Too many teachers in our schools are Irish nationals

RobertKK · 28-09-2018 12:43pm #1

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/primary-teachers-disproportionately-white-irish-and-catholic-1.3642624

The majority of trainee primary school teachers are white, Irish and Catholic and do not reflect our diverse population, new research has found.

Dr Manuela Heinz and Dr Elaine Keane, from the school of education in NUI Galway, have carried out the first comprehensive and nationwide study in Ireland which explores the socio-demographic backgrounds of entrants to primary teacher education programmes.

Most people would expect teachers in Ireland to be nearly all Irish nationality as immigration from places like Poland for example hasn’t been going on for several decades. We have been a nation of emigrants for the most part.
This study is a bit silly in my opinion.
It states the obvious but jumps to conclusions as one couldn’t expect 11% of teachers to be from a foreign background when immigration has been so recent.
It doesn’t take research to know this...

delop · 28-09-2018 12:54pm

Mafias tend to be homogeneous

Harry Palmr · 28-09-2018 12:55pm

Already a thread on this.

RayCun · 28-09-2018 12:55pm

Irish is a requirement to be a primary school teacher, which means you're ****ed if you come from outside Ireland.

suicide_circus · 28-09-2018 12:56pm

irish people teaching irish children? yuck! belurrgg!!

munchkin_utd · 28-09-2018 12:59pm

RayCun wrote: »

Irish is a requirement to be a primary school teacher, which means you're ****ed if you come from outside Ireland.

English at a native speaker level also needed for primary teaching, which is sortof an advantage for native english speakers.

I'd say irish geography or history is also not big on the curriculum in Nigeria or Latvia or wherever people arrive from.

Such a stupid bit of research.

RayCun · 28-09-2018 1:01pm

munchkin_utd wrote: »

English at a native speaker level also needed for primary teaching, which is sortof an advantage for native english speakers.

I'd say irish geography or history is also not big on the curriculum in Nigeria or Latvia or wherever people arrive from.

A lot easier to bring your English up to native speaker level, and to learn primary level Irish geography and history, than to learn to speak a dead language in a country where no-one speaks it outside school.

JMNolan · 28-09-2018 1:01pm

I did a bit of research myself, apparently too many Irish nationals are Irish. This needs to be remedied.

irishgeo · 28-09-2018 1:08pm

Tax payers money wasted on this. Why not have a survey that concludes the sky is disproportionately blue.

Mint Sauce · 28-09-2018 1:15pm

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Already a thread on this.

No no no. This one is about them being Irish Nationals, yesterdays one was about them being Irish Catholics. Tomorrows one I expect it to be about too many of them being off on a Saturday.

seamus · 28-09-2018 1:17pm

Nice sensationalising of the title into something the study didn't say, Robert.

Any road, this is probably be to expected, especially in our system. It would be interesting to see how other countries stack up.

It seems to me that in order to be an effective/confident teacher below college level, in any country, one would need to be linguistically fluent and culturally fluent. Kids are animals, some guy with a heavy Nigerian accent who doesn't know Father Ted would sink like a stone in a secondary school.

I couldn't imagine trying to go to England or the US and teach a class, never mind one in another language!

Our system does have its specifics though - the Irish requirement and the 90% Catholic regimes creates barriers for many, including men, homosexuals and non-catholics.

Removal of Catholic favouritism would probably be a significant step up, as well as a male-focussed recruitment drive by the dept of education.

But you're never going to be able to fully remove the phenomenon of disproprotionately more teachers being Irish-born.

whisky_galore · 28-09-2018 1:19pm

Obvious findings are obvious.

jacksie66 · 28-09-2018 1:20pm

This post has been deleted.

Eggs For Dinner · 28-09-2018 1:21pm

Too many Irish people are Irish. That's the bigger scandal

RayCun · 28-09-2018 1:21pm

jacksie66 wrote: »

If it was up to the people who came up with this study every school in Ireland would have an on site mosque, synagogue and standard uniforms would be phased out in favour of gender neutral, multicultural garments and Irish culture would be regarded as racist..

And hyperbole would be punishable by DEATH!

jacksie66 · 28-09-2018 1:22pm

This post has been deleted.

Hector Savage · 28-09-2018 1:23pm

Quiet you racist BIGOTS!!

biko · 28-09-2018 3:09pm

A similar study showed 100% of the teachers at local Quranic School were not white nor Catholic.
A terrible diversity problem.
Dr Manuela Heinz and Dr Elaine Keane refused to comment on the findings.

ohnonotgmail · 28-09-2018 3:14pm

seamus wrote: »

Nice sensationalising of the title into something the study didn't say, Robert.

Any road, this is probably be to expected, especially in our system. It would be interesting to see how other countries stack up.

It seems to me that in order to be an effective/confident teacher below college level, in any country, one would need to be linguistically fluent and culturally fluent. Kids are animals, some guy with a heavy Nigerian accent who doesn't know Father Ted would sink like a stone in a secondary school.

I couldn't imagine trying to go to England or the US and teach a class, never mind one in another language!

Our system does have its specifics though - the Irish requirement and the 90% Catholic regimes creates barriers for many, including men, homosexuals and non-catholics.

Removal of Catholic favouritism would probably be a significant step up, as well as a male-focussed recruitment drive by the dept of education.

But you're never going to be able to fully remove the phenomenon of disproprotionately more teachers being Irish-born.

How does that requirement create a barrier for men? Or for homosexuals?

seamus · 28-09-2018 3:39pm

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

How does that requirement create a barrier for men? Or for homosexuals?

The Irish requirement disproportionately affects men.

Three-fifths of students who take honours Irish at the leaving cert level are female, and half of those women get a Grade 3 or higher, versus just 40% of men.

Someone with poor Irish is just going to write off primary teaching as a profession.

The Catholic issue is a barrier for gay people, men in particular. Gay women are subject to less scrutiny and suspicion than gay men in religious circles.

topper75 · 28-09-2018 4:08pm

JMNolan wrote: »

I did a bit of research myself, apparently too many Irish nationals are Irish. This needs to be remedied.

Ah no JM - you completely missed a trick:

You are supposed to get funding FIRST from some progressive meddling billionaire. THEN you do the research. THEN you get an assortment of propaganda pamphlets-cum-newspapers and blogs-cum-newssites (funnily all funded by same billionaire through various channels) to stick your new shocking research results front and centre. THEN ordinary decent people can feel pangs of guilt despite having done absolutely nothing wrong.

Your amateur botch job is going to collapse the progressivist industry. It's all about the €€€€.
Everything is.

zapitastas · 28-09-2018 4:17pm

seamus wrote: »

The Irish requirement disproportionately affects men.

Three-fifths of students who take honours Irish at the leaving cert level are female, and half of those women get a Grade 3 or higher, versus just 40% of men.

Someone with poor Irish is just going to write off primary teaching as a profession.

The Catholic issue is a barrier for gay people, men in particular. Gay women are subject to less scrutiny and suspicion than gay men in religious circles.

Blaming the Irish requirement would be pretty lazy on their part though. I decided to learn Irish a couple of years ago. I had hated it in school and was not very proficient but with a fresh outlook went into it with enthusiasm and have found it to be a beautiful language and has certainly been beneficial and given me a gra for Irish culture which had been lacking. Is far from a dead language if one is willing to look.

Rodin · 28-09-2018 4:21pm

RayCun wrote: »

A lot easier to bring your English up to native speaker level, and to learn primary level Irish geography and history, than to learn to speak a dead language in a country where no-one speaks it outside school.

That simply isn't true. Irish is spoken daily around the country in Gaeltacht areas as a 1st language.

RayCun · 28-09-2018 4:23pm

Rodin wrote: »

That simply isn't true. Irish is spoken daily around the country in Gaeltacht areas as a 1st language.

How many people in Ireland speak Irish as a first language outside the home?

How many places are there where you could learn the language through immersion, speaking it because that's what everyone around you is speaking?

zapitastas · 28-09-2018 4:44pm

RayCun wrote: »

How many people in Ireland speak Irish as a first language outside the home?

How many places are there where you could learn the language through immersion, speaking it because that's what everyone around you is speaking?

Drop into a pop up gaeltacht and you can speak as Gaeilge and have a few pints at the same time. Just because you have no interest in the national language there is no need to denigrate it.

The J Stands for Jay · 28-09-2018 4:48pm

RobertKK wrote: »

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/primary-teachers-disproportionately-white-irish-and-catholic-1.3642624

Most people would expect teachers in Ireland to be nearly all Irish nationality as immigration from places like Poland for example hasn’t been going on for several decades. We have been a nation of emigrants for the most part.
This study is a bit silly in my opinion.
It states the obvious but jumps to conclusions as one couldn’t expect 11% of teachers to be from a foreign background when immigration has been so recent.
It doesn’t take research to know this...

They're talking about trainees, not the general teacher population. The white, Catholic, female makeup of the trainee intake does not reflect the population from which they are drawn. Quotas should be introduced to rectify this.

RayCun · 28-09-2018 4:52pm

zapitastas wrote: »

Drop into a pop up gaeltacht and you can speak as Gaeilge and have a few pints at the same time. Just because you have no interest in the national language there is no need to denigrate it.

I'm not denigrating it. I'm saying that hardly anyone speaks it.

If I emigrated to Portugal, I would be surrounded by people speaking Portuguese. I could insist on speaking English very loudly, but if I wanted to learn Portuguese I could practice with everyone I met.

If someone from Portugal moved to Ireland they could learn English fairly easily, but if they asked for directions in Irish they would get a lot of blank looks.

Making Irish a requirement for primary school teachers makes it very, very difficult for people who didn't go to school in Ireland to become teachers.

daheff · 28-09-2018 4:52pm

irishgeo wrote: »

Tax payers money wasted on this. Why not have a survey that concludes the sky is disproportionately blue.

ah but its not. It just looks that way.

also that study is racist -against Irish teachers.

28-09-2018 4:55pm

I'd argue, it's just the right amount.

Sleeper12 · 28-09-2018 5:00pm

RobertKK wrote:

Most people would expect teachers in Ireland to be nearly all Irish nationality as immigration from places like Poland for example hasnâ€™t been going on for several decades. We have been a nation of emigrants for the most part. This study is a bit silly in my opinion. It states the obvious but jumps to conclusions as one couldnâ€™t expect 11% of teachers to be from a foreign background when immigration has been so recent. It doesnâ€™t take research to know this...

Emerging from Poland has in fact been going on for several decades. Mid 90s & earlier.

Many Polish actually went home in the late 0s after being here since the 80s

bigpink · 28-09-2018 5:02pm

Middle class or from Kerry or Cork

Too many teachers in our schools are Irish nationals

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