„Große Nachfrage“ nach Irisch-Sprachkursen, da erwachsene Lernende Jahrzehnte später wieder zur Schule gehen
https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2025/12/01/huge-demand-for-irish-language-classes-as-adult-learners-return-to-school-decades-on/
Von TeoKajLibroj
10 Kommentare
Theres a market for adult gaeltacht get aways for all the 00s teens that couldnt afford to go during the recession
Suffered for years with terrible Irish teachers and ended up hating the class. When I look back at my time in secondary school it’s the biggest shame as I’d only love to be able to speak it now.
Ya see, this is what happens when you make something interesting and allow people to CHOOSE to do something rather than forcing them to do something and then making them sit exams on it!
EDIT – not wishing to give this a depressing „I hated Irish at school“ vibe – more an optimistic „this CAN work at school“ vibe.
I’ve recently joined a local class for a fiver a week, loving it!!!
It will be interesting to see if this results in higher traffic to the Irish language versions of gov & public service web sites. For years those sites have been bilingual (to greater or lesser quality) and for years everyone has completely ignored them and conducted their business through English, making the investment futile. That money would have been better spent sponsoring these classes than going the if-you-build-it-they-will-come route.
Is it taught differently to how it was/is in school?
One really poignant thing I noted was that the Irish that was drilled into me so hard I’ll always remember it were either commands (suigh sios/seas suas) or asking for permission (an bhfuil cead agam). It’s taught in a totally authoritarian manner. It felt like a victory of free will to not learn it, rather than actually try. I don’t know if anyone will relate to this, but I always perceived my Irish teachers as enemies and was never motivated to work with them.
Irish needs to be taught like a foreign language with the A to C grading system. Or N system like in Japan.
let it be optional at leaving cert
Everytime Irish education in schools comes up there is a lot of lamenting the lack of quality in the education but the problems stated and the solutions seem vague.
„It should be taught like a foreign language“
„There should be more focus on speaking“
When I think back to my own school days the quality of teacher and effort was fine, my own lack of ability, interest and motivation killed my education.
In school you are taught early that your choices will correspond to your college application and eventually be put on your CV. Learning French seemed like a better choice because you could potentially open up another job market and travel with it, more attractive to employers.
We treat education like a a jobs preparation program and not education. Now I am learning Irish for fun I suppose. I will never get a better job because of it or profit in any way, I am just treating education like education.
I lament that my teenage utilitarian attitude destroyed years of potential learning and closer connection to my culture in order to have a better LC result.
I do really wish I could see a report or analysis of our approach to Irish education because discussions of it always seem vibe based.
What are the problems and solutions? I don’t really know. Maybe for the utilitarian minded students like me there should be more points allocated for Irish or higher preference given in college applications. Again that is just vibes.
Would love to see more Gaelscoils.
The state of Irish in general in Ireland just makes me sad.