OPINION: Irish should be compulsory in schools - but not as we know it

One of the biggest cheers at the Feile in Thurles in 1992 was when the message 'Peig Sayers, what a bitch' flashed up on the big screen.

For a half drunk, (okay very drunk) over excited and mainly teenage crowd that had just completed their Leaving Cert that year,  that message on the screen certainly struck a chord.

Doing honours Irish in 1992 for me was a labour, and certainly not a labour of love. Spending endless hours reading about some old woman named Peig Sayers on some island and something about a pipe (honestly that's all I can remember) were wasted hours I will never get back and not one second of them helped give me a better appreciation or love for my native language. In fact it was quite the opposite.

When you throw in 'Scothscealta', poetry and 'Tóraíocht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne' (at least there was the odd bit of excitement in that with bulls and queens and what not), you can imagine why generations finished their Leaving Cert Irish exam wanting to do nothing more than to perform a ritual burning of their copy of Peig and to cheer in unison when her name was taken in vain on the big screen in Semple Stadium.

And unlike some others, I had an excellent Irish teacher in Killina Presentation School in Jackie Hennessy but even his amazing enthusiasm for the language could not break the dark spell cast over it by the material on the course. 

Now I know from my own children, two of whom who have done the LC already with another one doing it this year, that the Irish course now is nowhere near as dense, archaic or oppressive as it was in 1992.

Peig was published in 1936 and it has thankfully been removed in favour of more modern texts and the volume of content thrown at students is not what it was in the dark days of the 1990s and before.

While that is an improvement and a step out of the dark ages of De Valera's backward vision of the country, how Irish is taught is still far too focussed on the academic.

The bottom line is that from the day they walk through the gates of primary school, children are being taught Irish to ultimately pass an exam and get points for college. It starts on day one and ends with the Leaving Cert. And that is where the real problem lies.

For me, and I'm sure many others, learning Irish was a chore. Learning Irish was painful. Simply put, learning Irish in school was not even in the same timezone, never mind the same parish, as an enjoyable experience.

Consider this. Has anyone ever been taught the past continuous tense, past perfect tense, past perfect continuous tense or the future simple tense in English? Do I take that as a no from everyone?

But if I mention the modh coinníollach, the aimsir gnáthláithreach or God forbid the modh foshuiteach, how many of you get a perceptible cold shiver right down your spine?

So why is it exactly that we need to spend hours learning tenses and conjugating verbs in Irish but not in English? Why do we not spend hours learning verbs in English in the past perfect tense?

The answer really is quite simple. English is not taught the same way as Irish. It's learned through conversation, through listening and through speaking it from an early age.

So why can't learning Irish be the same? 

From Junior Infants on, would simply talking, listening or watching enjoyable programmes in Irish for a couple of hours a week in school not be the way to foster a genuine interest in the language? Is that not how the language was learned and spread in the first place? How many people in early Ireland had to sit down and learn the modh coinníollach?

And it would also be much easier and possibly enjoyable for parents. Instead of the endless fights over learning spellings at home, and trust me they can be endless, I have no doubt many parents of the Peig generation would love the chance to learn the language now in a less oppressive way with their children. Call it a team effort.

A cupla focal here and a cupla focal there and in no time, you have enough focals to hold a passable conversation with the odd English focal thrown in if you need it every now and again. After 14 years of simply speaking and listening to Irish for a couple of hours a week in school, (no need for Gaelscoils),  without having to worry about passing exams, we would have a lot more fluent or at least semi-fluent Irish speakers.

So begins a circle that will ripple out over years.

And for those who wish to take Irish as an exam subject, that option should certainly be there but the pressure of making Irish an exam subject for all should be removed hopefully creating a new generation of happy gaeilgeoirs not suffering P.T.S.D from P.E.I.G!

Irish is a difficult and imposing language, we have three ways of saying numbers for God's sake, but making it more fun than academic could be the best way to spread the words.