It has often been said that Irish is a language with little use, and no place in the new Ireland and should no longer be a cumpulsory subject taught in schools. This notion needs to be unclothed as a complicated psychological condition and not a well reasoned argument.
School is cumpulsory. Numerous subjects in school are cumpulsory. English is cumpulsory. Maths are cumpulsory. While it is clearly desirable to have students who are enthusiastically engaged with subjects such that they study them even in their spare time, it is unreasonble to assume that that state should support a public school curriculum in which no subjects are cumpulsory and a basic level of knowledge is unecessary in any subject. I’m sure that most reasonable people will agree that some cumpulsory subjects are necessary and
desirable for the education of the public.
This naturally leads as to ask which cumpulsory subjects these should
be? Bilingualism has enormous cognitive benefits as has been demonstrated by numerous studies. It is hard to overstate the pedagogic value of bilingualism. The positive effects bleed into other subjects including performance in mathematics, critical thinking and of course learning subsequent languages.
The indirect socialogical benefits are also numerous. Nothing can unmask subjectivity and perspective like the study of another language. Additional languages provide access to conversations that could never have been had otherwise. If the language has a literary tradition (as does Irish) they also give access to a body of literature that might otherwise be inaccessable.
While the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is not widely believed, it would be hard to suggest that some form of the weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is untrue even for universalists (I’ll have to make this a whole other post sometime).
Bilingualism should be considered a minimal basic requirement of education. What should this baseline be? I contend that Irish is the natural choice.
Irish is already fairly well known by most people in Ireland. While competency in speaking the language is low, people I have met tend to know quite a lot more than a ‘copla focal’. It would require very little effort for many Irish to gain speaking competency.
It is often claimed, half in jest, that either Polish or Mandarin should be the cumpulsory language since more people in Ireland use them daily then use the Irish language. For true bilingualism to occur it is neccessary that at least one of the additional languages taught, be taught universally. It is imperative to expect that one can use the langauge, at least at a basic level, and be understood. It is unreasonable to think that the language that will have these qualities is either Mandarin or Polish. It can’t be possible to make either of
them the single baseline cumpulsory language in school.
While the teaching (and speaking) of these two languages should be encouraged they can not be a replacement for Irish. Irish itself is the language with the greatest likelyhood of generating the socialogical consesus necessary to be a universally spoken language on the Island.
Irish, with its poetic character and its extensive and historically important literature should be seen as one of the pillars of pedagogy in public education in Ireland.
I, as an immigrant, have little comprehension of the complex emotional relationship that natives of the island have with the Irish language, besides the obvious understanding that it is indeed very complex. I have witnessed more than once, the same person in the same conversation both arguing for, and against, the importance of saving the Irish language. With such internal conflict amoung many Irish people, it is no wonder that there is a public conflict concerning the language.
There are a couple of vectors that I think that may have contributed to this complicated situation. One of which the cumpulsory teaching of the Irish language. The fact that after 12 years of study of the language in school, only a tiny percentage of people are able to speak the language with any fluency has to have had a negative effect. I’ve often heard people say that the language is impossible to learn. This is far from true, but it may indeed seem that way due to the tremendously poor methods employed in the teaching of the language.
I have heard from many sources that Irish is taught as a dead language; without a focus on conversation, and forcing memorization without teaching rules of grammar. This is a confluence of the absolute *WORST* ways to teach a language. Is it any wonder that people who take 4 years of French in the Irish school system feel far more comfortable in French? There is a large body of study on the proper methodology for teaching languages to obtain fluency. These methods need to be employed and the old techniques should be removed IMMEDIATELY before they can inflict psychological damage on yet another generation.
The Irish government is currently cash rich, and of all possible uses of money, nothing has a greater benefit for society and the long term economic health of a country than proper education. It has a nearly incalculable benefit. With this in mind my program for obtaining true bilingualism on the island would be the following.
Money should be made available to all teachers and child minders to spend signifcant periods in the Gaeltacht in the interest in assuring a high standard of fluency for those that are responsible for the education of our children.
Money should be made available to entirely subsize child care given through the Irish language. This would remove the hurdle for those who are usually at the greatest economic disadvantage in obtaining the Irish language. The money spent on child care would serve the dual perpose of education and social welfare while not increasing costs to the state significantly for either goal.
Money should be made available for adult education in the language. It is more expensive to obtain Irish language instruction in the Republic than it is in Northern Ireland. RTE should give their Irish language materials away for free (charging only for the cost of media). The BBC has better free language learning materials for Irish than does any entity in the Republic. I find this a highly embarassing situation, and I hope that others do as well.
The teaching of Irish in school should be modernised with a two pronged approach focusing both on conversational Irish, and on grammar and the study of literature.
I think that if these policies were to be put in place we could see wide spread fluency in the langnuage and most importantly a bilingual island within a generation.
I don’t intend that the Irish people be forced to give up their characteristic melange of national pride and self deprecation. I would never suggest such a thing. However, this should not keep us from implementing the most effective education system that we can.
June 17th, 2010 at 4:42 am
I don’t buy the line that the teaching of Irish is poor in schools and that this is largely responsible for its poor level of use. At primary school in particular, the teaching is generally pretty good. Of course, there will the occasional poor teacher, but on the whole the system isn’t bad. At secondary level, there is a greater problem which emanates from treating pupils as if they are fluent in it. Hence the focus on short stories and poetry.
The idea that Irish is taught badly in schools stems from the 1920s when it really was forced down people’s throats. But a lot has changed since then and primary schooling in Ireland is generally a happy enough time for kids.
The fact that most people can’t speak the language after 12 years of schooling is primarily down them being not interested enough. There is certainly enough state support. And why should people be interested? It takes a lot of effort and what’s the pay off. One can see the reward for reviving Hebrew; it was essential to their nationalist project. But Ireland has already won independence. Our elites don’t have a pressing need to revive the language in order to stablise their political situation. Thus I can’t really see any prospects for a successful resuscitation of the language, particularly as it isn’t really worth learning a language that isn’t used.
Sure, some people will be into Sanskrit and the like, but that sort of interest is a specialist hobby and if that was all that supporters of the Irish language sought, nobody would object.
But it isn’t. There is a nation building exercise that underlies the project to revive the language. And make no mistake, nation building will piggy back on bilingualism. Few people will share your enthusiasm for doing the hard work of learning to speak two languages out of love for language per se. The only way that a significant section of the population could possibly be persuaded to really support bi-bilingualism would be to attach it to a nationalist project.
And is it worth the cost? Because there will be a large social cost. That is hidden at the moment because there just isn’t sufficient interest amongst enough people for Irish to be more than the occasional blip on an intermittent radar.
Languages are group markers, whether we like it or not. Think Flemish and French or Hebrew and Arabic. Even Belgium, which has had zero ethnic conflict, is being torn apart by language based nationalism. This is idiocy. But it’s not an idiocy that is easy to avoid once the genie is out.
There is already too much nationalism in Ireland. It is the default ideology of the vast majority of the population. Increasing emphasis on Irish would only deepen its hold on the collective mind. It would also lead to conflict as Irish gained traction. It’s already slightly problematic when Irish speakers insist on being dealt with in Irish in their interactions with the state, e.g. it’s used to evade prosecution when caught drunk driving.
The conflict that will arise more than offsets the potential cognitive gain. If we are to adopt a bi-lingual strategy, then it’s probably better to do French or German where at least the attendant European nationalism that would underlie that development would be a step towards a more integrated world and not a retreat to a parochial mindset.
Gaelscoils are only not a problem as long as they remain such a tiny minority. If they achieve lift off and lead to a significant section of the population insisting on being spoken to in Irish (as happens from time to time in the public service), then we will have problem.
Irish might be a poetic language – which one isn’t, after all. Poetry actually had a social function back when Irish was still widely used, in that, like poetry everywhere, it was a repository of cultural information. That function is simply gone wit h the advent of literacy, not to mention television. The lingering sentiment one sees for Irish in this regards is a lingering sentiment for a non-existant romanticised past.
The flip side of Irish’s cultural legacy is that it was part of a society that was rural, agricultural, primitive, soaked in religious idiocy, violence and drunkeness. Nobody wants to retreat to that. But in the modern world, English fulfills our needs just perfectly. Not only is it an international language, it is also a very flexible one with many ways to express nuance. In short, there aren’t any compelling cultural reasons to revive Irish.
In conclusion, I submit to the esteemed host of this blog that even if the cognitive benefits of learning a second language are 5 times what is claimed, they are still outweighed by the social disadvantages that would accrue, no doubt unintentionally, but nevertheless ineluctably. Happily, the recession has put paid to many of your suggestions!