Once, the greatest enemy of the Irish language was the British government. Nowadays it is our Department of Education, John Waters.
After decades of failure, we discovered a way of teaching Irish that worked. Through the tortuous infancy of the State, into the painful adolescence of the Republic, State policy towards the first national language seemed more an involuted continuation of the penal laws than a policy for restoration. Miraculously, students were emerging after years of daily instruction with at best a smattering of their native tongue, and this combined with a hatred of the language that even the invader had failed to imbue.
Consequently, apart from a few regional pockets and a scattering of fanatics, the language had died.
But, then something clicked. Slowly, in the past generation, the Gaelscoil movement had been producing results in both the cultural and educational contexts, its students not merely exhibiting a different attitude to Irish but also matching or outdoing the academic achievements of students educated through English.
It was time to do something. Bang on cue, the Department of Education and Science intervened last July to put an end to the reactionary phenomenon of Gaelic reinvigoration, issuing a diktat that promises to continue the project of de-Gaelicisation into the second century of Irish Independence.
The instrument of this fatwa is Circular 0044/2007, ordering Irish-medium schools to teach 2.5 hours of English per week from no later than the second term of junior infants. The new practice is imposed from the start of 2008 or, in exceptional circumstances, the start of the next academic year.
Circular 0044/2007 strikes at the heart of the policy of total immersion which worked so well for the Gaelscoileanna. Already, this issue has been the focus of much ill-informed, opportunistic and PC commentary. Labour Party chairman Brian O'Shea, writing in this newspaper before Christmas, stated: "It's difficult to see the justification for not teaching English in Gaelscoileanna at infant level, particularly to children with learning difficulties and children from other countries."
In fact, total immersion is justifiable on the basis of voluminous international experience, functioning to combat the ubiquitous cultural influence of Anglophonism by postponing the teaching of English for up to two years to enable children to acquire enough Irish to manage their school work and pursue social interaction. Research on bilingualism confirms that students taught through minority languages do not suffer adverse consequences in their academic development.
On the contrary, the development of fluency in two languages brings increased linguistic and cognitive benefits. The reason is obvious: bilingual children, being required to absorb more than one set of linguistic meanings, are enabled to expand the range of synaptic patterns in their neurological circuitry, according them greater mental dexterity and a capacity to more easily absorb other languages in the future. Research has confirmed that there is no difficulty transferring conceptual knowledge between minority and majority languages, once a basic fluency is achieved in both.
On the other hand, it is indicated that, where there has been insufficient exposure to the minority language at preschool level, most of these potential benefits are lost. One thing most of us learned at school is that teaching Irish as a separate subject is a waste of everyone's time.
Presumably, you will impatiently interject, some new research has become available to justify the recent shift of policy towards Gaelscoileanna.
Well, no. Although the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment has emphasised the need for research in advance of any change, the department has set its face against such rationalism, apparently basing its decision on the rather murky situation in just one school, Gaelscoil Mhic Easmainn in Tralee. This school has been the subject of complaints from parents who feel that the standard of English attained by their children is deficient.
Judging from the department's own evaluation, Gaelscoil Mhic Easmainn has experienced a range of problems unrelated to the Irish language, including poor teacher-parent communication, a preponderance of special needs children, and a general pattern of inconsistency with regard to primary school curriculum requirements for the teaching of English.
It is accepted that children in total-immersion Irish schools will exhibit early signs of retardation in English when compared to children in all-English schools, but this cancels out provided there is compensatory teaching of English as the child progresses. The department's own study of Gaelscoil Mhic Easmainn found that the school had no provision for such compensatory education.
The report concluded that the school needed to "strive for better learning outcomes in the teaching of English" while ensuring that there be no "diminution or dilution of the school's commitment to Irish as the first language of the school".
In perhaps the most blatant act of State vandalism since Independence, this paradoxical instruction has now been issued to all Gaelscoileanna. At the back of all this, of course, as can be sensed from the above quote from Brian O'Shea, lurks the spectre of ideological egalitarianism, the belief that all things Irish must bend over in response to demands from the equality lobby and what is laughably called multiculturalism.
Every culture but our own.