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The Frontline on compulsory Irish

Permabear

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dlofnep

I'll give it a watch and comment afterwards. Hopefully it's up on the player.

Eliot Rosewater

ballsymchugh wrote: »

that argument can be fairly well argued for most languages other than english these days.

No, it can't. If I was fluent in German I would be able to travel to Germany or Austria or Switzerland to find employment.

theredletter

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

No, it can't. If I was fluent in German I would be able to travel to Germany or Austria or Switzerland to find employment.

Having Irish can give you great employment opportunities. I've just graduated. I've already been asked to teach Irish in the EU, NYU and in Dublin. This site has all of the jobs going where Irish is a requirement. Not all jobs listed are public sector, before you decide to get ahead of yourselves:

http://www.gaelport.com/foluntais

Bottle_of_Smoke

theredletter wrote: »

Em. No, she's not, quite frankly. That woman, Anna Gallagher, is a highly educated woman (probably more educated than you and most Irish people). She speaks around 5 languages fluently and speaks another 2 competently. Anna brought about major change on how Irish was being taught to adult learners in Ireland (most notably through following the European Council's framework on language instruction). Because of her hundreds of people have picked up a new language (Irish) and a lot of people have gotten promotions, jobs and other things through her pioneering teaching methods.

Anna would have the same opinion about every other language under the sun. She would say the same things about French, Spanish or Dutch.

So no, she's not a moron... she's pretty much a genius.

Oh and also... I forgot to mention that Anna is an internationally-recognised scholar and teacher. Pat Kenny's bully-style interviewing skills have failed us again.

For all her education she still can't think in practical terms. She has ideological views that will never work in reality. Therefore she's a moron.

Eliot Rosewater

theredletter wrote: »

Having Irish can give you great employment opportunities. I've just graduated. I've already been asked to teach Irish in the EU, NYU and in Dublin. This site has all of the jobs going where Irish is a requirement. Not all jobs listed are public sector, before you decide to get ahead of yourselves:

http://www.gaelport.com/foluntais

Teaching, Irish presumably.

I was talking about basically every other type of job. I'm studying for a maths degree, for example. Being fluent in German would be very beneficial; in Irish, pointless.

P. Breathnach

bleg wrote: »

Tabhair dom casur no tua go mbrisfead is go millfead an teach seo,
go ndeanfad tairseach den fhardoras 'gus urlair de na ballai,
go tiocfaidh scraith agus dion agus simleir anuas
le neart mo chuid allais...
Sin chugam anois na clair is na tairni
go dtoigfead an teach eile seo...
Ach, a Dhia, taim tuirseach!

I like that, but you might give some credit to Caitlín Maude, who thought of it first.

It relates to a very high proportion of threads in this forum.

P. Breathnach

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote: »

For all her education she still can't think in practical terms. She has ideological views that will never work in reality. Therefore she's a moron.

It's a bit of a cop-out to claim that anybody with whom you don't agree is a moron, and it's an ugly insult. I happen not to agree with her to any great extent, but that is no reflection on her intellectual capacity (or mine).

Eliot Rosewater

P. Breathnach wrote: »

It relates to a very high proportion of threads in this forum.

Perhaps a translation, for those of us unable to speak Irish?

theredletter

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote: »

For all her education she still can't think in practical terms. She has ideological views that will never work in reality. Therefore she's a moron.

If a person has enough intelligence to do what she does, and even have ideological views, and if we define the term 'moron' as stupid, then you're pretty much wrong.

Also, take a look at www.teg.ie before you judge... The syllabus is actually very practical and is used to teach high standards of all European languages. Trust her, she knows what she's talking about..

ballsymchugh

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

No, it can't. If I was fluent in German I would be able to travel to Germany or Austria or Switzerland to find employment.

it depends on what you want to get employed in too. you would learn more on the total immersion when you get there than you ever would in school here. their level of english would help you at the beginning but your everyday conversation in the local dialect is what would really help. someone from Berne would speak german which would probably sound dutch to most. someone from Basel speaks in a different dialect again. and that's just two places in one small country. it's on a totally different scale to the munster/connacht/ulster dialects in irish. so the german that you are taught at second level here (hochdeutsche??) would only help you in certain places. (granted, it may be a big area like the mandarin v cantonese v naxi v manchu etc languages in china).

also, what if the average german/swiss/austrian wanted to come here and get a job in tg4 or some other gaeltacht industry? it can be argued in both ways.

Eliot Rosewater

ballsymchugh wrote: »

it depends on what you want to get employed in too. you would learn more on the total immersion when you get there than you ever would in school here.

Yes, I think that's the general rule! Although I did do German in school, I'm in a poor way with it. I was considering taking up a beginners course in it to restart the whole process. I'd be nervous traveling to a German-speaking region without having a solid grasp of the language, to be honest.

ballsymchugh wrote: »

also, what if the average german/swiss/austrian wanted to come here and get a job in tg4 or some other gaeltacht industry? it can be argued in both ways.

How many jobs in Irish are there? 5000? How many jobs with German? A couple of million!

In diverse areas too.

There's also a lifestyle aspect to it. If you could speak German there's many more options open to you with respect to travel and living abroad than with Irish.

Ostrom

It is about tearing down a house, replacing it with a new structure but the author growing tired from her efforts. It is interpreted in the irish curriculum as a metaphor for patriarchy.

ballsymchugh

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

Yes, I think that's the general rule! Although I did do German in school, I'm in a poor way with it. I was considering taking up a beginners course in it to restart the whole process. I'd be nervous traveling to a German-speaking region without having a solid grasp of the language, to be honest.

How many jobs in Irish are there? 5000? How many jobs with German? A couple of million! In diverse areas too.

There's also a lifestyle aspect to it. If you could speak German there's many more options open to you with respect to travel and living abroad than with Irish.

look up radio lingua podcasts. they do most languages including one minute irish!! they're a great way to learn conversational languages. you'd be pretty comfortable having a conversation if you used them. i did it for spanish last year.

ah but if i could speak german then i wouldn't impress the weather girls on tg4?:cool:

P. Breathnach

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

Perhaps a translation, for those of us unable to speak Irish?

Try this one. It's not bad. http://dwellingexile.blogspot.com/2006/10/treall-caitlin-maude.html

digme

bleg wrote: »

Irish was a crap subject, I hated it. For me it made no sense to do it. Wouldn't be a good idea to teach our kids a useful language like German, Spanish, Hindi or Chinese and have them truely trilingual.

I wonder why they happen to have their own language.

dlofnep

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

Teaching, Irish presumably.

I was talking about basically every other type of job. I'm studying for a maths degree, for example. Being fluent in German would be very beneficial; in Irish, pointless.

Are there an abundant amount of jobs that require Irish? No. But the jobs that are available, aren't overly competitive - creating opportunity. There are many opportunities in radio or tv for example. In the local Gaeltacht here, there is a TV production course taught entirely through Irish - with opportunities for work in TG4.

Is Irish as useful as German? Not if you wish to re-locate to Germany. If you plan on staying in Ireland, it's more useful. Now that's not to say that everyone who is proficient in Irish will work in a job that requires Irish - but opportunities are there.

I don't want to over-inflate the importance of the Irish language, but I don't think we should undercut it's importance either.

dkin

It's a pity Irish has declined to such an extent. I like languages and would really like to be able to speak Irish fluently mainly for novelty value and an intellectual interest in its unusual celtic lineage. I would be just as interested in learning many other lanaguages for the same reasons however. Learning a foreign language is a lot of work. In fact I think the mental effort I've put into learning French is larger than any other intellectual endeavour I've attempted as the learning process is incredibly tedious and time consuming (for me at least). You have to really want to learn a new language as the investment is so great and in Ireland the reality is that most of the students couldn't care less about Irish.

Understanding this we have to ask if it's right to ask thousands of students to engage in thousands of hours of enforced study every year with in the vast majority of cases negligable results. They see that it has no practical benefit and is a dead language in the vast majority of areas. So why bother going through all the hard work? Tinkering with the system and syllabus will not change the simple fact that learning Irish is a hard task and requires alot of work even if very motivated.

I would also seriously question the motives behind compulsary Irish. In my opinion it is basicly a form of enforced cultural implantation. An effort to mould and coerce students into having traits that are deemed desirable by the state despite negligable economic or social benefit. An effort to create individuals that fit a predefined criteria of Irishness which is unfortunately an idealistic and ideological one not based in everyday reality. But rather corresponds to an outdated ideal. I disagree with this level of state involvement in education and the curtailing of individual freedom. Of course you can say that school in general can be accused of this and I would agree to a large extend but the case is particularily pronounced in the case of Irish.

Peanut

Making ANY specific language compulsory beyond the student's native language is not necessarily useful.

It should be abundantly clear that some people are just not as mentally adept at languages compared to others. Likewise, those good at languages may not have certain other skills.

Trying to circle this square is a waste of both time & money, and a huge missed opportunity cost where the student could be learning something else that they are skilled in. The scale of this opportunity cost should not be underestimated.

Nijmegen

dlofnep wrote: »

Are there an abundant amount of jobs that require Irish? No. But the jobs that are available, aren't overly competitive - creating opportunity. There are many opportunities in radio or tv for example. In the local Gaeltacht here, there is a TV production course taught entirely through Irish - with opportunities for work in TG4.

Is Irish as useful as German? Not if you wish to re-locate to Germany. If you plan on staying in Ireland, it's more useful. Now that's not to say that everyone who is proficient in Irish will work in a job that requires Irish - but opportunities are there.

I don't want to over-inflate the importance of the Irish language, but I don't think we should undercut it's importance either.

There was one of the speakers on the FL going on about the economic benefits also.

Show me numbers, I say.

Otherwise it strikes me that the only jobs going in Irish are in state-sponsored areas, like TG4, like the translation of government documents, etc.

I know of no private enterprise that uses Irish, except perhaps those devoted to servicing the Irish speaking parts of the land - it's not going to dig our 1/4 young unemployed out of their hole.

Go over to jobs.ie however and look out for the jobs that require lingual skills in European languages.

Irish does nothing to help a kid get a job, unless that job is in a very narrow field.

Also, we spend the same 100 hours a year teaching to what they now call "foundation level" Irish. If it's anything like the remedial classes of old - where it was ordinary level, with the hopeless eejits put into one class to wilt - then it's not much use as a teaching exercise, and it's worth 0 points precisely, A1 or E1.

You take 100 hours of valuable class time, 500 a full leaving cert cycle, away from kids who could spend that time in a subject that is worth points? (And their options, I would believe, get less hours in total than Irish?)

English is a required subject, as one needs to be able to communicate effectively when one makes it to the workforce. Having a broad vocabulary is one aspect of this, for anyone wanting to have a go at literature in there.

Maths is a required subject, as one needs to be able to think using the logic and problem solving skills it develops.

Irish.... Is a cultural legacy placed a little above Latin in terms of its usefulness and well below in terms of utility to our students, in that an interested student can choose to learn Latin for the love of it and excel, gaining the points they need to further their careers and their lives.

Irish is time we piss away down the drain for these kids.

Make it optional.

Permabear

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conorhal

A country without a language is a country without a soul.

Your language informs the cadence and idiom's of your speech, that particular way of saying something, even in English that makes you unique. It's informed by your environment and your history.

I don’t understand the lack of pride in our language. I don’t understand this desire to become a fractured and fragmented utilitarian culture or the strange intransigence of those that would erase their language and history in some bizarre rush to become mid Atlantic nomads with no history, language, pride or interest in anything other then self interest.
Now more then ever we need to restore a collective identity.

Aidan1

There are many opportunities in radio or tv for example. In the local Gaeltacht here, there is a TV production course taught entirely through Irish - with opportunities for work in TG4.

Or, in other words, the Irish language lobby have managed to argue their way to the creation a State owned media outlet whose main function is to provide employment for the children of lobbyists, and to the theoretical inclusion of Irish as an EU language*, further creating jobs for the children of this new cultural elite. Brilliant!

The nationalist State building project for the restoration of Irish as the first spoken language of the State has been an abject failure, predictably enough. Compelling students to wade through a poor syllabus on a language that has no practical use, when they could be spending their time doing something more productive (Civics, or Home Economics, or 'Personal Relationships') is completely and monumentally indefensible. It remains as one of the few remaining sacred cows in Irish policy circles, purely because it is so closely bound up with nationalist politics, and in particular with one party's perspective on the origins of the State. Give it time and it'll fade away into the Celtic twilight- the only question is how many thousands of hours of student and teachers time is wasted before that happens.

*The only functional change has been that all documents are required to be translated, the one MEP and one Minister who occasionally chose to speak Irish were always able to do so, it just required prior notice.

Nijmegen

conorhal wrote: »

A country without a language is a country without a soul.

Your language informs the cadence and idiom's of your speech, that particular way of saying something, even in English that makes you unique. It is informed my your environment and your history.

I don’t understand the lack of pride in our language. I don’t understand this desire to become a fractured and fragmented utilitarian culture or the strange intransigence of those that would erase their language and history in some bizarre rush to become mid Atlantic nomads with no history, language, pride or interest in anything other then self interest.

My language is English. It has done me fairly well down the years when I've gone abroad to work - in Europe, the US and elsewhere, it is the language of the world and I'm glad I speak it well.

Irish is a language that was forced on me and many others in school. I couldn't speak it coming out, and those that could largely can't nowadays, and if they could they don't find reason to use it.

Your dogmatic approach is an example of what held me back in school, like many others, and I resent that to this day. I wasn't good at Irish. I didn't like Irish. I didn't see the point in it from a pragmatic point of view. It didn't help me one bit.

Forcing Irish onto the mass population leaves you with a majority who resent the language and anything relating to it, rather than being something they may come to in time if they garner an interest.

I resent the time of my brief education that was wasted here when it could have been more productively spent elsewhere. Everything I learned after school I learned in my brief spare time while I worked my way through life. Ohh if I had 100 hours a year to spend learning something new today!

Sleepy

I've addressed this subject so many times on boards.ie that I won't do it at length again.

Most people in favour of forcing this language on our youth have only two arguments:

1. It's part of our culture/heritage.
2. 800 years of blah blah blah...

If it's a part of our current culture, it'll still thrive when made optional as lets face it, it's an "easy honour" subject (I got a C1 in Ordinary Level after reading my way through the Preacher comics for the two years of L.C.).

If it's part of our history (i.e. not hugely relevant to our modern culture), it'll be studied by those with an interest in it and kept alive by the many enthusiastic Irish speakers in this country. No doubt many of these will force their children to study it for Leaving Cert if it's optional.

To argue for it to remain a compulsory subject is to argue that you have a right to force your love of something on someone else.

At present, most of the opportunities for employment in the sphere of Irish only exist because our government are happy to waste money (both our own and the European Unions) on it. Bbased on personal experience of watching 5 figures having to be spent to translate a financial report I worked on (which was reckoned to be "makey uppy Irish" by the only fluent Irish speaker on the team), the "translations" of so many state documents are wildly inaccurate because for many of the terms they deal in, there are no Irish words, the language is simply to out-of-date to have words for many modern financial terms (because no-one uses the language in the world of finance - and, tbh, why would they ever need to?).

Forcing the language on our students and state agencies is a gross misallocation of state resources that there is no justification for beyond the desires of some of the state's citizens.

Sleepy

conorhal wrote: »

A country without a language is a country without a soul.

Your language informs the cadence and idiom's of your speech, that particular way of saying something, even in English that makes you unique. It's informed by your environment and your history.

I don’t understand the lack of pride in our language. I don’t understand this desire to become a fractured and fragmented utilitarian culture or the strange intransigence of those that would erase their language and history in some bizarre rush to become mid Atlantic nomads with no history, language, pride or interest in anything other then self interest.
Now more then ever we need to restore a collective identity.

Translation: "I don't understand why you disagree with me so I'm going to force you to do what I want you to."

sensibleken

i would definetely oppose it. I hated irish in school like most people and performed very poorly in exams. as an adult though i have a new found love of the language and have been trying to learn it for 3 years, unfortunetely not having anyone to speak irish with hampers that.

there needs to change how its taught, especially because the allot of people like the OP think its '1930's nationalistic' whereas i view it in much more positive and contemporary terms.

also its a much better language than English.

Banned Account

Allow Irish to be compulsory in primary - possibly up to Junior cert and then make it optional for students on the proviso that It can only be dropped if they take another foreign language in it's stead.

I am speaking as someone who was exempt from Irish at school and whilst I do somethimes regret the fact that I don't speak it I am glad that I had that extra time to spend on subjects that were more relevant to my further education.

I do believe that, as a nation we have fallen way behind our peers in terms of second languages - the way Irish is taught and the very limited utility of it only serves to give people a bad impressions of language as a whole.

To those who are arguing for it to be kept compulsory on heritage grounds, I note that the UK no longer teach Saxon or Pict.

conorhal

Sleepy wrote: »

Translation: "I don't understand why you disagree with me so I'm going to force you to do what I want you to."

And where did I say that? I asked a question and merely commented that the slow cultural suicide of the Irish nation is something that I just can't comprehend. Your hostility to the language is in my opinion both bitter and bizzare.

Banned Account

conorhal wrote: »

And where did I say that? I asked a question and merely commented that the slow cultural suicide of the Irish nation is something that I just can't comprehend. Your hostility to the language is in my opinion both bitter and bizzare.

But by this logic, Brazil has no culture?

There is more to cultural heritage than the spoken word. What would be more accurate would be to state that the language of a country is a part of its culture and heritage. Once this is accepted, the next issue is how much one is prepared to sacrifice for that part.

BKtje

in switzerland there are 4 native languages that most people are competant in after school, as well as english.

There may be 4 official languages but to say that most are competant in them after leaving school is not true as far as I have seen in my year living here.

I'm living in the bilingual city of Fribourg and while everyone here can speak french or german (with at least some ability of the other) very few can speak italian or romansch. On the other hand almost every student i've met also has the ability to speak some level of english, many to quite a high standard.

Now that I am over here i'd love to be able to remember any of the irish that i learnt at school but I still do not look back with any joy at the hours and hours of irish that I took. Do i wish i could speak irish? yes, like i wish i could speak any language. Would it and has it ever been of any use to me (apart from impressing locals with a strange language), no.

Make it an option but don't force people to sit through it, let them chose the foreign languages they'd like to learn. That said i do think that learning a foreign language (or two!) is crucial during school.