Ciannait Khan | Contributing Writer
I know this is potentially a very boring topic, in particular for those of you who did debating in school and would therefore have exhausted this rather limited subject to death. Regardless, I demand my say on it, mostly because I believe this question concerns a much wider problem we are facing in education today. I know I’m in the minority in Ireland, particularly among the younger generation, but I’m a supporter of teaching the Irish language in schools here. Even more unusually, it was never my favourite subject, or even close (I was quite awful at it, in fact).
Were people to actually break down what they think education should achieve, they would see that Irish doesn’t seem too out of place in that category.
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Despite this, I can’t help but think there’s significant value in learning the native language throughout your school life. In fact, I see the importance of it as becoming exponentially great rather than as decreasing as Irish becomes spoken less and less as a first language. There’s massive opposition to it among the general public, with most people you speak to having a resentful comment or two to say about how useless it is and how it should be taken off the curriculum. In general, the people who tend to be in favour of it are those who have aced their Leaving Cert Irish, or people who aren’t Irish themselves, but admire the culture. The average person seems to scorn the prospect of ‘wasting time’ learning Irish, an attitude which I think represents a lot of misconceptions we have about what we should be teaching young people.
Much of your opinions on teaching Irish will relate to how you view education and its function in general. Naturally, ideas will differ: however, I think that were people to actually break down what they think education should achieve, they would see that Irish doesn’t seem too out of place in that category. Taking a fast-evolving, globalising world into the picture, it seems even more pertinent.
Most people’s gripe with Irish is the impracticality of it. On the surface, this seems to make sense: you can immediately see the purpose of learning English, Maths or Biology. Irish is spoken as a first language by only a small minority, even in Ireland – the chances of anyone ever needing to use it, in this day in age, are slim. This is particularly obvious when kids are labouring away attempting to learn off when you’re supposed to put a ‘bh’ as opposed to a ‘ph’. Would it not be better to instead devote that time to learning English, which we speak every day, or Maths, the most universal language of all.
The aim of school is not to cater for every possible career path; in such a case, we would have more subjects based on manual trades and non-academic work.
However, as many economists will tell you, taking rationality too far just leads to irrationality. I believe this obsession with necessity that we seem to have is a bit of a myth, as necessity only stretches so far. Is the sole purpose of school to teach cold, hard facts? In Ireland, we spend thirteen to fourteen consecutive years in school. With school dominating our first two decades of life, surely our education system has a responsibility to do more than simply throw mounds of information at us just so that we can regurgitate it back. It is inevitably more complex than that: we’re teaching human beings, not robots. This is something that has rarely been more relevant than it is now, in an era of rapidly-developing technology. We have computers to serve as buckets of infinite information: we are more than that. The education we receive shapes and builds who we are, especially given that we are participants throughout almost all of our formative years.
We already know that the aim of school is not to cater for every possible career path; in such a case, we would have more subjects based on manual trades and non-academic work. Furthermore, is the actual content of a subject what really matters? Is English taught in schools to ensure that students will always be able to critically discuss Hamlet? No: but spending time doing so involves important transferable skills such as analysing, creative thinking and problem-solving. I don’t remember the majority of what I learnt in maths at school, and don’t really foresee it as being of much practical use in my life, unless I suddenly take a drastic career divergence. I think this will be the case for most people in all subjects other than the one or two that they feel passionate about. I know maths plays a much bigger role in the wider world than Irish does, but does this really matter in the context of individuals’ lives? I still don’t regret learning maths; it managed to successfully spur my brain into action, getting the cogs turning in the right way. The fact that I’ve completely forgotten the details of whatever theorems and formulas we were taught isn’t what I consider important.
The value of culture should also not be underestimated. The world is globalising, meaning we will have to hold on tighter than ever to avoid losing our unique language and traditions.
The value of culture should also not be underestimated. The world is globalising, meaning we will have to hold on tighter than ever to avoid losing our unique language and traditions. There’s a reason that the concept of a universal language doesn’t appeal to most of us, not merely on a practical level but on an idealistic one. Different languages are beautiful and fascinating. We all wantto have cultural identity, to distinguish ourselves from others – we as human beings crave diversity and difference. While I never went myself, I’m sure many people will tell you that they gained more life experience in a few weeks at the Gaeltacht than in a year at secondary school. While that might not be directly due to the language of Irish, it is a unique tradition borne from culture that creates community and brings people together.
If we want to complain about teaching Irish in schools, we need to address the wider issue of what we want to accomplish with our education system, and what we should consider valuable in today’s changing world. When we take a closer look, a lot of initial assumptions we make about school aren’t necessarily true. If we want to argue for change, we will have to delve into some much deeper problems. In my opinion, the simple claim that learning Irish is ‘pointless’ just doesn’t cut it.
