Dept considering coverting Primary teachers into secondary teachers

evolving_doors

So remove it from core after the JC?

markodaly

evolving_doors wrote: »

Do you have a source for that?
BTW I'm not talking about someone who registered to be a teacher in the 1970's or 1980's then left. I'm talking about the profession represented in the dail who you claim "are" teachers.

https://www.independent.ie/life/family/learning/teachers-still-top-of-class-for-31st-dail-representation-26709393.html

TEACHERS will still make up the largest professional group in the 31st Dail -- despite an increase in TDs with more varied backgrounds.

One-fifth of those so far elected have an educational background.

A journalist spouting nonsense is one thing... but a journalist merely reprinting something from a govt. press office without interrogation is another.

They do this all the time. Just because you are in education and it happens to be something you are vested in, does not mean they are somehow targetting educators.

Do you think they interrogated the topic well?
Namely the 4 articles I mentioned

Whether they do it well or not is not the question. The question was, do the government control or are in 'charge' of the press. Do they tell the editors of the various media outlet what stories to print or what news story to run with? Who is the Gobbells in this scenario?

[
If it's merely a rehash of a press statement then why aren't they questioning it or interrogating the issues?

Perhaps, but again show me the 'whos in charge' here? If you called it lazy journalism I would not have an issue with it.

keoclassic

evolving_doors wrote: »

So remove it from core after the JC?

No, remove it from the core full stop and make it optional.

keoclassic

Do you have a source for that?
BTW I'm not talking about someone who registered to be a teacher in the 1970's or 1980's then left. I'm talking about the profession represented in the dail who you claim "are" teachers.

Evolving doors....How can someone teach and be a member of government? That's 1 more arrogant post to this thread! If anyone qualifies as anything....they will always be qualified at it.

evolving_doors

keoclassic wrote: »

No, remove it from the core full stop and make it optional.

Ok where do you put the teachers with no job but on permanent contract ?
Just tell em retrain in something else and phase it out!

keoclassic

evolving_doors wrote: »

Ok where do you put the teachers with no job but on permanent contract ?
Just tell em retrain in something else and phase it out!

Your very dramatic altogether !

RealJohn

keoclassic wrote: »

Education in its entirety at second level should always revolve around what's best for the student........not what's best for teachers.

That’s true, but it misses the point badly - Irish isn’t a core subject to provide jobs for teachers.

keoclassic wrote: »

It would be hugely interesting to see how many pupils would take Irish if it were made optional,

No, it wouldn’t, because we know the answer.
If they made it optional tomorrow, only a minority of students would choose it. Why? Because it’s hard for them. Why is it hard? Because it’s badly taught.
As I said before, making it optional would kill the language overnight. It would certainly solve the issue of shortages of Irish teachers though.

keoclassic wrote: »

if Irish was phased out gradually at a reasonable rate to the point of being optional,then excess teachers of could focus on their second subject......the same way that a lot of optional teachers do.

But then, a lot of them would essentially be stuck with a single subject and be forced to teach filler subjects.

Making Irish optional is a terrible idea. How it’s taught needs to be addressed, and at this point, we probably need specialist Irish teachers at primary level as a great number of primary teachers are simply not fit to do their jobs but that would just exacerbate the supply problem.

There might well be a need to start paying teachers who teach in demand subjects more (at least temporarily) but we have enough issues with unequal pay already that that won’t happen. It’s still probably the most likely way to solve the problem but, at very least, if they raise teachers’ pay a bit in general (and obviously, put all teachers back on the same scale), that might encourage more people into teaching, rather than out of it and more teachers means fewer shortages and that is what is most beneficial to the students.

byhookorbycrook

RealJohn wrote: »

T

Making Irish optional is a terrible idea. How it’s taught needs to be addressed, and at this point, we probably need specialist Irish teachers at primary level as a great number of primary teachers are simply not fit to do their jobs but that would just exacerbate the supply problem.

.

Err, you are saying most primary teachers are unfit to teach?How do you come to that sweeping generalization??

PowerToWait

In relation to the Irish question, wouldn't it be worth looking at what Wales has done to breathe life into Welsh over the past couple of decades?

Similarly, though to a lesser extent, Breton, Alsatian and Corsican in France.

keoclassic

RealJohn wrote: »

That’s true, but it misses the point badly - Irish isn’t a core subject to provide jobs for teachers.

No, it wouldn’t, because we know the answer.
If they made it optional tomorrow, only a minority of students would choose it. Why? Because it’s hard for them. Why is it hard? Because it’s badly taught.
As I said before, making it optional would kill the language overnight. It would certainly solve the issue of shortages of Irish teachers though.

But then, a lot of them would essentially be stuck with a single subject and be forced to teach filler subjects.

Making Irish optional is a terrible idea. How it’s taught needs to be addressed, and at this point, we probably need specialist Irish teachers at primary level as a great number of primary teachers are simply not fit to do their jobs but that would just exacerbate the supply problem.

There might well be a need to start paying teachers who teach in demand subjects more (at least temporarily) but we have enough issues with unequal pay already that that won’t happen. It’s still probably the most likely way to solve the problem but, at very least, if they raise teachers’ pay a bit in general (and obviously, put all teachers back on the same scale), that might encourage more people into teaching, rather than out of it and more teachers means fewer shortages and that is what is most beneficial to the students.

Keeping Irish compulsory is a dinosaurs opinion. Being afraid to let the students decide for themselves is more of a reflection on you than them. Realjohn your dictorial arrogant view that you know what's best for students is fu@kin laughable. If you and other Irish teachers are not capable of reforming the subject so that students pick it themselves, then maybe it is Irish teachers that are not fit for the job you do. ( I don't for one second mean all Irish teachers, because some of them are gifted teachers)Fu@k it....What's the point in even talking to someone like you.

spurious

No need to be abusive to other posters.

amacca

keoclassic wrote: »

Your very dramatic altogether !

Not really....poster was just making a point.....with minimum drama I thought. It would be a drawback/pitfall of your plan. Certainly worthy of consideration if say you actually had to make real policy decisions.

RealJohn

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

Err, you are saying most primary teachers are unfit to teach?How do you come to that sweeping generalization??

I didn’t say most, I said “a great number”.

I say that because if it wasn’t the case, there wouldn’t be a need for thousands upon thousands of students to go to the Gaeltacht every year. I say it because if it weren’t the case, you’d be able to stop a random person on the street and have at least a basic conversation with them in Irish or, at very least, make yourself understood. Primary school teachers have kids for eight years and teach them Irish every day (supposedly).

At secondary, they’re (rightly) expected to be able to use the language a bit. If the secondary teacher has to teach them to form basic sentences in first year, their primary teacher has failed them. The secondary teacher has a syllabus to cover and exams to prepare them for. They don’t have time to teach them to speak the language from scratch.

Clearly, my own direct experience is less valuable as I’ve only met a tiny fraction of the total number of primary teachers but in my very limited experience, unless they teach in a Gaelscoil, most primary teachers I’ve met (not necessarily most primary teachers in general) are no more capable than the average person on the street to converse in Irish. I shared a house with a primary teacher a few years ago. She admitted that she wouldn’t be comfortable conversing with me in Irish and she was teaching FIFTH class. By that age, the students should have quite a good grasp of the language, not to mind the teachers.
The primary teachers I know all back my opinion up and say that a primary teacher with good Irish has the pick of the jobs because they’re up against people who can’t actually speak the language.

Frankly, anyone who thinks that we don’t have a serious problem with primary school Irish isn’t living in the real world. It’d be like if the kids were getting to first year and their maths teachers had to teach them to add and subtract.

The only justification for making Irish optional at second level would be to take the secondary Irish teachers and put them into primary schools, but that would obviously require a degree of retraining too.

RealJohn

keoclassic wrote: »

Being afraid to let the students decide for themselves is more of a reflection on you than them.

So there should be no compulsory subjects then? Fair enough, if that’s your opinion.

keoclassic wrote: »

If you and other Irish teachers are not capable of reforming the subject so that students pick it themselves, then maybe it is Irish teachers that are not fit for the job you do.

1. I’m not an Irish teacher. I’m an Irish speaker who is also a teacher. I don’t teach Irish.
2. Teachers have a syllabus to teach. There’s only so much they can do with the material they have to cover.

keoclassic wrote: »

What's the point in even talking to someone like you.

None, if you’re going to make assumptions about me and about teaching without bothering to establish the facts.
Are you a teacher yourself? I don’t remember seeing you posting here before.

RealJohn

PowerToWait wrote: »

In relation to the Irish question, wouldn't it be worth looking at what Wales has done to breathe life into Welsh over the past couple of decades?

Similarly, though to a lesser extent, Breton, Alsatian and Corsican in France.

I think it would be worth looking at everything but the Welsh situation wasn’t the same. Welsh was genuinely on its last legs when they made the effort to revive it (and by all accounts, they’ve done a great job). Irish is not on its last legs by any stretch but it is being very badly served in our educational system at the moment, and that is fueling an unwarranted dislike for the subject and the language.

man_no_plan

RealJohn wrote: »

I think it would be worth looking at everything but the Welsh situation wasn’t the same. Welsh was genuinely on its last legs when they made the effort to revive it (and by all accounts, they’ve done a great job). Irish is not on its last legs by any stretch but it is being very badly served in our educational system at the moment, and that is fueling an unwarranted dislike for the subject and the language.

I think some of the issues with Irish are inherented in the fokelore in every house in the country. "I hated Irish" "I could never understand it" "It's no use" etc. children pick up on this and place Irish near the bottom of their priority list.

It's as useful as French or Spanish or German for 99% of people (that's not an actual statictic, before I get attacked). A lot of what is done in school isn't immediately useful to anyone so that argument is a waste of time imo.

If children see it as having value and being accessible they will want to engage with it.

Irish teachers don't cover themselves in glory in his they promote the language all the time either. It is a bit clicky in staffrooms I've been in, speaking Irish and leaving people who can't speak it out, wouldn't endear you to getting involved when seachtain na gaeilge comes around.

RealJohn

man_no_plan wrote: »

I think some of the issues with Irish are inherented in the fokelore in every house in the country. "I hated Irish" "I could never understand it" "It's no use" etc. children pick up on this and place Irish near the bottom of their priority list.

Can’t argue with that. Same applies to maths, to some extent, except that there’s less of a perception that it’s no use, even though most people also don’t really use it in the direct sense much more than they do Irish, beyond adding and subtracting.

man_no_plan wrote: »

It's as useful as French or Spanish or German for 99% of people (that's not an actual statictic, before I get attacked). A lot of what is done in school isn't immediately useful to anyone so that argument is a waste of time imo.

Again, agreed. I was pretty good at German in school but I’ve spent less than two weeks in Germany (or other German speaking countries) in the twenty odd years since my leaving cert and didn’t even have to use it much when I was there since most of the locals had better English than my German.
Their Irish wasn’t great though.

man_no_plan wrote: »

If children see it as having value and being accessible they will want to engage with it.

Agreed. A bit like the maths really. For some reason, they see the value of maths but not of Irish. I suppose the more general benefits of Irish are less tangible.

man_no_plan wrote: »

Irish teachers don't cover themselves in glory in his they promote the language all the time either. It is a bit clicky in staffrooms I've been in, speaking Irish and leaving people who can't speak it out, wouldn't endear you to getting involved when seachtain na gaeilge comes around.

I agree to some extent. The foreign language teachers also converse in German/French/whatever too though, in my experience. There just tends to be fewer of them so it isn’t as obvious but in their case, they would be leaving the majority of the staffroom out. Most people working in Irish secondary schools have 13-14 years of Irish behind them. It’s not like it’s a secret code and I imagine those teachers would be happy to include people who want to be included and are willing to make the effort. I know I would be (although, as I mentioned, I’m not an Irish teacher, just an Irish speaker). I don’t see why people should be expected to switch to English though, just because most of the staffroom don’t have a strong command of the language though. We live in Ireland. We shouldn’t be considered rude if we want to converse in our own language. You wouldn’t say that if you were abroad (and in my experience, most Europeans have a better command of English than native English speakers have of other languages so the exact same argument applies).

byhookorbycrook

When I first moved "up the country" ALL of the parents told me that their children hated Irish and that it was a waste of time. I started teaching art and PE through Irish and also doing little dramas in Irish. Within a term, all of the parents told me that the children loved Irish and that the parents wanted help to resurrect their own Gaeilge.