years and it survives but with more people getting exemptions for various reasons it may well come to an end when it is too late to revive it.

Berserker

King George VI wrote: »

It's an important part of our heritage.

It's not really. People would speak the language, if it was an important part of your heritage.

TheQuietFella

Quite an amount of Gaelscoils have opened over the years so we'll see where this leads over the coming years!

kevin7

Berserker wrote: »

It's not really. People would speak the language, if it was an important part of your heritage.

I think that sums it up better than all the other posts here.
Its struggling to put out its last short struggling gasps of breath before death.

I love the idea of the language, and I'd love it to survive, but its dying.

Its just an artificial game now, not a live language.

Teach it to Junior Cert, and let it go then. The more interested can keep studying for academic purposes after that, and good luck to them.

Rumpy Pumpy

TheQuietFella wrote: »

Quite an amount of Gaelscoils have opened over the years so we'll see where this leads over the coming years!

It will lead to an increasing amount of parents sending their kids to these schools in an attempt to maximise the amount of points the children can get in the LC. Nothing to do with some innate love of the language.

I was listening to a piece on Newstalk recently about the future of Irish. One academic summarised it nicely when he suggested that it was the most flourishing dead language in Europe. The Kerry, Cork, and Donegal Gaeltachts are in trouble, and the Galway one is only surviving because of a 3rd level educational system in the city that actively discriminates in favour of the language. There's no one being born in Ireland at the moment who will grow up in an area where the language is spoken on a daily basis as the native tongue.

Pero_Bueno

2Mad2BeMad wrote: »

Don't forget to account for the people who think they class themselves in the catagory of being able to speak Irish but only know a few sentences
Unless I am wrong seen as I can string together a few sentences well then that number is shot by at least 1.
I reckon there is less then a million genuine fluent Irish speakers in this country.

less than a million ?

Less than a THOUSAND ...

donegaLroad

there are a lot of Polish children who have learned the language, I know one guy who achieved high grades in Irish, who is living here since he was 6 years old. He also as fluent Polish and English... and speaks with a Donegal accent

Ken.

Mod-Poll added. Results hidden till poll closes in 15 days.

waterfaerie

astrofool wrote: »

Irish is the only compulsory subject on the curriculum, and really only because the NUI have it as a requirement, if the NUI didn't require, a lot of kids would drop it like a hot potato, even though "technically" they wouldn't pass their leaving certificate without it. Foreign students applying to NUI don't have to have it, mature students don't need it, BAC Laureate students (including Irish students) don't need it, only Irish public school students need it for application to NUI education.

Can you get into university without English and maths?

cycle4fun

Fact 1. We spend / waste billions on the dead old language.

"It is estimated that we spend something around €1bn a year just teaching Irish. Other programmes add to that cost. Foras na Gaeilge supports 19 Irish promotion organisations with state funding. Add the money spent on translating things in to Irish, printing government signs and publications in to two languages etc."

Fact 2. Only 8,068 Irish language forms were completed in the last Census, 2016, in the whole country - that tells you how many people use Irish.


Wouldn't it be cheaper just to give a few hundred thousand euro a year to each Irish speaker in the country, tell them to get lost and we could then spend the rest of the money saved on housing, health, real education etc