Gaelic medium education

[parsley455]

Looking for some advice

DD currently in GME primary and will be moving up to high school in a few years. The only school in our local authority that carries on Gaelic as a subject is now getting close to bursting point and this year didn't accept any placing requests out with the catchment area. Myself and a number of others in DDs class are not in the catchment for this high school. I want DD to continue with GME and would ideally want for her to go to the Gaelic High school in Glasgow as a first choice but there are currently no buses put on from our area and I definitely wouldn't look at public transport due to the safety aspect as well as financial. Is anyone able to offer some advice on this and what I would be best doing? Anyone currently have kids at GGH?

Thanks

Not once BBC Alba closes

What do you mean by "need", cdtaylornats? As in literally as a requirement to do a job? Because knowing additional languages is helpful in all sorts of ways beyond just what's specified on a job application.

Bilingualism in any two languages is beneficial in all sorts of ways. More than half of all people in the world are bilingual or trilingual. It's weird that so many people in Britain assume it's bad or pointless to speak more than one language.

It's good to speak another useful language. Gaelic isn't bad - just pointless. School time is valuable and language teaching in school should teach useful languages. Learning Gaelic is as relevant as learning Christianity and like religion it would be a good ting to do on the weekend.

What does it mean to say that any language isn't "useful"? Gaelic is a language that people sing in, comfort their children in, tell jokes in, write poetry in. It's nonsensical to call someone else's language pointless. Gaelic has a point to many people. Who should get to decide which are the useful languages and which ones aren't?

And actually, learning about Christianity is entirely relevant if you want to understand the history of politics in the Western world and the current political climate in America, not to mention most Western art and literature... learning about other languages and other religions is pretty fundamental to being able to co-exist with people who aren't exactly like you. But I guess it's not useful if you don't care about that.

I agree learning about anything is not totally pointless but not at school. The most valuable resource in schools is learning time. Wasting learning time on things that are only going to be useful to a tiny number of the pupils is pointless. What point is there learning Gaelic if you don't know enough arithmetic to count too 10.

It doesn't take thirteen years of school to learn how to count to ten.

Useful if you want to live or work in the Islands!

I'd think something like Spanish would give more employment opportunities so you could argue that being taught in Spanish or French or mandarin etc from age 5 would be more valuable to the population as a whole.

People always suggest Mandarin in conversations like this. How many people growing up in Scotland are actually likely to need to use Mandarin when they grow up? Is it significantly more than Gaelic? Is the aim to ship all Scottish teenagers off to Beijing at 18?

Hmm, billions of people speak it and you don't actually need to go to China.... Apart from service industry or practical type jobs, most of our dc will be working from home competing for work on a global market via technology. Or most of our industry will be owned by the Chinese and it might be handy for them to be able to converse with their bosses.

People have been saying that for 30 years. Still hasn't happened. It's one possible future vision of this country's economy which seems politically undesirable for pretty much every party at the moment. Isn't it just as likely people will be working for American or Russian companies?

Mandarin is extremely difficult for native English speakers to learn here because there's no chance to practise it. If you learn Gaelic in Scotland, it's different depending on your area of course but you do have Gaelic radio and TV and there are native speakers to talk to.

Obviously no two languages are really in opposition at all, though, and no language is more valuable than any other just as no human being is more valuable than any other. You can learn more than one language and being bilingual makes it much easier to learn other languages. The number of Welsh pupils learning Mandarin has doubled since 2015, interestingly.
But this is an example of how people have been making exactly this flawed point about Gaelic since 1906.

Some vague idea of what we think the workplace of the future might possibly look like is a red herring - if we introduce more bilingualism (and Gaelic is the easiest way to do this in Scotland), foster an early love of languages in children and a passion for immersion in different cultures, then a cosmopolitan, international workforce who find it easy to pick up other languages will naturally emerge and be prepared for different eventualities

Mandarin was an example, personally I think Spanish would be a better option. But yes, no-one knows what the future holds. I did Russian as an option in high school and my sister has an O grade in it. No-one is saying that learning a 2nd language isn't useful, whether doing specialist, fully funded, full immersion education in a language that isn't widely spoken outside the western islands of Scotland is another matter.

Gaelic is the cheapest and easiest language to provide full immersion education in in Scotland (except for English) because we already have 57,000 Gaelic speakers, Gaelic TV and radio, and the right to conduct business in Scotland in Gaelic (official forms etc). If full immersion in any second language is beneficial, which it is, then Gaelic is the option that makes most sense in Scotland.

Even if you convinced people of the demand for a Spanish immersion school in Scotland (as opposed to Mandarin or French or Russian) and managed to employ enough Spanish-speaking staff, full immersion would still be impossible because there's so little chance to speak it or hear it in the wild. And not every student will grow up wanting or being able to work in Spanish-language countries or for Spanish companies.

I think you are missing the point really. The point is that I don't think we should be providing it at all other than in places where children are already fully immersed in gaelic. We are spending a disproportionate amount on gaelic that could be spent elsewhere. Children brought up in a home where the language is already spoken will, or should be, already bilingual. For others it is a choice they are making for their children to have a specialist education that the rest of society is funding. Its not just about gaelic schools here, its also about religious schools etc too. But it's a bigger argument. I don't see any issue with an extra language being taught all the way through schools and I don't really care which that is but I would suggest that one which is spoken by millions of people would be more valuable.

It's also not difficult to access tv/radio or other broadcasting in foreign languages either. I would also guess that more children in gaelic schools located outside of the western Isles, who are not from an already gaelic household, spend more holidays in Spain than in the hebrides. But I don't have any evidence to back that up.

But I don't have any evidence to back that up.

This seems to be a recurring theme in anti-Gaelic rhetoric, sadly.

I don't think we should be providing it at all other than in places where children are already fully immersed in gaelic.

So your point is that only children who already speak Gaelic should have the opportunity to be taught how to speak Gaelic? Imagine that argument working for other subjects - should only pupils who can already read music be allowed to learn an instrument? That's just not really how education works.

I get that you're against public spending on anything other than the most basic education (presumably you have an idea of what that should include). We disagree there.

But if Gaelic doesn't receive public funding now, after governments have already spent 150 years actively suppressing it in the education system at public expense, it may die. And its death won't be an accident.

Some people think that would be great of course.

I didn't say that only people who already speak gaelic should be taught it. Missed the point again. We are talking about being taught all subjects through the medium of gaelic which is completely different. Perfectly fine for dc who already speak it, live in a household of gaelic speakers and in an area where it is spoken by default. Not the same as taking dc with no gaelic and teaching them maths, history etc through that medium. I'm happy to have it offered as a 2nd language where there is demand and it's possible. That is not the same as a fully immersed gaelic education for children whose family do not live in a gaelic speaking area or in a lot of cases, don't speak the language themselves.

I am honestly trying to understand your point.

OK, so for Gaelic medium education to be offered in an area, you're saying that someone in power has to decide that it is already a Gaelic speaking area, I think. How would they do that? Or if you do live in a "gaelic-speaking area" but your parents don't speak Gaelic, that means you shouldn't then be allowed to attend a GME school? Why not?

I can't see how this would work. There's clearly already demand for GME in Glasgow and Edinburgh as the schools offering it are very popular. Can't that demand be proof enough that GME is needed in an area? If not, I'm afraid we're back at only people who already speak Gaelic being taught it.

It's really not that difficult. If we go back to the OPs original issue and start with catchments. If you offer all children a good standard (non denominational or specialist) education in their own catchment as a starting point. Those with catchments that cover a wide area continue to offer transportation as standard for the further away dc.

Anyone wanting any thing outside of that (excluding those that have special requirements to attend particular schools e.g. Autism units) should be facilitating that themselves in the same way as people making placing requests do. So, if something like a gaelic immersion school was a popular request and cost pretty much the same per pupil to run as any other school, it could operate on a placing request only basis. Successful applicants get themselves to and from school the same way as placing request dc do.

The problem with that is that you're defining Gaelic as "specialist" and English as the default, making access to Gaelic education harder, which is an inherently political position which people have been objecting to for 150 years.

But you're right, it's not that difficult if your goal is to make it harder for people to speak Gaelic. That's not my goal though.

Also, you're saying I'm missing the point but your original point made to me in this thread was in fact arguing that Spanish or Mandarin or French are inherently more valuable to the population than Gaelic. Which is a different point, to which I thought it was polite to respond.

Given Edinburgh has just cut hundreds of children's transport to special school, this feels quite pertinent just now. On a facebook group I'm on a parent has been told she should carry her non-walking and non-verbal child to school.

Funding for transport to the gaelic medium school appears to be untouched.

You are bonkers, are you seriously suggesting that English shouldn't be the default? I bet gaelic isn't even the 2nd most commonly spoken language in Scotland, i'd say that is Polish?

Yes, it's really not great that hundreds of years ago people were made to speak a language other than their native one (although Gaelic was not necessarily the default across Scotland anyway) but we are where we are. I've already said I have no problem with it being offered as a 2nd language to those who want. However, we are where we are and the ship of having it as our national language has well and truly sailed.

It comes across as a massive chip on your shoulder which the absolute worst part of nationalism.

Anyway, i'm done with this as it's pointless.

See Lonny's example of what i'm trying to get at here.

Again, I have no figures here but I would suggest that the main demographic for gaelic medium demand (outside areas where it is generally spoken) will be white middle class nationalists.

Not that it's really relevant, but I'm not a nationalist. The union is diverse. I'm just someone who thinks people have a right to speak their own language and be educated in it, which really seems to annoy you for some reason.

And I didn't say Gaelic should be the default for the whole country, or that it should be the national language. I don't think that at all. I said that for Gaelic speakers, it already is their default language. But you're saying it should be only a "specialist option" in the education system and you are OK with it being taught as long as it's only a second language. This is ludicrously unfair gatekeeping. It makes Gaelic speakers' access to an education in their own language, the language they want to speak, much harder, and all but guarantees it'll die out eventually.

Calling me bonkers, making up straw men, saying you have no figures for your random assertions and then flouncing off is a very petulant way to lose an argument. I was hoping we could come to some kind of cordial conclusion. Oh well.

Lonny, that's terrible. Gaelic-speaking kids didn't steal the transport funding though. Both should be funded, of course.

I think you are just being obtuse now.

I'm just someone who thinks people have a right to speak their own language and be educated in it, which really seems to annoy you for some reason.

Where have I said that I want to stop anyone speaking their own language? What I have said, is that outside of gaelic speaking areas, it is a specialist education that requires DC to be be bused in at tax payers expense for something that they could learn at home/as a second language.

I haven't flounced at all and haven't lost the argument either . I just think it's pointless as you have your agenda and I have my views and we are never going to agree.

I have no issue with anyone learning to speak gaelic, I have no issue with it being offered in schools, i have no issue with money being allocated from a heritage budget to support evening/weekend classes and, whilst I think we should be offering a decent all round education for all children, I don't really have any issue with schools offering an Gaelic immersed education if that comes at the same cost (and same results) as other schools and there are either enough kids within a normal catchment to fill it or DC outwith a normal catchment are transported at parents own cost or the school is treated as a placing request only with same transport rules.

I can't see that that is any way unfair, unlike the current system.

Unlike you, I think children with special educational needs should absolutely take priority over a parents wish to educate their child in gaelic. If a child is already speaking a language at home, I really struggle to see how learning maths in english is detrimental to them. I have neighbors DC of other nationalities who are bi-lingual in Italian or Hindi or whatever, their parents keep their language skills alive. So, the only real advantage to preserving the gaelic language from fully immersed schools is for children from currently non gaelic speaking households to attend. That then absolutely makes it a specialist education imo.

So, I'm not "flouncing" I just can't be bothered to keep correcting everything that you twist to your own agenda.

"outside of gaelic speaking areas", is a complicated concept though, as I know a significant number of fluent Gaidhlig speakers in Glasgow (many of whom have Gaidhlig as a first language). These people have raised children who have Gaidhlig as their first language. So, based on your theory that Gaidhlig shpuld only be taught in Gaidhlig speaking areas, should there be GME in Glasgow?