Irish is an awful course
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of the Irish haters. I consider Irish to be an integral part of our heritage and I really believe it has a future in Irish society. However in order to achieve this bi-lingual society we need to teach a modern and relevant course.
Already into my first week of 5th year I’ve been astounded at the irrelevance of everything I’ve done so far in Irish. Our first piece of work was the poem “Jack”. The poem is set in the west of Ireland and it describes a farmer’s son who is described as a “strapping young lad” (This is, of course a translation).
The first problem with the Irish course is the poetry section. I believe that poetry is best left to English class, firstly because Irish poetry is inferior to English language poetry and crucially because I believe poetry is not a constructive device in learning a second language.
A fair amount of the time in class has been spent outlining the historic setting of the poem and the emotions involved. How has this anything to do with learning the language??? Because of this I feel like I’m in a History lesson about the famine times and the west of Ireland. History of Irish is a section of the leaving cert course. I accept that these are important topics however they have no place in what is supposed to be a language class.
I also have a problem with the words used such as “strapping young lad”. When am I ever going to use this phrase in either English or Irish? Other words like nostalgic came up too and again I don’t see the reason to learn these words.
The only time in life I see myself using Irish is in politics. Should I manage to make it to be a TD I’ll still make up the majority of Oireachtas members who can’t speak Irish fluently. George Lee, during his recent election campaign commented on the extent of his Irish abilities: “Níl much Gaeilge agam”. Also even if I do become fluent in Irish I will never use the phrase “strapping young lad” in a speech!
The Irish course is too culturally focused and it has abandoned the core objectives of any language: speaking. I welcome the recent decision to increase the % of marks going towards your oral exam however from what I hear even the questions in the oral are unusual and removed from an everyday normal conversation.
If Irish is to become an attractive subject for students it needs to focus on teaching students the basic grammer of the language and it needs to focus on teaching relevant words used in modern life. Until this happens, Irish for me anyway, will remain a boring and irrelevant subject.
September 7th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Dave, enjoying your blogs! Keep em up! Just thought I’d feed into what you’re saying with a few observations I’ve had. Irish poetry is definitely not central to the learning of the language completely agree with you there. Despite the Irish curriculum being relatively new in secondary schools, one thing I’ve noticed myself as a primary teacher is the complete and utter disconnect between the way Irish is taught between primary and secondary. Primary now thankfully is very much based on learning through social interaction and speaking and listening in situations that kids actually are in every day. Why has this not come about at second level? How can we really expect students to be enthusiastic about learning in this way and to learn the language properly? You raise great points, ridiculous vocabulary like “strapping young lad” and an unrealistic focus on poetry are holding Irish back!
Maith thú!
John