Gaelic and Scots

[Motheranddaughter]

Just read on the BBC website about the Scottish government’s plans to strengthen Gaelic medium education ,and make Gaelic and Scots (?) official languages
Off the top of my head I can think of many things they could focus improving before this

I spose if you believe your DCs will always live on the west coast or in Scotland when so many move away for work - best to do extra maths imv.

The Gaelcholáiste and Gaelscoils in Ireland are amazing, and the Gaelic School in Glasgow has done fantastic.

There are real supportive school communities around them all and they don’t seem to have the behaviour issue that many of our other inner-city schools do here.

These conversations always descend into the politicisation of the language though, personally I think it’s worth preserving and growing through education.

The amount of history and culture that is locked away in a language that not many of us understand is mind blowing.

Some of our most beautiful music, language and poetry is right in front of us behind a locked door, if we are able to we should give our next generations the key.

My kids go to an Irish Gaelscoil and it gladdens my heart to hear them chatting away in Irish together.

Of course it’s not essential but it’s part of our cultural heritage and a beautiful living language that should be cherished and promoted.

I think it’s a great idea to introduce similar in Scotland!

Imagine the government decided that your children should be learning Dutch at school, and it was fine to beat them every time they spoke English. Your children have to speak Dutch now, despite all their culture and songs and heritage being in English. When they grew up most of them won't be able to speak English any more. They remember the odd song and snippet of the culture of their parents and their parents' parents and they feel a part of them has been lost.

Later a more enlightened government comes along and stops beating children. English can be taught in schools again and uptake is high. People are starting to reclaim their language and the culture which is inextricably tied into it.

Years later another government offers to help this process with a relatively cheap appeal option for parents who want their children to speak English. But people in another part of the country where they only speak Dutch don't want to spend a small amount of money on this. They think it would be better for the English speakers to abandon their native tongue and the culture that goes with it and just assimilate into the Dutch monoglot community. What right have these pesky English speakers got to their birthright? The birthright that the government of this country bludgeoned from little children.

Waste of money if it going to be implemented in the NE plus who is going to teach it?

Something else to be squeezed into the already packed curriculum 🙄

Gaelic has been in decline in Scotland since the 11th century. It was never spoken in South Eastern Scotland. Malcolm the 3rd & descendants brought French in as the court language in the 11th century, then by the 14th century Inglis/Scots became the dominant language. Imposing Gaelic on us when it's not been in widespread use for centuries is classic SNP nonsense. Is Norse on the agenda too?

I don't agree that Scots is a separate language to English but would have no issue teaching it in schools - but what dialect will we use? Will a Weegie bairn who flits tae Peterheid be telt aff for nae spiking Doric?

Of course it’s nonsense teaching Gaelic in the central belt. The SNP just fund it as they want to put all and any barriers up between Scotland and the rest of the UK as possible.

@TopographicalTime as a weegie who moved to the Broch as a 12 year old, I was assaulted mocked and ostracised for not speaking Doric.
I also witnessed teachers verbally abuse and mock young children for speaking Doric in school.
Having access to a nationally taught language which belongs to all of us, taught in nurseries would go a long way towards addressing sectarianism and bullying in schools.
Teaching children 2 languages from an early age is so good for their development as well, and Gaelic being so distinctly different from English in grammar and structure would supercharge kids' progress in learning and communication. It would be worthwhile for all these reasons.

Ultimately it is an indigenous language of Scotland.

The argument that it should not be taught in the central belt seems a bit illogical to me.

Many people from Gaeltacht areas have moved to the central belt (for obvious reasons) and are as much a part of the nation as the families who have always been here.

They should have the opportunity to maintain their heritage and language through educating their children in the medium they choose.

Just because they have moved 200 miles down the road doesn’t mean their culture can’t be supported in their own country.

If you don’t believe in Gaelic education then don’t send your child there, it’s a fairly simple decision.

@Motheranddaughter I can see this argument - after all, Gaelic is spoken fluently by about 0.07 of the UK population - but my child is in GME - in the Central Belt - and so far it’s been a really lovely experience. All sorts of cultural benefits. On a global perspective, native Brits are weirdly monoglot - bilingualism should be normalised. And some of the old Gaelic poets are truly amazing.

The shortage of teachers is a real problem though.

Personally I don’t regard Scots are more as an amalgam of regional dialects myself but I’m trying to keep an open mind on it!

Waste of money. The end .

But it doesn’t cost any more - not the books, not the teachers’ salaries, not the buildings. It would cost the same to educate these children in English. Yes, there are some centralised support staff, and the cost of school transport in a few cases, but this is really marginal compared to what is delivered.

Who is going to do the teaching though? NQTs can’t get jobs, teachers are leaving the profession in droves, but we’re going to have loads of gaelic-speaking teachers popping up out of the woodwork are we?

I’m a lallander, my folks would never have spoke it and I actively dislike the way it’s set up (self) selective schools in Edinburgh, but honestly, where are all the teachers coming from? I also have friends with children in Gaelic medium secondary up North and they had a severely restricted choice of highers… had to take a couple of subjects online iirc.

I think learning any language is beneficial and can make learning others easier.

scotland (and the Uk) have a shocking record for learning and respecting other languages. Maybe a step in the right direction.

If it doesn’t cost any more to do it then I really struggle to see why people are against it?

Is it just people who don’t like others to be able to choose something different than them?

Will we close private schools, catholic schools, Jewish schools and grant maintained schools like Jordanhill as well?

Just to ensure that everyone gets a standard state school whether they like it or not?

I find it really sad that some people seem to feel threatened by the language, that it’s somehow an attack on their identity.

How eloquent! Are you always so persuasive, engaging and entertaining in your repartee?

When you eventually master the English language feel free to step up to the Doric or Erse.

Okay ! I'll rephrase that for you ...
No, I won't bother. I'll just repeat what I've already said: waste of money. The end.

The Welsh government said they wanted all school children to be taught in the medium of Welsh. The unions stepped in saying that there were not enough teachers to carry this out. It's all gone very quiet now. We do have welsh medium schools though.

Gaelic was never universally spoken in Scotland and historically it was only the dominant language from approx the 8th century to the 11th - it's really not comparable to Welsh in that respect. And teaching Gaelic can't be cost free - as previous posters have said, where are we getting the fluent teachers from??

If immersive 2nd language teaching was compulsory I'd sooner my kid was learning Spanish, much more useful for employment.

I'm very sorry but not at all surprised to hear of bullying based on regional accent/ dialect in Scotland.
We can't teach Scots unless we nail down what Scots is, otherwise how can an exam be set? That means selecting or rejecting some regional variants, which is highly problematic. On the other hand, using see you next Tuesday as a term of affection would have to be on the syllabus so it's not all bad!

I am a fan of the Gaelscoileanna but I think the reason they do not have the behaviour issues found in other inner city schools is that they are kind of selective. Parents have to make a conscious choice to send their DC to the Gaelscoil and that tends to mean a higher proportion of students from families who value education and are actively involved in supporting their children through school. Fewer students from disorganised families. It is a bit like RC schools in England.
I would be interested to see a breakdown of the student body in terms of family income, family structure (two parents v one parent) etc and then see whether there might be social factors behind the better behaviour.
In some countries minority language education can also be shorthand for “white, middle class education” cf families choosing to educate through Flemish in parts of Belgium. We need to make sure we avoid this.

Did you mean to be so rude? I mean, clearly you did, so why? Because I disagreed with your point, or because you’ve actually realised that no, there isn’t a cohort of fully-trained fluent Gaelic-speaking teachers ready to step into role and that makes you feel a little hurty?

Apparently Glaswegians used to speak Welsh!! Yet nobody’s trying to teach us that.

Said so in the govan church (where there are lots of interesting standing stones in exhibition, it’s free) just over where the new footbridge is at the transport museum.

who knew!!

I can understand why people who have no connection to Gaelic don’t want to educate their children in the language.

I can understand there are many people who don’t believe it is worthwhile.

I can understand why some don’t appreciate the cultural significance of the language.

What I really don’t understand though, is why some of these people seem so passionate about denying this choice to others.

The ‘teachers can’t speak Gaelic’ argument is a fallacy, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig churns out about 80 graduates a year on Campus and has 700 doing distance learning courses, that’s not including native speakers and those who have been through Gaelscoil and have decided to become teachers, which is likely higher proportionally due to their academic success.

It really seems irrational that anyone would want to deny others a choice, or even care enough to do so.

The soul of a nation is worth more than money.

Gaelic medium classes/units have been in Scotland for decades have you been living under a rock, Learning how decendents spoke and wrote is no bad thing imo,

Your post reminds me of not being allowed to speak "slang" at School and to speak English.