It amazes me when I see primary schools talking about doing modern languages such as French, Spanish and German.

Our official curriculum is already well represented with 12 different subjects, our timetable is full to overflowing, yet people (parents and teachers) want to overload an already overloaded week with more subjects.

I have to admit that we used to bring in a teacher of French a number of years ago but we gave it up as a bad job.

Why I hear you say?

Well …. a number of factors brought about its demise:

We were charging the pupils for an activity within the school day. Education is supposed to be ‘FREE’ so charging pupils for French lessons was not right. I firmly believe that no child should be asked to pay for activities that happen in school ….. some schools offer dancing, speech & drama etc. but charge the pupils well for the privilege.

Drama is a school subject and we teachers are paid to teach it so no external teachers need be brought in to teach speech & drama.

I know of a Primary School Principal who is making a (personal) fortune because he doing speech & drama after school and charging all the pupils a clean fortune for the privilege. They put on a number of shows at Christmas and other times during the year, and, although he donates some of the proceeds to charity, he pockets the balance. I know he is doing it after school, but he is still using the school premises and he should already be doing it as part of his job by teaching ‘Drama’ – the subject!!

In relation to modern languages, a lot of secondary schools have to ‘unteach’ the pupils when they get them in.

A secondary school French teacher I spoke to said the best thing primary schools could do for modern languages was to leave them alone! We cause them so many problems by doing it wrong.

We have to teach up to three and a half hours of Irish each week to pupils for eight years, they get another six years of it in secondary school yet they can’t string a sentence of Irish together at the end of it. Irish is an official school subject …. Let’s fix Irish first before we introduce any more languages.

The ad on tv where the barman ask the Irish guy to do ‘something Irish’ and he throws out some unconnected Irish words are a terrible indictment of our Education system. Having taught in a Gaelscoil (all Irish medium school) for a number of years I firmly believe that the only way Irish can be taught is to use it as a living language of communication. The pupils in the Gaelscoil loved the language and they loved showing off the fact that they could converse effectively when outside the school. In my current situation Irish is a subject and it’s not held in the same regard. I had a third clas in the Gaelscoil doing 1^st year Irish. I was culturally shocked when I saw how little the pupils in English speaking schools fared in Irish.

I have an affinity for Irish but I don’t see the language surviving ….. it needs to be a language of communication and commerce …. it isn’t so it’s on a doomed path.

Even in the Gaeltachtaí (All Irish speaking areas) the language is dying. People are practically ashamed to use it. Údarás na Gaeltachta was set up to encourage employment in Gaeltachtaí for native Irish speaker. Businesses got grants to encourage the use of Irish etc. Most of the businesses have abandoned any pretence of using Irish as a means of communication and they are also employing foreign nationals who have difficulty speaking English not to mind Irish.

You’ll hear more Polish in the Gaeltachtaí now than Irish. Even Dingle wants to be known officially as Dingle not Daingean Uí Chúis. Peopel can’t half embrace the language. They can’t pick and choose.

There’s a review of the Gaeltachtaí coming …. it will make for startling reading when the report comes out. Suspicions of the Irish language being in trouble will suddenly become a factual report.

It’s a pity that we can’t make more of an effort to save our native tongue. But that’s the nature of languages …. evolving or becoming extinct.

If teachers taught all the objectives required of them within each subject the child would come out at the end of 6^th class with a well rounded education. Forget the ‘extras’! There are lots of extras in the Primary School Curriculum ….. go find them!