It’s pointless keeping Irish on this sentimental life support
June 17, 2013
ANDREA finished her honours Irish Leaving Cert paper in central Dublin this week – and last night the latest offering in an endless library on what life was like on the Blasket Islands was launched in the depths of Dunquin, Co Kerry.
The common thread linking both events is, of course, the Irish language.
But for Andrea, that linkage is now over and done with forever. Once she put her final full stop on the Irish paper, it marked the end of any kind of active involvement she will have with the language for the rest of her life.
Not that this is something to which she has ever given much thought. Her more immediate and primary concern is to bag enough CAO points to study medicine at Trinity College Dublin.
Given that her teachers had long branded her ‘ linguistic’, she figured it was a no-brainer to include Irish as one of her Leaving Cert heavy-hitters.
As it transpired, she did exceptionally well in both the oral and written examinations and, at the end of it all, could achieve a much-needed A1 result.
But despite having spent more than 12 years studying the subject to such a high level, Andrea would be the first to admit she still cannot speak it with any great degree of ease or fluency. Her Irish conversations are far too stilted and exam-based.
In that sense, she is reflective of a teaching strategy, which for almost 100 years, has been a singular failure by way of ensuring the language is more widely spoken. And she is among the academic elite.
What about all the time, effort, and vast amounts of money spent teaching Irish to hordes of other school leavers of lesser ability who will leave it behind forever come the end of this exam season?
Yet the charade continues. And in the Census returns a few years hence, many of these same school leavers will still insist – for a multiplicity of reasons, including sentiment and emotion – that they have some fluency in a language they never speak.
Maybe it is all part of the self-delusion that has been the backdrop to our attitude to the Irish language since 1922.
Then there was a sort of vague dream shared by so many of the State’s founding fathers that running our own affairs would help make us a bilingual country.
We have battled mightily to preserve as much as possible of the Gaeltacht areas. But even here, anecdotal evidence suggests Irish as a spoken language is in relentless retreat among the Facebook generation – much more so than official Ireland will admit.
However, all is not completely bleak. TG4 produces countless television programmes with flair, imagination and quality.
And the ingenuity of subtitles means the great unwashed, whose knowledge of the language is lost in the distant memory of schooldays, can relate to them just as if they were fluent.
There are also the Gaelscoileanna, with their driving academic focus, now outperforming many of the country’s elite schools in the Leaving Cert examinations.
It is unfortunate that some parents and children – who attend these bastions of the language – radiate a kind of self-righteous cultural superiority, which can be off-putting to say the least for somebody not of their tribe.
In any case, perhaps none of these musings matter very much. Can we not trundle along and continue churning out Leaving Cert Irish As, Bs and Cs year after year? So what if it all seems like an increasingly circular and meaningless merry-goround, by way of having any relevance to spoken Irish?
We can even have our tokenism, such as the endearing and slightly quaint practice of GAA managers, who may be incapable of stringing together even the standard ‘cupla focal’, having ‘Bainisteoir’ tagged on their tracksuits.
But in any case, in Dunquin last night, ‘The Great Blasket – A Photographic Portrait’ was launched by one of the few remaining islanders alive. It follows on from the recently issued paperback translation of ‘The Islandman’ by Tomas O’Crohan.
One is loath to sing the praises of this book, given that another Blasket Islander – Peig Sayers – provided a whinefest for generations of Leaving Cert students with her stories of unremitting rustic gloom.
However, O’Crohan was a very perceptive man and he could see that a way of life on that isolated and mystical island was in its death throes when he gave us his thoughts back in 1923: “I have written minutely of much that we did, for it was my wish that somewhere there should be a memorial of it all.
“And I have done my best to set down the character of the people about me, so that some record of us might live after us.
“For the likes of us will never be again. “No bheidh a leitheid aris ann.” So, perhaps, none of it matters. Let the annual ritual of garnering CAO points – using Irish as a prop wherever necessary – continue unabated.
And so what if O’Crohan wanted to chronicle the beginning of the end for the Gaelic-speaking world? Would modern-day realists not argue that there are only three world languages – methods of communication, if you like – that really matter? And we Irish are fortunate to be reasonably adept at them all.
They are, of course, English, soccer and Google.
www.independent.ie
New Coláiste Ailigh set for November opening
June 14, 2013
The new Coláiste Ailigh, due to open on Nov. 7th, will not only offer students and staff first-class facilities, but will also address all the school’s needs on the same site for the first time.
As well as classrooms, the new school will include a library, outdoor teaching areas, an art room, rooms for woodwork and technical graphics, a music and drama room, science rooms, a special needs room, a computer suite, kitchenette, fitness centre, GAA and soccer pitches, basketball and tennis courts and a gymnasium that can also be used for school events.
The Irish-language secondary school has operated in a very compressed space since opening in 2000, said the school’s principal, Micheál Ó Giobúin. The new school, “is no more than the kids and staff deserve”, he said.
Coláiste Ailigh, housed in Sprackburn House and prefabs on Letterkenny’s High Road, now has 219 students and will have 245 next year. The new school was designed to anticipate growth and will accommodate 350 students. There is also space on the 8.5-acre Carnamuggagh site for the building to expand.
Mr. Ó Giobúin; Pádraig Walsh, contract manager for Bam Contractors; and Brian Moore, safety officer with Bam; toured the site recently with the Donegal Democrat/Donegal People’s Press, and Tonia Kiely, an English and French teacher at the coláiste.
One of the most striking aspects of the design is the way each room has access to natural light, through creative use of space, windows and skylights. Prior to construction, the site was also contoured so that the two-story building will not obstruct the views of those on the upper side of the school.
Construction began last November, and there were 60 Bam staff on site the day of the tour, though there are up to 120 at peak times. Mr. Walsh said Bam endeavours to employ mainly local contractors.
Currently, the school holds physical education classes at the Letterkenny Community Centre and also uses GAA facilities. They have held events at the Mount Errigal Hotel, An Grianán Theatre and the Regional Cultural Centre. Mr. Ó Giobúin said the school was grateful to them all for their assistance over the years.
While touring the building, Ms. Kiely saw the room that will be her classroom. “I think it’s amazing,” she said. “This year I’ve been teaching in a prefab, so it’s going to be very different.”
Mr. Ó Giobúin also wanted to thank the Donegal Vocational Education Committee for their support and credited the cooperation and professionalism of Bam throughout the process.
As the principal walked through the site, pointing out and identifying each of the different rooms, it was easy to imagine the school in a few months’ time, bustling with students, teachers and staff.
Ms. Kiely said the new building will enable the coláiste community “to feel much more connected as a school”.
“It’s going to be much better to have everything here,” Mr. Ó Giobúin said.
www.donegaldemocrat.ie
There is still time to express your interest in Knocknacarra’s bilingual community national school
June 14, 2013
Due to the level of interest to date, the City of Galway VEC has extended the deadline for receiving expressions of interest for Galway’s first bilingual community national school in Knocknacarra.
Expressions of interest can be made at www.cgvec.ie/cns before 12 noon on June 14.
The proposed bilingual model delivers the Department of Education and Skills’ primary education curriculum through two languages, Irish and English, to enable progression to post primary education through the medium of either Irish or English, and welcomes children from all linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
It is intended that children completing their primary education in the City of Galway VEC’s bilingual community national school will be competent to progress to Coláiste na Coiribe, City of Galway VEC’s coláiste lán-Ghaeilge in Knocknacarra, which recently topped The Sunday Times table for university progression in Connacht, should they wish to do so.
Community national schools deliver the Goodness Me! Goodness You! programme, a multibelief programme which caters for children of all beliefs and none. It forms part of the daily teaching and learning in the school and full information can be found at www.cgvec.ie/cns
If successful, the City of Galway VEC’s bilingual community national school will open in Knocknacarra in September 2014.
The City of Galway VEC has a proven track record in delivering first-class education through both Irish and English across Galway city for more than 80 years from second level to further education, music education to lifelong learning, in its schools and via its many programmes.
Register your interest at www.cgvec.ie/cns
You can also contact the City of Galway VEC on 091 549 400.
www.advertiser.ie/galway
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