Time to rethink how we teach Irish

Ita O’Kelly

SPEAKING in New Zealand recently, President Michael D Higgins, a lover of the Irish language, questioned the effectiveness of making Irish a compulsory part of school curriculums. He said that we should encourage people to learn Irish, but we should not force them to do so.

And how right he is.

With Brexit on the horizon, it is high time that we reviewed our arbitrary policy of teaching Irish during the entire 13 years of schooling here and relying on the fact that English is sufficient to carry us through.

Foreign languages are not introduced here until secondary school and this is putting our students at a disadvantage. We need to embrace linguistic diversity and become European in our outlook, rather than just look to the UK.

The decision to make Irish compulsory in the education system and to award higher marks to those who complete State exams in Irish was made almost 100 years ago, at a very different time, by a fledgling State keen to assert its own identity.

The clarion call then was to “burn everything British except their coal” and push the Irish language with a fire-and-brimstone zeal. Those days are long over, thankfully.

According to Eurostat, 73pc of Irish adults cannot speak a foreign language. In a global world and economy, this is disastrous.

Many immigrants to Ireland, particularly from eastern Europe, already speak two languages. It is quite ridiculous, in my opinion, that their children are forced to learn Irish rather than a third language of their choice.

While we have, in theory, a bilingual State, announcing destinations on the Dart in Irish or calling the prime minister Taoiseach is about the size of it for many citizens. It is merely symbolic for most.

Should we be educating our young people to be young Europeans with fluency in German, French or Italian, or to be Gaelgeoirí, which has little practical application in the global jobs market?

I am not proposing removing Irish from the curriculum. Rather I would like to see it as an optional rather than a compulsory subject.

In addition, I believe there is merit in a more general subject including Irish language, music, history, poetry and culture, perhaps called Irish Heritage Studies.

A New Zealand politician recently declared that making Irish compulsory in schools here had turned it into the Brussels sprout of languages, in the context of a discussion about whether the Maori language should be made compulsory in schools there.

And he has a point.

For the vast majority of Irish school students, Irish is something that is foisted on them.

And there is no love lost for many. When my own child was in primary school, Chinese New Year was celebrated in class by learning the Chinese Zodiac in Irish. This happened even though some of the children in the class were studying Mandarin outside school.

In Census 2016, just 8,068 people completed the form in Irish, while 73,803 stated that they speak the language daily, outside of the education system. This is 3,382 fewer than in the 2011 Census.

Clearly the policy of compulsory Irish in schools is not working. And that is a pity.

Of 711 secondary schools here, 48 offer an education conducted through Irish, according to the Department of Education and Skills.

IT is discriminatory that such pupils receive up to 10pc bonus points in State exams. This is a practice introduced in the 1920s that should be discontinued.

Additionally it is ludicrous that teachers who correct exam scripts completed in Irish receive a premium payment rate over the English equivalent.

Many multinationals locate to Ireland and are then forced to import staff with the requisite language skills needed by a global business.

Many Irish graduates who decide to emigrate find themselves lacking in language skills compared to their peers abroad and are passed over for jobs.

It is foolish to assume that English is the language of business today. It is not.

Mandarin is the most spoken language in the world while German is the most spoken in Europe, at 16pc.

In an interview in ‘Time Magazine’ in July this year, Leo Varadkar described Ireland – stealing Manhattan’s cloak it must be said – as “an island at the centre of the world”.

If we are a monoglot nation in a globalised world, such sound bites are unlikely to deliver tangible results to our people who need to be equipped to become citizens of the world, whether they are working at home or abroad.

With the centenary of the State approaching, now is the time to start planning for a major rethink about preserving the Irish language for future generations.

The fact that we are also a modern European state needs to be strongly factored into that equation.

Irish is symbolic for most – and speaking it has little practical application in the global jobs market