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Can we kill Irish once and for all
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Where do you stop with the options though? At some point you need a common system. It is no surprise that the Irish language would be given pride of place in an Irish curriculum. You need a core to a curriculum. As the population increases and diversifies through immgration, such a core becomes even more important again, not less important.
I honestly don't think you need a core to a curriculum, and to say that Irish is said core is stretching it. The only subject I was taught using Irish was Irish. I am genuinely sorry to admit it but Irish isnt even a core of our society and the sooner we can admit that the sooner we can start revitalising it in schools. Ideally I would like to see it optional for Junior Cert as well but baby steps and all that. I think making it optional can ONLY be good for the language as the standard at LC Irish will rocket due to the people who don't want to do it giving it up.Don't quote me on it because it has been a while
but you learn about the language's history and place in an Indo-European context and you learn to debate abstract topics and current affairs etc. You also focus more on oral and aural Irish. Personally I would rip out a lot of the excessive literature emphasis. But students do push well past the JC level. These two years are critical.
Jesus! How long has it been? Speaking as someone who only did pass Irish for LC I can tell you that a lot of daya we were still conjugating verbs. This wasn't because the class was stupid it was because no one in the class had any interest in the language or learning it and merely needed to pass for University (myself included). This sort of environment has a hugely damaging effect on the pupils who do want to learn, not only because they're being held back but because the attitude of indifference is easily spread amongst teenagers. The most critical years of Irish study are in primary school, where we actually learn and can develop an interest in it. By time it comes to LC students should be able to explore all the things you mentioned, but if people don't wish to they should be allowed not to and not be lambasted as not being Irish (which I'm not accusing you of doing).Referring to 'not Irish' i.e. exclusion is a negative bent. I can turn this around and say that yes learning a language spoken in Ireland for thousands of years alongside the one that has only been in use for a few hundred definitely intensifies ones sense of belonging to the nation. Be careful that I'm not suggesting any corollary of that i.e. not speaking Gaelic means you are not Irish! As an analogy, if I was asked to choose between a German-speaking German national and a German national who was raised in an isolated fashion in Dusseldorf by British parents as to who was 'most' German, rationally you would pick the former. But of course establishing degrees of belonging to a tribe raises hackles, and nowhere more so than here in Ireland with the colonial and civil war history along with present day identity issues of NI.
Not in everybody. National identity is completely subjective. I myself don't speak the language, I don't like GAA, I don't drink, I don't like chicken rolls, but does any of that make me less Irish? In my mind no, and that's all that counts. I don't see it as the state's role to tell us what being Irish is and that's sometimes what compulsory Irish feels like.The simple fact of the matter is that education is built by a society to produce individuals who can be part of it. The Irish education system thinks that school leavers should habe at least three core attributes (apart from the actual content of the subject) to belong to this society,
Maths - Provides a medium to build reasoning, logical thought and application.
English - Builds the mind to communicate, have an emotional memory, creative though process etc.
Irish - Provides us as with a sense of who "we" are as a people and encourages us to invest in our culture and past.
From the Department of Education websiteStudents following the Leaving Certificate (Established) programme are required to study at least five subjects, one of which must be IrishThen it provides space for that person to determine what they should add to that blueprint to define them as an individual in that society with history, physics etc.
I finished my leaving certificate 11 years ago and then completed and honours degree in CS much like the OP and looking back on it now (and even though it has no bearing on my profession) I wish I had invested more time in Irish when I finished school.
What im trying to say is that education provides children (we are children when doing the leaving certificate) a direction in life to make our own choices but as children we don't have the experiences to determine that direction. What they make us do and what they make us not do helps us make those decisions later on in life.
Irish is the ONLY subject that the State insists students take at LC level. Leaving Cert is also NOT the last chance to learn Irish. You say you regret not investing in it more, invest in it now. What's stopping you? I know plenty of people who only really got into the language in University. At the moment Irish lovers are desperate to hang onto Leaving Cert Irish because they see it as a last chance saloon to convert chose not interested. I they focused on their own love of the language rather than trying to force it on the rest of us the language would be a LOT better off.0 -
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