Irish speakers a new elite

ROS123

P. Breathnach wrote: »

There hasn't been much pummeling in Irish schools for quite a number of years. Many of those who hate Irish have not experienced anything like pummeling; they use the image as a post hoc rationalisation for not having been very successful students of the language.

Although I contest the rationalisation for failure, I acknowledge two things:
1. A very high percentage of those who have had Irish classes throughout their primary and secondary school years have no worthwhile proficiency in the language (my subjective criterion: they are unable to conduct an ordinary conversation in Irish);
2. It is not entirely their fault.

I base the second observation on a simple (perhaps simplistic) logic: if such an amount of school time and effort is given to something, and it does not produce an outcome that is any way commensurate with the inputs, then the effort has been misapplied.

+1 all that effort is for the most part (majority of people) wasted..............

O'Morris

A man who can speak a language well after having spent a decade learning it in school has good reason to feel intellectually superior to the man who can't speak the same language after having spent the same amount of time learning it in school.

T runner

BlaasForRafa wrote: »

Is it any wonder that people who have had 12 years of that language pummelled into them at school hate it?

How do mean pummelled in. It is compulsory. Is English and Maths also pummelled in?

ROS123

O'Morris wrote: »

A man who can speak a language well after having spent a decade learning it in school has good reason to feel intellectually superior to the man who can't speak the same language after having spent the same amount of time learning it in school.

That is if all things are relatively equal, there is a chasm in the quality of teaching of all subjects, not just languages. Those in the top percentile will learn regardless of the quality of the teaching, I will agree on that....

syklops

The amount of parents who are educating their children (33%) through Irish in more than one subject is evidence that Irish parents want their children to learn Irish.

You keep quoting this.

Can you supply a link that shows that 33% of kids are taught in gaelscoileanna?

Also, in some cases kids go to gaelscoileanna because there is no other school available to the children in the area.

Peanut

O'Morris wrote: »

A man who can speak a language well after having spent a decade learning it in school has good reason to feel intellectually superior to the man who can't speak the same language after having spent the same amount of time learning it in school.

You also have to want to learn a language, unless you're suggesting that a good measure of intellectual capacity is compliant obedience to a curriculum based on whatever whims the Dept. of Education of the day prescribe, even though this may go against the best interests of the student (and wider society) in terms of wasted time, effort and money.

I would suggest that the opposite is more valid.

Sleepy

T runner wrote: »

Point (a) If students were allowed to skip the subjects they didnt want to study I suspect there would be little need for schools.

It is up to society (inc. parents) to decide what the child studies and society
wants Irish taught as a compuklsory subject.

Really? I've only been working in the Uk for 2 months now, did I miss a referendum already?

The amount of parents who are educating their children (33%) through Irish in more than one subject is evidence that Irish parents want their children to learn Irish.

Or one could interpret the rise in the popularity of gaelscoileanna as evidence that Irish parents don't want their children in a classroom with children who don't have English as their first language or are playing the system by putting their children in a position where they should be guaranteed high marks in at least one subject and a top up percentage in all others.

You definately have a problem with the langiage on a personal level.
Revival movements are symptomatic of a feeling on the ground. When the numbers of Irish speakers had fallen to a certain level it was certain that there would be a revival effort.

Not necessarily. This is Ireland, remember, it just takes a small group of people with the right connections to have laws made, changed or upheld here.

33% of all Irish pupils have been voluntarily enrolled in schools to learn at least 2 languages through irish.

That's a bit of a facetious argument. 7.4% of Irish children attend Gaeltacht or Gaelscoil schools. There's no proof that the other 22.6% of Irish children studying a second subject through Irish (I'm guessing/hoping it's most like Religion or something else relatively unimportant) are doing so at their parents behest. Most of us parents don't have the luxury of choosing where to educate our children, we put them in the best school we can find within a reasonable commute of our homes that we can get them into. Many parents are going to the lengths of having to christen their children in a religion they've no time for just to ensure they'll have a fair shot at a good school. For me, and I presume many others, disliking the notion of Irish creeping across the sylabus and eating into another subject's time would be pretty unlikely to be considered a big enough issue to rule out an otherwise good school for.

Rebelheart

syklops wrote: »

You keep quoting this.

Can you supply a link that shows that 33% of kids are taught in gaelscoileanna?

Also, in some cases kids go to gaelscoileanna because there is no other school available to the children in the area.

And in many, many more cases kids go to English-speaking schools because there is no other school available to the children in the area.

Unlike your English-speaking National Schools which were set up by Roman Catholic clergy and an unhealthily anglocentric elite, gaelscoileanna were founded and established by local people active in parishes across Ireland. My local gaelscoil started in a County Council prefab in 1985, got an adjacent prefab the next year and after ten years of living in these old prefabs and lobbying finally got a school built. It was entirely and completely a campaign by parents in my village, as is the case across Ireland. This local democracy in action is something which the anti-Irish brigade here is wilfully ignoring, intent as they are on portraying Irish as something which is imposed from the top rather than fought for from the bottom as is the real situation for anybody involved in setting up a gaelscoil against the might of church and state. By 1998 the gaelscoil was bigger in terms of students attending than was the local National School which had been set up in the 1830s. The local community alone made this reality, as much as it evidently discomforts certain myopic types here.

Permabear

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Sleepy

Where are you from Rebelheart? Given your username and rhetoric about anglocentrism, would I be right in guessing it's quite a nationalistic area?

nesf

donegalfella wrote: »

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What about compelling them to do English and Mathematics?

Permabear

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Sleepy

nesf wrote: »

What about compelling them to do English and Mathematics?

I think it's fair to say that literacy and numeracy are the cornerstones of pretty much every education system in the world. The three R's?

Rebelheart

Sleepy wrote: »

Where are you from Rebelheart? Given your username and rhetoric about anglocentrism, would I be right in guessing it's quite a nationalistic area?

Ha! Don’t get me started. No, I don't live in England. It really depends what you mean by that. It's the sort of word used by people who tend to be so immersed in a British (i.e. English) worldview that they cannot see the enormous nationalistic impulse which has driven English culture for centuries, a tribal impulse far greater than anything Ireland has ever produced.

But anyway, I'm from quite an Irish area, yes; Irish enough to know the difference between an Irish area and a 'nationalist' area, and that to a certain strand of English thinking it is only people like the Irish who live in "nationalist" areas. Irish areas, it seems, no longer exist because rather than admit that the Irish are different it is far better for their politics to create a ‘nationalist’ difference which is causing all the “trouble”. The English, you see, are above such crude tribal concepts like nationalism (even as they bomb some more Afghanis with the support of an ubernationalistic tabloid media looking for more "heroes"). Ergo, your question betrays your politics.

Rebelheart

donegalfella wrote: »

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I'd be most interested in the statistic which supports this comment, never mind reliable census data or statistics. It doesn't exist, so I don't know why you'd bother saying such a thing.

Rebelheart

donegalfella wrote: »

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Ahem, ten out of ten for the rhetorical flourish. I'll go there in a moment myself, don't worry. Anyway, Conradh na Gaeilge was a mass movement with upwards of 500,000 members supporting the new state's policy on the Irish language, particularly the proposals of the first Dáil in 1921 that Irish be made a compulsory subject (something English already was). Hardly "a few nationalist zealots". But don't let this historical context get in the way of selective revisionism to fit into your prejudices.

But seeing as you have brought up the issue of the history of linguistic education, no doubt you have no problem with the "few nationalist zealots" who were driving British state policy which made English a compulsory subject; it was only in 1934 that Irish joined it as an obligatory subject in the Leaving Cert (1928 for the Inter). Irish was not even acknowledged as a national school subject from the outset of the establishment of the national school system in the 1830s. Instead, English grammar was rammed down the throats of children and English cultural mores were propagated in an attempt to obliterate indigenous Irish culture. This was pointed out by numerous school inspectors throughout the century, such as Patrick Keenan in the 1850s, but they were repeatedly ignored. In 1904, finally, your seemingly impartial and apolitical British school system in Ireland allowed for the introduction of a bilingual education system in Ireland.

Given this context, you have some gall to accuse the Irish of being the "nationalist zealots".

Rebelheart

donegalfella wrote: »

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And where oh where would English culture be in Ireland without the English state imposing itself upon the Irish people? Or, let me guess, the Irish woke up one morning and abandoned Irish law and the Irish language and gave all their land to these supposedly impartial and enlightened English people because, well, the English were such nice cosmopolitan chaps trying to help them and love-bomb them with flowers everywhere from Mullaghmast to Drogheda?

Rebelheart

donegalfella wrote: »

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English at leaving cert level teaches us all that? I actually sat the Leaving Cert and my distinct memory of it was that the syllabus was full of pompous prats like Jane Austen and that horrifyingly pretentious Emma - oh my God; now that was an alien culture - Paddy Kavanagh and his incessant whinging about nobody liking him in the Pale because he was a culchie and Billy Yeats lamenting a woman for about 40 years whose hair he touched around 1904 beside a fireplace and who had the good sense to avoid him thereafter. Jesus, Mary and Joseph - what tossers, one and all!

I can safely say that shag all skills are acquired from those wasters and only a seriously lifeless parent would want to make their leanbh endure those work-averse moaners of the highest order.

And to think that Irish kids are forced to endure those muppets due to this compulsory English stuff. Rubbish. I'd get a better grasp of English communication and comprehension skills from sitting around a fire having a chat with neighbours. And that is a fact.

And, by the way, I could live happily without ever having sat for a single day in the Leaving Cert English class in which I was forced to sit. I have yet to meet somebody who feels their life is enriched from being forced to endure those manic wasters like Wordsworth, Keats and all the rest. There is no rationalisation for having this English syllabus imposed on Irish children.

mesas

Gaelic is not an ordinary language- its socilinguistic status is one of the weirdest you'll find and the Gaelic Revival project has been marked by a mixture of fantasy, disingenuousness and lies.
First off there is no monoglot speaker base -and hasn't been for some time.
Almost everyone who has any knowledge of Gaelic also has (invariably better) English . Gaelic is already a grossly impoverished language which is ill-fitted for dealing with the modern world ...and the people who use it import English sounds , syntax and idiom into it . This has been going on n the so-called Gaeltacht areas for decades . Learners of Gaelic meanwhile are encouraged to adopt ridiculous forms made up by committees.
Gaelic has not the resources to foster natural organic growth -it is a moribund language living on life support . If it were not a matriculation requirement it would very quickly be discarded by the tens of thousands who are coerced into wasting time on it.
I would like to point out the serious error people make when they discuss the question of compulsory Gaelic in the curriculum . There is no comparison between Gaelic and Mathematiics , History or any other subject .
When children go to school they have no Mathematics , they have no History , Geography etc. They need to be taught these .They do however have a language -which just happens to be an Irish version of one of the most grammatically developed , semantically rich , sociolinguistically powerful and widespread languages in the world .
Further -talking of Gaelic as if it were directly equivalent to French , Spanish , German , Chinese etc. maks no sense . Of course revivalists go out of their way in their propaganda to try to suggest this . Since they can hardly be that stupid -I can only conclude that they are being deliberately dishonest and misleading .
The research referred is another such attempt to lure unsuspecting people into believing that learning some Gaelic will provide a form of magic panacea in the shape of extra money and status . More codswallop.

Rebelheart

Sleepy wrote: »

I think it's fair to say that literacy and numeracy are the cornerstones of pretty much every education system in the world. The three R's?

And their connection with having a plethora of wafflers, wasters and nutcases going under the guise of poets and writers imposed on every student in secondary school English is what, precisely?

Sleepy

I have to admit Rebelheart, I have issue with some of the content of the English curriculum (and a lot of things considered to be 'great literature' generally) myself. I'd love to see a re-introduction of grammar to the curriculum. I was fortunate enough to have a teacher sensible enough to make us all go out and buy 'The Elements of Style' by Jr William Strunk (interestingly a college professor who wrote this grammar manual out of frustration at the poor standards of his level students) in addition to our sylabus based learning in secondary school.

None of this changes the fact that if someone wants to consider themselves educated, they need to be able to write in an educated fashion. "Excellent Communication Skills (Written and Oral)" is a requirement listed on almost every job notice outside of the trades. A lack of a Leaving Cert level English education would detract from the written element of these skills.

Unless one is going for a position in one of the government funded life support institutions for Irish, or an area where it has been artificially imposed as a requirement (e.g. law enforcement, the legal profession), one can't make the same argument for maintaining Gaelic on the Leaving Cert curriculum. (I've resisted the temptation here to rant about what passes for education in Irish btw.)

Arguments that the language is inseperable from the culture of this island are a nonsense. And since the only arguments for maintaining Irish as a compulsory part of the curriculum are cultural, it rather invalidates those arguments. Should we force children to go to mass so we can maintain the culture of "Catholicism" in this country?

Permabear

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T runner

donegalfella wrote: »

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Again you ignore the FACT that 33% of children now learn more than one subject through Irish. Going along with this trend we have to assume that a majority of the remainder are happy for their children to learn Irish as a language. Your arguments dont seem to speak for the majority of Irish parents as you claim.

donegalfella wrote: »

Although I don't agree with state compulsion in those subjects, either, I would note that the vast majority of parents regard English and maths as valuable and necessary subjects. English teaches vital communication and comprehension skills in the first language of our country. Mathematics teaches essential numeracy, logic, and problem-solving skills. How many parents would not want their children to acquire such skills?

Evidently a majority of parents want their children to be proficient in Irish also. You may not agree with their reasons but thats neither here nor there.

Irish, by contrast, is imposed upon children without any clear intellectual rationale. Anyone who questions why it is compulsory hears the familiar vapid rhetoric about "our national language ... part of our identity ... our cultural heritage." But given that someone can undeniably live a happy, prosperous, fulfilled life in Ireland without ever knowing or speaking a word of Irish, these rationalisations hold little water.

So you dont really have a problem in compulsory subjects so long as Irish isnt one?
A big majority of parents seem to want Irish. Around 33% of them do so far as to send their children to learn more than one subject through Irish.
Are all these parents Irish nationalists?

Also Anyone who advocates the use of Irish gets the familiar arguments that it is a backward, parochial, dead???? language (sound familiar?).

There are many thousands of languages spoken in the world today. There are only a couple of hundred states. The vast majority of these languages are minority languages. Are people who advocate speaking these all abominable nationalists?

Are the Finns who impose the 5% Swedish language on all Finns abominable nationalists. Are the Welsh (welsh compulsory in schools) abominable nationalists?

You irrationally associate the Irish language with Irish nationalism. You are barking up the wrong tree.
It should be approached in the same way as it is approached internationally.
Diversity is good and multilingualism promotes diversity. Nothing whatsoever to do with Irish nationalism.

Baboushka

To suggest that speaking your own language makes you elite is sad and pathetic. The inferiority complex of the non-Irish speaker knows no bounds. Ah well, thanks for the laugh.

mesas

It is quite a stretch to suggest that for the vast majority of Irish people Gaelic is ''their own'' language . Their own language ,in any meaningful sense of the word, is their native language -English .
Likewise ,for the bulk of human history, monolingualism has been the natural norm and people were not less human , less intelligent or less fulfilled.
Mixing of populations has led to various adaptations being made i.e. people will pick up bits of other language systems according to palpable need or perceived benefit.
The world of multilingualism is actually a very messy world -with much misunderstanding , delays , frustration , translation costs ,mistranslations etc. Monolingualism is not fundamentally a problematic state -it is multilingualism that creates problems that have to be dealt with.

Permabear

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T runner

mesas wrote: »

Likewise ,for the bulk of human history, monolingualism has been the natural norm and people were not less human , less intelligent or less fulfilled.

It is a common misconception that monolingualism is the "norm".
Around 65-70% of the worlds population todat are atleast bi-lingual.
These people are not less human , less intelligent etc. etc.

Mixing of populations has led to various adaptations being made i.e. people will pick up bits of other language systems according to palpable need or perceived benefit.

You seem to think that mixing of populations is a new phenomenum?
We know in Ireland that many waves of people have arrived here since the first peoples 10,000 years ago. Atleast 3 waves of ancient Celts, Normans, Anglo-saxons, Lowland and Highland Scots. Bilingualism has almost always being present here and were an Island! Imagine how more prevalent multilingualism must be on mainland continents where there are no barriers like seas to stop movements of people.

sceptre

T runner wrote: »

Again you ignore the FACT that 33% of children now learn more than one subject through Irish.

You've been reasonably asked for a reliable source for that figure more than once and yet have continued using it with an emphasised "FACT" label since without backing it up following those reasonable requests. Please provide one. Post-haste if possible.

Permabear

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mesas

T Runner ...The point I was making is that monolingualism would have been the normal starting point for human societies and would surely have been the case for tens of thousands of years .
We must remember that even up to quite recently it was generally the case that most people never moved outside their immediate vicinity . Firstly there was no need , secondly it was too dangerous .
You might also consider that even when different populations come into contact - bilingualism is not the usual outcome . It suffices for a small number of speakers to act as intermediaries and translators for trading purposes and for conflict resolution.
In terms of economy -it would make no sense for a particular population in a defined territory to use two systems of communication to do the same business and in fact this doesn't normally happen .