Scots Wikipaedia

[scottishcurryfan]

Scottish nationalism has never been about race. The scots themselves are not a race we are a community and culture of people.

However, I would not choose to spend my time learning gaelic. I would have had it been taught in schools like in ireland. However, I see greater benefits of learning a european language over gaelic anyday.

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

However, I would not choose to spend my time learning gaelic. I would have had it been taught in schools like in ireland.

According to Kevin Meyers in today's Irish Independent 23% of Irish school leavers are functionally illiterate. The forced feeding (and that's what it is) of the Irish language is considered to be a major factor in this failure of the educational system. Far better, it would seem to me, if those five weekly hours of Irish were replaced with teaching basic reading, writing, and math skills.

Students attending all-Irish schools are further disenfranchised by the fact that many of their text books are in English, whilst the lectures are delivered in Irish. That school leavers from Gaelic schools receive a lesser education is proved by the fact that they are given a 10% "bonus" on their leaving certificate scores for taking the examination in the Irish language in order to assist them in qualifing for placement in Irish universities.

[thanmuwa]

According to Kevin Meyers in today's Irish Independent 23% of Irish school leavers are functionally illiterate. The forced feeding (and that's what it is) of the Irish language is considered to be a major factor in this failure of the educational system. Far better, it would seem to me, if those five weekly hours of Irish were replaced with teaching basic reading, writing, and math skills.

Kevin myers is hardly a neutral observer. He is a highly partisan commentator with a major political axe to grind who is not above at the very least misquoting if not downright fabricating statistics to support his cause (He hates the Irish language amongst many other things).
I have direct personal experience of both the UK and Irish education systems and the Irish secondary-level one (in it's present form, I only left tertiary level education 6 years ago) is superior.

I agree that Irish is taught terribly (there aren't words to describe how awful the teaching of Irish is in general... for a start, imagine learning grammar by rote for 6 years with no conversational lessons at all!), but the other core subjects are taught to a level equal or above, for example, the equivalent in Northern Ireland. (Northern Ireland is acknowledged as being top across the board in the UK for education, based on school results.) This is based directly on how my Irish second-level education compared with Northern Irish students in the same degree programme in Queen's, Belfast. In Maths for example they were still coming across new concepts that I had already done in school until at least halfway through our first year.

Students attending all-Irish schools are further disenfranchised by the fact that many of their text books are in English, whilst the lectures are delivered in Irish. That school leavers from Gaelic schools receive a lesser education is proved by the fact that they are given a 10% "bonus" on their leaving certificate scores for taking the examination in the Irish language in order to assist them in qualifing for placement in Irish universities.

I love the way you deliberately put two unlinked items in a sentence in such a way as to imply a link that doesn't exist. You may not have been a politician (I don't know) but you certainly picked up a few tips on politician speak! The Gaelscoileanna (Irish speaking schools) are a much more recent invention than the bonus points for doing exams in Irish, the bonus points weren't invented to get educationally sub-par Irish speakers into Uni as you imply. The bonus was a failed way to encourage Irish, the Gaelscoileanna (which started up about 50 years afterwards, they are a recent phenomenon) are what is looking like a successful attempt to encourage Irish. Which is incidentally what kevin myers has a problem with.
Your implication that Irish speakers need additional help to get to University is just plain false. Getting results of the level to allow you you to go to Uni means that you got little or no bonus for doing your exams in Irish (they are awarded on a sliding scale - top results (i.e. Uni level) = no bonus).

There is another major advantage to the Gaelscoileanna apart from the obvious preservation of a language that was the first modern European language to be written down, and the language of the people who almost alone were responsible for preserving Western European Christianity during the Dark Ages.
Students who grow up actually speaking Irish tend to have a major advantage in that they can read, write and think in two distinct languages. Being a duoglot is a strong stepping stone to becoming a polyglot. You go into a shop in Dublin and the fictional Dublin guy behind the counter will speak one language - English. You go into a shop in the Connemara Gaeltacht and there is a good chance you will get by in French, German or Spanish. To put it another way, the Irish people I know with fluent Irish (and English obviously) to a man/woman have at least two other fluent languages, and a smattering of several more. Surely polyglottism is to be encouraged rather than looked on with suspicion?

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

Kevin myers is hardly a neutral observer. He is a highly partisan commentator with a major political axe to grind who is not above at the very least misquoting if not downright fabricating statistics to support his cause (He hates the Irish language amongst many other things).
I have direct personal experience of both the UK and Irish education systems and the Irish secondary-level one (in it's present form, I only left tertiary level education 6 years ago) is superior.

For get about Kevin Meyers-- that's not the subject at hand, no matter how much you may wish to disparage him. Take off the rose coloured glasses and look at the hard facts: Only about 12% of the Irish population can be considered as "literate" in the Irish language despite having spent at least an hour a day, for twelve years, "learining" the language in school. Sure he may have a few words of social Irish, but the average 30-something couldn't fill out a DSS form, or pass the written portion of the Road Test in Irish, if called on to do so. Worse, almost a quarter of those leaving school today can't fill out those forms in English without assistance. If, as you say, the secondary education system where you live isn't as good as the Irish system, all I can say is God help you. Your schools must be turning out a generation of dolts.

But here's the whole point of it.

Like it or not, for political, cultural, or economic reasons we are English speakers, and it does no one any good to have schools turning out students who are unable to function in the real, work-a-day world, in English, especially when that bit of their education is given short shrift because of some lofty-- although possibly misguided-- "nationalist" ideal. Whether we are talking about Scots, Lallans, or Irish, the bottom line is this: it doesn't matter how good--or bad-- they are in that language. If they can't read, write, and comprehend English, they are going to be doomed, if not condemned, to the lowest end of the social scale.

[thanmuwa]

For get about Kevin Meyers-- that's not the subject at hand, no matter how much you may wish to disparage him.

I am disparaging his made-up statistics. And if you want to forget about him, why are you using his figures yet again?

Take off the rose coloured glasses and look at the hard facts: Only about 12% of the Irish population can be considered as "literate" in the Irish language despite having spent at least an hour a day, for twelve years, "learining" the language in school. Sure he may have a few words of social Irish, but the average 30-something couldn't fill out a DSS form, or pass the written portion of the Road Test in Irish, if called on to do so.

See above, where I also talked about how poorly the Irish language is taught. By the way, first hand experience is usually referred to as "evidence", "rose tinted spectacles" would more accurately refer to using the wild ramblings of an opinion columnist piece as fact. Hint: if a newspaper article is called an opinion piece it means there is even less of a constraint on it to be truthful than in the rest of the paper....

Worse, almost a quarter of those leaving school today can't fill out those forms in English without assistance.

See above, that figure of 25% is plucked from the air and "functionally illiterate" is a phrase so ill-defined as to be essentially meaningless anyway.

If, as you say, the secondary education system where you live isn't as good as the Irish system, all I can say is God help you. Your schools must be turning out a generation of dolts.

"My schools" (I presume you mean schools in the UK) do appear to be pretty poor. 10 year old kids appear to be struggling with books I read when I was 6. On this side of the Atlantic, the perception is that things are even worse over there, that US schoolkids are too busy smuggling guns and drugs into school to worry about education, but I have no idea how true that is.... Comparisons to other European education systems certainly seems to come out poorly for the UK.

But here's the whole point of it.

Like it or not, for political, cultural, or economic reasons we are English speakers, and it does no one any good to have schools turning out students who are unable to function in the real, work-a-day world, in English, especially when that bit of their education is given short shrift because of some lofty-- although possibly misguided-- "nationalist" ideal. Whether we are talking about Scots, Lallans, or Irish, the bottom line is this: it doesn't matter how good--or bad-- they are in that language. If they can't read, write, and comprehend English, they are going to be doomed, if not condemned, to the lowest end of the social scale.

Again, you are implying that being an Irish speaker means that you are therefore poor at English. That, quite simply, is untrue. They are not mutually exclusive. Unlike Homer Simpson, for most people learning another language doesn't make the first one fall out...
Again giving a personal example, I had all those lessons in Irish. The Irish was taught poorly (on this mr myers, you and I are in agreement), so my Irish is not as good as I would like, to my regret. However, my English has most certainly not suffered for it and I have a much higher standard of English than the majority of my UK colleagues, (who in the majority of cases only speak one language). My sample regions (areas in which I have worked/studied) are Belfast, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Hull, York, Southampton and London, so reasonable comprehensive.
My point remains that proficiency in another language doesn't hinder and may well help your English. For example, most medical terms have either a Greek or Latin root.

[The Thing]

According to Kevin Meyers in today's Irish Independent 23% of Irish school leavers are functionally illiterate. The forced feeding (and that's what it is) of the Irish language is considered to be a major factor in this failure of the educational system. Far better, it would seem to me, if those five weekly hours of Irish were replaced with teaching basic reading, writing, and math skills.

Students attending all-Irish schools are further disenfranchised by the fact that many of their text books are in English, whilst the lectures are delivered in Irish. That school leavers from Gaelic schools receive a lesser education is proved by the fact that they are given a 10% "bonus" on their leaving certificate scores for taking the examination in the Irish language in order to assist them in qualifing for placement in Irish universities.

Well since Ireland has the second highest amount of 3rd level graduates in Europe, I don't think our education system is doing too bad, as for the teaching of Irish, would you have us stop the teaching of English as it is also the national language of this country. Trying to preserve the culture and language of a people should be highly encourgaed by the national government. Take the Irish Whiskey industry for example from being the world's premier Whiskey to almost dying off, this was a massive part of Irish culture and the Irish Government almost managed to kill it off. I hope the language doesn't go the same way.