to think there must be some kind of border in Ireland / Northern Ireland because of people

[kalapattar]

All the talk has been about goods and services.

But how will people travel between the UK and Ireland without a physical border? Passport checks, immigration status etc. There won't be a border between mainland UK and Northern Ireland so how will this work?

This is a great thread on Twitter to help explain the complexity around the border.
Link to full thread:
twitter.com/hayward_katy/status/969961465233989632?s=19
Slide 1
Here is a very simple outline of what border controls mean for different types of border with the EU, i.e. if in the EEA, if in a Customs Union, with a FTA, with nowt. The spectrum is vast. This is just the basics, with a focus on goods. t.co/etGXgOUUe7

Slide 2
This, again, is a simple outline of what a customs border requires, both for those moving goods across it and for those charged with enforcing it.
It is intended to show that a 'hard border' is not just determined by its visibility. And this is before we even touch on NTBs etc. t.co/zGOdhTCHRl

Eloisesparkle, I do, but I am Irish.

35 year old born and bred here in NI I also grew up with bosco and the toy show, and the Den, dustin the turkey and zig and zag (before they went to the big breakfast in england!), the late late show on a friday night, gaelic in school, camogie, irish dancing, performing in the feis and scor competitions.

I did none of this apart from learning Irish in school, and rarely watched Irish TV. I loved Blue Peter and all the rest of BBC programming.

I went to a convent primary school, was taught Irish in the usual way (focus on grammar, not speech), to a community school for secondary where I had a great teacher, went to Irish college for a few summers, then did Irish in university (where I met many students from NI who were also doing Irish).

Many of my community school classmates got As or Bs in honours Irish in the LC. There were two full honours classes, which was one more than honours maths. None of us came from Gaeilgeoir backgrounds. I know many people from the Irish college I went to who are now involved in the Gaeilscoil movement and few of them came from Gaeilgeoir backgrounds either. It's not a universal thing that Irish is taught badly or that nobody can really speak Irish as a result of bad teaching.

French and German were taught the same way that Irish was, with the emphasis on grammar, and very outdated texts (Maupassant, anyone?)

You don't fail the entire LC for failing Irish. Even back in the 80s you could get into Trinity without Irish iirc, as long as you had another MFL. The fervour with which Irish was taught depended on the teacher, imo. I had a few teachers in junior school who taught maths with great fervour but little flexibility and no sense of joy. There was lots of mental arithmetic, grilling, testing, and an unpleasantly tense atmosphere in the classroom. I had one teacher in junior school who even sucked the life out of Art.

I saw a huge contrast in the approach of my DCs' teachers in the US - encouraging children's positive points and trying to get them to believe in themselves. A lot of Irish primary teaching, looking back, seemed focused on establishing a pecking order in the classroom, and if this was not the aim it certainly had this effect. It was done by exposing weakness in language or spelling or arithmetic. I had a few primary school classmates who were almost certainly dyslexic, when I think back, but this was not understood at all.

......
Flavia - DD2 spent a semester in UCL during her junior year in university in the US. She traveled to Dublin to spend a fortnight with my mum and the Irish rellies before heading off to Paris, a preplanned trip as she knew about the lack of a passport stamp. From there she immediately flew back to London, where she was questioned at length about her reason to visit the UK, her finances and how she would be supporting herself, her address, any relatives in the UK, their addresses and occupations, and much more. Luckily her university had thorough instructions about paperwork to have to hand so she had a file ready, all of which was examined. She traveled within the EU using her Irish passport and had no problem entering any countries. Unfortunately, thanks to the Brexit-related rush to get Irish passports, her Irish passport wasn't sent to her in time to enter the UK with it from Dublin.

Slide 3
Here we have a very basic outline of what 'smart border technology' can do and what it requires.
It is primarily a means of enhancing efficiency.
It cannot make a hard border 'frictionless'.
It requires physical infrastructure. It does not obviate the need for inspections etc t.co/Vxo4iW0XKl

Yes Jewel, my son (who has ADHD and was useless at languages) had to pass English, Irish and French at the age of 18 to get into university. So years wasted on languages instead of being able to concentrate on the things he was good at.

Of those three, he could at least see the point of English and French, but Irish was one big waste of time for him.

There are few families who speak it every day, but every single child in the country has to spend 5 hours a week (plus homework) up until the age of 18 learning the theory of it - little speaking, lots of rote learning. The majority I know hate it. Even those who are good at it are pretty indifferent; in fact I've never met a teenager who actually enjoys learning Irish.

Slide 4
And here are, as I see it, the main scenarios we are looking at for UK/EU borders post-Brexit + a summary of what each would mean for GB/NI & NI/IRL borders.

IMO the draft Protocol is narrow interpretation of Joint Report.
UK in a CU wd be minimum to keep E/W open as possible. t.co/7R6g73AkFv

In sum: a customs border is a big deal. No technology can magic away that fact.

Any solution relies on a clear distinction between constitutional/political borders & economic/regulatory ones.

[Each of those slides is deliberately simple but let me know of any glaring errors!]

x-posted with math, whose experience is entirely unlike anyone I know.

Kids may not fail the entire leaving certificate without Irish, but they cannot get into any university other that Trinity (apart from a very few, science based subjects) and they are seriously restricted in any public service jobs - gardai, civil service, teaching (even if not of Irish) etc etc all need leaving cert (mostly higher level C's).

A child who doesn't pass Irish in the Leaving Cert seriously narrows their options.

Kofa, those slides are really interesting, thank you.

It seems the choices are:

(1) UK stays in CU and SM; or
(2) disruptive border between NI and Ireland; or
(3) disruptive border between NI and rest of UK

i.e. back to square one. Unless we have TM's preferred

(4) UK has its cake and eats it

I'm just watching Soft Border Patrol, it really is laugh out loud funny

It really is flavia! I watched it this afternoon. The sheep counting had me in kinks.

The really, really annoying thing is that the limited options for Ireland are nothing new. The issue has been known since before the referendum, and nothing whatever has changed since then.

People who voted for Brexit either believed the bullshit from Johnson etc that it was just Project Fear and could be easily solved, or else they just didn't give a fuck anyway.

No wonder the people most closely affected by this being dumped on them are really angry. You have every right to be.

Didn't you get extra marks if you did other exams 'through Irish ' ? My BIL went to an Irish speaking school and did all exams in Irish interestingly can't speak a word now. University was also a challenge as he for the first time had to study in English.

I think people assumed there would be a work-around tbh. We (in the UK) are well used to being told by government that X will happen, Y will happen £Z exists for this purpose etc and then when push comes to shove the outcome is unrecognisable from the original plan. I suspect many people thought that is what would happen with brexit as far as NI was concerned. That there would be tweaks and adjustments and negotiations and something barely resembling what existed at the start would be produced. Completely ignorant of the actual situation that NI is in. Others just didn’t give NI a single thought when they voted to leave.

...they cannot get into any university other that Trinity (apart from a very few, science based subjects)

This is not true, Maryz.
You need English and another language for Trinity, and maths or Latin. So you don't even need maths.
Dublin City University - English or Irish, and maths.
Institutes of Technology - passes in English and maths, not necessarily any language/Irish. This goes for Level 8/honours degree courses as well as lower certificates and ordinary degrees.

University of Limerick requires English and maths, plus Irish and another language.
NUI - universities require passes in English, Irish and maths.

You need a MFL for a cadetship in the armed forces.

You used to get extra marks for doing your exams in Irish. (I did this in the French exam in the Inter, as well as doing it in English as I had lots of time left, and got an A. . )

Grades in honours maths get more points than you would get in other subjects, with the aim of encouraging more students to take honours, and upgrade Ireland's international maths rankings. The CAO counts your six best results and if maths is not your thing you are more restricted than you are without Irish, actually, unless you want to go to Trinity and you somehow managed to do Latin in secondary school.

Maths at honours level may not even come into a course they want to do, such as many courses in UCD that require premium points.
Law with History in UCD for instance required a CAO points range in 2017 of 525 - 615. The actual LC subjects needed for this degree are English, Irish, another language and three other subjects. To be sure of getting this course, which is at the high end of the scale, you might be very tempted to get that maths bonus.

I know this is going off the track, but I'm trying to freshen my memory/relearn Irish, in large part so I can say a few words to my baby. I was part of that 'learnt Irish from 1st class through to leaving cert and could barely string sentence together' but we also had the odd word at home. I like the idea of being able to use some terms with my children and reclaiming the language a bit. It seems like the language is going through a bit of a renaissance at the moment too, with pop-up gaeltachts in Ireland and abroad.
I agree that forcing the language in school isn't the best way forward, but it should be encouraged on both sides of the divide. There should be the space to have interesting conversations about how Irish, Ulster Scots and English form the way we speak. (There's a ton of similarities with Geordie too, I'm guessing cause of Scotland and emigration) I think it's bullshit to suggest changing signs to include the two major languages that formed place names is an act of aggression.
I also think that the DUP are hoping to create a stink about it in order to keep deflecting about the RHI scandal. Which hasn't been forgotten about, it's still regularly in the top BBC stories for NI.
Jewel our school did teach History for the LC, but basically one teacher wrote essays on topics which all students were expected to memorise and spew out verbatim in the exam. Apparently the lecturers at some colleges could tell who came from our school because of the method of teaching. I opted not to do it for LC, but did it at Uni. I was never good at learning things by rote.

Also, the Irish Border on twitter reckons it's going to disappear at 10,000 followers, thus ending partition one way or another. It's currently on 9,954...

math, you are splitting hairs.

All NUI universities, ie every university my son wanted to go to required Irish and French. Six best subjects count; if you are shit at languages you have to do eight subjects, including English, to get points. Doing eight instead of six subjects massively, massively adds to the workload.

I don't think you have any idea how much time every single child in secondary school, in every one of their six years, has to spend on Irish. And the vast majority don't want to do it and will never, ever, use it.

Many people whose teenagers don't have to go through the Irish school system minimise those wasted hours, and romanticise the language. Those of us who live here recognise how shit it is for the kids who are poor at languages. And being forced to study it teaches them to hate it.

This is off topic though

I've never met a teenager who really enjoys learning anything apart from a little group in my LC year who were really, really into honours Physics, and three of them ended up getting PhDs, with one now a professor of astrophysics. Apart from that little group of nerds (maybe there are similar groups in every school even now) everyone else moaned a lot about homework, teachers, the irrelevance of everything in the syllabus, etc. (We were joined by our English teacher, who is still teaching. He hated the syllabus.)

Most of what students have to do for the LC is actually irrelevant. I never used any algebra after the LC. I had to learn statistics in my own time in university as we had not touched on it in maths in the detail needed. Science - another massive waste of time for me. I did honours biology, and much of what I learned and certainly the fundamental approach was obsolete by the time my DCs were taking biology in high school in the US.

When I was in school it was rumoured that the school had a computer, which was kept in a locked annexe to the Principal's office. Even in university, students wrote essays by hand, with very few even typing on an old typewriter. There were overhead projectors in classrooms and theatres. The internet was in its infancy. People my age had to teach themselves all they now know about the technology that took over the world. We had little or no exposure at all to any of that in formal education.

Among the only subjects that stood to me were languages - the grammar foundation that was drilled so thoroughly turned out to be very useful for building on in French and German, and I learned another language well after university too.

I think a lighthearted, oral based programme of learning Irish in primary school is a good idea. Using songs and stories and tv programmes and talking in Irish is fine for under, say, 12s.

But forcing 15-18 year olds to study poetry and literature in a language they can barely speak is counter-productive, in my opinion.

The Irish Educational system is points based. Every single point counts. The pressure is enormous.

Having to do an extra subject that is a complete waste of time is unbelievably stressful. There is no way my son was ever going to get a single point from Irish, yet he had to do 5 lessons a week (more than any other subject apart from Maths) and a huge amount of homework every year for six years.

It was an utter waste of time. Maths and English are compulsory, but they have a value in real life. Every other subject he could choose to give up. So he didn't have to do history, or art, he could pick things he preferred.

But he had to do Irish. He will never study languages. It will never be of any use to him - it was a complete waste of time; he will resent it forever, and probably pass his resentment on to his children.

It's totally counter-productive

There's more to university in Ireland than the NUI though. I don't think it's splitting hairs to say that there are more than four universities plus the NCAD in Ireland.

I spent far more time doing maths than Irish (which I worked hard at), and for no reason. I am not romanticising anything when I assert that a good foundation of grammar will help greatly in learning a subsequent language. Irish in particular has a good deal of grammatical complexity, which serves as a very useful foundation even in computer science.

My DCs in high school in the US have all done a broad curriculum, with years devoted to language, history, maths, science and art, with as many subjects as possible at AP level, because universities they want to attend require four years of core subjects even though the majors they are interested in do not require, for instance, fine arts, or the ability to write an essay about Sylvia Plath's inner life. They have also done subjects like health, financial literacy, and civics that are mandated by the state, that took up time they wanted to spend having a study hall or doing something they were interested in like participating in the school magazine. I have shelled out lots of money so they could take these subjects online and not waste half a year of school. The school makes them take PE every single day, even if they play a sport. To make a university application stand out they have to take part in volunteering, performing arts or other attention getting activities.

The GPA system means they can't blow off homework no matter what else is going on in their lives, and ace the end of year exam. My youngest DD struggles at maths and science but she can't drop them or she won't go to university at all, and she is looking for universities that take students with weak GPAs because she has got several Ds in those subjects. She would like to be a school counsellor. She will not need calculus for that but she won't be able to get through university without passing a calculus course. DS had to take a MFL (German) in order to graduate with a degree in Biology and minor in Chemistry, and courses in cultural studies. His major and minor only took three years of the four he had to spend. It would have been 25% cheaper for him to do only the three years.

It's not a case of comparing apples and oranges - the Irish LC isn't the only system where students take subjects they don't have much interest in and won't use, and it's not the only system where students only have 24 hours a day to get the work done. I rarely saw DD1 for two years of high school because of all the extra curriculars she had to do to make her university applications stand out. She was in the pool swimming at 5.45 am four days a week for two years, with meets or more practices in the afternoons, and weekend meets too. On top of that she had lots of homework as her courses were at honours or AP level. No Irish homework, but lots of pressure all the same.

The broad curriculum is still imo preferable to the far too early specialisation in the UK.

I disagree that most teenagers don't love to learn. I have 2 here who do and I did too just not languages. My point about Irish is if you want to revive it and create a love of it don't force it on kids. Speak it at home. My mother was a natural speaker and yet never spoke it but was aghast at my poor grasp. This is more than a conversation about the Irish education system (something I could go on and on about) it is about culture. As an aside I had to knit an aran jumper before I left primary school. Now I have found that skill useful ....

Exactly jewel.

By the time children get to secondary school they have learned to hate it; I think it's something that people who aren't in Ireland simply can't understand - the combination of the poor teaching methods, the outdated texts, the sheer amount of time wasted, it's such a pity.

Translating compulsory Irish to NI (and especially the Unionist population) would go down like a bucket of cold sick I bet.

I agree do something light touch when they are young. Bring the parents in and teach them in a fun way and encourage them to talk at Home and then let the kids choose in secondary schools. Offer it but don't make it compulsory. I would say the same for lots of subjects. My eldest was gifted at the sciences and maths but here Art was compulsory for 3 years in secondary school. He was in tears the night before Art lessons. I found Art easy he found it hard. What was gained by forcing him to do Art?