More Than One Subject?

you may still have to learn about a second subject as part of the PME though and train in it as if you are qualified, but you wont be able to register to teach it when you qualify unless you get the required credits etc in it. so, you should pick a second subject based either on other credits you might have in another subject that you will be able to increas credits in. or pick a subject that you might be interested in teaching and will be willing to do a degree in at some stage to qualify you.

I think I would counsel you to reflect very carefully about this. Although history has now been restored to core status in Junior Cycle after a long and outstanding campaign by history teachers and historians, the fact is that your employment prospects are extremely limited. As solerina has stated, there is an oversupply of history teachers with the English and History combination among the most in surplus. Most junior cycle students do 2 hours of history per week. About 8500 students nationally do Leaving Cert history in a given year making it a relatively minor subject numbers-wise. In a medium sized school (600-700 students), this equates to one history class in both fifth and sixth year and even if you walked into a retirement scenario there would still be others ahead of you in the pecking order. I have to say this since I've come across plenty of frustrated history teachers in staffrooms desperate to get their hands on a fifth or sixth year class but with no chance of doing so since the senior, established history teacher has a stranglehold on those hours.

I am sorry to come across this negative, but the reality is that save for certain very niche subjects: Home Ec., Art, Practical Subjects, Music to an extent, Irish second-level schools require a minimum of two subjects for timetabling purposes. I don't see a way to a make a living in second level with history as a single subject.

Purefrank128 wrote: »

History never previously had core status.

All students in voluntary secondary schools studied history, but it wasn't previously core in other types of schools or in the national curriculum.

How can an education system give history core status while not giving the same status to science, the field of human knowledge that defines the modern world?

Thank you. I am entirely aware of that distinction but I used a shorthand explanation to contextualise my response to the OP.

It's clear that you just responded to have a puerile rant and establish a bogus dichotomy with regard to the relative merits of two subject areas. In any case, statement 19 of the Junior Cycle statements of learning taken alongside statements 9, 10, 17 and 18 - perhaps Science teachers would suggest more - makes the study of Science at Junior Cycle de facto compulsory.

Mardy Bum wrote: »

Because science costs money in terms of labs and supplies. History doesn't.

Money is the factor that determines all policy in Ireland.

Schools still have to have science labs, whether the subject is compulsory or not. The government have been pushing STEM subjects and careers for the last 15 years. Yet the new course has been reduced to 200 hours (which is a heap of watered down crap) where the old course was a minimum of 240 hours.

You will probably have to do a subject like SPHE or CSPE as said above. However, depending on your degree, you may be able to teach LC Politics & Society.

TheDriver wrote: »

It'd be very hard to fill your timetable and hence it will be very hard to get a job. The only single subject teachers that have a hope are English, Maths or Irish. And even with that, you'd need something else to fill the timetable.

Hollyworth wrote: »

... I'm not all that worried about career prospects. I have a career plan laid out that just requires me to be a qualified teacher.
....

Tl:;Dr Tap on the shoulder :pac: