A chara, – As a primary teacher, I find that one of the biggest barriers to teaching Irish in English-medium schools is that the children see it as a language without function: to most of them, it only exists in a school environment, and you’re often met with indifference from children who see its only function as something they might need for an exam down the road.
I’ve worked as an Irish teacher in the Gaeltacht, and I’ve seen kids walk in without a word of Irish and walk out two weeks later with the ability to have a basic conversation. “The Gaeltacht experience” is one of the things we do well in this country, so why not play to our strengths? There are kids in my class that I know would love the Gaeltacht but it’s expensive. When I worked in the Gaeltacht, I observed I was mostly teaching the children of doctors, lawyers and teachers.
There are lots of families who would love to send their children to the Gaeltacht but it’s a luxury many can’t afford. Would giving schools a voluntary option to go to the Gaeltacht at primary and secondary school for a short school trip be something the Minister for Education would consider? A subsidised package with curricular activities based around PE, drama, music, geography, history and art. I feel this would give children whose parents don’t have the means to send their children to the Gaeltacht a proper taste for how fun the language can be. I feel like having incentives like this would also encourage a lot of the neurodiverse children in our system to persevere with the language, resulting in fewer children opting for Irish exemptions. I know that when we do drama and music through Irish in class then most of the children with exemptions want to participate.
If at the start of the year, I tell my class,”We’re all going on a trip to the Gaeltacht, there will be céilí and craic to be had but we’ll need to focus and learn how to speak before we go”, then there would be engagement, excitement and plans to be made. All of a sudden, that language that only exists in school has much more functionality to it. The infrastructure already exists to cater for large groups of children in the coláistí samhraidh. Their season is condensed into three summer months but a scheme like this could extend that season from March to Halloween. Gaeltacht areas are some of the most underdeveloped areas in the country. This would redistribute Government money and create sustainable employment in those areas. The biggest benefit being it would create opportunities for positive associations with the language for neurodiverse children and those whose parents can’t afford to send them over the summer. – Is mise,
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PAUL GALLAGHER
Tullaghan,
Leitrim.
