Irish language - Revamp in Education.

I'd love to see that coming into being- all primary schools made Gaelscoileanna- but I don't reckon you'd have enough teachers able to xo everything in Irish.. As it is, and this is going by a friend of mine who's a primary school teacher and who is really passionate about it, one of the problems is that the teachers themselves are weak at Irish.

I'm definitely not saying it's a waste of time teaching Irishat primary school obviously- the earlier the exposure the better, but I think we should be concentrating on quality. So I'd like to see really passionate Irish language speakers and teachers going in for a couple of hours a week and giving really good Irish tuition that would have the same effect as 20 hours of their normal teacher.

Now we are talking about a thread with huge potential. I'm just after coming back from teaching English this morning. As you all probably know, CLT, Communicative Language Teaching, is used to teach English as a second language in most classrooms today.

It was only when I did the ACELS CELT qualification that I realised that the way Irish was taught in UCD was via CLT (I did the Dioplóma Sa Ghaeilge Fheidhmeach). The grammar book in UCD for that course was easily the best grammar book I have ever read. It was designed by the staff in UCD's School of Irish. It really utilised all the latest teaching techniques. Everybody I have loaned it to has said the same. It was never published; just printed and binded by UCD for UCD DsaGF students.

Anyway, my spoken Irish was abysmal when I began the course but by the end of it Seosamh Watson and the late Ciarán Ó Con Cheanainn interviewed me for c. 20 minutes in the Irish. Yes, I made mistakes but I felt so proud to have held my own with the two of them for so long. They were really kind and encouraging to me through it, and that matters.

I really think the way Irish is taught on UCD's Dioplóma Sa Ghaeilge Fheidhmeach should be replicated in every single post primary and primary school where Irish is taught.

As for dlofnep's point that 'I think it's debatable when you think of how many people can't hold a conversation 6 months after finishing their oral', I'd have to disagree. I went into UCD yesterday to talk about going back and doing the BA this September and I managed to hold a 15 minute conversation in Irish. It was, once again, liberating. It's a new experience, but 'liberating' is precisely the word. I think it comes back to you fairly quickly once you have been in an environment where Irish was spoken intensively. But I agree that something needs to be in place to keep the conversation going after the Oral. I'm thinking of joining Na Cnocadoirí (http://www.cnocadoiri.com/) now just to go hillwalking (which I love) with a group who speak Irish. I've decided I'm going to do the Irish from September so this is it. It's sink or swim now. I'm off to Ard na Caithne as well in the next month to immerse myself beforehand.

It's amazing how useful the CLT has been to me in not only teaching English to others but in learning Irish for my own benefit. I was totally oblivious to the way to teach language, and therefore to learn it, until I did it.

PS: Without digressing from this very good thread, does anybody know what happened Ciarán; he died at 27 years of age earlier this year having won the Corn Uí Riada last year (http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/obituaries/2009/0228/1224241983518.html)

I agree with that. I did Bord na Gaeilge classes while I was doing my postgrad in UCD and they used material from that. It was very very good for conversation and learning grammar as you go along. Excellent for day to day use. I still have a lot of the notes and got great stuff from them.
It would be very effective for secondary school.

[Quote: Dionysis: PS: Without digressing from this very good thread, does anybody know what happened Ciarán; he died at 27 years of age earlier this year having won the Corn Uí Riada last year (http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/obituaries/2009/0228/1224241983518.html)[/quote]

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam. I'm so so sad to hear that he passed. He was such a beautiful and talented singer. God that's awful news.

me_right_one wrote: »

Not outside the pail it wasnt. The famine was the death knell of it though.

Interestingly, even in so-called 'Pale' counties like Meath there was a very conspicuous cultural and linguistic difference right up to An Gorta Mór. In north Meath, where the land is more mountainous, Irish was still very widely spoken in 1845 but the 'spailpíní' and poor generally of course suffered much more and with it the language.

Also, when John O'Donovan did his travel around Meath for the Ordnance Survey in 1836 there was sufficient Irish spoken across the entire county for him to record the spoken Irish in each place at the time for his placenames. (http://openlibrary.org/b/OL3997030M/Ordnance-Survey-letters-Meath)

North Meath is still quite different from southeast Meath, with cockfighting, céilithe, smuggling and subversion stronger near Meath's border with Cavan and Monaghan.

The survival of Irish is going to be down to the middle classes when (okay if) it dies out in the Gaeltacht in say 3000AD or whatever!

Does anyone know who is actually in charge of changing the Irish language curriculum? I'm guessing it's long-serving teachers?
Is there enough discussion and interaction between these people, and say the folks in the Dept. Education to manage overall Irish education policy? Seems to me we'll need these two groups working together with the same agenda.

Like with their work on the Caighdeán, I'd be afraid they'll be too laissez-faire about it to do anything with serious long term vision.

conchubhar1 wrote: »

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an all irish speaking population is not possible - face facts

Nothing is impossible. Check out Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's efforts with the Hebrew language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language

Maybe if we revise our history of the 1840s and interpret it as what really happened,

http://skinflicks.blogspot.com/2009/01/lets-all-stop-denying-holocaust.html

we'll have enough anger to want to be a proud nation of Irish rather than people with an inferiority complex.

Just in case you're crediting me with that blog, I only posted the link. Cant take credit for someone elses work.

Anyone I know or speak to say that they want to be able to speak Irish and they would love to see everyone speaking it but when I tell the about the various ways in which they could learn it they cry off bein gtoo busy in work or with other things.
Maybe this reccession might get people turning their backs on the God of Money and ploughing some of their time into their language, heritage and culture?

Nobody was comparing the 2 languages and politics did'nt have to be brought into it. They had the will and the passion to revive their language. We are lacking in this department.

conchubhar1 wrote: »

hebrew and irish are not comparable - on any level


My point is that your comparing of the 2 languages is irrelevant, and de-politicising it can only be a help.

I agree with conchubar1 there. Money would be an obstacle as regards sending kids to the Gaeltacht for 4 weeks a year.
I try and stick a cupla focail into sentences when speaking to friends and a few of them would add in a few when replying. If more people could get over the initial awkward/embarassed feeling we could soon spread those cupla focail into more elaborate phrases... and then onto fluency .

Rather than trying to turn all schools into Gaelscoileanna overnight, what I think we need is for education through Irish on demand - in other words, the same as is now available in English.
If you want a gaelscoil for your child, well just go to the nearest inspector's office (or write to them) and state that is what you want. This should be a right, but it is not at the moment.
Until we get that service, we need to collect money to set up our own gaelscoil in each district.
My suggestion here is that we could collect money through the schools that are already in existence, say ask each family to make a small donation each week (maybe one euro), with 30,000 kids attending gaelscoileanna at present, and say 3 kids per family, that would work out at €10,000 per week, multiply by 30 school weeks a year (or is that 39?) and you could collect up to €300,000 per annum if everyone chipped in.
Even at €100,000 per annum, you could part-fund a few schools - and as soon as a school is up and running, the local politicians will press for recognition of the school, as they will not want to antagonise the parents who are potential voters.

deise go deo wrote: »

Turning all primary schools into Gaelscoileanna is simply not possible over a short time frame. The pool of teachers capable of teaching entirely through Irish is simply too small,

The best way forward is for new gaelscoileanna to be recognized on the basis of demand for them, In areas where there is enough demand for a gaelscoil to justify setting one up then they should be supported by the state, Demand for gaelscoileanna is well ahead of supply and there is no sign of this demand slacking, Should this policy be adopted I think that the Gaelscoil movement would grow steadily. Following on from this, the parents of children from Primary level can then go on to set up secondary level schools.


As far as the rest of the education system is concerned, I think that the teaching of Irish needs to be throughly reformed, The system in place now is clearly failing to teach people Irish.

Personally I think the priority of the Education system with regards to Irish should be to teach people how to speak Irish, In my opinion the Curriculum is simply not capable of doing this and needs to be reformed, Far too much emphasis is placed on rote learning poetry and stories, most students do not have a conversation in Irish till their oral examination, A ridiculous situation. Students spend most of their time reading through Stories and learning how to answer questions on comprehensions.

In my opinion, the best way forward is In primary level to focus more on spoken Irish, and for a second subject(PE or art etc) to be thought through Irish so that Irish is the vehicle of learning. The standard of Irish among Primary school teachers needs to be addressed, Personally I thing CnaG's proposal that students training to be primary school teachers spend the Equivalent of One year learning through Immersion in Irish is the most practical solution to this because while The Standard Of Irish will be improved
It would not come at the cost of other subjects as they could still be learned in this time but through Irish instead of English.

In Second level I think that Irish should be split into Two Subjects, A Conversation based subject that focuses mainly on spoken Irish that would be compulsory to LC, And a literature subject,focused on Poetry, Essays and Reading Comprehension that would be optional.



I dont have a problem with deirdremf's proposal that the gaelscoil movement could support the creation of new gaelscoils from within its self, The need for which has been shown by the situation in Rath Tó, though I am unsure as to how this could be organised.

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