If only there was a simple solution to this problem.
It should honestly be optional full stop. I wasn’t diagnosed until adulthood and was allowed to struggle all through primary and secondary school because I didn’t meet the criteria for an exemption.
Edit: And the fact that I didn’t have a decent Irish mark also severely limited my choice of college, which I believe is DEEPLY unfair.
In my opinion there shouldn’t be exemptions. This is the home country of the language it lives or dies depending on us speaking it. Reform how it’s taught is the best option
Around 10 to 17% of children are dyslexic. Maybe you should untie Irish from universities. They need exemptions so that they can have a future. We don’t throw them into the ditch anymore and call them dumb because we’re modern we have science and we understand how these children learn and for a lot of them a second language requirement will limit their future opportunities. Personally, I think that it’s a disgrace that there is no additional needs schools, and that we are failing this population of kids. I find the Irish have a very low understanding of special needs, the country needs to elevate an educational system to understand this population and do a better job educating them
Should be an optional subject after primary school. Should be reforms on how it is taught in primary and secondary school to make children want to choose it. In fairness apart from watching TG4 and a few niche jobs there’s no use for it once finished school.
It should be a mandatory subject to Leaving Cert level for all. That being said, they should overhaul how it’s taught and it shouldn’t be a prerequisite for any college course except for courses that are taught through Irish at any point.
I remember clearly in second year when a few of my fellow students were told they had exemptions (I think they were born in the UK). The absolute look of glee in their faces. Everyone else was jealous! Keep it mandatory for all so that everyone can learn to despise the language!
Ireland is very funny to me, fiercely proud of it’s national identity yet the second your own language comes up you’ll find every argument under the sun to stand against teaching it and ignore that fact that only a few miles over the Irish sea Wales exists and that most of these arguments were made when we started teaching it and have nearly all proved to be utter bollocks and teaching the native language from early years all the way through to 16 is nearly always beneficial to students.
Mandatory Irish sucks. The whole system of marking is pivoted around this, best 6 of 7 subjects, special points for Irish (if that’s still a thing for third level?).
We’ve had decades of expenditure on mandatory Irish and look at the results for the money spent and the impact of homework, pressure on students to study something which most have no love or use for.
You could make the same argument for any other subject to be mandatory e.g. art. It’s an abuse of power and lobbyism.
Rising exemptions are a valid response to dealing with something which should not be in place.
There needs to be reform in how it’s taught. The south has been a Republic since the 30s and we’ve done fuck all to help revive the language
It should be a mandatory subject until students finish school as a living language regardless of academic ability.
It should only be examined as a Leaving Cert subject for those who want to do it.
Make it a living language, and encourage people to learn it. Let those who enjoy studying it like a foreign language, with grammar rules and tests, do it as a Leaving Cert subject if they want.
The “kneecap effect” isn’t all it seems. Kids voting with their exemptions.
The swet little petals, hostile parents,how will they cope..
I think the syllabi could be reformed…then make it mandatory up until Leaving Cert level. I think that’d be around 11/12 years of mandatory study (grammar, prose, some dialects, etc.)…which should be enough. I don’t know what could be non-mandatory though.
I was except from Irish in school, and I’m so glad I was. Im a little disappointed in people with blanket statements saying it should be forced mandatory.
I’m dyslexic, while my dyslexic definitely isn’t as bad as many others , Irish was always a massive stress for me in particular, even if not for others like me. Even in national school when I still had to learn it I could never grasp any understanding of it, the weekly spelling tests in Irish was always bottom of the class. It had a massive impact on my self esteem and mental health overall. I felt totally useless in any academic sense. If I continued to be forced to do Irish in secondary school I feel it’s likely I would have burnt out and had to leave school completely.
But because I was allowed to be exempt I could go on to later get a degree and build up my confidence again.
I get the irish language is a vital part of our cultural history that we should fight to preserve, but not at the expense of children’s mental health, if realistically it’s not actually a vital part of modern life or needed for major of further studies.
Maybe a totally different approach could help integrate it more for students like myself ,but as is I can’t see it
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. And they’ve shown that they’re not interested in doing Irish right, so why would anyone want to do it at all?
I was always of the opinion could every primary school should be transitioned into a Gaelscoil over time, with Irish being the primary language children speak and learn in until secondary?
Using anecdotal evidence, everyone I know that went to a Gaelscoil of course spoke Irish to a higher degree entering secondary and it gave them a great platform to continue learning the language.
Make it optional. It’ll take a while but that might just supply the revival people want. Forced it on folks hasn’t, and doesn’t, work.
Our son has an exemption, and the relief we all got from that was palpable. No more hours of misery, him reckoning he’s “no good” at anything as his difficulties with Irish spread into other subjects, a general resentment towards education.
It’s not as if we speak ‘English’: we speak Hiberno-English, which is an entirely different thing.
18 comments
If only there was a simple solution to this problem.
It should honestly be optional full stop. I wasn’t diagnosed until adulthood and was allowed to struggle all through primary and secondary school because I didn’t meet the criteria for an exemption.
Edit: And the fact that I didn’t have a decent Irish mark also severely limited my choice of college, which I believe is DEEPLY unfair.
In my opinion there shouldn’t be exemptions. This is the home country of the language it lives or dies depending on us speaking it. Reform how it’s taught is the best option
Around 10 to 17% of children are dyslexic. Maybe you should untie Irish from universities. They need exemptions so that they can have a future. We don’t throw them into the ditch anymore and call them dumb because we’re modern we have science and we understand how these children learn and for a lot of them a second language requirement will limit their future opportunities. Personally, I think that it’s a disgrace that there is no additional needs schools, and that we are failing this population of kids. I find the Irish have a very low understanding of special needs, the country needs to elevate an educational system to understand this population and do a better job educating them
Should be an optional subject after primary school. Should be reforms on how it is taught in primary and secondary school to make children want to choose it. In fairness apart from watching TG4 and a few niche jobs there’s no use for it once finished school.
It should be a mandatory subject to Leaving Cert level for all. That being said, they should overhaul how it’s taught and it shouldn’t be a prerequisite for any college course except for courses that are taught through Irish at any point.
I remember clearly in second year when a few of my fellow students were told they had exemptions (I think they were born in the UK). The absolute look of glee in their faces. Everyone else was jealous! Keep it mandatory for all so that everyone can learn to despise the language!
Ireland is very funny to me, fiercely proud of it’s national identity yet the second your own language comes up you’ll find every argument under the sun to stand against teaching it and ignore that fact that only a few miles over the Irish sea Wales exists and that most of these arguments were made when we started teaching it and have nearly all proved to be utter bollocks and teaching the native language from early years all the way through to 16 is nearly always beneficial to students.
Mandatory Irish sucks. The whole system of marking is pivoted around this, best 6 of 7 subjects, special points for Irish (if that’s still a thing for third level?).
We’ve had decades of expenditure on mandatory Irish and look at the results for the money spent and the impact of homework, pressure on students to study something which most have no love or use for.
You could make the same argument for any other subject to be mandatory e.g. art. It’s an abuse of power and lobbyism.
Rising exemptions are a valid response to dealing with something which should not be in place.
There needs to be reform in how it’s taught. The south has been a Republic since the 30s and we’ve done fuck all to help revive the language
It should be a mandatory subject until students finish school as a living language regardless of academic ability.
It should only be examined as a Leaving Cert subject for those who want to do it.
Make it a living language, and encourage people to learn it. Let those who enjoy studying it like a foreign language, with grammar rules and tests, do it as a Leaving Cert subject if they want.
The “kneecap effect” isn’t all it seems. Kids voting with their exemptions.
The swet little petals, hostile parents,how will they cope..
I think the syllabi could be reformed…then make it mandatory up until Leaving Cert level. I think that’d be around 11/12 years of mandatory study (grammar, prose, some dialects, etc.)…which should be enough. I don’t know what could be non-mandatory though.
I was except from Irish in school, and I’m so glad I was. Im a little disappointed in people with blanket statements saying it should be forced mandatory.
I’m dyslexic, while my dyslexic definitely isn’t as bad as many others , Irish was always a massive stress for me in particular, even if not for others like me. Even in national school when I still had to learn it I could never grasp any understanding of it, the weekly spelling tests in Irish was always bottom of the class. It had a massive impact on my self esteem and mental health overall. I felt totally useless in any academic sense. If I continued to be forced to do Irish in secondary school I feel it’s likely I would have burnt out and had to leave school completely.
But because I was allowed to be exempt I could go on to later get a degree and build up my confidence again.
I get the irish language is a vital part of our cultural history that we should fight to preserve, but not at the expense of children’s mental health, if realistically it’s not actually a vital part of modern life or needed for major of further studies.
Maybe a totally different approach could help integrate it more for students like myself ,but as is I can’t see it
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. And they’ve shown that they’re not interested in doing Irish right, so why would anyone want to do it at all?
I was always of the opinion could every primary school should be transitioned into a Gaelscoil over time, with Irish being the primary language children speak and learn in until secondary?
Using anecdotal evidence, everyone I know that went to a Gaelscoil of course spoke Irish to a higher degree entering secondary and it gave them a great platform to continue learning the language.
Make it optional. It’ll take a while but that might just supply the revival people want. Forced it on folks hasn’t, and doesn’t, work.
Our son has an exemption, and the relief we all got from that was palpable. No more hours of misery, him reckoning he’s “no good” at anything as his difficulties with Irish spread into other subjects, a general resentment towards education.
It’s not as if we speak ‘English’: we speak Hiberno-English, which is an entirely different thing.
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