The Irish language thread

unknown13

Fine Gael have proposed that Irish is going to be demoted from a core subject to an optional Leaving Cert. I just want to gauge peoples opinions on this matter.


NOTE: Can we refrain from responses such as: "I hate Irish and why should I have to do the subject".

Insect Overlord

Very evenly matched so far! I'll admit I'm quite biased in favour of the language, but I think most people here knew that anyway.

unknown13

My view is that it should be made optional but there should be bonus points awarded for it.

Lawliet

I don't think it should be compulsory; forcing students to learn a badly taught subject will only make most people despise it.

Davidius

unknown13 wrote: »

My view is that it should be made optional but there should be bonus points awarded for it.

I don't think any subject should have bonus points simply because in doing so you're granting an unfair advantage to people who are naturally more able for it. Somebody losing their college place because somebody else performed better in an irrelevant subject is ridiculous.

Anita Blow

The current Irish course- No.

If they made a new course, split it into 2 classes-One conversational Irish which would have a Leaving Cert exam 50/50 Oral/Written and the written exam based on the current Irish Paper 1.
The other would be Literature/History which would focus on the poetry/Stair na Gaeilge side of things and which would be for those who are good at Irish and carry extra points.

It'd only be compulsory to choose one of the 2 classes.
Then I'd support it being a compulsory subject. I don't support the whole "Abandon it because it costs money" argument for things..like the Seanad. Make an honest effort to improve something, and if it still doesn't work then abandon it.

Pygmalion

Davidius wrote: »

Somebody losing their college place because somebody else performed better in an irrelevant subject is ridiculous.

That's essentially how the entire system works at the moment though, you're judged on 6 subjects, and if you're lucky 2 or 3 of them are actually relevant to what you want to study.
If you're going for a fairly high-points course you essentially have to ace completely irrelevant subjects, and you're almost certainly going to have really capable people missing out for stupid reasons.

Grindylow

I think it should be because I was made do it and thus so should everyone else due to the fact that I had to suffer my way through it.

I think it should be revised completely though. Learning off notes on Poems/Stories isn't going to help anyone to learn the language. The reason we learn poems in English is because we know the language well. It should be more specialised like the French course, ie: a couple of comprehensions, and then opinion questions where you have to use your own knowledge of the language to answer the questions.

Screaminmidget

Ive been opposed to Irish as a Compulsory Subject since I started secondary school. Its a pointless subject. I for one will never again use Irish, as will most people im guessing. Theres not much to be gained in learning it either.

ironictoaster

Screaminmidget wrote: »

Ive been opposed to Irish as a Compulsory Subject since I started secondary school. Its a pointless subject. I for one will never again use Irish, as will most people im guessing. Theres not much to be gained in learning it either.

Nothing gained by the current curriculum. I learnt more in those few weeks just before the Irish oral than I have in all my years of learning Irish.

Tbh, I don't really care if its made optional or not. We all know the way it's taught is completely wrong and nothing is been done about it. Going in circles imo.

Davidius

Pygmalion wrote: »

That's essentially how the entire system works at the moment though, you're judged on 6 subjects, and if you're lucky 2 or 3 of them are actually relevant to what you want to study.
If you're going for a fairly high-points course you essentially have to ace completely irrelevant subjects, and you're almost certainly going to have really capable people missing out for stupid reasons.

The current system isn't perfect but I can't see how adding bonus points for a subject would make it any better. At least in the current system you can choose subjects that play to your strengths* and not be at a disadvantage to somebody who did the same thing but happened to be stronger at a bonus points subject.

*to a degree

EDIT:
Though I take the point that irrelevancy isn't the biggest issue. Still, I think a system that uses better at a bunch of irrelevant subjects is the lesser of two evils (the other being better at a single subject).

shadowninty

Lawliet wrote: »

I don't think it should be compulsory; forcing students to learn a badly taught subject will only make most people despise it.

This.

kev9100

Tough one. On the one hand, I hated Irish in school but maybe that was because I had a bad teacher and the course is very flawed. I mean, there is a very serious problem when I can study French for 6 years and be good enough to do it well in University but can hardly string a sentence in Irish together.

Screaminmidget

kev9100 wrote: »

I mean, there is a very serious problem when I can study French for 6 years and be good enough to do it well in University but can hardly string a sentence in Irish together.

That could probably be put down to you wanting to learn french, as opposed to be made do irish.

Colm!

Shouldn't be compulsory, but I'd keep up the subject because I like it. Sure, it's taught awfully. But if the course was restructured to more conversational Irish, I'd gladly study it.

Overall, is breá liom an Gaeilge, but I shouldn't have to do it.

whadabouchasir

I don't think that there is any good reason for having compulsory Irish for the lc.As previous posters have said it will just lead to a lot of students that didn't want to do Irish hating it.You have to ask yourself is this really beneficial to anyone?I don't think that forcing people to learn irish against their will is benefiting the language in anyway and it certainly isn't benefiting those students,students that will probably never speak the language after the lc.There is also this notion that if we make it optional then nobody will do it and the language will die out overnight.This simply isn't true,for one thing there will still be thousands in national school and up to Jc studying it as well as those that choose it for the lc.

Chuchoter

I think they should do Irish like all the other languages, starting in first year. I think the current system of people being given the basis in a language by people who only (I know its a good mark, but you need perfect Irish) got a HC3 and then expecting them to go write poetry essays is insane. All your foundations are going to be on flawed sentence structure and grammar.

Were we to bring it in from first year, all your Irish would be coming from someone with a degree in it so at least we can hope they are pretty good. I think it should be optional for everyone, because frankly I have absolutely no use for it and I'd rather take German but I can't handle 3 foreign languages. When I leave school, there will be this massive empty space in my brain where Irish used to be.

QueenOfLeon

I liked it, but I've barely ever used it since I left school (apart from when in foreign countries and wanting to bitch about people :pac:). I think people should have the basics of speaking it, so learn some grammar, vocab, and how to hold a conversation, if you want to keep the culture thing going along. Maybe do this up til Junior Cert so only those who really like it and will count it among their best subjects will carry it on...the way the course is now is making people despise it, which is a pity I think.

Richard Cranium

I voted no, but my actual opinion is more complicated than that. I think that either a heavily revised syllabus, similar (but not identical) to the ones for other languages at LC, should be compulsory; or else the syllabus as it is, and shall be for the foreseeable future it seems, with poetry and studied prose and all the rest should be made optional.

For the record, I'm strongly pro-Irish. However, the way it's taught and represented in the media depresses me terribly.

jumpguy

Irish simply isn't working the way it's currently being thought. I hated it in primary school, I pretty much ignored it all the way until secondary school. My parents played a big part in my education and the only thing they couldn't help me with was Irish. So my Irish was poor in comparison to my maths and English in primary school, I couldn't get help with it at home. When you're that young, parents often play a key role in education.

In secondary school, they expect you to come in with a good level of Irish. Most people in my school had far below what was needed for HL JC Irish. I did HL in the JC and got a D (was gonna drop on the day, but said, arra fúckit, I'll give it a try, TIS' ONLY DA JAY SEE).

My German, which I started in first year, is much, much, MUCH better than my Irish. Why? Because my parents don't know Irish. They could never help me with it, and didn't have the money to send me off to the Gaeltacht every summer. There was no emphasis placed on it.

But, jumpguy, surely your parents don't know German? That is true, they don't know German. But I started learning German when I was 13 and didn't need my parents to help me do my homework anymore. I was well capable of independent learning. I could start from the start and had strong English as a comparison language.

So, my opinion is, teach Irish in secondary schools, or start at 4th class in primary schools maybe. Teach it like a foreign language (I know that sounds bad, but, the cold raw truth is that the majority of the country only speak English fluently). Sheets of vocab, basic grammar, etc. Maybe for the JC make it mandatory and purely a test of comprehension and composition. For the LC, make it optional and maybe add a VERY small amount of literature to the syllabus.

Unfortunately, I don't think any minister of education is ever gonna think outside the box much.

Namlub

I wouldn't like to see the langauge disappear completely but I do think it should be optional after JC so I voted no. In all honesty, it doesn't deserve to be treated as a core subject in the same way English and Maths are, especially not with the current course. People talk about the new 40% for oral course (which I'll be doing) as if it's going to change everything, but I'm still going to have to learn off answers about poems, pros, a play and now 20 sraith pictiuirs because we simply don't have the technical ability to talk about it ourselves. Irish isn't exactly the most useful language to have in the first place, and the fact that when I, and most of the people I know, leave school, I can reel off an answer about the theme of equality in a poem but unable to conduct a conversation just shows that things aren't working.

eVeNtInE

This post has been deleted.

Bottleopener

Anita Blow wrote: »

The current Irish course- No.

If they made a new course, split it into 2 classes-One conversational Irish which would have a Leaving Cert exam 50/50 Oral/Written and the written exam based on the current Irish Paper 1.
The other would be Literature/History which would focus on the poetry/Stair na Gaeilge side of things and which would be for those who are good at Irish and carry extra points.

It'd only be compulsory to choose one of the 2 classes.
Then I'd support it being a compulsory subject. I don't support the whole "Abandon it because it costs money" argument for things..like the Seanad. Make an honest effort to improve something, and if it still doesn't work then abandon it.

My solution would be similar to this - only I'd make the Paper 1 style course compulsory, and have the Paper 2 style one available as an extra subject called "Irish Literature" or something like that.

Irish needs to be taught in a more modern way which will actually get people's interest. I only have to look at the reactions of my fellow students to recent Irish mock orals to see how much the language is hated right now. The way I'd do it is to teach it like French, German etc. - and not force people to learn all the literature that they frankly don't care about at all.

Chuchoter

The issue is though, we can't make the course really easy (ie conversational class) as then what you end up is the language being further and further debased pidgin language, which would do even more damage.

I don't think our education system is the appropriate place for cultural preservation, and I think it will be beneficial anyway for people to not be forced into Irish. I think it gives people a chip on their shoulder about the language.

SarahBeep!

Very pro-Irish.

Very anti- An Trial.

Bottleopener

crayolastereo wrote: »

The issue is though, we can't make the course really easy (ie conversational class) as then what you end up is the language being further and further debased pidgin language, which would do even more damage.

Aye, that's a major problem.

Another possible solution is to teach a major European language from early primary school like they teach Irish, and instead start teaching Irish from first year. Although that creates the problem of having to retrain or hire teachers for teaching the foreign language.

KnifeWRENCH

I voted No. Don't see the need for it to be compulsory.

Having said that I was always pretty good at Irish, so I may have kept it on even if it wasn't compulsory (although almost 4 years later, I can barely string a few sentences together!) The current curriculum seriously needs to be revised though. Placing more emphasis on the Oral was a good idea but they need to do more. I was good at Irish because I learned of shítloads of notes and regurgitated them, not because I was proficient or any way fluent. In other words, I'm an example of what's wrong with the curriculum! :pac:

bluejay14

I don't really see the need for it to be compulsory, I hate it being forced onto us. My whole TY class hates Irish class because nearly all we do is either oral work or reading Foinse. Our teacher keeps telling us to speak out and not be afraid of making mistakes because we need to improve it because the new oral is 40% but frankly, the reason we won't speak out is because we can barely put a sentence together. We can read and translate all the Foinse's in the world but our basic Irish is disastrous.

It makes more sense to make Irish optional than other core subjects such as English or Maths. There'll be hardly a ripple in society if no one learns Irish anymore, we won't all suddenly be using sign language because we can't communiate. And of course, there will be the people who will still study it because they're good at it or have some kind of an interest in it. But on the other hand, if English and Maths were to be made optional, it's hard to say where we'd be without them.

I for one would much rather drop Irish from my timetable in favour of another subject that I'd prefer.When we were making our choices for subjects for the L.C. about 2 months ago, I couldn't pick music because I already had my seven subjects, meaning that I'll have to do it as an extra subject outsied school, that is if I decide that I want to continue with it at all. If I had the choice to get rid of Irish I probably would becuase it's really going to be of no benefit to me and is more than likely only going to be a huge waste of my time.


I can't say that I know a whole lot about the L.C. Irish course but for the J.C. it was just a matter of learning paragraphs off about themes and such and just spitting it out on the page on the day of the exam. It didn't matter if the best theme that came up was uaigneas and the piece we had learned was about grá, we had to write it down anyway because we weren't able to write something of a good enough standard for ourselves.

enda1

No it shouldn't be compulsory, but according to the Irish Constitution, it is Ireland's first language so on that ground it should be compulsory. However I would vote for a constitutional referendum which moved English to being to the first language, and putting Irish as a regional language.

So until the constitutional change, I think it should be ruled by the supreme court to be going against the spirit of the Constitution (if forwarded by the President).

Fad

For once the constitution actually protects something I care about!