Cassandra Voices

Author: Donal Flynn

  • The New Experiment in Gaeltacht Education

    In 2016 the Department of Education and Skill’s outlined its latest scheme for Gaeltacht (designated Irish-language) districts: ‘Policy on Gaeltacht Education 2017 – 2022’. It aims to reverse the adoption  of English as the primary language of these areas, a process which is pretty well complete.

    Irish speakers are now in a minority in twenty out of the twenty-six ‘Gaeltacht Language Planning Areas’, often with numbers which are quite miniscule.[i]

    The new education scheme is, nonetheless, being implemented throughout the defined districts. Each school’s Management Committee was offered the choice of becoming a designated ‘Gaeltacht School’, and 106 out of 133 primary schools agreed, as did 27 of the 28 secondary schools at that time, with the last one joining in subsequently. [ii]

    Their participation is entirely unsurprising, however, given it qualifies any school for extra teaching staff and other resources to implement an enhanced Irish-language curriculum, as well as to teach the general curriculum through Irish. Remarkably, no English at all is taught to any children for the first two years of their primary schooling.

    This plan will fail as all such Revival of Irish plans have done, and for the same reason. They derive from a defective belief that official action can reverse the people’s choice to speak English. It is simply impossible to sustain a separate language community as a relic of the past among an overwhelmingly English-speaking nation, even assuming the parents of the children concerned are actually seeking this.

    Is this a new insight? Hardly! In 1963 ‘The Final Report of The Commission on the Restoration of the Irish Language’ was clear:

    The preservation and strengthening of the Gaeltacht, therefore, must not be approached as if it were an attempt to preserve in one corner of the country an aboriginal reservation to remind us of the past…

    In any case, the new Gaeltacht Education Policy is not a scheme to preserve a Gaeltacht, but to re-invent one. It is a sort of linguistic Jurassic Park experiment, where the captive school children are expected to mutate into an Irish-speaking tribe after a spell inside the Department of Education’s fantasy laboratory.

    Of course it won’t happen. Today’s infants will emerge in due course from their Irish-medium ‘Gaeltacht’ designated schools as native English-speakers. As adults they will live their lives in the English-speaking world, of which they are already a part.

    In 1990 Reg Hindley the author of The Death of the Irish Language painted a revealing picture of children in Gaeltacht areas:

    the problem is not usually one of downright mendacity, much as it feels it when being assured by respectable people in positions of considerable trust that the children in their area all speak Irish excellently and are devoted to it, whereas the infants in the playground are playing loudly in English and the teenagers of whom one enquired directions where chatting in English when interrupted. [iii]

    But the account of a deviant Sassenach was denounced by Irish language enthusiasts, and his research dismissed with contumely.[iv]

    Nonetheless, in 2017 a Department of Education report on an Achill Island school bluntly stated that ‘the pupils speak only English.’[v]

    In 2018 another Department report on the new Gaeltacht Education scheme itself said: ‘There are significant challenges in encouraging teenagers to speak Irish among themselves in social situations in the school environment.’[vi]

    Thus, it seems the schoolchildren chat in their home language as soon as they can get away from their teachers. What a surprise!

    In 2004 a ‘Study of Gaeltacht Schools’ carried out for COGG (the ‘Council for Gaeltacht and Gaelscoil Education’) said that ‘English is the main language used by pupils in normal conversational interactions in the vast majority of Gaeltacht schools.’

    Subsequently, in 2014, a report by NUIG ‘Analysis of Bilingual Competence – language acquisition among young people in the Gaeltacht” revealed:

    Unbalanced bilingualism or dominant bilingualism is the norm. English is the dominant language since it is the language in which they exhibit greater ability. Irish is the weaker language or it is the weaker language for the majority of pupils … From the point of view of formal linguistics, the majority of pupils function better in English, since it is the language in which they have the greater ability.

    These facts about Irish-language use in Gaeltacht areas is of course well-known to State officials, considering that altering them is the stated purpose of their grand experiment.

    A moral question arises here around using pupils as guinea pigs. On this point, Joe Mac Donncha in the Dublin Review of Books opined:

    One might well ask, at this stage, if it is morally tenable for the state to continue to encourage parents in Gaeltacht communities to raise their children through the medium of Irish when the state itself is aware, or should be aware, that those children will struggle to acquire native-speaker competence in their first language, given the linguistic dynamics of the current Gaeltacht.[vii]

    So why is this still happening? The answer is that it is a matter of a fixed political ideology, and it is in the nature of ideologues that they are immune to external influence, moral or otherwise. And as we know, when social engineers have the power to carry out their schemes, they often acquire a sense of absolute entitlement to do so.

    Spare a thought for the school children concerned who choose to speak English whenever they are able. We may ask what entitles the Department to impose such ‘revivalist’ policies on them especially in many districts that have long since abandoned Irish.

    ‘Saving’ the Irish language may serve the interests of a coterie of enthusiasts, but does anyone care whether or not it benefits the children concerned?

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    [i] Untitled, ‘Cainteoirí laethúla ina mionlach i 20 den 26 ceantar pleanála teanga sa Ghaeltacht – figiúirí nua daonáirimh’, July 20th, 2017, www.tuairisc.ie. https://tuairisc.ie/cainteoiri-laethula-ina-mionlach-i-21-den-26-ceantar-pleanala-teanga-sa-ghaeltacht-figiuiri-nua-daonairimh/

    [ii] Untitled, ‘Na cúiseanna nach dteastaíonn stádas ‘Gaeltachta’ ó 27 scoil sa Ghaeltacht’, May 14th, 2019, www.tuairisc.ie. https://tuairisc.ie/na-cuiseanna-nach-dteastaionn-stadas-gaeltachta-o-27-scoil-sa-ghaeltacht/

    [iii] Reg Hindley, The Death of the Irish Language, Routledge, London, 1990, p.59

    [iv] For example: ‘Buried Alive – A Reply to Reg Hindley’s The Death of the Irish Language’. Dáil Uí Chadhain, 1991

    [v] Unknown, ‘Achill Island pupils ‘speak only English’ The Sunday Times, December 10th, 2017.

    [vi] ‘Schools participating in the Gaeltacht School Recognition Scheme’ September-December 2018, Department of Education and Skills.

    [vii] Joe Mac Donncha, ‘The Death of a language’, Dublin Review of Books, April, 2015

  • ‘Wooden Legs on Hens’ – The Ongoing Failure of the Restoration of the Irish Language

    Last January, the Minister for Education, Joe McHugh, invited views from the public on the current system of granting exemptions to pupils from the compulsory study of Irish, following debate around the current regime.

    The Irish language organisations want exemptions to be kept to a minimum; they have long complained that these are granted too easily[i], and seem to fear that the public consultation process may lead to a further loosening in the system, rather than the tightening in the grounds they wish to see.

    These Irish-language advocacy organisations, Conradh na Gaeilge and COGG (representing the Gaelscoil movement) perceive an even greater threat to the position of Irish in the schools in certain other refors under consideration by the Department of Education and the NCCA, namely, the possibility of students being able to choose just five subjects (as opposed to the current minimum of six – and with most schools offering eight subjects) from a wider range of Leaving Certificate subjects than are currently on offer.[ii]

    The organisations fear that increased freedom of choice for students, combined with an expanded range of practical or vocational subjects, would lead, inexorably, to Irish becoming a subject of choice in the final school examination.

    The Irish language organisations are therefore pledged to resist the changes now being mooted, knowing that the place of Irish in the education system has to be maintained by compulsion, and that its loss would both reduce the numbers of pupils studying Irish, and diminish the number of teachers of Irish required in the educational system as a whole.

    Yet, already there is an acute shortage of teachers of Irish,[iii] even in its current dumbed-down form. The shortage is even more acute in teachers who can teach other subjects through Irish, and some all-Irish schools are now having to teach subjects such as Science, including Physics, through English.

    The contest between Irish and other subjects in the school curriculum is an ancient one. In 1934, when the government was harnessing the primary schools to the task of reviving Irish, the resulting stresses on teachers led to intense negotiations between the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) and the state. These resulted in teachers agreeing to place greater emphasis on Irish in return for the government accepting lower standards in the other subjects.[iv]

    English was then reduced to the old ‘lower course’ in all schools; Mathematics shrank, with Algebra and Geometry becoming optional subjects in one teacher schools, as well as in three-teacher coeducational schools, and in all classes taught by women. ‘Farm Economics & Rural Science’ was abolished altogether, leaving its flasks, pipettes, rubber tubing and Bunsen burners in many a national school cófra to gather dust for ever after.

    There followed the long decades of the Revival when 25% more class time was given to Irish than Arithmetic, twice as much time as to English and five times as much time as to either History or Geography.[v]

    By the 1960’s, 40% of the entire budget for primary and secondary education went on languages, and, of that, 45% went went to Irish, while less than 1% was devoted to German.[vi] The vast expenditure was all, however, to no avail, proving Eoin MacNeill, the first Minister for Education, to be correct in his surmise that ‘You might as well be putting wooden legs on hens as trying to restore Irish through the school system.’[vii]

    But the underlying ideology persists, and still today Conradh na Gaeilge and COGG persist in their determination to resist any weakening of the system of compulsion. It is essential to their mission and, make no mistake, these are doughty fighters who expect to be successful in their campaign.

    Shaping the political narrative is a crucial factor, and these are past masters at harnessing allies to their cause. Irish politicians remain sensitive to any accusation of treachery to the national language. Furthermore, with Irish-language-enthusiast Joe McHugh at the helm, the organisations already have an ally occupying a crucial position in the forthcoming battle over the curriculum.

    They were not to be disappointed. Within days the Minister for Education and Skills publicly asserted that Irish would always remain a compulsory school subject[viii] and Deputy Seán Kyne, Minister for the Gaeltacht went so far as to declare that students who were given exemptions from learning Irish should be blocked from learning other languages.[ix]

    How will it all turn out? As if we didn’t know already; the Irish people will keep speaking English and their English-speaking officials will keep telling them to speak Irish – plus ca change – mar a déarfá. 

    Note: Donal Flynn is the author of a paper ‘The Revival of Irish – Failed Project of a Political Elite’ which can be found on www.sites/google.com/site/failedrevival

    [i] Untitled, ‘É curtha i leith na Roinne Oideachais go bhfuil próiseas comhairliúcháin dhíolúine na Gaeilge ‘réamhshocraithe’’, December 18th, 2017, Tuairisc.ie, https://tuairisc.ie/e-curtha-i-leith-na-roinne-oideachais-go-bhfuil-proiseas-comhairliuchain-dhioluine-na-gaeilge-reamhshocraithe/, accessed 25/4/19.

    [ii] Untitled, ‘Amhras mór caite ar stádas na Gaeilge mar ábhar éigeantach i dtuarascáil de chuid an NCCA’, December 17th, 2018, Tuairisc.ie, https://tuairisc.ie/amhras-mor-caite-ar-stadas-na-gaeilge-mar-abhar-eigeantach-i-dtuarascail-de-chuid-an-ncca/, accessed, 25/4/19.

    [iii] Untitled, ‘‘Fáilte’ ag an Aire Oideachais roimh mholadh ar bith a leigheasfadh géarchéim na múinteoirí Gaeilge’, February 5th, 2018, Tuairisc.ie, https://tuairisc.ie/failte-ag-an-aire-oideachais-roimh-mholadh-ar-bith-a-leigheasfadh-gearcheim-na-muinteoiri-gaeilge/, accessed 25/4/19.

    [iv] Adrian Kelly, Compulsory Irish: Language ad Education in Ireland 1870s to 1970s, ??? p.46

    [v] John Kelly, ‘Education and the Irish State’, Unpublished paper delivered in Saint Patrick’s College Drumcondra, 1969.

    [vi] Dr Edmund Walsh, ‘Education for Europe’, delivered to the Chambers of Commerce of Ireland on May 16th, 1987.

    [vii] J. J. Lee, Ireland 1912-1985, Politics and Society, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, p.133

    [viii] Carl O’Brien, ‘Minister insists Irish will remain compulsory in school’, January 4th, 2019, Irish Times,  https://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/minister-insists-irish-will-remain-compulsory-in-school-1.3747161, accessed 24/4/19.

    [ix] Ian O’Doherty, ‘Gaeilgeoir brigades still turning people off learning Irish’, April 24th, 2019, Irish Independent, https://www.independent.ie/opinion/ian-odoherty-gaeilgeoir-brigades-still-turning-people-off-learning-irish-37723097.html, accessed 24/4/19.