Why do you hate Irish?

LordSutch wrote: »

Remove it as a compulsory subject after Inter Cert.

Honestly, we should only be introducing it as a subject choice at Junior Cycle imo.

A romance language would be far more useful as an introduction to learning a second language at primary level as a decent grounding in one not only teaches one language acquisition skills, it provides an extremely strong basis for picking up any of the others. From 5 years of studying French, I find I can interpret quite a bit of Spanish and Italian due to the inherent similarities in those languages, all of which have more practical application than Irish.

Because you go into learning it, knowing that, at best, you will be able to less efficiently talk with someone else in the language (because everyone who knows Irish also knows English).

That it's not optional if you're "Irish", when foreigners applying here don't need it for 3rd level (the uni requirement is about all that keeps it going in secondary school).

It represents a very oppressive twiddle dee dee version of a church controlled Ireland that is, thankfully, dying off rapidly.

The only reason it exists is to perpetuate itself, rather than add much of value to the world, all Irish jobs are state sponsored, walk down any Irish road, and the only Irish will be the state signage, all shops will use English (barring the odd Irish named house).

Dughorm wrote: »

How do you know this with such certainty? What other languages are you fluent in that you have no interest in?

None. I'm only proficient in French rather than fluent (though I have an interest in it). If I can make a fair comparison to another area of study, I'd be more knowledgeable about the bible and the tenets and dogma of Catholicism than most Catholics yet still have no interest in the religion whatsoever.

I think there has to be an element of personal responsibility here - if you want to waste your time in school with whatever subject then that is your choice, but that is no reason for the education system to accommodate your attitude problem!

You're rather making the argument for the removal of the compulsory status for me here. It wasn't my choice that my time was wasted.

Even as a 13 year old I knew that Irish was of no use to me (so much so that I had my mother look into finding a loophole to allow me opt out of it in the same way kids who've spent time in education abroad can). I had no interest in the subject and it has no practical, or educational purpose.

By reading fiction and playing tetris I chose to "waste" my time in another fashion than the Dept of Education wanted me to. TBH, I can legitimately state that my career benefited more from the time spent on the Tetris than it did from Irish - the first software issue I diagnosed and resolved for a client was based on the same size limitation of integers that I'd discovered in that version of Tetris back in fourth year. I've yet to have a single moment where Irish could have been of use to my career - though I have seen tens of thousands wasted on the professional translation of reports to Irish that have never been run in that language and which were meaningless according to a fluent Gaelgoir on our team as the terminology used in the report didn't exist in the Irish language it had been largely made up by the university doing the translation.

Had Irish not been compulsory, that time wouldn't have been "wasted" as I would have been spending those 5 classes a week studying a worthwhile subject (or even a different non-useful subject that I had an interest in e.g. Latin, Classics etc).

Yet another poster reaches to an analogy from economics to drive our education policy! There is good reason to have core subjects for a balanced education - if there isn't "demand" for English Literature does that mean it should be optional? Of course not.

None of that is an argument for Irish to be one of the core subjects.

I could pick dozens of more useful or worthwhile subjects to form part of that core. You mentioned one, economics: how that isn't a core subject in a country where anyone can end up Minister for Finance regardless of their qualifications is beyond me tbh.

Any major world language would be a worthwhile inclusion in the core subjects, though perhaps in the interests of a diverse skillet in our population it would be best to stipulate solely that at least one of them must be studied (I know it's already a requirement for many of our Universities).

I'd argue that Applied Mathematics, Home Economics, History or Geography would be all better suited to forming a core part of our curiculum than Irish and that's before even getting to subjects we should be teaching but largely ignore such as Health (sexual, mental, physical, nutrition etc.), Personal Finance, Programming, Critical Thinking, Logic, Debate, Driving etc.

I don't think it's fair or accurate to describe Irish as a hobby, it's a language of the State and used in the State. Even if you don't like Irish you have to acknowledge this.

I think you're stretching the definition of the word "used" tbh. That implies utility. Irish has none, ergo, imo, it's best described as a hobby or a past-time.

That it's an official language of the State (and that we've foisted it upon our EU partners as one) is, lamentably imo, undeniable. That such a designation was a political decision rather than a reflection of the reality of our society, however is also undeniable.