http://www.gaelport.com/sonrai-nuachta?NewsItemID=5500

What in the name of God are we going to do about these ************** idiots in the Department of Education?

Sorry I don't want to distress people but Honestly it's worse it's getting... I'm so so fecking mad I'm almost in tears. Something has to be done.

At least we need to start asking questions like they did with Fás. Who the hell is in there, what the hell are they doing, what the hell are they costing us. I think we need to focus in hard on the Department of Education, it has gone too far.

quote:

“A similar change was introduced a number of years ago in the case of foreign languages.
“The result: Ireland now ranks at the bottom of European surveys on foreign language competence,” she added.

The ability of an Roinn Éadochais to ignore evidence is breath taking.

quote:

Students have been given a detailed preview of exactly what to expect in an oral Irish exam in 15 months’ time, after exam chiefs ignored the advice of experts.

Incredible . . .

It is well known within the Civil Service that the Department of Education is the most inward-looking and conservative of all departments

Teachers are getting off the hook again which of course suits that shower just fine.

Well I'm not putting up with it. It's time to do something and what I'm going to do I'm going to plan out this weekend.

Sorry but **** them. They have a serious responsibility when it comes to our language and they are not going to stamp all over it, not after all the outrageous efforts and hard work of so many others.

As I've said before; all of this is the logical result of having Irish taught by the unwilling and the unable to the often equally unwilling and equally unable.

But I'll stop now before people start looking around for a piece of rope to make a noose out of :o)

They are making a rag of this country. I'm starting to wonder why would anyone want to bring up children in this country? What is going to be here worth talking about?
I'm not standing back anymore.

quote:

Well I'm not putting up with it. It's time to do something and what I'm going to do I'm going to plan out this weekend.

Good for you! Do what your heart tells you is right, as long as it doesn't involve a can of petrol and a box of matches. I just wouldn't want to see you being hastedly bundled into the back of a Garda van or something on TVTripe News.

(Ok. Sorry. I'll behave now. Honest.)

Well if it comes to that I can just say you put me up to it ;)

quote:

Well if it comes to that I can just say you put me up to it ;)

Sorry, schnukems, I've no intention of ending up in the slammer having to keep my back to the wall in the showers for five to ten years or more ;)

quote:

all of this is the logical result of having Irish taught by the unwilling and the unable to the often equally unwilling and equally unable.

That is true. However, the issue here is the setting of a curriculum which hides the dereliction of duty by the Dept to ensure some kind of standard of education.


The case of Irish is the most glaringly obvious because the gap between the rhetoric and the achievement is widest.


But they are doing it everywhere.

One could substitute maths in the sentence above, and it would be equally true.

c.f. Alan Titley's piece yesterday on (il)literacy.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2011/0120/1224287943052.html

quote:

Is féidir scileanna léitheoireachta a mhúineadh agus a fhoghlaim go lá pilib gan chleite, ach ní léifear pioc mura gcuirtear ábhar suimiúil os comhair múinteoirí agus mic léinn agus daltaí.

I don't know you could have an easy life of it if you shaved your head and fattened yourself up in the meantime :)

quote:

I don't know you could have an easy life of it if you shaved your head and fattened yourself up in the meantime :)

Yeah, maybe so. And I could probably make a few bucks on the side having bootleg copies of Graiméar Gaeilge na mBráithre Críostaí smuggled in and then selling them on to cons and screws alike netting a tidy little profit for yours truly. "I hears you're a man who knows how to get hold of certain things". "I've been known to get hold of certain things from time to time. What ya lookin' for?" "Dinneen's dictionary." "Well, you see, it'll be pretty hard to get something like that past the screws on all . . .". "Ok. How much?" "Twenty packets of smokes". ;)

Well, Carmanach, they don't call it the Jailtacht for nowt!

quote:

Well, Carmanach, they don't call it the Jailtacht for nowt!

[cue drum roll, cymbals!].

(Message edited by carmanach on January 21, 2011)

You're not alone either. I'll tell you straight out that my children are going to be homeschooled here in California because the school system is a mess overall. Sure there are good examples of people overcoming the limitations of their system, but the situation is like russian roulette. I am not aware of the various options in Ireland, but parents need to take back education and force the system to change. All this news from Ireland never mentions what people think of the situation. Do Irish journalists ever ask the man-on-the-street what he thinks of his kid memorizing poems in an Irish oral test? In California we've managed to keep homeschooling legal and add another layer to it, which is homeschooling through a public charter school (that is, schooling at home with the actually benefit of your tax money). Homeschooling and education choices like it are like the hottest thing since sliced bread out here. Everyone knows that most public schools are trash. Sure there are personal sacrifices, but if you care about something your actions will match that. If we lived in Ireland, my kids would not be at any local hum-drum school in Ireland. And they would learn Irish. That would be the simple point. I am not an iron-hammered dad, so don't think they'd be forced. It is just the way it is. You commit to "we are a family that will learn and speak Irish". Then you drive out to the Gaeltacht all the time and get on with it! This is not difficult.

I have taught every level from PreK through college sophomores in my time. Granted, the American system is very different from the Irish one, but my following observations I think hold regardless of the details.

- Public education has grown into something it was never intended to be, and indeed cannot effectively be.

- Most of a child's education takes place through its parents; and what education takes place through teachers is only as effective as the value the parents instilled in the child regarding education.

- No government, no matter how well intentioned, can ever give your child a better education than you can. Mind you, you don't necessarily need to personally give all aspects of the education (you may not be an engineer yourself, etc), but you make choices regarding your child's education that reflect your values and what you want to see them taught. You also instill values in them from before they are able to speak. In trying to be broad enough to please everyone, the only thing the government manages to do is tick off everyone.

- Public education would best serve the public by teaching students fundamental and trade skills that would make them employable. Liberal arts, humanities, and "academic" subjects should be left as electives and/or left to the private schools for which people voluntarily pay tuition if they want that kind of education for their child. How do I define "academic" subjects? They are subjects whose skills only qualify you to teach that subject (more or less). Another term might be "circular subjects."

- Because massive funding is involved, the money spent needs to be justified in a "scientific" and standard manner - enter standardized tests, animals which are ill-suited for most of the subjects taught in our schools. Mix them with multiculturalism and socioeconomics and you get something that is not only useless for its stated purpose, but a divisive political tool that becomes more about "diversity," politics, and manufacturing a particular statistical result than it does actually assessing students' abilities or the effectiveness of the instruction.

- To the degree that the system itself is to blame, the teachers usually bear the brunt of it whereas most of the real problems are in the design of the system itself.

- Going to college has become the only measure of success with which public education concerns itself, and the only one parents want to hear (although this does not mean that every single cog in the machine shares that value [see following point], but it is far too accepted by out-of-the-classroom policy makers). The unfortunate reality (or, perhaps it is actually fortunate...what good is a society full of linguists and political science majors and short on plumbers and real scientists?) is that most students do not belong going to college and are not particularly well served by doing so. When reforming public education, we need to reassess our goals.

- We also need to agree on goals and purpose for an education system. If you ask, "What is the purpose of public education?" of elementary school teachers, humanities high school teachers, math high school teachers, college professors, school principals, boards of education, and the Secretary of Education (or Irish equivalent), you will get seven different answers. How can any institution with every level of the hierarchy at cross-purposes to every other be expected to accomplish anything worthwhile?

In short, if you are relying on the government to give your child what you believe he needs in an education, you will be sorely disappointed. A parent questioning why their child has failed to learn X from their education (especially when X is part of the curriculum, regardless of how poorly it is taught) needs to look in the mirror first. To go back to the example with which we began, Irish, I knew more Irish after three years of casual study in New Jersey than my cousins who have attended school in Tipperary for over a decade. I live in a country with zero support for the language in schools, no easy access to Irish language programming (especially not in my first three years), nor any native speaking community closer than an eight-hour plane ride. The school (and/or the entire Irish education system) may be partly to blame for my cousins' failure to attain even a low-grade conversational grasp of the language, but that is not where the lion's share of it lay.

To expect that any system could possibly be constructed which would overcome lack of support and perceived lack of value at home is ludicrous. On my more cynical days, I sometimes think the Irish language might do better in the long run if the government just started ignoring it.

When Brian Cowen's resignation speech was put online today, it was only in English despite the fact the he opened in Irish and went on for quite awhile. This was ignored. Not enough people care.

Irish in State schools is a joke. Make it optional after the JC.

Who do you think you are, Sineadw, making the following comment:
'Teachers are getting off the hook again which of course suits that shower just fine.

Well I'm not putting up with it. It's time to do something and what I'm going to do I'm going to plan out this weekend.

Sorry but **** them...'

xxxx you too Sinead. I am an Irish teacher and I did not ask to 'get off the hook'. This nonsense doesn't help me as a teacher in any way. Most teachers I know are very much opposed to this new style of exam. The DES seem to just do what they want without taking the opinion of the people on the ground into account.

The same happened last year, when a new-style Junior Cert paper was imposed which dropped the written comhrá and re-introduced a grammar question - this paper was then given to the same students who were into their third year of the Junior Cycle preparing for the older exam paper. The NCCA which has teacher reps on it were apparently ignored.

The actual comhrá in the Leaving Cert is now reduced to 4-6 minutes where before it was roughly 8-10 minutes. The poetry reading just takes a bit of practice and students can (as before) have phonetics written between the lines. So there is very little real testing of ability there.

So, yes, it is a hugely retrograde step. But give us teachers a break. I chose to teach Irish because I love the language. I spend an inordinate amount of time on corrections (at Leaving Cert level) as compared to my colleagues who teach Maths, or even French. The subject I teach is not valued by many students despite our best efforts. I don't want sympathy - I enjoy the challenge and take great pride in the students who embrace the language and do well, or at least do their very best in it - but I would like people like Sinead to realise that we are on the same side, as people who have an interest in and wish to promote Irish.

Danny 2007, the full audio is online here

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/audio/0111/cowenff.mp3

The full speech is here

http://www.fiannafail.ie/news/entry/6229/

You can watch it here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4kktW7FMaw&feature=player_embedded

So where exactly are you referring to the Irish having been removed?

---

quote:

The DES seem to just do what they want without taking the opinion of the people on the ground into account.

Sadly true: and also a wilful ignoring of concrete evidence.

quote:

but I would like people like Sinead to realise that we are on the same side, as people who have an interest in and wish to promote Irish.

Well said!

(Message edited by aonghus on January 22, 2011)

Brian Cowen has stepped down as leader of FF, but claims he will be Taoiseach until March 11th. How can he make that decision? How is it up to him? Surely, if he leads no party, and therefore can make no claim to represent a majority in the legislature, he has no valid claim to staying in his job? Where are the constitutional proprieties in this? At the very least, he should give the legislature a chance to approve his staying on without leading any party? Why hasn't the president dismissed him? She should say "you don't have the backing of any TDs now, as you are not a party leader - so you're out as of today"...

(Message edited by corkirish on January 22, 2011)

That is not the President's perogative.

http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/upload/static/1175.pdf

See article 13:

The only independent decision the Prseident can make is not to dissolve the Dáil at the request of a Taoiseach who no longer has a majority.

That is, she could refuse to dissolve the Dáil, but she cannot force a dissolution.

I see. I hadn't appreciated the finer details.

Dev knew what he wanted!

2° Má éagann an Taoiseach nó má ghabhann míthreoir bhuan é, ní foláir don Tánaiste gníomhú chun gach críche in ionad an Taoisigh nó go gceaptar Taoiseach eile.

Forward, Mary Coughlan. (Go bhfóire Dia orainn!)

Er scooby I think you'll find that when I said '**** them' I was referring to the lazy shower in the Department of Education. Also when I referred to 'that shower' - again, the Dept. of Education.

Quote Scooby: "Most teachers I know are very much opposed to this new style of exam. The DES seem to just do what they want without taking the opinion of the people on the ground into account"

Well if secondary school teachers of Irish really give a damn when do you intend to get together and speak up about this? My feeling is that the majority don't care enough to do anything of the likes and you'll hand out the pictures and go along with the Dept. Education as usual.

Also, I obviously understand (having a father who taught second level Irish for 40 years) that people who teach Irish in secondary schools like/love/enjoy the language so I don't really need to be told that they are relatively on the same side as myself and anyone else who wants to see Irish thrive.

Sineadw,

quote:

Teachers are getting off the hook again which of course suits that shower just fine

.

In that sentence everyone would understand "that shower" as referring back to "Teachers". (Ní haon múinteoir mé féin, caithfidh mé a rá!)

(Message edited by Hugo on January 24, 2011)

Hugo - this thread has nothing to do with learning Irish. I could regale you all with my opinions on the education system, but we would be no further with our Irish learning...

Well Hugo that actually refers to the shower I had posted about originally in my first posting. The Dept. of Education has let teachers off the hook. They won't have to actually teach students how to speak relatively fluently now that students and teachers have advance notice of what's going to be in the exam. Hence that suits the Dept. (that shower) as the results will be relatively good as a consequence of giving out the questions in advance and everyone will say what a success this 40% worth Irish oral has been.

Secondary school teachers by and large work hard, it's not an easy job but they are looked after very well for it by Irish taxpayers. Is it too much to ask for that they would stretch themselves a bit and take on the Dept. on this? They are the people with the most authority to speak up after all.

But I'm not expecting them to. I learned that lesson when I saw how silent 99% of the civil servants in the Dept. of Heritage and Environment were when it came to the M3 going through the Hill of Tara.

All anyone in this country gives a crap about is minding their own job. Well the country is practically beyond saving now anyway so I suppose I should say good luck to them.

Hence that suits the Dept. ..... will say what a success this 40% worth Irish oral has been. "

- I'm sure that's what they had in mind all along.


Irish people don't protest (unless they are taxi drivers). Look how bad the country is now, and all the government has done even recently. Not a whisper from the public. The slightest thing would sent thousands on people onto the streets of Paris.