I was talking with my Dad (through Irish) the other day about how the language has some really beautiful turns-of-phrases. I agreed with him but pointed out how I didn’t think Irish as a subject in school was geared keeping appreciation for the language going and generally keeping the language alive.

Now, before we continue – this isn’t a whiny post. I’m quite happy and content to continue Irish as is because I imagine that I have very little chance of changing anything; especially for my Junior Cert. in 2011 and Leaving Cert. in 2013 or 2014 (Transition Year is still being considered and I don’t have to choose until 2011). Think of this post instead as one of those hypothetical games we all played in primary school: If you were President of Ireland for the day…

Let me begin by saying that I really quite like Irish. I know about half of you have raised eyebrows at this stage, but I’ll continue. I love the language and speak it quite often around my parents and siblings (when they’re home; maybe subconsciously to make sure they’re not becoming too Americanised.. have you heard Patrick’s accent?!). English is most definitely the dominant language but we’d definitely use it a fair bit – more than any other family I know actually and I’ve asked around.

I think it’s a beautiful language actually – English has no real nice turns of phrases while Irish is full of them. Case in point: To say ‘last week’ in Irish, one would say an seachtain seo chaite. A literal translation of same would be something like “The week just spent”, which I find quite nice.

So: these problems I mentioned in the title.

As an Exam Subject

I think most of the dislike of Irish stems from the core thought of “When will I need this?” – one can’t help but somewhat agree with this. Unless one wishes to be the next Conn Ó Muíneacháin (not that there’s anything wrong with that), the chances are that your future vocation won’t require you to know the ins and outs of Irish poetry.

With this in mind, I’d no longer teach Irish as an exam subject – if we changed the core method of how it was taught, I’m confident that interest, respect and general enjoyment of the subject would go up. Instead of focussing on getting you through exams, we spent the 155 minutes per week just appreciating Irish, much more in terms of keeping the language alive (which is the end goal, right?) would be achieved.

Speak, Speak and Then Speak Some More

You immerse yourself in a language by speaking it and 155 minutes (how long we have now) of speaking Irish would be endlessly beneficial. After all, that’s how you keep a language alive; not by writing a page and a half on the theme of ‘sadness’ in Reoiteog Mharfach (a poem about a young child who, in his eagerness to buy ice-cream, gets run over by a car. The title literally means “Deadly Ice-cream”).

Change Your Focusses

One can’t help but get the feeling that the purpose of most classes (not limited to Irish) are geared toward getting you through exams. Students love SPHE (Social, Physical and Health Education) because, well, it’s a bit of a doss. A class not geared toward the Junior Cert. is welcomed with open arms. We’ll watch some film clips or have a class discussion and it’s generally a more relaxed atmosphere.

I believe that making students enjoy Irish (an impression I can’t say I share with any of my class-mates) is the only way you’ll succeed in keeping the language alive. How do you expect these students to speak Irish with their kids when their strongest memory of the subject is resentment?

Differences

Perhaps it’s because you have a better grasp of Irish than a continental language upon entering secondary school, but I’m always surprised at how different Spanish/French/German is taught in comparison to Irish.

I finish 2nd year this afternoon – looking back at the two languages I do (Spanish and Irish), there are startling differences in how they’re taught. In Spanish, we study directions, post-cards or shopping terms. We do listening comprehensions to practise understanding spoken Spanish and learn off lists of fruit, vegetables and other such foodstuffs. Sure, we also practise conjugating verbs and such; but there’s a helluva lot more such everyday work than there is grammar work.

I’m always happy doing the donkey-work in Spanish because I know how much it’ll stand to me when I go to Spanish speaking countries. It’s perfectly obvious why we’re learning what we’re learning and thus, I (and, I think, my class-mates) quite enjoy Spanish.

So why in Irish do we focus on poetry and such?

Conclusion

I adore Irish. I don’t adore Irish classes in school while I agree with the end goal of keeping the language alive, I feel the way it’s taught in school doesn’t/won’t achieve this.

I’d love to hear about your thoughts on Irish being compulsory, why we’re doing Irish poetry, the differences between how the continental languages are taught in comparison or what you think about Ireland’s need/duty to keep the language (or lack of that belief) alive?

I started my last two weeks of proper school today, which means that come this time 3 weeks, I’ll be on summer holidays. I’ll also be in France! :) Before that, though, I have to get through 10 summer exams! Irish, English, Maths, History, Geography, CSPE (stands for Civic, Social and Political Education; basically learning about government), Spanish, Music, Business Studies and Science all have to be completed before I can enjoy my uninterrupted summer :)

Apologies if posting here will be a bit thin on the ground for the next while, so. As you can see from today’s 365, I’m actually planning on studying for these so I can feel like I earned this summer. :)

There have been so many posts bitching about the Irish education system – this isn’t one of them.

According to a new survey conducted by Newspoll for training website reasontospeak.com, the fear of public speaking ranks number one in the minds of 23% of people. Think about that for a moment. To some (23%) people, the fear of public speaking is more frightening than death.

“People’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if they go to a funeral, they’d prefer to be in the casket than doing the eulogy.” – Comedian Jerry Seinfeld.

In my opinion, public speaking is one of the most important things you can learn. Certainly, if you were to rank the most important life skills in a list, the ability to get up and speak in public is a hugely important one that would be near the top. Because of that, I think it’s hugely important to make it a mandatory subject in school. I personally don’t know where you’d fit it in, but I think it’s of vital importance that it should get taught alongside biology, geography, english or any other subject.

Chances are, somewhere in your career, you will have to talk in front of other people, and this shouldn’t be a problem for anyone. It’s a common issue that really shouldn’t be so common. In fact, I don’t even think it can afford to be a common issue.

Photo owned by codepo8 (cc)

Except poetry.

For the most part, I enjoy reading poetry. I just don’t enjoy studying it. Don’t worry, this isn’t one of these teenage angst posts about how ‘the Irish secondary school system is a farce’ and ‘as if I’ll ever use trigonometry/chemical bonding/ox-bow lakes in later life’, it’s just that poetry isn’t my thing, as it were. I’ll put effort into it and everything, but don’t ask me to like it.

Anyhow, I’m showing you a poem from my English book. Why? Because I like so few of them, finding one I actively enjoy should be noted!

War and The Simpsons – Hilary McKay

The really good thing about war is that they generally put
it on at 6 o’ clock.
Same time as The Simpsons

And nowadays, of course, war is quite safe.
It stays in the TV and makes no mess.
Even if it gets too noisy you can just turn down the sound.

(If you can find the remote.)

Also it is very clean,
No dust, nor smoke, nor blood leaks through the screen.
And when it gets boring you can switch over and watch
The Simpsons

(If you can find the remote.)

The only trouble is, it still goes on.
(The war, not The Simpsons. The Simpsons lasts for
twenty minutes — unless it is a special.)

The war still goes on. The noise and the smoke and
the leaking blood. The dirt and the boredom and the fear.
You cannot switch it off with the remote.

(Even if you can find the remote)

You have to switch it off another way
You have to say, No
No
No war
You have to say No To War.

Then you can watch The Simpsons
In peace.

I think I like it because it’s a poem on an everyday subject, and not something difficult to relate to. I think that’s why I enjoy this poem of Sinéad’s so much. (Check out her other stuff, it’s good too)

Photo owned by Bramus! (cc)

Whenever I get exam papers all I do is glance through the questions and see what I can definitely answer and what I don’t know, because I find it really comforting knowing that I have a reasonably good idea of what the answers are as I plough through it. I rarely if ever go along with some teachers’ suggestion of ‘do what you find easy first’ because I can be a bit scatter-brained in that if I pick and choose what I answer as I go through a test, I’ll invariably not see a second part of some question or something. Instead I’ll look over the test and proceed to plough through it, ignoring anything I don’t know until the end.

I’m looking forward to being finished; to Christmas; to New Year’s Eve; to John and Patrick being home; to not having school; to the Young Scientist and to eating chocolate again.

And to be honest, all of that isn’t too far away!

Tomorrow holds Maths and Irish, with people doing Religion in between. I have an exemption from it so I’ll probably head home and study. After that, it’s the weekend, which I’ll split between studying, drumming and finally getting round to buying and wrapping Christmas presents. I always leave stuff like this to the last moment; which is silly. As I always tell myself: I’ll do it in November next year.

Yeah right, T

Then on Monday I have to soldier through History, Geography and Spanish. Once they’re done and dusted, it’s Christmas break and it will be mega.

On the far side of New Year, the Young Scientist beckons! It runs from the 12th to the 16th of January – be there or be an isosceles tetrahedron! :)

I think it’s a very admirable cause.

So admirable, in fact, that I don’t think you can do it all in just one day. I think you should close all the schools on Monday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday too :)

One of my teachers, who said he wasn’t going to be actively participating in the marches and such, said he’d protest in his own way: since his pay had been cut by 15%, he would only teach us 85% of what he was going to teach us.

Well played, sir.. well played :)

I wrote my emergency, last-minute debate speech during the car journey up. It was rather excellent actually. All my thoughts flowed coherently and I’ve discovered the awesomeness of WriteRoom, after I managed to get a free copy of it from MacHeist.

WriteRoom’s a full screen text editor. It’s great for eliminating distractions and just knuckling down and getting whatever needs doing done. An added plus is that the black background (only optional, but what I use) means I can can turn the brightness of my MacBook’s screen down to 1 and still be able to see anything. Battery conservation for the win!

Getting back to the debate, we’re proposing the motion that rising unemployment at home is too high a price for overseas aid. It’s a grand old motion that provides plenty of arguments and chances for rebuttal. It’s on tomorrow evening in school, but I’ve plenty of time to get home.

The reason I’m up in Dublin is I’ve got a meeting with a surgeon tomorrow who’ll be giving me Botox…

* pauses to allow the jokes about Simon Cowell and face lifts to abate *

…into my left hand, because Botox functions as a muscle relaxant, and my left hand’s been tight all my life, because of the Cerebral Palsy. Increased hand movement can only be a plus on the drumming front though!

I’ll be conscious for it, of course. I’m debating asking whether I can film it or not.. something you as a reader would be interested in seeing? Lemme know in the comments!

For me though, who enjoys being able to listen to music AND browse Safari, which, not long ago wasn’t a tall order, it seems incapable to manage it. Everything gets intolerably laggy and when I type, the screen doesn’t keep up, which makes it look like I’m typing nothing, then typing 200 words a minute as it plays catch-up.

Now, I’m not against MacBook Airs – in fact I think they’re rather fantastic. I think it’s just the fact that I’ve got Patrick’s old one. It’s 2 years (ish) old and probably has a bunch of old programming stuff slowly killing it slowly. If that’s the case, that he forgot to remove his stuff off the Hard Drive before giving it to me.. I’m in a rather fantastic position.

I’m not going to blackmail him.. nah, us Collisons stick together.. but if I could learn off him..!

Well that’s that plan down the drain.

Either that, or he’s more cunning then I give him credit for.

Could be either.

So, the MacBook Air isn’t able to support my gluttonous lifestyle – every time I boot up I hear a little wail from the bowels of the machine: ‘Ohhhh, he’s gonna want to use iTunes and Safari and maybe some iPhone’. And then a little mechanical arm comes out and prods the hamster that lives in the cage situated in the empty space the disk drive should be. It begrudgingly awakens and begins running on his wheel, a little pop tart hanging on a string attached to another mechanical arm, by way as intensive.

I decided to move back operations to my old Macbook, which I used before getting the Air. However, I’ll still use the Air in school. The lightness coupled with the fact that Hammy the hamster seems okay with using TextEdit, along with the occasional usage of Numbers and Mail.

The rather unique problem I refer to is the fact that since I was using old Macbook last night, I forgot to charge the Air overnight, as I’ve done every night for months. I was putting the Air in my bag this morning when I realized it wasn’t turning on.

So I went into Maths this morning -my first class- and charged it there. I go into Irish, class #2 and discover that the damn thing hadn’t been charging. it was plugged in, the socket was on and even the light in the charger was orange. I think I needed to wake it up first but boy was it annoying.

Silly laptop!

But yes, I do think that I’m unique.. any other secondary school bloggers ever have the problem of an uncharged laptop? :)

_____

After I set up the directory two other secondary school students (Ben Chapman and Enda Crowley) took it upon themselves to bring my vague pipe-dream of someday making it into its own website and took it so much further.

With their tech expertise and my idea, a website was put together that did all and more of what I had in mind for it.

Welcome to IrishStudentBlogs.com

It now could (and should, and can, and will) be classed as an aggregator; people can now subscribe to IrishStudentBlogs’ RSS feed and get everyone’s posts in one go. With featured articles bringing the best of everyone’s posts together at the forefront of the site, I think we should start to see some really good blogs begin to emerge :)

If you want to get listed, head on over to our Get Listed page, and fill in the simple (oh, I hate those rock-solid Capchas as much as the next guy!) form. We’ll whiz through a quick submission process to verify you’re in secondary school, and not doing/posting anything undesirable, like advocating viagra or practicing the occult.. :)

We even have a kickass mobile site:

Like pretty much all fledgling sites, we’re looking for linkage and other such attention, so if you would tweet about us or blog about us we’d love you forever. :)

I think that, like all respects, people in secondary school can bring a lot of fresh ideas to the table. They’re (what am I saying? we’re!) growing up in a vastly different world than most, facing different challenges and new influences like the internet, which wouldn’t have been around 5-8 years ago.

So, I’m hoping to build a directory to highlight some wicked secondary school-going bloggers: I’ll add this as a page up top and edit it as new blogs come in. I’ll take a looksie around Boards.ie too and see if I can add ones from there too.

But not just yet… gotta get my homework done! :)

Check the directory out here

At the moment, it looks neither pretty nor populated (alliteration, where the poet uses the same consonant sound to- sorry, some English learning getting in the way there….) but I’m working on fixing both problems. If this takes off, I would consider buying a domain for it and getting something by way of a list orientated theme. We’ll see if it flies.