Quinn: Schools spend too much time on religion and Irish

Permabear

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franktheplank

But then we'd have to pay the teachers a 'not teaching Irish and religion so much any more' allowance.

Grayson

Permabear wrote: »

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I Think science in primary school consisted of a nature ramble for me.

Would most teachers in primary school even be able to teach basic science at this stage?

Permabear

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Pilotdude5

Good. I would be in favour of removal of religion from both secondary and primary, and make Irish an option in both.

gallag

What's the point in Irish? It's like Ulster Scotts, the child would benefit from learning French or German etc. I think sport and religion should be scrapped and sports clubs on Saturdays and religion on Sundays if required. That way children will not be sent home with houres of homework destroying family time.

Permabear

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slarkin123

I think religion should be kept out every public school. If parents are that pushed about kids having a religious education then the church should set Upanishads Sunday school type of thing. Preparation for holy communion and confirmation takes up way too much time which could have been spent on more beneficial subjects to the children.

Irish on the other hand i feel should stay. Its part of our culture and it would be sad to lose it. My dilemma when sending my first child to school was i wanted them to be fluent in their own language but every Irish school had a catholic ethos. They are in an Irish school now and i find in 3rd class most of their homework consists of learning religious prayers for communion. I had approached the principal about the possibility of my child not making her communion and it was seen as a big no no.

Seaneh

Religion shouldn't be thought in public schools.

I think Irish should be changed entirely, it should be 100% conversational until after junior cert year. And then optional academic classes.

Opinicus

I spent thirteen years of my life learning Irish and I still can't string a sentence together in Irish if you asked me. Learned more French in five years. We should be teaching young people HTML and logic instead of wasting their time learning something they'll never use.

As for religion, there's no place for it in a state school.

Mr Whirly

slarkin123 wrote: »

I think religion should be kept out every public school. If parents are that pushed about kids having a religious education then the church should set Upanishads Sunday school type of thing. Preparation for holy communion and confirmation takes up way too much time which could have been spent on more beneficial subjects to the children.

I feel the same way about Irish as you do about religion. It should be taught outside school to people interested in learning it. Academic subjects in school should be beneficial to students and not a complete waste of time, money and resources.

VinLieger

There is absolutely no reason for religion to be taught in schools along side factual and useful subjects.
If parents want to force their own backwards and archaic beliefs onto their children its up to them to do it themselves, crossing my fingers that disgusting brainwashing will outlawed soon enough as well though

cmssjone

Permabear wrote: »

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With regards to Maths, Ireland's ranking is set to plummet thanks to the ill conceived Project Maths debacle. I'm sure this has been covered in other threads.

As for Irish, it is part of your heritage and should remain in some form. Perhaps, as in Wales, it should be compulsory until Junior Cert and then made optional.

MUSEIST

Learning irish is a complete waste of time and resources, it should only be an optional subject for those who are genuinely interested (in my experience most people had a strong dislike for the language). As for religion, well that has no place in schools unless it's teaching a broad range of religions and history of religion and even then that time could be spent on more relevant subjects.

slarkin123

MUSEIST wrote: »

Learning irish is a complete waste of time and resources, it should only be an optional subject for those who are genuinely interested (in my experience most people had a strong dislike for the language). As for religion, well that has no place in schools unless it's teaching a broad range of religions and history of religion and even then that time could be spent on more relevant subjects.

Making Irish optional is a very good idea.

Permabear

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redandwhite

VinLieger wrote: »

There is absolutely no reason for religion to be taught in schools along side factual and useful subjects.
If parents want to force their own backwards and archaic beliefs onto their children its up to them to do it themselves, crossing my fingers that disgusting brainwashing will outlawed soon enough as well though

Yeah.

Total waste of time teaching kids about one of the most influential forces in human life, both past and present.

gallag

The Irish language is dyeing and people are using children as its life support. Can anyone make an argument for learning a dead language over a language that could help with employment and communication with other people in the world? Most people will not speak three languages so filling their head full of irrelevance for your own romantic ideals.

I think that every child should be tought sign language then everyone in the world could communicate.

My name is URL

slarkin123 wrote: »

Making Irish optional is a very good idea.

How would that work exactly? What if only 10% of kids opt to study Irish? Would it be justified to employ a teacher just for them?

VinLieger

redandwhite wrote: »

Yeah.

Total waste of time teaching kids about one of the most influential forces in human life, both past and present.

The history and power of religion is taught in history class, but teaching children how to worship and that one relgion out of the hundreds of other choices out there is the right one as a subject in school is just plain wrong

anncoates

I don't think it's such a bad thing to make the national language compulsory. albeit taught in a context that might bring it to life a little.

while I agree that a grounding in sciences is good thing, I'd hate to see education (especially primary) becoming solely a dull employment-orientated exercise.

Religious instruction should not be taught at any school level. People have places of worship and the home to practice their faith in. Perhaps history curricula could be expanded to give an overview of religion in a strictly historical and informative sense.

c_man

He's dead right. And one of the few in Government who I think is actually trying to do some good :eek:

Solair

He's right though. Our curriculum is not fit for purpose at all.

I would add to his list :

1) No science / none worth mentioning at primary level.

2) Very poor choice of foreign languages in most schools with a major over-emphasis on French. Spanish is actually easier to learn and much more widely spoken and useful if you're going to pick a latin language to teach and not enough schools are offering German.
Mandarin Chinese could be offered, but it's probably too difficult to teach in the context of a school curriculum to be honest.
We should probably offer Polish too, there are loads of poles living here and probably quite a few who would be ready to teach with primary degrees in Polish. There could also be quite a few people capable of teaching Russian here too.

3) We have too much duplication of schools.
Think of the overheads involved in having umpteen different primary schools in any given area all because we have this notion that girls can't be educated with boys and that catholics and protestants and non-religious types all have to be segregated.

It is institutional sectarianism, sexism and class-discrimination. We can't see it because that's what we grew up with and we think it's normal. Compared to most countries in the developed world, the Irish (and to a degree the British) educational system is absolutely weird in that regard.

Can you imagine the uproar that would go on if someone suggested that universities should be single sex and religiously divided up, or any other aspect of public service for that matter?

Anyone been to the catholic female-only motortax office recently?

Every one of those schools has buildings maintenance, and more importantly a principal on a very hefty salary. We need fewer principals and fewer, better organised facilities to house schools in.

I would propose as an interim measure, that primary schools be organised into school districts with one principal per district.
Maybe take all the schools in one suburb / one town (work it on some population model) and then merge them when the funds are available. But, in the interim perhaps use the existing buildings as a single organisation.

Obviously, they couldn't just fire the principals, but they could just not hire new ones. Most of them would be in their 50s anyway so it's not like they've long to go in the job.

KamiKazeKitten

gallag wrote: »

I think that every child should be tought sign language then everyone in the world could communicate.

And I like the idea, but there are different kinds of sign language in the world, fyi.

Stained Class

AFIK, Science was on the primary school curriculum untill 1922. It was then abandoned to facilitate the teaching of Irish.

My name is URL

gallag wrote: »

The Irish language is dyeing

lol... and the English one?

KamiKazeKitten

Fwiw I think religion has a place in schools - before you jump on me though I'd be supporting children learning a little bit about different religions instead of doing the whole Communion shebang.

Real Life

VinLieger wrote: »

The history and power of religion is taught in history class, but teaching children how to worship and that one relgion out of the hundreds of other choices out there is the right one as a subject in school is just plain wrong

agreed. religion has had a huge role in society for thousands of years so it needs to be taught but in a way that says heres what these people believe etc. not in a this is right kind of way. Id say an hour per week is enough to do this. Science should play a much larger role, there should be classes everyday for at least an hour on it.

gallag

My name is URL wrote: »

lol... and the English one?

Give me a break lol, I am on my phone.

Lelantos

gallag wrote: »

Give me a break lol, I am on my phone.

And driving?

cmssjone

My name is URL wrote: »

How would that work exactly? What if only 10% of kids opt to study Irish? Would it be justified to employ a teacher just for them?

If Irish was totally optional then I have a feeling that some schools would make it their USP that they still offered it. It would then be down to parental choice (to some degree) whether or not their child learnt Irish or not. Before people object and say that in some areas this choice would be removed from them, I totally agree.

Irish is part of your heritage and this should be embraced if at all possible. It would be a shame if the language became extinct. Give people a flavour and the opportunity to decide after studying for a few years. Other languages are started at JC level and there is no reason why Irish can't be one of these. I do believe it is pushed too much at primary level which probably alienates children at such a young age. They have more important things such as English, Science and Maths to be focusing on at this stage.

slarkin123

My name is URL wrote: »

How would that work exactly? What if only 10% of kids opt to study Irish? Would it be justified to employ a teacher just for them?

No i wouldn't agree with having to hire additional teachers for a small percentage. But there are already plenty if qualified Irish teachers at the moment. Schools could use the Irish teachers they have at the moment. Its down the years where difficulty will begin.

Louthdrog

Im a science/maths teacher now. This thread has made me realize that I never studied any form of science at primary school level (Only left primary school in 2004). The closest would have been "Nature" which usually involved bringing in leaves and displaying them on a table. Never actually looked at anything scientific until first year in secondary school.
I was of course fed the usual religious crap as "fact". Thinking back, the amount of time spent on Religion versus Science is scary. Hundreds of hours of my life were probably spent listening to far fetched stories or learning off prayers. Think of how that time could have been spent, learning about interesting and useful stuff!
Absolutely backward stuff

Holsten

Remove religion and replace Irish with French/German/Spanish/Etc

pablomakaveli

They should just get rid of Religion. Its a waste of time. (Though i admit i used to like it in school because it was a doss class)

As for Irish, i've said it countless times but the approach to teaching it needs to change. Teach them how to speak the language and just do away with teaching Irish poetry and literature (maybe make that a leaving cert subject) and we'll see an increase in fluency in Irish.

gallag

Lelantos wrote: »

And driving?

Not if over 60mph

redandwhite

VinLieger wrote: »

The history and power of religion is taught in history class, but teaching children how to worship and that one relgion out of the hundreds of other choices out there is the right one as a subject in school is just plain wrong

Have you looked at the JC and LC syllabi recently?

Theres a lot more to Religion these days than the indoctrination of the Catholic/Major Christian denominations.

shantolog

I can understand the point of questioning how it is being taught, and in my opinion is it taught badly, but to question whether it should be taught at all is ridiculous.

Can you imagine some Estonian person saying " Estonian is crap and shouldn't be taught in Estonian schools".
I imagine the ONLY countries where this type of conversation is being had is in countries which are, or were former colonies in which their culture and language were systematically destroyed to cement their colonisation, and a language has been imported to run government and local business.

There would be plenty of examples in Africa, and I believe Ireland is an example of this. Our attitude to the language of Irish is simply a hangover from former generations being put into a position of having to use English and almost unlearn Irish in order to get employment and try and make a living for their families.

We need a serious overhaul of how it is taught in schools, we don't need to abandon it. Linguistic diversity is not a bad thing.

And if we are going to teach any language for business reasons it should not be French it should be Mandarin:pac:

Solair

Irish should be available as a subject, but it should be just conversational Irish in primary school ... get up a bit of fluency, learn about the culture and it shouldn't be dominating the whole day.

In secondary school it should be a conversation course (non-examined) anything else should be optional. There's no reason why it shouldn't be offered as a full subject with literature and everything, but not compulsory.

Some people would want to study it, regardless of whether it's compulsory or not.

gallag

The people that are quick to waste their kids time and education on a dead language should do a night course and learn it themselves, let adults decide if they want to learn it.

books4sale

Permabear wrote: »

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Considering the number of countries in the developed world that's a fairly scary statistic for Ireland.

I spent a few years in South Korea, religion never even gets a mention in the schools, students go to school to learn, not get brain washed with non factual sh*te.

Pottler

Dump Irish and teach science and technology. If the Teachers can't cope, dump them as well and hire ones that can.

Which private business would come out with the codology that "we can't change as our staff would be unable to deliver"? Deliver, or stand aside so that someone else can do the job of delivering.

I see the education my kids are getting and it is very poor - hours spent each evening fumbling over a load of old codswallop Gaelic that they will NEVER use, ever and have no more than a passing clue as to what the teacher is on about.

More days gone to retreats, masses, communion preparation, confirmation preparation, priests visits, nuns visits, saints days, blah blah blah. If I want them taught a religion, I'll do it myself thanks, ye get on with teaching them maths, geography, computer science and how to spell "taught".

MadsL

Drives me nuts when people talk about teaching "Religion" in schools. There are two separate things, there is Religious Instruction - teaching someone how to be a follower of a religion, and there is Religious Studies, teaching people about religions and human value and moral systems, in order to foster understanding, respect and tolerance of different faiths and cultures.

One clearly has no place in schools. The other is astonishingly neglected and mocked.

Jimoslimos

gallag wrote: »

What's the point in Irish? It's like Ulster Scotts, the child would benefit from learning French or German etc.

Ulster Scots isn't a language, it's a glorified dialect. Anyway let's not get sidetracked. If we can't teach Irish to an acceptable standard then we won't have any luck trying to replace it with other supposedly more useful ones.

Teaching languages isn't a matter of either/or. If you master one (fairly basic Irish) it makes subsequent ones easier to pick up.

Mr Whirly wrote: »

I feel the same way about Irish as you do about religion. It should be taught outside school to people interested in learning it. Academic subjects in school should be beneficial to students and not a complete waste of time, money and resources.

No, school should be about giving children the tools to think for themselves and form their own ideas (which is precisely why religion should have no place). It is not simply a factory to produce trained clones of what multinational companies require from graduates.

books4sale

Pottler wrote: »

More days gone to retreats, masses, communion preparation, confirmation preparation, priests visits, nuns visits, saints days, blah blah blah. ".

What is this? The figgin 70's.

Seriously, you're the parent, why don't stand up and say something FFS!

Pottler

books4sale wrote: »

What is this? The figgin 70's.

Seriously, you're the parent, why don't stand up and say something FFS!

Primary school that he's finished with at the end of this academic year. It's the local school and that's the "ethos" - if you complained, your kids life would be a misery.

Solair

On the religious side of things - The problem is that we have completely confused 'education' and 'indoctrination'.

The two are VERY different.

Education about religion, would be discussing it, analysing it, talking about it, looking at the history, sociological implications etc etc.

Indoctrination is where you sing lots of songs over and over again, say prayers over and over, get down your your knees etc etc and are expected to believe something and partake in ceremonies.

Irish is taught as a cultural requirement, not a practical one. I have no issue with teaching it, but I think it needs to be a choice for students. It's a hugely difficult subject for some people, particularly if you've no natural flare for languages or interest in them.

Someone who is excellent at maths, science, business or whatever, has to devote vast amounts of time to doing literature in a language that isn't' their native tongue. That's really unfair and probably means they end up reducing their options at 3rd level by dragging their grades down too.

VinLieger

redandwhite wrote: »

Have you looked at the JC and LC syllabi recently?

Theres a lot more to Religion these days than the indoctrination of the Catholic/Major Christian denominations.

No i havent but i sincerely doubt it has changed enough where kids arent being taught specific paryers and catholicism is given the majority of the time
I know several recently qualified primary teachers and have heard the bizarre details of the religion exams teachers have to go through to simply get their qualifications.
These exams have had a pretty detailed thread on here and are shocking to say the least http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056553324

Solair

VinLieger wrote: »

No i havent but i sincerely doubt it has changed enough where kids arent being taught specific paryers and catholicism is given the majority of the time
I know several recently qualified primary teachers and have heard the bizarre details of the religion exams teachers have to go through to simply get their qualifications.
These exams have had a pretty detailed thread on here and are shocking to say the least http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056553324

Apparently if you don't pass you have to go for trial by water too!:D (The re-sit)
Weeds out any of those nasty agnostics, atheists, unreformed hippies etc..

mackerski

cmssjone wrote: »

Irish is part of your heritage

Have we met?

cmssjone

mackerski wrote: »

Have we met?

Your point?