Joseph Scanlan, a Transition Year student at Presentation Milltown, has launched a petition calling for a change in how Irish is taught in schools. It’s gained hundreds of signatures already, he’s sent his proposal to TDs and Ministers, and he’s even been invited to speak at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Education and Youth. Not bad going for someone still in secondary school.

What Joseph is saying is pretty straightforward: the way Irish is taught, and especially the way it’s assessed, is doing real damage to the language. And it’s hard to argue with that. Most people in Ireland have spent years learning Irish, but still feel embarrassed or anxious about speaking it. That doesn’t happen by accident.

Irish has become something to be passed rather than something to be used. So much time goes into rote learning – essays, poems, grammar – and so little into actually talking. The pressure of exams turns the language into a source of stress instead of something natural or enjoyable. Once the exams are over, a lot of people drop it completely, which tells its own story.

Then there’s the exemptions. Last year alone, around 65,000 students were exempted from learning Irish. If we’re serious about the language surviving, that number should be ringing alarm bells. A language can’t thrive if tens of thousands of young people are effectively written out of learning it every year.

There’s a growing feeling that Irish needs to be taken out of the Junior and Leaving Cert exam systems altogether. Not because it doesn’t matter, but because it matters too much to be reduced to grades and points. Imagine Irish as a daily class where the main goal is just speaking – talking about your life, your interests, your world – without the fear of being marked down for every mistake. Reading and writing would come after that, naturally, the way they do in any living language.

It also means accepting that classrooms need to change. Kids today learn differently. Technology isn’t a threat to the language, it’s an opportunity. Irish should exist in podcasts, videos, music, memes, games — in the places where young people already are. You don’t keep a language alive by pretending it’s still the 1950s.

What makes Joseph’s petition so important is that it’s coming from a student. This isn’t someone who hates Irish or wants rid of it. It’s someone who cares enough to say the system isn’t working and needs to change. Young people aren’t disconnected from Irish — they’re disconnected from how it’s being taught.

If Irish is going to survive, it needs to be spoken without fear, without pressure, and without being treated as just another exam subject. It needs to feel alive again. Joseph has started that conversation. We should probably be listening.

 

By Ciara Gannon
Senior Marketing Executive
Emu Ink Publishing