Tuesday’s Irish News reported how the numbers taking GCSE Irish was continuing to fall, leading to a decline in numbers studying the language to AS and A-level. SDLP MLA Dominic Bradley noted that: “Ironically, careerwise, Irish is a much more exciting prospect than ever before with a wider range of careers opening up to young people, especially in the creative industries.”
The fall in numbers does not bode well for the wellbeing of the language. Those studying GCSE Irish tend, for the greater part, to attend Catholic schools thus giving the lie to the idea that all people from a Catholic/nationalist background automatically have an interest in the language. The numbers attending Irish-language primary schools may be significant but, experience in the Republic suggests, that that does not always translate into active adult Irish speakers. It must also be a cause of concern that, still, there is little opportunity for pupils at state schools to find out about the language.
There may well be a new political dispensation here but the work involved to promote Irish will continue to be as hard as ever.
Friday, March 06, 2009
Decline in Irish
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Surely, if those who are currently offered the language choose for whatever reason not to do it, rolling it out to more children who won't want to study it won't solve any of your problems.
Possibly because it is such a difficult language to learn - could be the reason - I have always found it dificult at school - but maybe it is learnt in a different way now - mind you when I have a drink I find it comes back to me more clearly
Post a Comment