<div dir="ltr"><h1>How to revive the Irish language? Make every school a Gaelscoil</h1>
<p class="gmail-subtitle_article">One journalist reckons recent efforts to revive the Irish language has been an "utter failure"</p>
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</span><p><strong>It's being suggested that
all national schools across the country should be turned into Gaelscoils
to support the revival of the Irish language.</strong></p>
<p>Irish Daily Star journalist Ger Colleran told Newstalk Breakfast that
he believes recent efforts to revive our native tongue has been an
“utter failure, a waste of money and worst of all, has created
resentment veering towards out-and-out hatred for the language among
hundreds of thousands of victims of the language policy.”</p>
<p>Colleran said that while the Gaeilscoilenna movement has been a "mass
experiment! its also provided the language with one of its biggest
success stories.</p>
<p>"The solution is right there in front of our faces, and we seem to be
looking around it," he said. "The language was never the problem - it
was the teaching of it."</p>
<p>Recent figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that we are speaking less Irish.</p>
<p>Of the 1.76 million people who stated they were able to speak Irish,
73,803 spoke the language daily outside of the education system, which
is 3,382 fewer than 2011. Some 32% of Irish speakers in Gaeltacht areas
spoke Irish daily outside the education system.</p>
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<h3>'A terrible, dark legacy'</h3>
<p>Acknowledging the long-standing criticism of the way Irish is taught
within schools, Colleran said there were "excesses, excuses and
blagarding" involved in its teaching.</p>
<p>However, he added that the country has a responsibility when it comes to changing that.</p>
<p>"We have to turn around and say, 'look, are we going to put up with
this terrible, dark legacy that has been given to us in respect to the
teaching of the language, or are we going to change it?'</p>
<p>"We have a wonderful model there, and there is no problem about
changing it if we have the public will and the public authority."</p>
<p>On <em>Newstalk Breakfast</em>, Colleran called for a national debate in respect of the language, re-imagining the country as a bilingual one.</p><p><a href="http://www.newstalk.com/How-to-revive-the-Irish-language-Make-every-school-a-Gaelscoil">http://www.newstalk.com/How-to-revive-the-Irish-language-Make-every-school-a-Gaelscoil</a><br></p><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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