Bending psychologist’s ear to not give a focail

Kids have it easy today. OK, maybe those now in their teenage years will suffer the worst excesses of climate change. Sure, they probably won’t ever be able to afford to buy a home. Alright, they are growing up in a turbulent world where the old order is rapidly changing, writes Michael Clifford

Bending psychologist’s ear to not give a focail

Kids have it easy today. OK, maybe those now in their teenage years will suffer the worst excesses of climate change. Sure, they probably won’t ever be able to afford to buy a home. Alright, they are growing up in a turbulent world where the old order is rapidly changing, writes Michael Clifford

But at least they have a better chance of being exempted from studying Irish for the Leaving. At least their schooldays may not be stalked by the terror of having to address the peculiarities and complexities of the native language. At least they have some chance of breaking free.

Why is the study of Gaeilge such a source of consternation, fear, and loathing?

This week, the Department of Education published a report entitled ‘Review of Policy and Practice in Relation to Exemptions from the Study of Irish’.

The review was completed to investigate the suspicions and anecdotes which suggested that a relatively high proportion of pupils were finding ways to be deemed exempt from studying Irish. The language is a compulsory subject in primary and secondary level education.

The review found that psychologists feel under pressure from parents to provide the basis for exemptions for their offsprings. Parents look for assessments to have their children exempted on the basis that the study of Irish exposes them to peculiar stress or anxiety.

Is there a specific condition for this? Gaeilge-phobia?

Apparently, Gaeilge-phobia can manifest itself with disturbing symptoms, including bed-wetting and a refusal to go to school, according to the report.

In some countries, childhood development is stunted by wars, famine, internecine strife. In the land of Saints and Scholars, there is a cohort who exhibit trauma because they are forced to study a language that is inimitable to the native culture and identity.

Personally, I blame the parents — and so does the review.

In some of these instances, factors relating to parents may have been a contributory factor to the pupil’s negative attitude towards Irish,” the review states.

Or, as the poet Philip Larkin might have put it: “They focail you up, your mum and dad.”

There is another way of getting a pass on being exposed to Irish. If you can show that the pupil has spent a certain amount of time out of the country, and was therefore robbed of all opportunity to develop a grá for the cúpla focail, freedom may be waiting around the corner.

The son of friends of mine got an exemption on that basis. His parents were part of the exodus to London in the 1980s. He was born there, but the family returned to Cork before he hit his second birthday. Yet his parents managed to convince the relevant authority that the boy should be exempted because of his time abroad.

Logically, the basis for his exemption would be that he had to play catch-up on his contemporaries who were all presumably yabbering away in Irish to beat the band before they could even walk.

Still, he got the nod.

His brother, who was born after the parents returned home, had no such excuse. He is doing the Leaving next year and thankfully has coped well with the childhood ministrations inflicted by the imposition of the lingo.

Why has study of the native language driven rational beings to such states of anxiety, or faux anxiety, or desperation? Why has it prompted them to plead with head shrinks to diagnose that their son or daughter is suffering from ‘Exposure-to-Gaeilge Traumatic Stress Disorder’?

I know not the answer, but I can certainly feel the pain. As a pupil and a parent, I have been that soldier and I can’t blame my own parents.

My mother had such a grá for the language that, in sixth class, I was sent off to a Gaeltacht to live with a family and go to school as if I was one of the natives.

This was under a government scheme in which you shelled out £15 for the honour.

Somebody was sent to interview the child, and once he or she was deemed compos mentis, that was considered enough proficiency to endure an extended stay in a Gaeltacht.

Thus I was taken from my metropolitan home, in the teeming suburb that is the west side of Cahirciveen, and dispatched across the bay to the mysterious and dark Dingle peninsula. It was hell, my own private ’Nam.

My new home was a farm in the middle of nowhere (the Feothanach Gaeltacht). In school, they spoke a strange language and even spoke to girls. They even tried to speak to me, but we were at cross-purposes.

Back at the farm, I saw a sheep being slaughtered in Irish. In the evening we all got down on our knees in the living room and recited the Rosary in Irish. We even played football in Irish.

The Bean an Tí was kind and understanding, or at least I think she would have been if I knew what she was saying. I came home from the war an unchanged boy and four years later did pass Irish for the Inter Cert (the forerunner to the Junior Cert).

Later, there was Peig Sayers. If you are of an age, you know who I’m talking about. Whose idea was it to inculcate in a generation of children an association between the language and the hard and stony existence endured by poor Peig on the Blaskets? Death and poverty and pain and pestilence and rain, rain, rain, all delivered As Gaeilge, relentless and unending.

I know I am not to only one to have in early adulthood endured nightmares in which Peig is standing on the shore, swaddled in shawls, the rain bucketing down, forks of lightning streaking across Dingle Bay, her arms raised aloft, speaking in tongues to the Gods on behalf of the children of Ireland. Set us free, set us free. Kids don’t know how good they have it today.

Until becoming a parent myself, I was under the impression that the language could flourish once the mistakes of the past were rectified, the damaged generation reconciled. Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Recently I told the first-born that in his pre-school days I had flirted with the idea of sending him to a Gaelscoil. He threatened to report me to Childline for historical bad thoughts.

I wish it was different but it’s too late for me now. Whether it is right and proper to continue to have the language as a core and compulsory subject in school is a dilemma. To remove it would be to admit that the language is dead, that it is no longer a vital component in culture or identity.

To continue in its current guise is, according to the evidence of the department’s review, a cop-out. It does neither the language nor the pupils any favour if study of the native tongue is viewed as an obstacle to be endured or avoided.

Slán.

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