The creeping prominence of the Irish language

If you wish to advance your career it makes more sense to study a science subject or a modern language than waste 100s of hours studying Irish , if you live in a city you may never meet another fluent Irish speaker unless you look for them. Or spend time doing a basic pc course, learning excel , ms word, etc I think maybe 3 per cent of people speak Irish after secondary school unless they become a teacher

Your approach to spreading the Irish language to those who cannot speak it is to insult them and call them names?

You're not an Irish teacher from my school of the 60's are you?

Because your approach brings back memories, none of them happy, about trying to learn Irish in school.

THIS is why I suggested dropping it as an exam subject and you got uppity and started throwing insults around the place: if people are doing it for extra CAO points, they aren't doing it the betterment of the language. Also, too much of a value of an unnesecary feature (assuming it's not a career that needs Irish, unlike teaching, in whcih case, fair enogh, I'd agree with you) the best people for the courses aren't actually getting the positions.

If you're going to harp on about "making an effort to increase... intellectual activy" then you kinda have to start losing the arrogance first.

which in itself is bollocks... if you sit the Geography exam, say honors. Your reward for the exam is the grade achieved ... nothing else.. you answer the questions correctly, you get a grade for your performance.extra marks for the language it’s sat in ? Bollocks !

id like to see somebody take a legal case... I’d imagine hands down they’d win as its actually discriminatory..

Not everyone driving our roads learned Irish in school. French, British, German tourists, Polish lorry drivers etc.

Irresponsible to have warning signs and notices in an obscure (to anyone outside this island) language because 'culture'.

English is a life-skill, Irish is not, so the reverse argument dies there. You'd find it impossible to find a non-Englush speaker under 40 in places like the Netherlands or Sweden, and they don't start learning until about 10 years old - let alone Ireland, which is a native-English speaking country.

Re History - we need less mandatory subjects, not more The curriculum needs to focus on who the students ARE and not what it thinks they should want to be.

You need to take that up with the poster I was replying to, but ultimately this depends on your defintion.

Is education being defined as something that should dictate to students who they are? In that case, yes, I am; but I disagree with the definition.

"Ignore all the evicence of your eyes and your ears and believe only what we tell you - it was the Party's final, most important command."

Talk about twisting arguments.

I mentioned you because you're the one imppsing an ethos onto students rather than letting them decided what is important for them and Who They Are as opposed to Whe The Are Told To Be.

How the hell does being against mandatory subects make it ironic to quote Orwell? The whole point of 1984 is to NOT be indoctrinated. The constitution arguemtn also diies on the basis that you think the will of the peopel never changes (just becuuse it once was, does not mean it always will be - there have been dozens of amendments to it since it was written).

Irish is not a life-skill. People go about their lives successfully and unhindered without Irish every day. The also experience cultures, are very knowledgaebale about history and vote without little to no knowledge of Irish.

As for the soul - well, who decides what is important for the soul? The State? We going back to 1984?

Eh no - you haven't answered anything - you've just said the same thing again.

You got called out on it because you did it. And you're doing it again.

You did not defend the staus quo, you presented false arguments and misrepresented responces in order to oppose change.

You did not get compared to 1984, your idea that the State should decided what is important to the student got compared to 1984.

And as you have presented no challenges to these points three times in a row, I'm resting my case here. Have a nice day.

It isn't though. "As much a life skill as English"? Not way at all.

And that's the fundamental problem with Irish - the fact that it simply isn't needed by the vast majority of the population for the vast majority of their interactions.

The way it is taught is a problem, but the real issue is that people don't see the language used in a way that causes them to value it or become motivated to learn it.

I've made this point plenty of times before on boards, but the one sentence most people can still remember from Irish is 'An bhfuil cead agam dul go dti an leithreas?'. And why is that? Because you needed to be able to say that before you could go to the bathroom. Kids saw the value of it and learned it. They don't see the value of it in general, and don't learn it.

If people check my post history (almost impossible now, I know) they will see that I'm in no way anti-Irish language. but I am a realist about it.

The exact problem here is that it is not as much a life skill as English. That is what it needs to become, or at least, the level it needs to approach, for it to gain value outside some niche areas.