Peter McGuire’s Irish Times article on teaching Irish (Feb. 4; archived) starts by focusing on dyslexic students, concluding:
Much of the discussion around this, intentionally or otherwise, effectively pits one minority community (Irish-language speakers) against another (people with dyslexia). But many Irish speakers are dyslexic, and many dyslexic people want to learn Irish.
Then it goes on to more general issues:
At Leaving Cert level, Irish consistently has the highest number of top grades outside minority languages and music – subjects that tend to attract students who are already reasonably skilled. But despite decades of discussion about Irish language teaching, only a minority have anything approaching fluency.
While the focus on oral skills has increased (to 40 per cent at Leaving Cert), teaching of Irish remains dominated by the written word – in contravention of everything we know about language acquisition. So why does our education system continue to teach it in a way that is inaccessible to many?
“I want my daughter to study Irish,” says Fahey. “I want her to experience Irish culture and the language, but without expectation.
“She was struggling to learn English and the extra pressure of an additional language was damaging her confidence. I availed of the exemption for her, but asked her school – who have been great – if she could still take part in Irish class, just not be tested or have to read it. I have seen a huge change in her confidence and self-esteem.”
Rosie Bissett, chief executive of Dyslexia Ireland, says growing awareness and diagnosis of learning differences and neurodiversity (a broad term that includes dyslexia, dyspraxia, autism, ADHD and more), as well as increased numbers entering the Irish school from abroad after the age of 12, have led to growing exemptions. […]
“The rationale for an exemption is that it gives children an opportunity to develop competency in a first language, and then, at a later date, they can take on an additional language. And, while they can indeed take up a foreign language at the start of second level, the Irish education system doesn’t allow an opportunity to take up Irish at the same stage.”
Bissett says English is taught to children through phonics, but that a whole-word approach is taken to Irish teaching, which makes it more challenging for all learners.
Julian de Spáinn, ard-runaí of Conradh na Gaeilge, a forum for the Irish-speaking community at home and abroad, says the growing number of exemptions presents a crisis for the language. There is a pressing need for change in how we teach the language, he says, and present more flexible options to learners instead of the one-size-fits-all approach that has marked the State’s century of failure to revive the language.
“There’s no plan to address it,” he says. “We need to overhaul the system from start to finish, from preschool to third level and beyond. Irish is not taught through the Common European Framework for Languages (CFR), which is a skills-based system used across Europe.”
De Spáinn points to Wales, where the national assembly is aiming towards all children achieving at least a B2 in the system. “This would make them an independent user of the language. That is ambition. But we have an inflexible system where, if someone is not able for Irish as taught, their only option is an exemption. But students with difficulty in writing the language should have the option of oral Irish only. […]
Parents and advocates also point out that learning support classes are very often scheduled during Irish class, meaning that many children have no choice but to get an exemption. And, while learning support is standard for English and maths, there is no equivalent support system for Irish.
“I know of one parent whose son came from a Gaelscoil and is being pushed for an exemption because learning support is at the same time as Irish,” says de Spáinn. “This child is good at languages, and it is devastating for him.”
“It’s all firefighting and band-aids with Irish, instead of a sensible approach that supports the benefits of bilingualism and Irish speakers,” says de Spáinn. “We need reform that ensures inclusion.”
Bathrobe, who sent me the link, adds: “And there is a mention of phonics again. I’m still in the dark as to why phonics is being made a villain. Is there substance to the complaints?” I have no answer; there’s been a back-and-forth on “phonics” for as far back as I can remember, but I can never remember what the issues are or decide if I have an opinion. (Also, I note “I availed of the exemption for her”: I’m still getting accustomed to the use of “avail” rather than “avail oneself,” which is what I grew up with, but at least I’m not griping about it any more.)
At Leaving Cert level, Irish consistently has the highest number of top grades outside minority languages and music … But despite decades of discussion about Irish language teaching, only a minority have anything approaching fluency.
I can testify that Welsh school qualifications for non-native speakers have a ludicrously lax standard, probably not unrelated to the fact that many of those taking the (compulsory) subject would not have chosen to do so if they could have avoided it.
(I know someone who got an A despite being wholly unaware that Welsh has grammatical gender. Naturally, he is entirely unable to communicate in Welsh.)
There is no question of “phonics” having anything at all to do with this.
I can see why Plaid Cymru pushes this the way that they do, and have every sympathy with their objectives, but they really have no idea how to achieve them. (To some extent this is a general déformation professionnelle of all politicians: as a class, they have unrealistic ideas about how much government policies can ever achieve. Most of the levers they pull so energetically aren’t actually connected to anything.)
Edewit ny wnelher ny diw.
… ebr Llywarch Hen.
Gwir, myn Duw!
I feel that there should be more blogging in Middle Welsh.
(Technically, Llywarch Hen was neither Middle nor Welsh, but we are an inclusive people. We accepted vast numbers of economic migrants who came here in small boats, even though many of them failed to integrate fully and did not learn the local language. Cymru am byth!)
I’m not sure whether Bathrobe views this article as among those in which phonics is being made a villain? My interpretation was that the article implies phonics should be used for Irish, either because it’s inherently better or because it’s confusing to use phonics in one language and not the other. The latter does not imply that phonics is inherently worse.
Yes, the whole-word approach is the villain, not phonics.
Although I’m not sure what this has to do with it at all – you don’t need to learn *how* to read all over again in order to read in a different language.
I think Bathrobe may have read it too hastily; I agree that the whole-word approach is the villain. But in any case the main point (I think) is that you should be able to learn Irish (or any other language, for that matter) purely orally, if that’s more in line with your needs/desires.
The phonics v. other approaches conflicts in English instruction in Anglophone societies occur in the context of the particular relationship between pronunciation and orthography in English, which is … dramatically less 1:1 than some languages but also notably less divergent from 1:1 than certain other languages? I can see there being parallel conflicts in the teaching of other languages, but what the best approach given the various tradeoffs might be is likely to be language specific. At one extreme, it’s basically conceptually impossible to teach literacy in Mandarin with a phonics-type approach; OTOH languages with very pronunciation-transparent orthography (I dunno … Finnish?) are such that you can’t even get the conflict between approaches going in the first place.
That said, the fights in English are mostly about how to most effectively teach reading/writing to elementary-school-age students who already have age-appropriate aural/oral native-speaker fluency. If you don’t have that prior oral/aural fluency in politically/culturally-motivated instruction in Irish or Welsh or what have you, the optimal strategy for teaching reading/writing may well be different just because of that.
It sounds like the practical problem in Ireland is that the bureaucrats running the schools fully appreciate that the official political commitment to universal instruction in Irish is a very pro forma and merely symbolic thing. That’s why assistance for kids with learning disabilities is predictably scheduled to conflict with Irish class rather than math class, because everyone secretly “knows” that math class should in reality be treated as more important. This is no doubt upsetting to the minority who actually believe the romantic propaganda about the degree of the regime’s commitment to universal instruction in Irish. And of course one obvious downside of mandatory universal instruction is that it’s hard to have separate and more rigorous classes for the minority of students who would actually like to learn Irish and are motivated to do so.
I think the situation with direct government intervention and language preservation (and with much else too) is asymmetrical: governments have considerable scope to do deliberate severe harm comparatively easily, but much less ability to make a positive impact, even with the best will in the world, than they or their supporters imagine. Facilis descensus Averno …
“teaching of Irish remains dominated by the written word ”
Maybe because there’s not too many opportunities to hear and speak it in everyday life outside the classroom?
Just a suggestion – I know nothing about what the facts of the matter are about how much Irish you’ll hear in everyday life. Perhaps others can comment?
There’s a chicken and egg problem here of course.
Wow. Horrifying as the Irish spelling system is, it’s more regular than the English one.
…and accidental severe harm just as easily, if not more so.
Horrifying as the Irish spelling system is, it’s more regular than the English one
Welsh, of course, has far and away the most straightforward orthography of any of the longer-established languages of the British Isles (a low bar.) This does not appear to have helped very much.
accidental severe harm just as easily
I think the commonest category is predictable (or indeed, predicted) severe harm, where the government decided to go ahead anyhow because of motivated blindness to the risks. Calling this “accidental” is too kind.
With learning to read? I’m just talking about phonics vs. whole-word here.
Agreed. It’s stupidity in the strictest sense.
With learning to read?
With preserving the language.
Perhaps I read it too hastily. Maybe it can be put down to the fact that the teaching of spelling in English, and the enormous effort that has to be put into it, has the effect of “crowding out” the time and effort that could be expended on the teaching of other languages. “Whole word” or “phonics”, learning to spell in English requires an inordinate commitment of time and energy. As the most important language on the planet today, it’s depressing that English spelling is such a train wreck. Only ideographic languages are worse. (I first came to hear of the whole word approach from Chinese and Japanese, where, if I remember rightly, it was given as a more suitable approach to apprehending Chinese characters. I suspect it was a spillover from English rather than an indigenous approach.)
Spelling bees should be something to be ashamed of, not something to be applauded.
Spelling bees should be something to be ashamed of, not something to be applauded.
Oh I dunno, they’re traditional exercises in self-abnegation, like re-enactments of the crucifixion and walking on hot coals. Spelling bees promote humility and submission to authority. Without them, anarchy ensues.
Spelling bees are another of those things that only the US really applauds, and everyone else finds quite peculiar. Not that we don’t do things equally peculiar, but they’re not universal across the English language.
When I was young I had a book with a character called the Spelling Bee, who ‘spoke’ by spelling out the letters of words, but since I’d never heard of such a thing the joke went right over my head for years!
The Phantom Tollbooth!
the Spelling Bee is one of its many fantastic language jokes, and certainly not the only one that’s heavily u.s.-contextual. (i played the Humbug – typecast again – in a stage adaptation as a child)
I liked Myla Goldberg’s novel Bee Season, about spelling bees and young Kabbalists. It really draws you into the intensity of both practices. It’s also a shaggy dog story.
No, I didn’t read the Phantom Tolbooth until I was a student. Something about a young witch and her imaginary friend, or something like that.
I liked PT quite a lot in patches, but never really fell in love with it the way I expected to do from the descriptions I’d seen.
(This one, in fact!)
I suspect that if you first read the Phantom Tollbooth at 10 and loved it you will love it again upon rereading at 20, but if you come to it cold at 20 it may not make the same impression.
Speaking of bees, there are also quilting bees, where rural women get together to make quilts and dish the local dirt, and the Sacramento Bee. These names derive from the association of the bee with industriousness, which may in turn relate to the Mormons’ celebration of the hard-working honeybee, called deseret in the Book of Mormon, hence the Deseret State for Mormon territory.
I don’t know whether quilting bees or spelling bees came first.
Spelling bee quilt.
Per the google books ngram viewer as applied to the AmEng subcorpus, “spelling bee” began to pull ahead of rival genres of bee circa 1905 but for the more old-fashioned rural-culture sorts it was not until the early 1960’s that “quilting bee” was consistently more common than “husking bee.” You know, “(US, historical) A social event involving the husking of corn.”
Spelling bees promote humility and submission to authority.
Or in some cases, an unhealthy effect on one’s ego. I think that happened to me, as I was a spelling champ and got to national three times (28th, 5th, and 8th). Great trips to DC, but the memorizing of scads of words without their meaning was, in retrospect, utter bullshit.
Or in some cases, an unhealthy effect on one’s ego.
I made it once to 3rd place in an El Paso spelling bee. Considering the venue, not something to seriously swell the ego beyond its already serious size at the time. As I recall, I simply wrote off that area of knowledge as not relevant to future greatness.
@Rodger C: Compare my previous comment on the misaimedness of the National Geography Bee.
No, I didn’t read the Phantom Tolbooth until I was a student. Something about a young witch and her imaginary friend, or something like that.
I thought it sounded like a plausible joke for Xanth, and indeed the Spelling Bee shows up in the Xanth series – specifically the 4th book, Centaur Aisle. No young witches with imaginary friends in that one, though, AFAICT.
TBH I suspect that it’s a relatively obvious pun that children’s book author stumble upon every so often. I’m not sure if it would be possible to find out what book it was.
@Stu Clayton: As a young person, I competed in approximately equal numbers of spelling bees and drag contests. The latter were a lot more interesting and fun.
@Jen in Edinburgh & January First-of-May: My own search turned up A Very Witchy Spelling Bee, but that is far too recent and does not appear from the online descriptions to involve any intelligent insects.
I did find it up above – Eleanor Este’s A Witch Family. I was a bit mixed up – the witch girl may or may not be imaginary, but the two friends in the ordinary world are both real!
@Brett: But spelling bees are more like a legitimate sport where who wins and who loses is very objective (even if you think the criteria/rules a bit arbitrary) whereas drag contests are more like gymnastics or figure skating where the subjective evaluation of performances by the very dodgy-seeming judge from Belarus or some similarly-dodgy place is maybe gonna determine who wins and who loses?
I watched Spellbound, a spelling bee documentary, with the kids last year, and was astonished to discover that my personal physician had been the winner of the national spelling bee.