Compared with other subjects Irish is not badly taught. More students got a B1 or higher in Irish than in their other European language, writes Caoimhín De Barra.
Caoimhín De Barra Assistant professor of history, Gonzaga University, Washington I WAS IN Nashville last year when I met two women from Canada. As someone who is interested in the bilingual status of Canada, I asked them if they spoke French.
An obvious subject to compare Irish to is Maths. We can easily compare the marks students achieve in both subjects in the Leaving Certificate. If Irish is really taught badly in comparison to Maths, we would expect to see this represented in the Leaving Certificate results. While students attending Irish-immersion secondary schools undoubtedly gives the scores for Irish a boost, based on these numbers, it is simply impossible to argue that there is some deficiency in how Irish is taught compared to other subjects.
If we assume the student sleeps seven hours each night, and that they spend most of their waking moments speaking or thinking in English, we can estimate that they are exposed to English for 6,038 hours a year.Based on these numbers, an Irish teenager spends 2.6% of their time engaging with Irish, and well over 90% of their time operating through English.
The vast majority of students who go through the Irish education system learn to read and write. Next, we look at maths. Most people retain some math skills, like the ability to add and subtract, multiply and divide, and to calculate percentages, for their entire lives. Others, like algebra, geometry and trigonometry, are quickly forgotten. Why? The former are skills we use all the time, but the latter are ones most of use never use again.
Their choice of a scapegoat is either themselves, for not being clever enough to learn Irish, or our teachers, for teaching it so poorly. No prizes for guessing who most people decide to pin the blame on. The issue is that our expectation for what can be achieved within an Irish classroom given the position of Irish in wider society is completely impracticable. Imagine if every day, every Irish school child was taken to a GAA field and asked to run one gentle lap of it.
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