Andrew McKimm: Leaving Cert: it’s an Irish renaissance as hostilities cease
June 5, 2012
An Englishman gave us back our flag — and now we are reclaiming our own language from extreme republicanism, writes Andrew McKimm
THIS year sees the launch of the revamped Leaving Certificate Irish Paper. It will be a markedly changed exam in which 40 per cent, instead of the former 25 per cent, is being awarded for the oral component of the test. This is the first major change to the Irish paper in about 15 years.
I asked Richard Barrett, who teaches Irish in Blackrock College, Dublin, what prompted such a significant shift in the examination of Irish. Does he see this trend as a kind of dumbing down of Irish by moving away from a more literature-based curriculum? Where is Peig in all of this? Is her legacy in danger of drowning somewhere off the Blasket Islands?
“Not at all — I see it as an entirely positive step and one that is very much in keeping with the modern healthy trends in the attitude of students to learning Irish nowadays,” he replies.
He proceeds in his measured, calm way, every point springing with clarity from a deep understanding and love of a language to which he has devoted a lifetime of teaching.
“There are four components to learning any language — listening, speaking, reading and writing. For far too long, the speaking part has been underplayed!”
I can’t resist the opportunity of playing devil’s advocate. What about the large number of people who claim that Irish is a dead and useless language and that it should be totally abolished from the curriculum? He sighs patiently as this is a question that he has to face almost every day.
“People say to me all the time that, after spending 13 years learning Irish in school, they can’t put two words together. I tell them that I beg to differ. Of course they can put two words together and usually quite a lot more. I can give them a quick vocab test and they can get it completely right. I can speak to them and they can understand me perfectly.”
He adds, “Thirteen years of studying anything doesn’t imply perfect knowledge. Does 13 years of studying maths mean that you’re going to get an A?
“It has been a trend for many years not to like Irish but, in fact, most people don’t feel that negative about it any more. People now have a greater sense of our history and are regretful of the fact that they don’t know more Irish.
“Parents keep telling me that they were ‘useless’ at Irish and didn’t like it. This of course makes it much harder to pass on to the next generation. Ironically, the young people whom I teach are the least hostile towards it — they just see Irish as being part of the system. In our school, we have Seachtain na Gaeilge which virtually every boy in the school gets involved in. The smarter ones opt for the ceili with the girls from Sion Hill next door.”
Ultimately does Richard think that attitudes to Irish have improved over the last 20 years? Did the boom —the era of the Fionns and the Saoirses — actually cause a proliferation of more than just that a cupla focail?
“Over the last 30 years, Ireland as a nation has matured and is not trying so hard to prove itself. Irish now exists as part of our heritage, and we accept it. The extreme Republican element in this country had hijacked both the language and the national flag. Ironically, it was an Englishman, Jack Charlton, who gave us back our flag and allowed us to wave it without being viewed as terrorists.
“The days of narrow-minded gaelgoiri being able to define ‘Irishness’ is gone and the language belongs to no political or religious tradition. In fact, some of the best performers in Irish nowadays are our immigrants.”
Apart from our newfound national confidence that started with The Joshua Tree and the discovery of Michael Flatley — both of which have reached their natural apotheosis in Jedward — Richard thinks that credit for our modern, more positive attitudes towards Irish lies with the governments of the last 40 years.
“Healthy bilingualism, which started as unwritten government policy in the Seventies, became de facto policy in the Eighties. Ireland is an English-speaking country and there is now no attempt to replace English with Irish, to pointlessly pit one against the other. The realism of the modern era has buried the ‘one-language nation’ approach.”
What about the reduction in the literature component in newspapers, does this mean that Irish as a literary medium is dying out?
Peig almost single handedly killed off my own admittedly fragile interest in Irish at school. It was only the genius of Padraic O Conaire (coincidentally a past pupil of Blackrock College) and his masterful short stories, Scothscealta, that saved it.
Richard shares my abject enthusiasm for Scothscealta and thinks that a great TV series based on O Conaire’s work has yet to be made.
Richard reminds me that things have moved on a lot since I was in school.
“Irish still has a thriving literary culture with a small but committed audience. The topics on the Leaving Certificate include crime, murder, drug addiction, abortion. The work of poets like Nuala Ni Dhomhnail is some of the most sensual you will read in any language.
“In fairness to Peig, she was the first to forsee that she was part of a dying culture on the Blasket Islands. ‘Ni bheidh ar leithieidi aris ann.’ (Our kind will not be seen again.) Peig can never be viewed as great literature but her book is a vital historical document, a window to the past,” he says.
It is thanks to Richard Barrett and many other teachers of Irish in this country that the Irish language is prevented from going the way of people of the Blaskets and becoming nothing other than a memory.
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