Jennifer Horgan: Treatment of Irish language is damaging and divisive — we need to preserve it

The Irish school system is doing a spectacular job of killing the Irish language. It is a two-pronged attack. Firstly, comes death by matriculation. Secondly, comes death by design — by making it overly academic all the way up, but most acutely at senior cycle. Across the water in Wales, all students study Welsh until the age of sixteen, when they are offered a choice to continue it, or not. In 2020, Duolingo described the Welsh language as the fastest-growing language in the UK. It is also the least endangered Gaelic language according to UNESCO.

Meanwhile, back in Ireland, the number of Junior Cycle students availing of Irish exemptions has climbed by 33% in only three years, while the number of Leaving Cert students with exemptions went up by 22% in the same period. 

Some are angered by the rise in exemptions and worry that it will affect children’s ability to integrate fully into Irish life. They complain that principals are giving out exemptions too easily, framing it as a way ‘by stealth’ to kill the language. Minister Norma Foley puts it down to the increase in students arriving from elsewhere, most significantly from Ukraine. She also mentions our growing understanding of additional needs.

What nobody seems to mention is that if Irish were not needed to matriculate, and was not required for most of our university courses, many of these tensions, and the fundamental need for exemptions, would go away

I am the first in line to say university is not for everyone, but where it is the right path for a student, Irish too often poses a threat. For entry to all degrees in our national universities, English, Irish, and four other subjects in the Leaving Certificate are required. For commerce, the subjects presented must include mathematics, and for courses in the sciences, they must include mathematics and a science subject.

Maths and science are only required if the degree subject relates to them, but Irish is required regardless of a student’s final choice.

I should say at this point that it is similarly preposterous that English is a requirement across all courses too, given that teaching time at senior cycle is largely taken up with English literature, a niche area of interest among the general population. English language should be a requirement, not literature.

 It is fair that more students, arguably all students, should have exposure to the Irish language at school, at whatever level is appropriate for them.

The Irish language will not be for everyone, but everyone deserves to experience it at some level 

I know adults who secured Irish exemptions thirty years ago, having arrived from England. Some feel no loss whatsoever, but they notice small inconveniences in not understanding place names, missing references. Others wish they had learned it alongside all of their Irish friends. They view it as a missing piece in their Irish identity. Like any subject, it won’t be for everyone, but to exclude students from a subject altogether is damaging and divisive.

Teaching methods

Changing how we teach and assess Irish would mean no longer shoving it down students’ throats along with the threat of failure in the Leaving Cert. I’m not saying that the subject shouldn’t be examined at all. Let it be examined. But make it a language-based subject, not a literary one, and let it not be a potential block to embarking on the next stage of education. Teach it as both a first language and a second language, not only as a first language as is currently the case. And let students choose an option that is meaningful to them, without jeopardising anything. The analysis of Irish literature, the learning by rote of stock notes taken down from the board, all that drivel at senior cycle needs to end. Irish needs to be about conversational language, as well as being culturally celebratory and meaningful.

Sadly, it is becoming a subject many students resent, and they resent it even more when they see other students gaining their exemptions, carrying far less of a burden through those stressful final years at school

I’m pretty certain that if I didn’t work in the education system, I’d be nothing but a fan of Irish language in schools. But I see the flipside of the ‘Irish language’ coin every day. 

I see how the current school system inflicts the same kind of misery on people in our schools as was once inflicted on Irish-speaking people in the past. 

We are making young people feel shame for not having a particular language, a particular ability. We are ignoring their realities and the realities of their world. All to fulfill our own narrow definitions of progress and education.

It might as well be the 1850s.

I fully understand the harm that was done to Ireland when our language was taken. The loss of Irish was brutal and rapid. According to old RTÉ archives in the year 1800, more people were speaking Irish than there were speaking Dutch, Swedish, Danish, and Finnish. While these other European languages grew the Irish language withered, falling from four million in 1840 to one million in 1870.

Watch Your Language: What happened?, broadcast on February 17, 1970, on RTÉ and presented by Jim Sherwin is an illuminating watch and listen and is available online. 

One man interviewed recalls how there was never much Irish spoken in Sligo as it was a garrison town and if you spoke it, the British soldiers would ‘laugh at ya'.’ He remembers his own grandfather putting a British soldier ‘across the counter’ and hitting him for ‘jibing at him for talking Irish.’ Another man in Clonmel recalls how the older generations refused to pass Irish down to the younger generations. ‘It was driven into them in schools … to kill the language.’ They were told it wasn’t ‘class’ enough; that it was ‘beneath them'.

And the ‘spirit of mockery’ as another contributor puts it, came from younger people towards the older generations. They thought it ‘wasn’t the thing'. Any national effort being called for to preserve the language is a good thing, but it is being simultaneously thwarted by what is going on in our schools.

For the child whose parents might not even be literate in English and who also needs to navigate English literature to matriculate, it is simply unreasonable to force Irish language and literature upon them too. But it is equally shameful to deny a child access to an important part of Irish culture, identity, and heritage.

We cannot excuse our current dogma around the Irish language in schools in the name of language rights and preservation. Dogma is exactly what killed the Irish language; it will do little to preserve it.