Madam, – Brian Hayes states “Forcing students to learn Irish is not working and is driving young people away from the language,” (Home News, April 9th). I think he misses the point on this issue. Teachers in national schools need the support of an integrated Irish-language course aimed specifically at the linguistic needs of the children they teach. Séidean Sí, an integrated course, has been developed to great success for children attending gaelscoileanna and Gaeltacht schools in recent years, although it would be unwise to attempt to use it for the purpose of national schools.
International research suggests that some form of immersion education would be beneficial to acquiring Irish and would help more of our young people to become bilingual/biliterate by the time they finish formal education. – Yours etc,
Madam, – On the basis of very direct professional and personal experience, the peculiarly Hibernian phenomena of the “Irish exemption” is yet another example of how we can go to quite extraordinary lengths to get it totally wrong, at immense expense. This is the toe of an extraordinary skeleton which, like many others in the multitudinous cupboards of the denial mansion of our society, has been struggling to get loose.
Though my grandfather’s mother tongue was English, he lived, worked and died (in 1919), in a Co Kerry which was functionally bilingual – although his grandfather (like his more famous big brother Daniel O’Connell), spent his very early years in an Irish-speaking family.
In 1922, it would still have been possible to hold the line of bilingualism over large swathes of the country. Yet the whole sad saga of official attempts to revive (sic) “the language” seems to have been directed towards drilling our people into hating and rejecting it. It is not inaccurate to suggest that the exercise was run by an unholy alliance of bureaucrats and political zealots (assisted by some esoteric academics). Not by language teachers. Or even Irish-lovers.
The key lies in the quality or character of teaching and in evoking motivation. Any teacher who can teach, and has a certain minimum knowledge of and love of the language, can teach Irish to almost anybody. Even hostile Irish children! Bring them to the point where they want to learn more.
My own Irish is minimal, but I am angry that if any of my grandchildren, some of whom are bilingual, want to follow serious higher studies in Irish, they will have to go abroad! After 90 years of soi-disant “Gaelic” independence – and the nauseating cupla fhocal.
Time to remove the Swiftian/Mylesian grotesques who have been in charge of the final linguistic solution, the enemies of land, language and people. To apply common sense. To let those who love all three to pass on that love. Before all three are dead. – Yours etc,