Cruinniú faoi thodhchaí na Gaeilge i gCill Dara
February 14, 2011
Polasaí Fhine Gael le plé ag cruinniú sa Daingean
February 14, 2011
Irish: if we really care about it, let’s stop the pretence
February 14, 2011
Six out of 10 parents, according to new research, think children should be tortured daily. Or forced to learn Irish up until Leaving Cert, to give the practice its official name. The survey? Oh, that was carried out on behalf of Comhar na Muinteoiri Gaeilge, a support organisation for Irish language teachers.
That's a bit like using a survey by the Babar Institute to claim that six out of 10 people who visit the zoo think elephants should be given more sticky buns.
As it happens, I don't believe a word of it. That is, I believe 61 per cent of parents claim to want Irish to remain compulsory, in the same way that people, if asked by pollsters, would express a desire for less rain, or for Dart carriages to smell of hollyhocks and freshly baked bread. I just don't believe that so many parents actually care that much about the subject, since, if they did, they could make a greater effort to use Irish with their children in their own daily lives.
In fact, I'd go further. If you're not making the effort to speak Irish regularly, then your advocacy of the language carries no more weight than the views of a deaf man on how loud the juke box should be played in bars. It's just another example of the tendency to heft responsibility for doing the right thing on to other people's shoulders whilst carrying none of the burden oneself.
Same goes for Irish teachers. If the maintenance of Irish as a compulsory core subject is so dear to their little Gaelic hearts, then they should start teaching it better. That way, it might come to be seen as something worth fighting to preserve, rather than a drain on a curriculum already weighed down with pointless distractions.
The battle is definitely on. Fine Gael has already committed itself at the national level to ending compulsory Irish at Leaving Cert — a policy which hasn't gone down well in the Gaeltacht, where they've been raking it in for decades making children miserable in their wretched summer schools. Labour's never exactly been keen on the language either, perhaps in revenge for the fact that culchies still refuse to vote for it in the same numbers as Dublin 4 metrosexuals.
If the defenders of Irish language teaching want to keep the gravy train going, they'll have to fight back with something more robust than a poxy survey and a few pious platitudes. Fail, however, and they'll only have themselves to blame.
There certainly can be no other subject which is so badly taught. (OK, maybe maths, but let's not go there right now.) Most of the adult population of this country spent five hours a week learning Irish from the moment they first stepped through the gate in primary school, to the moment they fell out of a nightclub, drunk, on Leeson Street after celebrating their Leaving Cert results, and afterwards it all simply vanished from their heads in a puff of indifference. If German lessons were made compulsory for one single week at the age of 14, more Irish adults in their 20s and 30s would still know what gesundheit and apfelkuchen meant than would be able to follow an episode of Ros Na Run without peeking at the subtitles.
Partly this is to do with the manic obsession in the education system with written, as opposed to spoken, Irish, which means that a child who gets her spellings right is valued by the examining authorities more highly than one who speaks fluently but keeps dropping all those pesky fadas.
They've had Irish the wrong way up from the start. The only thing that matters to the survival of a language is an ability to speak it to a certain level of fluency. Once that happens, spellings and fadas and grammar all fall into place — and even if they don't, the gain is still greater than the loss.
Everyone knows this. A couple of years ago, comedian Des Bishop spent some months in the Gaeltacht, immersing himself in the language to perform a stand-up routine. He came back to Dublin, fired with enthusiasm about pepping up the teaching of Irish. Watching him being given a patronising brush off by Mary Hanafin, then Minister for Education and a former teacher herself, was excruciatingly embarrassing.
This is what happens to anyone who has new ideas in Irish education. They either get so frustrated at the slow pace of change that they flee in despair, or else they succumb to complacency like all the others. Teachers never want to change. Even now, with the survival of Irish as a core subject under serious threat, they're still taking refuge behind the great Twenty-Year Plan which is supposedly going to transform teaching as Gaeilge in the next generation — presumably in the same way that Stalin's Five- Year Plans transformed Soviet farming, ie by making things worse.
It's only delaying the inevitable. The country's problems are so severe that any incoming government is going to have to make radical changes in education sooner rather than later, or watch impotently as Ireland drops further behind the rest of the world. We've smugly lied to ourselves for years about having a widely envied education system, but the recession has brutally exposed all our institutions as unfit for purpose — the bloated public sector, of which our schools form a major part, not least. If we don't change fast, we're sunk. Simple as that.
Meanwhile, here's looking forward to a survey asking parents what they think of those endless holidays and Mickey Mouse staff training days off enjoyed by teachers. Bet Irish teachers won't be so keen to publicise the results of that survey.
Eilis O'Hanlon, Sunday Independent
NUIG Language Planning Symposium – Minority Ethnolinguistics: The Individual in Society
February 11, 2011
The National University of Ireland, Galway will host its second Spring Symposium on Language Planning on Monday the 28 March 2011, organised by the Language Planning Unit of Acadamh na hOllscolaíochta Gaeilge. The Symposium is aimed at those who have an interest in cultural and linguistic diversity, and the challenges posed to this diversity in various language communities.
Both national and international scholars of language planning will contribute to the Symposium, with the aim of encouraging discussion and critical analysis of the various language planning challenges at this critical juncture.
Invited lecturers include: Dr. Enlli Thomas, Bangor University, Wales, Dr. F. Xavier Vila i Moreno, University of Barcelona, Dr. Peadar Ó Flatharta, Dublin City University and Dr. John Walsh, NUI Galway.
Location: National University of Ireland, Galway in the Bailey Allen Wing
Date: Monday 28 March 2011
Fee: €40. Students will be permitted to attend free of charge
Registration: 9.00 – 9.30 am Monday 28 March 2011
Inquiries: Laoise Ní Thuairisg at laoise.nithuairisg@oegaillimh.ie or (091) 595101 / (091) 495310. The Language Planning Unit, Acadamh na hOllscolaíochta Gaeilge NUI Galway.
The programme of events for the Symposium can be downloaded here.
FG policy on Irish language will be divisive
February 11, 2011
Were Fine Gael to succeed in making Leaving Cert Irish optional it would be mission accomplished for the dark forces in the Department of Education, which for the past 30 years has been sticking pins in the doll that is our national language.
National bilingualism is not a pipe dream but a day-to-day reality for many thousands. That we still have an Irish language at all is testament to the courage and vision of concerned parents who decades ago realised the importance of setting up their own Irish language primary and secondary schools. These very same schools top national lists of high achievement every year. If the vast majority of our school leavers were illiterate and innumerate it would be a national scandal and yet it has become somehow acceptable that after 14 years of instruction our young people can leave school having been denied any meaningful relationship with their own language. Optional Irish — a very ‘Oirish’ solution to an Irish problem!
Colm Mac Con Iomaire
Co Loch Garman
The stated policy of Enda Kenny to drop the Irish language as a compulsory third-level subject has just ensured that he will have my family’s vote. There is no doubt as to the cognitive and developmental benefits of learning another language, but whilst you may be able to compel the learning of a subject, you cannot compel an interest in it. The majority of students across the country may accept the cultural importance of the Irish language but they have long ago discovered its irrelevance. Indeed as thousands of our young people emigrate to pursue jobs in foreign lands the last thing that will equip them for this is being able to speak Irish. If people have a genuine interest in the Irish language then let them indeed learn to speak it. This apart, our educational system should be extolling the huge benefits in the ability to speak such languages as Spanish, French and Mandarin; skills that will prove more beneficial to them than to join the dwindling ranks of those that speak a language that has essentially become little more than a hobby.
Derek Ross
Blessington, Co Wicklow
Irish Independent – Litireacha chuig an Eagarthóir
Making Irish an option
February 11, 2011
Madam, – Gabriel Rosenstock (February 10th) is confident that we can find creative solutions to the problem of encouraging young people to engage with the Irish language.
Strange, then, that his default position is to force it upon them. – Yours, etc,
DARRAGH MCHUGH,
Moneen, Castlebar, Co Mayo.
Madam, – It may be Valentine’s Day next Monday but the leader of Fine Gael will not be winning the hearts of those who support the Irish language. While loved-up couples across Ireland will be exchanging chocolates and teddy bears, the Union of Students of Ireland will be holding a silent protest outside an empty Dáil against a political party which is deaf to their concerns. As a member of that party, I hang my head in shame. In his new book, Dr John Walsh critically examines the social and economic development of Irish in recent times. Recently he stated that making Irish an optional subject for the Leaving Certificate would have dire consequences for the language. As a renowned scholar of socio-linguistics surely his word carries more weight than a party-political policy that came to life without any substantial research worth mentioning.
As an active member of Young Fine Gael I too will be outside the Dáil next Monday. The question of the Irish language is bigger than party politics and so long as Fine Gael remains determined to make Irish an optional Leaving Certificate subject then I will have no choice but to remain ashamed of our policy on the Irish language. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL CLANCY,
Deputy-International Secretary,
Young Fine Gael,
Ennafort Road,
Raheny, Dublin 5.
Madam, – The Fine Gael party has met opposition from all fronts regarding its hopes to make Irish optional at Leaving Cert level. Horrified politicians from across the board rallied under the cry of “Irish needs to be accessible to all children!” It seems there has been a failure to communicate. I heard Mr Kenny speak of a policy wherein students aged 17 and 18 are given the choice of learning a language which they might have interest in, and therefore speak (as opposed to forcing Irish on all students, thereby draining any possible enthusiasm from it). The opposition to the plan must have heard a long speech detailing how Mr Kenny will strike Irish from the curriculum at junior infants level and burn all Irish textbooks in the street, most likely punctuated with evil laughter and the sound of thunderclaps in the distance. – Yours, etc,
BARRY NEENAN,
Tullow Road, Carlow.
Madam, – Is it not enough that we have lost everything financially and my children’s futures are mortgaged? I thought that the one thing we would retain is our national heritage. The prospect for the future is indeed bleak if we are to lose even that. Our language is a quintessential part of who we are. We may no longer be free to make our own financial decisions, but we do choose which language we speak. Fine Gael has lost the plot if it is planning to give away this fundamental part of our culture by abolishing compulsory Irish. Have we not lost enough? – Is mise,
MADELEINE MCCARTHY,
Burdett Avenue,
Sandycove Co Dublin.
Madam, – I was unsure of which party I should support in the general election but since Enda Kenny clarified its position on the teaching of the Irish language, I’m going to vote Fine Gael. In advocating the abolition of compulsory Irish after Junior Cert, Fine Gael is taking the first steps in acknowledging the reality of the language’s position in this country.
Irish, we’re told by correspondents such as Mr Rosenstock, is “our cultural legacy” and it apparently takes thousands of hours of compulsory teaching of it to all in primary and secondary school pupils – as well as millions of euro in subsidies, grants and printing costs – to ensure Enda Kenny knows from where his name derives.
Forcing everyone to learn a language for the purposes of cultural enlightenment is a rather blunt tactic that breeds indifference. Encouraging pupils to voluntarily pick it up, speaking it as a hobby instead of an obligation, is a far more honest policy than insisting every government publication and road sign is as Gaeilge. The political party that starts down the road of acknowledging the Irish language’s real, not idealised or imagined, place in Irish society has my vote – and Fine Gael is the closest thing to that party. – Yours, etc,
JOE LANGAN,
Baldara Court,
Ashbourne, Co Meath.
The Irish Times – Litreacha chuig an Eagarthóir
Walsh condemns Fine Gael proposals on Irish language
February 11, 2011
Fine Gael’s proposals to remove Irish as a compulsory subject in the Leaving Certificate is a move that will kill off the language once and for all.
This is the view of Independent Galway West candidate Eamon Walsh, who said he was “appalled” by the proposal. “There are undoubtedly difficulties with the way Irish is being taught in our mainstream schools,” he said, “but it does not justify this ill thought out knee jerk policy move. Irish must be compulsory in the Leaving Cert. If you give the option to 15-year-olds they will not take Irish and if this happens then the language is dead.”
He further pointed out that if Irish was abandoned as a compulsory Leaving Cert subject, it would be the “death knell for the Irish summer schools” and a “serious blow to the survival” of our remaining Irish speaking areas. Mr Walsh said a “more constructive” way of approaching the issue would be the establishment of a specialised curriculum review group drawing on the experiences of the Gaelscoileanna and Gaeltacht communities to reframe the way Irish is taught.
Galway Advertiser – Kernan Andrews
25 Year Celebrations at Gaelscoil Dhún Dealgan
February 10, 2011
Gaelscoil Dhún Dealgan is celebrating its 25th year! The school is situated in Muirhevnamor close to the Dublin Road. It has 14 teachers and 200 pupils and is housed in an impressive building which was officially opened on the 17th June 1997 by Mr. Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh, the chairperson of Bord na Gaeilge at that time.
The school has flourished greatly since its origins as an All-Irish stream in nearby St. Joseph’s School. The stream was established in 1980 due to the efforts of a number of parents who wished to have their children educated through the medium of Irish. Its inception began with one teacher and six pupils in a pre-fabricated building.
In 1986, the all-Irish stream was granted independent status by the Department of Education by which time it had 5 teachers. Mr. Rónán Ward became the first principal of the school. The school remained on the St. Joseph’s site until a new school building was built adjacent to the Dublin Road.
Annette Bn. MhicArdáil became principal in 1991 and remained in her post until she was succeeded by Mr. Pat McCann in 1999.
Major celebrations will take place in March to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the school. On the 11th March, an oíche of “craic” agus ceol” will kickstart the events. Entertainment will be provided by traditional musicians and dancers associated with the school through the years. The following week’s events will culminate in a celebratory mass on the 16th March at 11.00 in the Church of the Holy Family. Bishop Gerard Clifford will officiate at the mass which will be attended by members of the school community, ‘muintir na háite’ and others.
Of course the children will enjoy some in-school events as part of the celebrations and will receive a small memento of the occasion as well as a little booklet which will commemorate this important milestone. All events and updates can be followed on facebook, so make sure not to miss what will surely be a great week of celebrations in the Gaelscoil! Bígí linn!
Suirbhé ar Mheon an Phobail i Leith na Gaeilge sa Chóras Oideachais
February 10, 2011
Cá seasann na polaiteoirí?
February 10, 2011
