Feidhmeannach Nua le GAELSCOILEANNA TEO.
March 20, 2013
Comhdháil Chomhairle na Gaelscolaíochta – Míshástacht léirithe faoin Bhille nua Oideachais
March 20, 2013
Tús curtha leis an bpróiseas clárúcháin do Ghaelcholáiste nua i mBÁC
March 20, 2013
Crosfhocal Beo Ar Líne
March 20, 2013
Battle of the Bands live on Raidió na Gaeltachta
March 20, 2013
RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta’s Rónán Beo @3 invites budding musicians to take part in a Battle of the Bands competition – Bruíon na mBuíon – as part of the RTÉ youth week event in April.
If you are a member of a band or a solo musician performing songs in Irish, then make sure to be in on an opportunity to perform your music live on the radio!
The prize for the winning band will be a recording of a 3 track EP in the studio of Tommy McLaughlin of Villagers fame, and an invitation to perform at Rónán Mac Aodha Bhuí’s Cabaret Craiceáilte music night in Gaoth Dobhair, Co. Donegal.
The competition is aimed at secondary school pupils throughout the country, and individual musicians or groups are invited to submit a newly composed, contemporary song in Irish to the programme by 5 April via e-mail or post. Applicants are welcome to submit more than one song.
Keep an eye on Raidió na Gaeltachta’s Facebook page for news and updates.
Irish deserves strong support
March 20, 2013
Your editorial (Mar 13) would be comical if it were not so ill-informed.
You offer no evidence for the alleged €1 billion annual spend on Irish. How is this quantified? Is money spent on childcare (good) through the medium of Irish (bad) included? Are schools which don’t teach Irish for more that 20 minutes a day included?
You quote the budget of TG4, which gave us Ireland’s first teen drama and myriad quality TV shows, in comparison with RTÉ Two, for example, which costs much more and adds very little to viewer choice in its rebroadcasting of foreign shows.
Is money spent on gaelscoileanna a spend on education (good) or on Irish (bad)? Does it cost more to ensure that public servants serving Irish speaking areas are bilingual? Answer: No.
Our appalling English-only attitude has left us the odd man out in Europe with no respect for either our own history, culture and language or that of anyone else. Consumerism has not lead to happiness. Self-confidence and self-worth will. Time to see the value of our language, and of ourselves.
Irish has no intrinsic monetary value or use, much like Shakespeare, ballet and laughter. Irish is not much used in working life, like calculus, integration or the history of WWII.
Are we all to be trained to be unthinking cogs in a wheel? Each language is a different way of thinking. We need to think in a different way. And had you checked the record you would see that more Irish is spoken in the European Parliament that Maltese, Estonian or Latvian.
Dáithí Mac Cárthaigh BL
Law Library
Dublin 7
www.irishexaminer.com
Registration now open for Gaelcholáiste an Phiarsaigh
March 19, 2013
Registration for a new Gaelcholáiste, which will open in Dundrum in 2014, is now open.
A large crowd gathered in Leopardstown to hear the latest news on Gaelcholáiste an Phiarsaigh.
An Foras Pátrúnachta is the patron of the new Gaelcholáiste. The school, which has a multidenominational ethos, will cater for the great demand for secondary school education through Irish in south Dublin.
Caoimhín Ó hEaghra, General Secretary of An Foras Pátrúnachta, said that An Foras Pátrúnachta and the Department of Education are currently working together to locate both a temporary site and a permanent site for the school.
Lorcán Mac Gabhann, chairperson of the founding committee, said that they are hopeful that the new school will be able to cater for the demand for education through Irish in the area.
The registration form as well as the admissions policy are available from the website www.gaelcholáiste.com
All this talk about Irish is rubbish
March 19, 2013
The view in your editorial (Throwing good money after bad? Mar 13) is built on the supposed fact “that we spend something around €1bn a year just teaching
Irish.” This figure is rubbish.
What’s the annual budget for the Department of Education and how could it be claimed that the teaching of Irish could account for such a high proportion of it?
It is absurd to suggest that €1bn a year could be saved from the education budget by scrapping Irish. The writer assumes that the policy of the State has been a failure. On the contrary, and given the incompetence of many of those charged with responsibility, the policy has been remarkably successful.
Most Irish people are sympathetic to the language and 1.5m of them claim competence in it. I agree, it’s a poor reflection on the education system if some people don’t know a ‘capall’ from a ‘bó’ or ‘bainne’ from ‘tae’. With TG4, new social media, etc, Irish has a greater presence in the public space than ever before. It also has a greater capacity to attract and mould a new language community.
If Irish is to have a future, it will be as a second language, of choice (teanga roghnaithe), for citizens who want to use it. In the David and Goliath context, in which Irish struggles to survive, there is little or no public understanding of the concept of a second language of choice. The attitude is ‘why would you use Irish when everyone speaks English, and you have perfect English yourself?’
This was the underlying attitude in the case in the annual report of An Coimisinéir Teanga — of the Garda who arrested the young man who wanted to conduct his business through Irish. The constitutional position of Irish notwithstanding, historically there has never been much acceptance among the public for the linguistic rights of the Irish-speaking minority, be they native speakers or speakers by choice.
Paradoxically, as Irish retreats in the Gaeltacht, and as its wider public profile increases (thanks mainly to TG4), there are indications that a more positive attitude is beginning to emerge. The Government needs to build on this. Most of all, government policy needs to be focused on making it possible for people to use Irish in the public domain.
In fairness, this was the thinking behind the Oireachtas’s unanimous passing of the Official Languages Act, 10 years ago. As usual, the sentiment was correct, but the practical steps needed to make it happen have so far been lacking.
Seán Mag Leannáin
Bánóg Rua,
Cillín Chaoimhín,
Co Chill Mhantáin
www.irishexaminer.com
State must support Irish language
March 19, 2013
B’fhearr liom an litir seo a scríobh i nGaeilge. I would prefer to write this letter in Irish, but I know how important it is to reach out to English speakers to explain why the Irish State cannot be neutral about the Irish language.
Your newspaper’s editorial (Mar 13) regarding the Irish language asked if, in difficult economic times, Ireland could afford to pay for the Irish language. Languages gain strength by being used by a state. If the Irish State does not support and use the Irish language, which state will? Slovenia? Botswana? Argentina?
Irish is unique to Ireland so the Irish State is the only one that can support it. If anyone needed proof of how a state strengthens a language, all that needs to be done is to imagine if English was not an official language in Ireland. Imagine if English was not taught in schools, used in Government departments, broadcast on televisions and radios, used in courts or used for public notices and contracts, etc.
The real questions that should be asked is why the Irish State took so long from 1922 to 2003 to lay down in law the rights Irish speakers have and the requirements for the State to provide services for Irish speakers? In that period the Gaeltachtaí declined considerably.
Why is it acceptable for English speakers to be unable to speak Irish, but it is unacceptable for Irish speakers to be unable to speak English? Monoglot Irish speakers don’t exist anymore, but if a parent insisted to the Department of Education that they did not want their children to learn English, they would not be allowed to do that, but it is acceptable for parents to not want their children to learn Irish.
Another editorial enquiring why the State does not want to make Irish the vernacular language would be most welcome. Táim ag tnúth go mór leis. (I look forward to reading it.)
Seanán Ó Coistín
Bonnevoie
Luxembourg
www.irishexaminer.com
So many quangos, so little Irish
March 19, 2013
Millions of euro flow into a range of Irish-language educational quangos. But with few people having little more than cúpla focail, it’s time to question the strategy
In July 2007, the Harris Report indicated that less than one third of pupils from English-medium schools achieved mastery of the Irish language between 1985 and 2002. The report also found the confidence of teachers to speak Irish declined significantly, with almost a quarter indicating their own standard of Irish was “weak”.
In our schools, there are serious questions about how effective Irish-language policies have been, with many school leavers still unable to speak more than a cúpla focal within a few years of the Leaving Cert. Last week, it emerged some gardaí are unable to ask basic questions in Irish, despite having studied it in school and at the Garda College in Templemore.
Is the taxpayer getting value for money? Have the myriad Irish language quangos achieved anything? And what is the future of the language, a slow death or a miraculous revival?
In 2010, the Fianna Fáil-led government published the 20-Year Strategy for the Irish Language. The document was rich in promises and expensive aspiration. Three years later, Foras na Gaeilge, the all-island body for the promotion and development of the Irish language, which also channels public funding to 19 Irish-language organisations, considers publication of the strategy a major result in itself.
Progress on the strategy has been slow. Several key parts have been axed. A planned Irish-language education resource centre in Baile Bhúirne, Co Cork, will not now happen. An Comhairle um Oideachas Gaeltachta agus Gaelscolaíochta (COGG), which provides Irish-language resources to schools, has been downgraded: the opposite of what was promised in the strategy. Promised financial support for trainee teachers to attend the Gaeltacht has not materialised and a scholarship scheme for disadvantaged students to attend the Gaeltacht has also evaporated.
However, many other educational parts of the strategy are being implemented, in part at least, including the development of third-level programmes at NUI Galway and Dublin City University.
There is significant duplication of resources between many publicly-funded Irish language organisations. Cumann na bhFiann, Ógras, and Údarás na Gaeltachta all organise Irish-language youth clubs. Gaelchultúr, Conradh na Gaeilge and Gael Linn all arrange Irish classes for adults outside the Gaeltacht, while six other organisations operate Gaeltacht-based Irish-language courses. Conradh na Gaeilge and Gaelscoileanna Teo both play a role in establishing Irish-medium schools.
COGG, Gael Linn, and Foras na Gaeilge all produce educational materials for Irish medium schools on the island of Ireland, although COGG produces the vast majority. In Northern Ireland, An tAoisanaid, which receives the majority of its funding from the State through Foras na Gaeilge, provides these resources for its Irish-language school curricula. A further unit within Foras, Clar na Leabhar Gaeilge, publishes occasional Irish-language books for a general readership.
Duplication of resources
The Irish language sector also has significant and powerful representation, with Conradh na Gaeilge, Comhluadar, Comhar na Múinteoirí Gaeilge, and Gaelscoileanna Teo, all of which are publicly funded, among the organisations with have a lobbying and advocacy role.
In the face of opposition from many of the public bodies funded through Foras, amalgamations of these quangos have been slow. While much public money has been invested in Irish-language educational initiatives at all levels, in contrast, modern European languages were completely axed from the primary-school curriculum in 2011.
Major technology companies such as eBay, Facebook, and Google are hiring staff from France, Spain, Germany, and Italy due to the lack of qualified European-language graduates from within Ireland. There is no corresponding level of public investment in European languages that comes remotely close to that spent on Irish. There have always been serious questions about the effectiveness of Irish-language policies in education.
The 1966 Fianna Fáil government, led by Seán Lemass, made a series of pledges to support the language and increase bilingualism. A three-year action plan for the Irish language was published in 1983 during a Fine Gael/Labour government. Then, as with the latest strategy, teaching of other aspects of the curriculum through Irish was called for, and recognised it as crucial for young people to truly engage with the language. It never happened.
A major focus of the current strategy is on increasing the number of Irish speakers nationwide, and supporting the many organisations that provide Irish-language classes, competitions, courses and events. But meaningful or effective change in how Irish is taught in schools has been slow since the foundation of the State. Will the latest attempts to reform the Irish language sector also amount to nothing?
Changing how Irish is taught
Thirty years on from the 1983 action plan, and once again, the provision of Irish-language immersion education, or partial immersion education, forms a central plank – arguably the central plank – of the latest Irish-language education strategy.
The idea of immersion education is that pupils are given a chance to use Irish not just in Irish class but also that, for instance, some other classes such as geography, maths, religion and history would be taught through Irish. The strategy says that “from as early as possible in Implementation Phase II, it is proposed to move towards a situation where partial Irish-language immersion will be offered to all children”.
To prove the point that immersion works, the level of pupils in Gaelscoileanna who achieve mastery in both listening and spoken Irish is above 90 per cent. The strategy is in the first phase of implementation and there are still 17 years to bring about change. But three years on, no significant developments have taken place to introduce widespread immersion or partial immersion education.
Indications from the Department of Education and from senior figures in Irish-language organisations suggest that, despite its centrality to the strategy, the issue is not on the table for the time being. The focus is firmly on revising the curriculum for all primary pupils and supporting immersion education in Irish-medium schools, although the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment is developing a new Irish-language primary curriculum and looking closely at the changes that have already been made to the Leaving Cert, particularly the oral exam.
View from the Irish language sector
The Irish-language lobby is suspicious of the Government, after Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s pre-election suggestion that compulsory Irish in schools be abolished. More recently, Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn stated that too much time in schools is spent on Irish and religion.
“There is no evidence of any commitment to the 20-year strategy in the current Government,” says one senior figure in a major Irish-language organisation. “Little by little the language is being downgraded.” The current Programme for Government commits the Government to supporting the strategy and delivering on achievable goals.
The most significant piece of legislation relating to the Irish language is the controversial 2011 Gaeltacht Act, which redefined Gaeltacht areas based on the amount of locals speaking the language rather than on geographic location.
“The Irish-language community are being frozen out of the decision-making processes,” says Julian de Spáinn, general secretary of Conradh na Gaeilge. “The publication of the Strategy was a big achievement and included a range of recommendations from the community. Three years later, and the Department is picking and choosing the easiest elements of the Strategy, implementing only parts that are cost neutral, and ignoring whole swathes of it altogether. A huge amount of mistakes are being made. A high-level structure between the community and the authorities must be set up to oversee the implementation of the strategy, or it will not succeed.”
There are some positive indications. An 11 per cent increase in the uptake of higher level Irish at Leaving Cert level has been linked to the new marking scheme that awards 40 per cent to the oral exam. Overall, the number taking higher-level Irish increased last year by almost 5 per cent to 37 per cent.
De Spáinn says that the teaching of languages needs to be changed entirely. He argues, supported by international evidence, that partial immersion education is central. However, the Department of Education is a long way from implementing this change. Apart from some minor curriculum adjustments, the strategy barely addresses how the teaching of Irish will change. It seems like another major oversight in our approach to the national language.
www.irishtimes.com
