Commissioner calls for review of Irish language teaching

ishmael whale

On the positive side, at least this amounts to some official recognition of what we all know. We’re spending €500 million a year (that’s a nursing homes crisis every four years) on teaching the Irish language, to little effect. We spent nearly €4.5 billion on first and second level education in 2003 (including capital expenditure). So we’re getting very little for an expenditure equivalent to over 10% of our expenditure on schools.

I’d say we not only need to review how Irish is taught, although it would at least be an improvement if we actually got something for all that money. But we also need to at least ask the question if this level of resourcing is justified, bearing in mind expenditure on other areas within the education sector.

http://www.breakingnews.ie/2005/03/15/story193743.html
Commissioner calls for review of Irish language teaching
The Irish Language Commissioner has reportedly called for a review of how Irish is taught in primary and secondary schools. Reports this morning said Sean O'Cuirreain had advised that such a review was essential if the State was truly committed to promoting the Irish language.

The advice is contained in Mr O'Cuirreain's first annual report as Irish Language Commissioner. This morning's reports said the document highlighted the fact that many pupils haven't even attained basic fluency in Irish despite being taught the language for 13 years.

http://u.tv/newsroom/indepth.asp?id=57883&pt=n
The first report of the Irish Language Commissioner reveals that many students do not have basic fluency in Irish, despite being taught it for 13 years.

It costs an estimated half a billion euro each year to teach Irish in primary and secondary schools.

http://www.education.ie/servlet/blobservlet/statistics_key92_03.pdf
2003 Primary expenditure €2119.7
2003 Second level expenditure €2304.8

gurramok

Very true, finally after about 60 odd years, they acnowledge the obvious.
Practically no-one of about 30 pupils in my class including me when i left school could muster a sentence in Irish.
The language is simply taught wrong, learning about Peig before actually knowing the verbs\nouns of the language was the way it was taught to me, complete failure.
I'd still support it being taught in schools if it was taught the correct way.

simu

Teaching kids how to speak the language first is the way to go. The curricula at primary and secondary should be made to follow on from each other as well - I went from doing all the tenses in 6th class to learning how to say hello in first year in secondary school!

Sponge Bob

Ireland has a pathetic record when it comes to teaching Second Languages in General , how many pesons here can muster up conversational French or Irish or German after their leaving certs ?

Compare that with the language skills of a bunch of Dutch or Swedish primary school kids who are taught English properly from the word go.

dent

Sponge Bob wrote:

Ireland has a pathetic record when it comes to teaching Second Languages in General , how many pesons here can muster up conversational French or Irish or German after their leaving certs ?

Compare that with the language skills of a bunch of Dutch or Swedish primary school kids who are taught English properly from the word go.

To be honest I can speak more Spanish after three years of secondary school teaching than I can after 13 years of Irish.

I remember having an argument with my Irish teacher in secondary school about how the language was taught. He saw nothing wrong with it and I get the feeling that he thought he as quite elite.

Really glad some change is going to be made. I think it’s more important that we learn simply to speak it than focus on the academic side of things.

Nuttzz

we would be better off teaching primary school children a working european langauge rather than Irish, Irish should be an optional langauge in secondary school.

[ Daithí ]

Nah, Nuttzz, we wouldn't.

I'm so glad they're finally copping onto this after so long. I had very little Irish two years ago and I had to teach myself. The way it's taught in school is atrocious.

Pity I'm leaving school this year. :rolleyes:

sleepwalker

its purely the way it is thought that is the problem

instead of learning off poems and stories and essays, the teaching should be 100% focused on oral skills until students can fully hold a conversation then move onto grammer and then move onto the complex stuff of poetry etc

Sponge Bob

sleepwalker wrote:

its purely the way it is thought that is the problem

Oh DEAR me !

monument

simu wrote:

Teaching kids how to speak the language first is the way to go. The curricula at primary and secondary should be made to follow on from each other as well - I went from doing all the tenses in 6th class to learning how to say hello in first year in secondary school!

I remember hearing it was something to do with different students coming to secondary school with different levels of Irish.

Gael

Fair play to the Commish. He's right. The methods are usually ****, as are the teachers. Name and shame your crap Irish teacher on www.ratemyteachers.ie
Although he didn't say anything about not making it compulsory, just changing the teaching methods Ishmael. You must be peeved.

I noticed that you conveniently didn't mention that the Commish also said in his report(The full details of which I received from Comhdháil na Gaeilge and not from news soundbites):

Mr Ó Cuirreáin has indicated that teaching Irish may cost as much as EUR500m annually although this figure would constitute a non-saveable "opportunity cost" rather than an additional cost to the State.

So I think we can discount Irish being to blame for all those poor souls lying on trollies in hospitals, although I know it's a very popular argument used against Irish in schools.
I remember once being told by a guy who hated Irish, that the state was "wasting" over two billion a year on Irish in the education system(It was Irish pounds at the time). Turns out the figure he was quoting was the cost of the entire education system! But why let some facts get in the way of an good bout of Irish-bashing.

Sleepy

I just hope that any review also questions the validity of Irish as a compulsory subject in secondary school.

And btw Sponge Bob, while I haven't more than a few words of Irish, my conversational French is pretty good for someone who hasn't had a chance to use it in a while.

Slutmonkey57b

Gael wrote:

I noticed that you conveniently didn't mention that the Commish also said in his report(The full details of which I received from Comhdháil na Gaeilge and not from news soundbites):

Mr Ó Cuirreáin has indicated that teaching Irish may cost as much as EUR500m annually although this figure would constitute a non-saveable "opportunity cost" rather than an additional cost to the State.

So I think we can discount Irish being to blame for all those poor souls lying on trollies in hospitals, although I know it's a very popular argument used against Irish in schools.

Hmm. I think YOU also glossed over the fact that this is an "opportunity cost" IN THE COMMISSIONER'S OPINION. Since he is the head of an Irish-language promotion board, it is hardly suprising that he would think this.

For those who like a spin-free explaination of opportunity cost please visit the wiki. Notice that the concept revolves around the fact that a choice is made on how to spend the money, and that the choice involves weighing up what the various options are worth in terms of opportunities missed. So while the Dear Commish might think that missing the opportunity to shove Irish down our throats whether we like it or not is worth spending €500 million a year to avoid, the rest of us may not.

The rest of us may think "hmm... We COULD spend €500m on shoving a useless language down the throats of people who don't want to speak it... or we could save somebody's life with that money by getting more nurses in... hmmm... Hmmmmm... Hmmmm...." I think I know which missed opportunity is more valuable, don't you?

And for all those who decry the teaching of Irish and the lack of "proper" structure, explain this:

English is taught in primary schools from the same age, and it doesn't have a "proper" teaching structure either. Children aren't taught grammer or theory before practice in English, just like in the "poor deprived" Irish classroom. Yet English is the dominant language of the country - to all intents and purposes, it is the only language in the country since the population does not speak Irish. Teaching is not to blame my friends. Learning a language is a choice, and students should be given the choice to stop wasting their time with it and learn something more useful. Like archaic greek for example.

Sleepy

Gael wrote:

So I think we can discount Irish being to blame for all those poor souls lying on trollies in hospitals, although I know it's a very popular argument used against Irish in schools.

An opportunity cost is still a cost. Were the same amount of time spent teaching fifth and sixth years how to drive properly how many lives would be saved? Were some of the time spent giving proper sex education, how many young girls wouldn't have their lives ruined by teenage pregnancy, 'trips to England' etc? Were some of this time spent on proper PE and health education would our hospitals be as over-run?

The fact is, Irish is of very limited use in the modern world. Even if you can argue that it's part of our culture, so are many other things that we've left, are leaving or should have left behind (religeon, ignorance, political cronyism, drinking too much etc. etc. etc.). In order to offer the next generations of this country the best possible future, Irish needs to be removed from the compulsory curriculum and the time that's currently wasted on Peig, O' Connaire et al be better invested in teaching the children of Ireland things that might actually benefit them in life.

Sleepy

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

For those who like a spin-free explaination of opportunity cost please visit the wiki. Notice that the concept revolves around the fact that a choice is made on how to spend the money, and that the choice involves weighing up what the various options are worth in terms of opportunities missed. So while the Dear Commish might think that missing the opportunity to shove Irish down our throats whether we like it or not is worth spending €500 million a year to avoid, the rest of us may not.

The rest of us may think "hmm... We COULD spend €500m on shoving a useless language down the throats of people who don't want to speak it... or we could save somebody's life with that money by getting more nurses in... hmmm... Hmmmmm... Hmmmm...." I think I know which missed opportunity is more valuable, don't you?

While I think our opinions on Irish are quite similar I think I should point out that what I believe the Commisioner is referring to is the opportunity cost of teaching another subject. The €500m a year would include the cost teacher's wages for the hours they're spending teaching Irish, overheads on the classrooms etc. As such, the opportunity cost of Irish is the loss of other subjects being taught because of the decision to teach Irish.

Slutmonkey57b

Equally, there's no reason why a portion of that €500m couldn't be redistributed outside the education budget, or in a really shocking move

(brace yourself)



Build a couple of new schools that the government has been promising to build for 20-30 years now while teachers sit in portakabins.

And again, it's the commissioner's opinion of the various choices that leads to his revelation, not anyone else's.

ishmael whale

Gael wrote:

Although he didn't say anything about not making it compulsory, just changing the teaching methods Ishmael. You must be peeved.

Not at all peeved, merely suggesting that one issue that also should be considered is what level of resourcing we should be putting into Irish. In fairness, I wouldn’t particularly expect the Irish Language Commissioner to be leading the charge to reduce the amount of time spent teaching Irish. I do acknowledge he’s doing us all a service by at least acknowledging there is a serious issue.

Gael wrote:

I noticed that you conveniently didn't mention that the Commish also said in his report(The full details of which I received from Comhdháil na Gaeilge and not from news soundbites):.

I actually didn’t see this comment. Strangely enough, I’m not on Comhdháil na Gaeilge’s mailing list. I did look for the full report yesterday, but I couldn’t find any link – and would be interested if you have a link.

As the contributors above say, I take it what he means is that, for example, at primary level the class has the same teacher doing all subjects, so if you reduce the amount of time spent teaching Irish you don’t save money that you could move to some other sector. However, reducing the amount of time spent on Irish releases resources to do other useful things within the education sector.

Gael wrote:

…. Turns out the figure he was quoting was the cost of the entire education system! But why let some facts get in the way of an good bout of Irish-bashing.

Fine, but I take it you accept that this does not apply to this discussion. We have an estimate of €500 million as the cost of teaching Irish. We can flesh this out with the useful quote you supplied above to understand that these resources involved rigidities that mean they cannot easily be transferred out of education (although, given our enormous class sizes, who’d want to). We also (finally) have some official acknowledgement that these resources are achieving very little at present .

Gael

Sleepy wrote:

An opportunity cost is still a cost. Were the same amount of time spent teaching fifth and sixth years how to drive properly how many lives would be saved? Were some of the time spent giving proper sex education, how many young girls wouldn't have their lives ruined by teenage pregnancy, 'trips to England' etc? Were some of this time spent on proper PE and health education would our hospitals be as over-run?

Irish is the reason for a high teenage pregnancy rate and road deaths?
Ok course, why didn't I see it before!

Sleepy

I see the solution to both problems as being education. Irish takes up a completely disproportionate amount of school time to it's usefulness, at the expense of education which could contribute to lowering teenage pregnancies, road deaths, juvenille delinquincy, health problems etc.

It's what's called an "indirect cause", Gael. I'd also consider the amount of time spent on Religeon during one's education in the same light.

ishmael whale

Gael wrote:

Irish is the reason for a high teenage pregnancy rate and road deaths? Ok course, why didn't I see it before!

The key issue is that resources are currently tied up in teaching Irish, with little to show for it. If you want you can avoid addressing this point by concentrating on picking up some of the looser statements made by some contributors (which still embody the essential truth that Irish consumes resources that could be used profitably for some other purpose.

Alternatively, you can follow the Commish’s lead in at least acknowledging the fact that resources are currently being wasted. I take it he suggests these resources should be better invested in teaching Irish. (I still can’t find his report on the internet.) Others take the view these resources could be used elsewhere in education.

You might recall this survey when it came out:

http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/1/63/34002454.pdf

The OECD assessment of our 15 year olds scored them as roughly the OECD average, or 17 place out of about 40 studied, for mathematical ability and much the same for problem solving ability (20 out of 40 studied). Reading we’re doing better – placed 6, and categorised as statistically significantly above OECD average.

It might be some comfort that we’re doing no worse than average, but if we really see ourselves as progressing on the basis of being a highly skilled population engaged in cutting edge technology, we’d want to be doing a lot better than this. The OECD report basically says educationally we’re doing better than places like Brazil and worse than places like Finland. I don’t regard that as a cause for complacency.

Now we can (hopefully) finally acknowledge on the basis of the Commissioner’s report that the money spent on Irish isn’t contributing to our educational levels. (Unless we’re going to make some tortuous effort to suggest that wasting an amount of classroom time failing to equip people with the basics of Irish in some way magically makes them great readers.)

So the message is clear enough. If we spent less time teaching Irish, we wouldn’t really be making things any worse for the language – because we’re not achieving much on that front in any event. This would release teaching time to invest in mathematics and problem solving skills, where we’re not excelling.

(incidently this topic is also the subject of today’s Irish Times poll here:
http://scripts.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/regularvote.cfm?pollid=1835)

Slutmonkey57b

Gael wrote:

Irish is the reason for a high teenage pregnancy rate and road deaths?
Ok course, why didn't I see it before!

Feel free to ignore both Sleepy's point and the commissioner's point. The point is not that people are dying as a result of teaching Irish, it's that a choice is made to teach Irish at a cost of €500m p.a. There are other, perhaps more useful ways of spending all or some of that €500m either within the education sector or by redistributing the budget elsewhere. Sex education or driver's education are merely two examples. If you don't think that sex education is as worthwhile as Irish education, I'd love to hear your argument for it.

simu

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

There are other, perhaps more useful ways of spending all or some of that €500m either within the education sector or by redistributing the budget elsewhere. Sex education or driver's education are merely two examples. If you don't think that sex education is as worthwhile as Irish education, I'd love to hear your argument for it.

Sex education is already taught in schools and besides, you need far less time to teach that than you need to teach a language. As for driver's ed, that might be an idea but you're hardly going to start that in junior infants - it would work best as a module in Transisition Year imo. And still plenty of room for Irish. Whilst it's important to teach some practical skills at school, it's just as important to teach kids things of cultural, intellectual and imaginative value imo.

Slutmonkey57b

Then why not teach Greek and get the kids reading Socrates, Plato and Homer instead of Peig?

Is sex education being taught well, or could it be taught better, with more resources perhaps?

Or, as I pointed out, build some new schools.
Ask the kids:

"Would you rather sit here and be forced to learn a language you're never going to use, or would you like not to have to sit in a leaking portakabin and have a choice about learning the language nobody speaks?"

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Hmmmmm.

You are of the opinion that Irish is a good investment. The amount of people that cannot speak Irish after decades of forced learning and propaganda suggests otherwise.

abccormac

English is taught in primary schools from the same age, and it doesn't have a "proper" teaching structure either.

Most kids can speak english when they start school. :eek:

We spend lots of money teaching shakespeare, history, art , music, poetry, and all sorts of other subjects which have no tangible economic benefits. Why does nobody ever get their knickers in a twist over these subjects? I despised irish in secondary school, and left with a very poor grasp of the language. I agree with the posters questioning the way in which the language is taught in secondary schools, but I cannot understand why people are so vehemently opposed to it being taught at all. Education is about a lot more than preparing somebody to go into a job, there is an important cultural and social aspect to it aswell.

"Would you rather sit here and be forced to learn a language you're never going to use, or would you like not to have to sit in a leaking portakabin and have a choice about learning the language nobody speaks?"

To blame the state of school buildings directly on the teaching of Irish is laughable. There shouldn't have to be a choice, we should be able to afford both. Why not drop art or music while we're at it?

You could make exactly the same arguments about the teaching of music or art or english poetry, drama and literature as people have been making about the teaching of Irish. In fact vast majority of people are never going to need to use most of the maths they learn in secondary school, the basiscs they learn in primary would be enough, so why not make maths optional aswell?

Slutmonkey57b

abccormac wrote:

Most kids can speak english when they start school. :eek:

And why is that? I thought irish was only unpopular because of inferior teaching?

It's because English is our first language. So if your argument is "well they go into school speaking English", then I suggest you give out to every parent in the nation for not teaching their kids Irish.

To blame the state of school buildings directly on the teaching of Irish is laughable. There shouldn't have to be a choice, we should be able to afford both. Why not drop art or music while we're at it?

You could make exactly the same arguments about the teaching of music or art or english poetry, drama and literature as people have been making about the teaching of Irish. In fact vast majority of people are never going to need to use most of the maths they learn in secondary school, the basiscs they learn in primary would be enough, so why not make maths optional aswell?

Your point is deeply flawed:
* Art and Music are optional. Irish is not.
* People who choose to study Art and Music come out of it with some decent standard of knowledge or ability. We shove Irish down people's throats for 14 years and they still don't know it.
* English is not only our first language, it is the language in which a huge amount of the world's great art is written in. Suggesting we dump Peig is not the same as suggesting we dump Shakespeare. If you don't think knowedge of Shakespeare is economically advantageous, then you might not be aware of how many people have made a living reinterpreting, restaging, or filming his works.
* Teaching advanced mathematics at least provides a basis for more people to go into engineering disciplines, something the world needs. They may not choose to go into that field, but at least they have a basic knowledge so they have the choice.

Nobody is "blaming Irish" for the state of school buildings. Repeating a false statement someone else has already made does not make it true.
I am criticising the amount of money wasted on Irish which could be put to better use. The money is wasted in my opinion - my opinion, however is backed up by the fact that after 80 years of propaganda and billions of pounds/euro thrown at it, the language is still to all intents and purposes, dead.

Slutmonkey57b

abccormac wrote:

There shouldn't have to be a choice, we should be able to afford both. Why not drop art or music while we're at it?

You must be referring to the "Infinate Pot of Money" that the government can dip into whenever the leprechauns let them. All government departments have a budget. Resources are shared. In the case of Irish, a huge amount of resources are being used to no good effect. We probably could afford both - if Irish were made optional, or dropped in secondary school.

abccormac

English is not only our first language, it is the language in which a huge amount of the world's great art is written in. Suggesting we dump Peig is not the same as suggesting we dump Shakespeare. If you don't think knowedge of Shakespeare is economically advantageous, then you might not be aware of how many people have made a living reinterpreting, restaging, or filming his works.

And now we get to the crux of it. There is no great art in Irish. Have you ever read the tain? the midnight court? any one of the great many other Irish literary works? And can you provide some figures to back up your assertion that the teaching of Shakespeare is economically advantageous?

Teaching advanced mathematics at least provides a basis for more people to go into engineering disciplines, something the world needs. They may not choose to go into that field, but at least they have a basic knowledge so they have the choice.

And teaching Irish provides a basis for people to go into jobs which require it, such as teaching,(24,700 jobs at primary level according to the c.s.o. ) or the irish language media. You still haven't explained why maths should be compulsory and Irish shouldn't.

ishmael whale

abccormac wrote:

You still haven't explained why maths should be compulsory and Irish shouldn't.

It might have something to do with the way that if the OECD turn up to assess your educational levels they regard maths, reading and problem solving as the indicators to use. They might do this because a holy man told them this was what to do after inspecting the entrails of a chicken. Or it might be simply what we know to be intuitively clear. Could most of us get through the week without having a level of basic competence in maths? Or if we were unable to read English? Not unless we happened to be a hermit living on a diet of nuts and berries (in which case we're probably not looking at this thread.) Do most of us get through the week without Irish ? Yes.

Bear in mind its not a case of choosing between teaching Irish and not teaching Irish. Its simply we're spending a whole pile of money and failing to achieve anything with it. By all means lets improve the way we teach Irish. Buts lets spend less doing it, too.

the_syco

Sleepy wrote:

An opportunity cost is still a cost. Were the same amount of time spent teaching fifth and sixth years how to drive properly how many lives would be saved? Were some of the time spent giving proper sex education, how many young girls wouldn't have their lives ruined by teenage pregnancy, 'trips to England' etc? Were some of this time spent on proper PE and health education would our hospitals be as over-run?

Maybe they should revise the sex ed. The sex ed in my school was fairly good, but it's not a stanterdised sex ed, thus some schools have a crap sex ed, some have a good one.

=-=

Or, or, you want a way to rake in lots of money? Make a law that states the f*cking politicans can't VOTE themselves a pay rise. I'd say if we made them reverse the last one, we'd have enough to build a few schools...

=-=

Sleepy wrote:

I see the solution to both problems as being education. Irish takes up a completely disproportionate amount of school time to it's usefulness, at the expense of education which could contribute to lowering teenage pregnancies, road deaths, juvenille delinquincy, health problems etc.

It's what's called an "indirect cause", Gael. I'd also consider the amount of time spent on Religeon during one's education in the same light.

Actually, its religon, and ONLY RELIGON that is the cause of teenage pregnancies.

Love to know how teaching any subject somehow causes a car to crash. :eek:

=-=

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

The amount of people that cannot speak Irish after decades of forced learning and propaganda suggests otherwise.

The amount of people (adults, etc) who can't read is also staggering.

=-=

I have to go now. I'll be back to continue on later. Note to self; didn't get to read the last 5 posts.

Sleepy

the_syco wrote:

Maybe they should revise the sex ed. The sex ed in my school was fairly good, but it's not a stanterdised sex ed, thus some schools have a crap sex ed, some have a good one.

Which is a result of a lack of funding, n'est pas?

Or, or, you want a way to rake in lots of money? Make a law that states the f*cking politicans can't VOTE themselves a pay rise. I'd say if we made them reverse the last one, we'd have enough to build a few schools...

Completely off-topic but I agree with you. TD's salaries should be index linked to the rate of inflation.

Actually, its religon, and ONLY RELIGON that is the cause of teenage pregnancies.

That makes no sense, either as a stand-alone statement or in the context of this thread.

Love to know how teaching any subject somehow causes a car to crash. :eek:[/SIZE]

Re-read the posts about opportunity cost. We have terrible drivers in Ireland because no proper driver's education is provided or enforced. If this were made part of the Leaving Certificate curriculum, we'd have better drivers. Better drivers would result in less road accidents, which would result in less unnecessary deaths. If Irish were not compulsory in schools, far fewer students would be taking it, thus freeing up resources for more important education such as sex education, drivers education, IT, etc.

I really can't put that in any more simplistic terms for you. It would appear that your devotion to Irish in school was to the detriment of your English comprehension skills

simu

Sleepy wrote:

Which is a result of a lack of funding, n'est pas?

No, poor sex-ed is due to Catholic ideology prevailing in some schools. The classes are timetabled, the teacher is there but they decide to tell you that condoms don't work* or some such propaganda instead of teaching you sex facts.

*I know are not 100% safe but they're still pretty effective.

ishmael whale

simu wrote:

No, poor sex-ed is due to Catholic ideology prevailing in some schools.

From what I can gather there are fewer Irish teenagers giving birth than in the UK, which in turn has far fewer than the US. So blaming it on religious control of education seems misplaced. Indeed, thirty years ago, when religious control would have been stronger, unmarried Irish teenagers produced babies more rarely than Pandas in captivity.

Equally, it seems to be Scandanavian countries and the like that have low rates of teenage pregnancy and they are also reputed to have frank sex education. But there’s more to this issue than more sex education and condoms = fewer pregnancies.

I don’t hold the time wasted failing to teach pupils Irish as responsible for teenage pregnancy. I do hold the resources wasted as partly responsible for the mediocre performance of our students at the OECD survey of maths and problem solving skills.

simu

ishmael whale wrote:

From what I can gather there are fewer Irish teenagers giving birth than in the UK, which in turn has far fewer than the US. So blaming it on religious control of education seems misplaced. Indeed, thirty years ago, when religious control would have been stronger, unmarried Irish teenagers produced babies more rarely than Pandas in captivity.

I'm not saying there is a huge problem with teen births here. Overall, there is some level of sex-ed in most schools in the country plus people get information from other sources. However, some teachers are still too embarassed or conservative to teach sex-ed (due to religion) and this is the biggest problem of a not all that problematic area.

I don't know about Pandas but the existence of Magdalen Laundries suggests that teenage births were well-hidden rather than non-existent in the past.

I don’t hold the time wasted failing to teach pupils Irish as responsible for teenage pregnancy. I do hold the resources wasted as partly responsible for the mediocre performance of our students at the OECD survey of maths and problem solving skills.

I don't think it's necessary to devote more time to maths - they should teach it better though. When I was taught maths, there was no consistency or discussion of the reasons that people bothered to invent maths in the first place. You do one mathematical topic after another and while they all have some things in common, they seem a bit haphazard as well, so it's hard to remember them come exam-time. Also, the myth that you are either good at maths or not should be destroyed - teachers are all too quick to relegate some students to pass classes when they might understand the topics if more effort was made and they believed they had the ability to do well.

i think most of the problems in our education system come down to poor teaching methods rather than time shortages. I'm not blaming teachers here - they can only work with the curricula they are given to follow.

ishmael whale

simu wrote:

I don't know about Pandas but the existence of Magdalen Laundries suggests that teenage births were well-hidden rather than non-existent in the past.

http://www.cso.ie/releasespublications/documents/vitalstats/2002/annualreport_2002.pdf
If you look at table 2.1 in the publication above you can see that births outside marriage (not the same as unwanted pregnancies, but close enough for our purposes) stayed below 4% of total births until 1980 when they shot up to 9% (ironically following the first Irish family planning act.) They currently stand at about 30%. This is not definitive, and makes no split between teenagers and others, but still a reasonably clear picture is that there are more unplanned pregnancies now.

simu wrote:

I don't think it's necessary to devote more time to maths - they should teach it better though. .

I accept that additional classroom time is not necessarily the whole answer, but I’d hesitate before ruling it out.

If someone (in this case the Irish language commissioner) points out that we are spending a considerable amount of time and resource on teaching Irish and achieving very little with it, I would feel like I’ve found a fiver in my pocket. I would not assume that the amount of time spent on Irish must be correct and that all we need to address is how we fill that time. Look on it this way, if they got the content so wrong for so long what’s the basis for saying they got the resource level right?

It would seem clear to me that a potential solution might involve allocating an amount of time and resource away from Irish, where its achieving so little, towards maths and problem solving where there is a need to achieve.

Sponge Bob

A potential solution might involve revising the curriculum from Primary school up to ensure that spoken skills take primacy . The state is afraid to admit , however, that the teaching of spoken Irish is not practised in some primary schools despite the fact the the Primary teachers are supposed to be trained in Irish and that the same Primary teachers refuse to implement their own curriculum. Their Inspectors then refuse to ask questions which would force them to act . The teachers know they wont and breach their obligation to teach the curriculum even more, etc etc.

As a consequence of this the secondary curricilum has been dumbed down badly to deal with frequent non-implementation of the Primary School curriculum by Primary schools. .

If the state admits , tacitly or otherwise, that their own staff in National schools are being a la carte with the curriculum then who knows where that will lead. Many myths have been propounded about our 'first rate' education system in ireland but thats all they are in many cases, myths.

The reality is ugly . The reality in math is particularly ugly .

Lots of sacked primary teachers (for incompetence and breach of contract) would be a great help .

abccormac

Could most of us get through the week without having a level of basic competence in maths? Or if we were unable to read English?

You get the basic competence in primary school, I was talking abiut second level.

Slutmonkey57b

abccormac wrote:

And now we get to the crux of it. There is no great art in Irish. Have you ever read the tain? the midnight court? any one of the great many other Irish literary works? And can you provide some figures to back up your assertion that the teaching of Shakespeare is economically advantageous?

And is any of that on the syllabus? Oh, no it isn't. And before perfidious albion is blamed for that, the propagandists in the Irish departments of the government have had 80 years to put whatever they like on the curriculum, so it isn't down to the "denigration" of Irish by historical factors. As was pointed out elsewhere, the Czech republic has successfully re-invigorated its own language in only 15 years after living under the most brutal and far-ranging repression of modern times. The Gaelgoirs have been brainwashing us for 80 and have got nowhere.

I never said there was no great Irish language art (though I'd be hard pressed to believe it since the language simply doesn't have the depth of vocabulary that English, Greek, Latin, German, Mandarin, or Japanese has to express itself in), what I said was that the teaching of English literature gives students access to a body of work that is massive and practically unparalleled in its scope and depth and beauty. The same can not be said, however optimistic you are, of Irish.

And teaching Irish provides a basis for people to go into jobs which require it, such as teaching,(24,700 jobs at primary level according to the c.s.o. ) or the irish language media. You still haven't explained why maths should be compulsory and Irish shouldn't.

Haaaaaaaaah! Oh that's funny.

And tell, me, dear friend, why do those jobs "require" Irish?

Why, because the Gaelgoir nazis have forced an Irish requirement into those jobs! Why would a teacher need to understand Irish in order to teach any subject on the syllabus apart from Irish? They wouldn't.

And why is there an Irish language media?

Why, because the Gaelgoir nazis have hijacked my licence fee to pay for TG4 and other Irish propaganda outlets that would never survive on their own two feet!

abccormac

(though I'd be hard pressed to believe it since the language simply doesn't have the depth of vocabulary that English, Greek, Latin, German, Mandarin, or Japanese has to express itself in)

Do you have any facts to back that up or is it just something you made up off the top of your head? I suggest you get hold of heaneys translation of the tain, and have a look.

And tell, me, dear friend, why do those jobs "require" Irish?

Why, because the Gaelgoir nazis have forced an Irish requirement into those jobs! Why would a teacher need to understand Irish in order to teach any subject on the syllabus apart from Irish? They wouldn't.

Primary school teachers teach all subjects, if irish is to be a part of the curriculum at all, the Irish language would still be a requirement for them. There are other aspects to the Irish language media other than tg4. There are several Irish language newspapers in circulation. Many english language radio stations have an irish language news slot.

My point , which you seem to have missed is that we seem much quicker to condemn Irish as a waste of time than other subjects,such as art or music which have little or no tangible point. I have never seen somebody call on art or music to be removed from the school curriculum, but people regularly give out about how we are wasting resources teaching irish to our children. I know that Irish is the only one of these subjects which is compulsory at second level, but both art and music are taught at primary level, were students don't have any choice in what they learn. Whats the difference?

Maths is also compulsory at second level, rightly so imo, but the majority of people will never need most of it. I haven't solved a simultaneous equation, or done any differential calculus since I did my leaving ten years ago, but I still don't think I wasted my time learning maths. I haven't read any english poetry
sice then either, but I don't think studying it was a waste either. Both subjects broaden your horizons to some extent. My irish now is quite poor, but I am very grateful that I was forced, against my will at the time, to study it. Like it or not the language is a part of who we are as a people and as a state. If we make it optional in schools it will die completely very quickly. If you're happy with that, then fair enough, but I wouldn't be.


And the constant references to nazis and propaganda makes you sound like a spoilt teenager throwing a tantrum by the way.

Slutmonkey57b

Propaganda is exactly what the gaelgoirs use to promulgate their message so I've no qualms about using that phrase. Although I'll admit the nazi comment is in humerous mode.

Again you're ignoring the fact that I have removed your arguments. You state that Primary teachers have to have Irish because it's compulsory, ergo Irish is useful. You state the Irish media requires Irish speakers, ergo Irish is useful.
How many times must I point out that the only reason these things exist is because they are artificially forced into existance? You're not backing up your point here, you're backing up mine.

If you think learning Art and Music serve no purpose you have no conception of basic brain function, learning theory, and even the obvious point that some students are creative rather than academic.

Slutmonkey57b

If you don't believe me that the vocabulary of the Irish language is sparse (as even the most ardent Irish fan I know has been forced to admit), then here's a siple test for you:

Get the most comprehensive dictionary of the Irish language you can find.
Then get a copy of the full Oxford English Dictionary.
See which is bigger.

I'll give you a hint: after over 150 years of study, the OED is on its Second Edition. It contains over 400,000 definitions, is made of 20 volumes and takes up four feet of shelf space.

If you still don't believe me, then how about this: Lets make up a list of the 1,000 greatest works of literature in both languages. I'm willing to bet that there aren't 1000 great works of Irish literature. So let's be fair. Let's restrict it to great works of literature produced since the artificial revival of Irish in the 1880's. Let's see which language has produced a more impressive body of work.

I'm not simply trying to denigrate the Irish language here (that's quite easy), I'm trying to leave you with a very simple point:
Irish is a marginal language.
It has very little real-world support.
It has very little to offer us in and of itself.
It does NOT define who we, as Irish people are, in the 21st century.

If the gaelgoirs of the world would simply accept this, and work on promoting the language on the basis of which it actually exists then they would have an easier job of it. Persisting in the fiction that it is our "official" language, that the Gaeltacht is a success, that it is an integral part of our lives, merely exposes them to quiet ridicule. We all listen to it, and most people (except for people like me) pay all these precepts lip service, but deep down, we all know that a) they're not true and b) we're not going to do anything to change it.

If they want to promote the language, they have to do a better job of it.
Making artificial uses for it does not promote it. Throwing money at it is a spectacular failure. Forcing people to learn it in school is equally a failure. But there will never be an honest reappraisal of what the Irish language is, or how it can be promoted, without accepting the reality of the situation. Bashing teachers, or curriculums, or perfidious albion, while ignoring the truth of what Irish actually is to us in the 21st century, only gives people like me more ammunition to shoot it down.

Slutmonkey57b

Sponge Bob wrote:

Many myths have been propounded about our 'first rate' education system in ireland but thats all they are in many cases, myths.

The reality is ugly . The reality in math is particularly ugly .

Very true.

Lots of sacked primary teachers (for incompetence and breach of contract) would be a great help .

Lots of sacked gaelgoirs from government-sponsered propaganda waffle pits would be more useful, and probably a much bigger wage saving given what teachers get paid.

ishmael whale

I read this and I couldn't help thinking that at least there's some benefit derived from spending €27 million teaching English to foreign pupils, and I'd expect the pupils are least interesting in learning the subject.

Where's the sense of outrage about the €500 million that's being largely wasted failing to teach Irish to English speakers?

http://www.examiner.ie/pport/web/ireland/Full_Story/did-sghHv6-KlZvycsgdq-nXlDAyFE.asp

Teaching English to foreign pupils costs €27m

By Niall Murray, Education Correspondent
THE Government is spending €27 million a year on language support for non-English speaking children being taught in Irish schools.

The money pays for 600 teaching staff who provide additional English classes for pupils, at primary and secondary level, whose first language is not English.

Schools are approved for a language support teacher if they have between 14 and 27 pupils not from English-speaking countries. An extra staff member can be appointed for 28 or more such students. There are at least 8,400 students in primary and secondary education who do not speak English as a first language, but the Department of Education does not keep a record of the exact number of children involved.

However, a spokesperson said a further 2,000 children are helped by grants of €2.5m for part-time teachers in schools with up to 13 non-national pupils...

Andrew 83

I think the Leaving Cert Irish course that currently stands is excellent (I was in the first year to complete it in 2001, I can't speak for the pre-2001 LC course which many of you may have done) but the problem is, as many of you ahve eluded to, that some people don't have a good enough mastery of the language before they go into 5th year.

What I would do to fix it is this:

a) reinstate the old system whereby Infants was taught through Irish, I don't know why they ever got rid of this. Teaching can then be either through English or Irish from 1st class onwards.

b) place a lot more influence on oral speaking. When I was in primary school we spent a couple of hours each day in class discussions as Gaeilge all the way through school. It meant I had a better grasp of the language at 12 than many of my friends at 18. That needs to be done in all primary schools and then in secondary school classes it needs to be the same as well. The same goes for French, German etc as well. The reason English is learnt so well by people in toher countries is that they watch American films, Tv etc. This means they interact with the spoken word a lot more, this needs to be replicated with a higher emphasis on the oral side of things. If you can speak the language well grammar can become second nature before you try to teach it.

ishmael whale

Andrew 83 wrote:

a) reinstate the old system whereby Infants was taught through Irish, I don't know why they ever got rid of this. Teaching can then be either through English or Irish from 1st class onwards.

I think you probably have a point regarding the need to concentrate on the spoken language, but bear in mind that frequently parents will not have a good knowledge of Irish. That's certainly one reason why there would be resistance to teaching infants through Irish. Parents, or at least engaged parents, will want to know what their children are learning so they can support it at home.

While we're not operating from complete year zero, I think whatever revised policy might be put in place needs to recognise that Irish language teaching is happening in a context where a very significant portion,and possibly most, of the population have no real command of the language.

pork99

dent wrote:

I remember having an argument with my Irish teacher in secondary school about how the language was taught. He saw nothing wrong with it and I get the feeling that he thought he as quite elite.

There's the crux of the problem. In teaching generally there's no accountability. Teachers get their big benchmarked pay rises because they have a powerful union. The fact that there has been only one teacher dismissed for incompetence in the last, I think, 5 years would seem to indicate that they believe that they deserve greater than private sector level salary rises without the ruthless competition and insecurity of employment you have in private companies*. So yes teachers generally think they are an elite who are above criticism & accountability.

*I know this from talking to one or two teachers

The other side of it is that as an Irish speaker in the education system & state employment you get privileges. If everyone spoke fluent Irish it would no longer be a privilege. Given the poor standard of Irish teaching the best way of becoming an Irish speaker is to be born into an Irish speaking family. This makes it a sort of hereditary privilege. So from your teacher's point of view the current situation is just fine. It's in his interest, his kids will have an advantage over the other plebs so why would he want that to change? :rolleyes:

Time Magazine

pork99 wrote:

There's the crux of the problem. In teaching generally there's no accountability. Teachers get their big benchmarked pay rises because they have a powerful union. The fact that there has been only one teacher dismissed for incompetence in the last, I think, 5 years would seem to indicate that they believe that they deserve greater than private sector level salary rises without the ruthless competition and insecurity of employment you have in private companies*. So yes teachers generally think they are an elite who are above criticism & accountability.

*I know this from talking to one or two teachers

The other side of it is that as an Irish speaker in the education system & state employment you get privileges. If everyone spoke fluent Irish it would no longer be a privilege. Given the poor standard of Irish teaching the best way of becoming an Irish speaker is to be born into an Irish speaking family. This makes it a sort of hereditary privilege. So from your teacher's point of view the current situation is just fine. It's in his interest, his kids will have an advantage over the other plebs so why would he want that to change? :rolleyes:

After also speaking to one or two teachers, namely my mother who's done it for 40 years and my two sisters, they're not elitist. People have no idea how sh*t a job it can be, and how crappy the pay really is until you're made permanent. While you're TPT or whatever you're on absolutely crap money. I know for one, that my sister at 25, with 4 years' experience on top of an honours degree in education (not yer standard B.A.) had to get a summer job in a hotel.

Lack of accountability =/= elitism.

pork99

Angry Banana wrote:

People have no idea how sh*t a job it can be, and how crappy the pay really is until you're made permanent. While you're TPT or whatever you're on absolutely crap money.

Even if the money is crap (I could be wrong but don't we have the highest paid teachers in Europe?) once you are in you have 4 months paid holiday a year and a guaranteed pension don't you?

Evidently teachers cannot be fired. I've had the experience of turning up for work, in a job which as far as I was concerned was a "permanent" job, and finding myself out of a job before 11 am. No warning. Just "thank you very much we no longer need you". If that happened to a teacher their union would have someones gonads on a plate within 24 hours.

It was a badly run company which was losing money so me and my colleagues who found ourselves out of a job paid for someone else's incompetence. Teachers do not even seem to ever have to face any consequences if they're incompetence. If only one teacher over the last 5 years gets fired for poor performance then there must be a lot of dead-wood being carried in that profession.

I'm not picking on teachers - they're only one profession/service among others in this country, legal, medical, transport etc which needs a good root up the arse, a good shake out of the dead-wood.

jank

If you don't believe me that the vocabulary of the Irish language is sparse (as even the most ardent Irish fan I know has been forced to admit), then here's a siple test for you:

Actually, a group of world leading academics reported recently that Irish is one of the best descriptive languages in the world.....

As with everything what you put into it, you get out of it. Irish people are famous throughout the world for putting themselves and their culture down. The language itself is usually on the top of the list.

And what is with all this compulsory talk. Isn't History, geography compulsory for all but the last 2 years of your formal education?

It is also statistically proven that children who attend Gaelscoils achieve much more and better throughout their 2nd level education.

One more point. Around 60 years ago Hebrew was a long dead and ancient language. Now its the No1 spoken language in Israel. Now thats an achievement. But the thing is Israelis/Jews knew how important ones culture and language is to them and how important ones self identity is to them especially when they were almost gassed to extinction.

Its a pity we dont have the same pride in our selfs.

As I said we are the only country in the world with this language, but yet we spit on it, kick it, **** on it any time we can rather then trying to embrace it the best way we can. Sure its not a perfect situation but what is?

Be a philistine if you want but I know what I am.

ishmael whale

The main theme in this thread, as I see it, is that we’re spending €500 million teaching Irish, and not getting anything for it. That’s finally received some official recognition in the shape of the Commish accepting that, at the end of the process, students emerge with no real knowledge of Irish. This experience is not shared in other subjects – as per people acknowledging that they are able to fumble in French even though they spent less time learning it.

So Irish might be the most descriptive language in the world, whatever that means, and wonderful in every respect. That’s not the point. The point is we’re spending a big squad of money failing to teach people Irish.

jank wrote:

Irish people are famous throughout the world for putting themselves and their culture down.

jank wrote:

Be a philistine if you want but I know what I am.

This assumes that the Irish language is an essential part of Irish culture. Many of us feel this is not the case. The work of Irish writers in English, GAA, Irish music and now even Irish dance all have an active following. It’s the language that has trouble touching many Irish people.

jank wrote:

And what is with all this compulsory talk. Isn't History, geography compulsory for all but the last 2 years of your formal education?.

The compulsion element has been watered down, but Irish still takes up a sizeable portion of the primary curriculum. And as I understand it, you still need to pass a proficiency test in Irish before you are allowed to teach science to English speakers.

jank wrote:

It is also statistically proven that children who attend Gaelscoils achieve much more and better throughout their 2nd level education.

Gaelscoils also benefit from lower pupil teacher ratios, so its not necessarily indicating that a training in the Irish language opens the mind to learning.

If you want, we can relabel every primary school in the country a ‘Gaelscoil’. Then we’ll have the same number of teachers only with classes needing to be conducted in a language alien to most of the pupils and their families. Do you think that would be a good foundation for second level education?

Part of the problem with Irish language teaching in Ireland has been an unwillingness to accept that they are teaching it to a population that frequently, and probably mostly, has no substantial knowledge of it. It needs to be taught in the same way as a foreign language. Maybe then we’d see some return from the money we’re investing. And maybe we could do it for less than €500 million.

Alun

ishmael whale wrote:

Part of the problem with Irish language teaching in Ireland has been an unwillingness to accept that they are teaching it to a population that frequently, and probably mostly, has no substantial knowledge of it. It needs to be taught in the same way as a foreign language. Maybe then we’d see some return from the money we’re investing. And maybe we could do it for less than €500 million.

This is so true! As a 'foreigner' only recently having arrived in Ireland, and having something of a talent for languages, I thought I'd try and learn a little Irish, out of curiosity more than anything. What a disaster! Basically no-one here seems to know how to teach the language from scratch, and certainly not in any kind of structured way. Start asking about aspects of grammar and glazed expressions and "you don't need to know that" are the order of the day. Absolutely hopeless!

jank

The main theme in this thread, as I see it, is that we’re spending €500 million teaching Irish, and not getting anything for it

Well on one point id like to know more about this 500 million euro. UTV quote it but dont back up a source. 2nd whats a good return for one is not for another. True something needs to be done but how do you measure teaching? Its impossible

This experience is not shared in other subjects – as per people acknowledging that they are able to fumble in French even though they spent less time learning it.

You would be surprised how may people are able to fumble their way in Irish too but are less likely to attempt mainly because there is a shame factor with speaking it, which I will never understand.

This assumes that the Irish language is an essential part of Irish culture. Many of us feel this is not the case

Some think that GAA is culture others think its a few guys with sticks battering the **** out of each other on a field. Each to their own to their own however it is our sport as is Irish is our language. Unique in every sense.

Thing is you just proved my point 10 times over. If one doesnt assume his own native language, a language that is spoken nowewhere else in the whole world, is not an important part of the culture of ireland, then we live in a sad country. It seems that Irish people have no pride anymore in what belongs to them.

Saying that Irish is not an essential part of the Irish culture is truly one of the most idiotic comments I have heard about this subject or anything in a long time. Honestly come on!
Welsh is not an important part of Wlesh culture or Flemish is not an important part of Belgium culture?

As I said you sir have just proved my point 10 times over!

Gaelscoils also benefit from lower pupil teacher ratios, so its not necessarily indicating that a training in the Irish language opens the mind to learning.

Well funded international studies has shown that a child who starts learning 2 languages from the day he/she starts school perform much better, so its not an Ireland only thing! But we cant have French/German/Spanish being taught at primary school now becuase it will be a

language alien to most of the pupils and their families