On youtube the video “Should Irish still be compulsory in schools? | Upfront with Katie” the presenter starts by asking everyone who did Irish in school, and then asking who’s fluent (obviously some hands were put down) and then asked one of the gaeilgeoirí if they got it through school and when she explained that she uses it with relationships and through work she asked someone else who started with “I’m not actually fluent but most people in my Leaving Cert class dropped it or put it as their 7th subject”
Like it seems like the apathy has turned to a quiet disrespect for the language, I thought we were a post colonial nation what the fuck?
I think Irish should be compulsory, if not for cultural revival then at least to give people the skill from primary school age of having a second language like most other europeans
RTÉ should be like the bulwark against cultural sandpapering, but it seems by giving this sort of platform to people with that stance that they not only don’t care but they have a quietly hostile stance towards it
Edit: Link to the video https://youtu.be/hvvJVGzauAU?si=Xsi2HNijZAQT1Whx
by Closeteer
44 comments
Yeah we spend about 12 or 13 years learning it in school only to never use it ever again, it’s a wonder it’s virtually a dead language.
So do you think the “Should Irish still be compulsory in schools?” shouldn’t have had anyone on the “No” side? I’m not getting your issue here.
> I think Irish should be compulsory, if not for cultural revival then at least to give people the skill from primary school age of having a second language like most other europeans
Pretty sure the second guy addressed that by saying they’d prefer to focus on subjects that would be more useful such as English or French.
Unpopular opinion: You can’t force people to do something they don’t want to do.
As kids, you can put them in a room. You can make them recite phrases until the cows come home.
But disengaged learners are not learners.
As for RTE I rather see them reflect apathy where apathy exists rather than trying to force an agenda.
So RTE shouldn’t be allowed to have a balanced discussion on the topic?
RTÉ got people’s honest opinions. How is that ‘promoting’ the lack of use of Irish. It is just reflecting what the opinions of the populous. It would be far more disingenuous if they filled the audience and panel with Irish teachers and Irish speakers talking about how brilliant it is.
I’d rather honesty than a fake narrative.
>at least to give people the skill from primary school age of having a second language like most other europeans
It’s only a skill if it has a practical use, otherwise it’s a party trick.
Other Europeans learn second languages that can be useful for travel or business. Spanish and French are two of the most widely spoken languages in the world.
So there was a discussion on a TV programme where some people thought one thing and some people thought something else, and both sides were given a chance to have their say. What’s the problem?
Oh no, someone disagreed with you. They must have a colonial mindset.
You should try to force them to do the things you do and like the things you like. This will work for making your vision of the culture dominant. That is not a colonial mindset.
You seem very obsessed with colonialism.
If I learn Irish, I can soeak to… everybody I already can eith English.
If I learn French or Spanish, I can speak to many more people.
It’s just practical to pick another language over Irish, not to mention people being out off of it by the education system.
Oh joy this again. You’re not going to win anyone over by moaning that nobody gives a shit about learning Irish and making it non compulsory would be about as popular as abolishing “insert tax here”. People are usually in favour of a second language but would prefer it to be something useful not a language which is less widely spoken and useful than latin.
If a tiny minority wants to keep the language going then go for and I’m even in support of government funding for it and it being an option in schools but the idea of forcing it on people? Nah, leave the forcing dogma down people’s throats in school to the catholic church(which frankly should also be evicted from schools).
If learning Irish was a valuable and amazing as you claim then why are you in favour of forcing it on people? wouldnt they see its value if you explained it? Why are you against any discussion of it?
Truth is we have not tried to revive Irish as a nation. Individuals do try valiantly for sure. Na Gaeil Óga, Conradh na Gaeilge, Loch Lao, Gael Linn, Caen Togher etc etc. None of this matters for much when so many kids leave school hating Irish. Our department of education need to cop themselves on and say right let’s listen to the teachers and not just pretend to and maybe we can fix this course. But they don’t listen to us teachers and what happens? More literature added to the junior cycle, so much that you have no time to teach the language at all. Trying to get teenagers to analyse literature pieces they don’t and will never understand is such a waste of time. Now the oral has been removed from junior level. Leaving cert orals are during Easter holidays now so it’s hard to get teachers to do it. Because they don’t want to pay simple as. It’s a joke and all teachers know it but it’s not our fault, we have a course to get through. Just try to pass on some love through the misery of it all.
It should not be compulsory. I say that as someone who did 4 years in the summer Gaeltacht and was fairly fluent when I left school.
You make it compulsory and 95% of people hate it. They carry that hate through their lives. The language has no chance.
You make it optional. 5% of students choose to do it . They don’t hate it. The other 95% are completely apathetic to It.
Apathy you can work with. Those people may get curious in later life and decide to give it a go. The language has a chance. What it needs is the people trying to force it onto others to back off. Give it a chance to survive on its own.
Compulsory to end of Primary. They’ll have had a taste and it’s up to them if they want to continue.
Your problem is here:
*I think Irish should be compulsory, if not for cultural revival then at least to give people the skill from primary school age of having a second language like most other europeans*
This is complete denial. Compulsory Irish does the exact OPPOSITE of what you want to achieve. It’s the very definition of “counter-productive”. How anyone who thinks compulsory Irish is going to bring about a “cultural revival” or ever do anything positive for the language is something I will never comprehend.
The problem isn’t whether it’s compulsory or not in schools, although arguably it is a problem. It’s that no one speaks it outside of school apart from Gaeltacht areas (traditional and new) and the areas around them. I say that it’s a problem having it compulsory in school because kids will have the mentality that it’s just another “dumb subject” like Maths.
If we want to look at a successful language revival effort, we should look to Israel. Now, putting that conflict aside just for this one single example, whatever your views are on it, you cannot deny that their effort to revive Hebrew as a common language is nothing short of a miracle. There are methods put out there for a language revival and the way we do it is completely wrong. It’s literally just “learn it in school and that’s it”. Linguist Joshua Fishman devised a model for a language revival with 8 steps:
1.Acquisition of the language by adults, who in effect act as language apprentices (recommended where most of the remaining speakers of the language are elderly and socially isolated from other speakers of the language).
2.Create a socially integrated population of active speakers (or users) of the language (at this stage it is usually best to concentrate mainly on the spoken language rather than the written language).
3.In localities where there are a reasonable number of people habitually using the language, encourage the informal use of the language among people of all age groups and within families and bolster its daily use through the establishment of local neighbourhood institutions in which the language is encouraged, protected and (in certain contexts at least) used exclusively.
4.In areas where oral competence in the language has been achieved in all age groups, encourage literacy in the language, but in a way that does not depend upon assistance from (or goodwill of) the state education system.
5.Where the state permits it, and where numbers warrant, encourage the use of the language in compulsory state education.
6.Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated, encourage the use of the language in the workplace.
7.Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated, encourage the use of the language in local government services and mass media.
8.Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated, encourage use of the language in higher education, government, etc.
As can be seen, compulsory education is one of the last things to do on that list. I’d say if there was a genuine effort at actually preserving our culture and heritage rather than just being Anglicised Gaels pretending to be distinct, this would be how it was done
Being a “post colonial nation” means deciding for ourselves what our nation should look like
That involves open and frank discussions about what our modern culture is and what it could be
Not an automatic defense of what it was or what it might’ve been, simply because it used to be under outside attack
I just finished watching the video and honestly, great discussion.
Im no fan of the language personally, but I don’t see how anyone can look at our current process, where you finish 12 years of mandatory schooling in a subject and have no ability in it, is anything other than a failure.
These people’s opinions as adults, that you find so distasteful, are the result of the exact schooling you’re proposing.
If we don’t have honest adult discussions about the topic, the result will never change and the language, which is already regarded as endangered will absolutely continue to decline.
I get the whole “post-colonial” thing and I understand how frustrating it is when people don’t seem to want to do what they clearly should. But at some point we will have to face some simple truths.
One is that more or less our entire culture expresses itself through English. This does not mean we have a fake culture. For instance, I don’t think you would tell Egyptians that they don’t have a “real” culture just because most of it is expressed in Arabic. Or that Argentina doesn’t have a real culture just because most of it is expressed in Spanish. They are doing fine with post-colonial languages and so are we. Our four Nobel Prize for Literature winners, for instance, wrote almost exclusively in English. The idea that we can only express a “real” culture through Irish is demonstrably false.
Another one is that speaking Irish doesn’t solve any problems. This is the real issue. There are no speakers of Irish who don’t also speak English, and some studies have demonstrated that even most *native* Irish speakers speak English better. Those wishing to revitalise Irish often point to the successful campaigns of Hebrew and Tagalog, but in both of those cases, it solved a real problem. Of course it’s nice to learn Irish and have an extra key to open the locks of our heritage, but it doesn’t solve any actual problems.
To be clear, I am in favour of supporting anyone who wants to learn Irish and all encouragements should be given. But forcing people into it might not be the most productive approach.
RTE should be a voice for all Irish people, and newsflash, most Irish people don’t give a shite about Irish as a language.
It’s not unexpected, or wrong, for the state broadcaster to cover both sides of the issue.
Personally, I don’t think Irish should be mandatory beyond primary school. That’s enough to give anyone who wants it enough basis to learn more in secondary. Basically all of my friends wished they could drop Irish for a language the people around us actually speak, like Polish or Russian. There was a petition with like 300 signatures brought to the school to try and let one of the Irish teachers teach us Polish instead, but nothing ever came of it.
If we don’t want to learn Irish, we shouldn’t have to after primary. Simple as.
This post is a textbook example of the issue with Irish.
The undeniable fact about Irish is that fuck all people can hold a conversation despite most having 13 years of formal education.
Instead of having an honest conversation about the use of resources, we have tripe about “British bad”
The harsh reality is that Irish is too small to continue the way it is going.
You’d rather RTE lie to maintain an agenda. The opinions are honest and beyond that what does it matter if a dying language dies. We still have the info if anyone wants to study it or the etymology.
They are just covering the public’s honest opinions. Nothing disrespectful about that.
I’m sorry, but the education system has failed us when it comes to Irish. Irish was never taught to us as a “second language.” We were expected to know it from the day we entered school. We get taught stupid poems and stories instead of teaching us like they do with Spanish or French.
Gaelgors don’t help with their elitism either.
If we want Irish to survive for the 21st century, it must be taught differently.
If they are not going to teach it like a foreign language, don’t bother at all. I remember trying to study poetry for paper 2 even though I could barely hold a basic conversation. It’s madness.
The saddest part I probably learnt more Irish two weeks before the leaving cert oral exam than the 14 years of Irish education prior.
It’s a tragedy tbh. It’s a beautiful language.
God forbid we have a debate on the sacred Irish language!!
Looks like your post backfired on you and not everyone has their pitchforks out.
Forcing Irish down peoples throat has worked well so far, so we should force it down even harder. Once 90% of people finish Irish paper 2 in the leaving cert that is the last interaction they have with Irish until it is time to help with their kids homework. It is even worse when they are studying Irish it stops at the school gate. None of this is new, has been going on decades. It is the honest opinion of a lot people.
There has been promotion of the language for decades as well, so why is it so disliked? RTE is highlighting the problem of how people feel about Irish. Pretending that there is not a problem will make things worse.
There have been so many threads on here about why is Irish in its current state. And all nearly end up the same way. Taught badly and the preferred solution for a lot is make all schools gaelscoil (never mind that there aren’t the teachers who can speak Irish).
Change the curriculum so that Irish is taught more like french/German are (I.e actually useful). If we need to have a subject on Irish poetry/literate etc then have a separate subject for that but the majority of students don’t have enough of a basic command of the language to be able to do effective creative analysis through it.
Or keep it as is and just have it not be compulsory, either way I think there needs to be a change
Personally I am of the mind that the two most significant, and easy to achieve steps we could take as a nation to improve, would be to let Irish be an optional subject for children and their parents to decide whether it’s worth the time investment for them…
…and media education, which imho would include heavy cult & religious eduction. Groups forming around ideas is great, but people within those groups doing so because they think fictional stories (wonderful and useful yes, but still fictional) are real, is extremely dangerous.
OP’s opinion is a major part of why this language has failed and will continue to fail to spark back to relevance and usage.
I’m in NZ now and Te Reo Maori words and phrases are used daily by anyobe under 40,the vast majority of which are colonists descendants. Actual Maori users speak it more commonly and with greater complexity but it’s not universal known by all Maori either, so it reviving organically nationally.
>I think Irish should be compulsory, if not for cultural revival then at least to give people the skill from primary school age of having a second language like most other europeans
The second language kids learn in school in Europe will have practical use. Irish does not.
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>RTÉ should be like the bulwark against cultural sandpapering, but it seems by giving this sort of platform to people with that stance that they not only don’t care but they have a quietly hostile stance towards it
Im pretty confident that some people resent Irish being forced to learn Irish in school. The resentment, or hostility as you put it, likely comes from how it’s taught, its compulsory nature, and its lack of practical use after school. I HATED Irish in school and couldn’t wait to be done with it.
My biggest regret from school is the lack of opportunity to learn European languages to a point where I am fluent. But yay, Peig, right?
>I think Irish should be compulsory… at least to give people the skill from primary school age of having a second language like most other europeans
Why not teach them French or Spanish if that’s the language they want to learn?
I’ll tell you one thing, whoever is promoting the lack of use of Irish is doing a hell of a job? It’s not being used, literally, everywhere I go!
>having a second language like most other europeans
Most European countries teach a second language that has a practical use.
So unless Irish becomes the Lingua France of something, this point is moot.
Having lived abroad, I have never for a second thought “oh, I really should have paid attention in Irish at school”.
>I think Irish should be compulsory, if not for cultural revival then at least to give people the skill from primary school age of having a second language like most other europeans
It’s not worth the effort. Went to a gealscoil. I would say I’m still somewhat fluent, but I very rarely hear or speak it. I can still hold and understand simple day to day conversations.
Having a second language is great, but not if it’s a language that hardly anyone speaks and isn’t used anywhere else. I would have rather spent my years learning a secondary language that was spoke elsewhere (French German Spanish or even something like Mandarin). Irish may be a skill, but it’s a niche skill, possibly even less use than say Latin. In fact Irish actually hindered me in some subjects like math as I had to relearn words and concepts in English when I went to an English speaking secondary school.
I often hear people argue for the “culture” aspect of it. What culture are you talking about? Old Irish culture that’s long dead? Modern day Irish culture where nobody speaks the language?
It’s a niche language, and literally will not help you get ahead in the real world. It won’t help you get a job (unless you are in a tiny minority of jobs that need it). It won’t help you put a roof over your head, pay the bills, travel to other countries or even keep you fed. There are plenty of other skills I wish I had spent my time at as a kid, skills that would actually have helped me in my adult life.
Agree, disagree, do whatever you want. That’s just my opinion on it.
I mean I don’t know a word of Irish. I know it’s our heritage, but it’s not practical in todays world. Having Irish take up the larger font on signs and information and having to squint for the fine print isn’t exactly helpful to me.
Neither are the occasional posters written entirely in Irish that I can only begin to guess their meaning.
Long story short please stop it with the promoting Irish to the point of inconveniencing me. Adding Irish as the fine print? Sure. English being the fine print? No, not fine… Learn to promote it without generating *resentment* I guess.
The Irish language is not part of how I feel Irish. I do believe languages are important, but I would much prefer to learn other European languages.
I don’t see why I had to ‘learn’ a language for other people’s sense of being Irish.
Make it optional and let everyone make their own choices.
What planet are you on, lad
What will the food be like in the gulags where we send those who dare say they don’t like learning Irish?
No, it should not be compulsory. That’s how you get generations who hate the language, like we have now. What happens to choice?
>I think Irish should be compulsory, if not for cultural revival then at least to give people the skill from primary school age of having a second language like most other europeans
Being able to order a pint from a Gaeltacht isn’t a skill worth making compulsory and piling resources into when the people don’t want to do it.
honestly no, irish should be an optional subject. if we started learning spanish, german or french at an early age. many would follow through and actually have a second language. its a rarity when you speak to an irish person they can speak the language
Can’t the people who want to shag Dev’s ghost stop telling us to dance at the cross roads and like it. Irish people will do the opposite of what we are forced to do. That’s as real as the langague.
Compulsory teaching of Irish is learning to pass exams. Remove the exams. Give kids a chance to explore fun stuff with the language. Run three to four competitions a year where kids came win stuff by performing in I don’t know Irish language debates and singing pop songs in irish.
Equivalent to forcing everyone in the country to spend 12 years learning the harp.
Fact remains that if most people are spending 14 years learning a language and the vast majority of them cannot speak it fluently after, that is a systematic and institutional failure. We’re not linguistically handicapped.
They have to teach it as a spoken education. Most people shit themselves about the oral despite it being 10 minutes of basic conversation after 14 years learning that language. Why? Because they have never conversed consistently in Irish, and they’re taught it like every other subject: Write, memorise, regurgitate. It’s Irish, not Newspeak.