You're KILLING it you bastards, you're KILLING IT!
*sigh* Finally, the weekend! 5 papers of the Leaving Cert down, only 6 more to go thank God! Had Irish Paper 2 today, which is all the literature and the like! And it has to be one of the most RETARDED sections of the Irish course!
I love the Irish language, I spent 8 years in primary school speaking it! I love how it sounds when spoken properly, I love it's rich history, I love the big-titted weather woman on TG4 who speaks it! But the Department of Education fuck it up so badly, I mean REALLY! People dislike it enough as it is - those poor fools who don't comprehend it's beauty, who think it's a dead language useful for nothing. And while it maybe true that there are very few practical uses for Irish, that doesn't mean you don't learn it! There are very few practical uses for quadratic equations yet people are MORE than willing to learn them! Why? Because the Irish course, despite the Dept's feeble attempts to "update" it, is still an overwhelming, unrelateable dirge of crap.
The English course was updated a few years back! Gone are relics of higher English like John Donne, Milton and other such metaphysical, high minded, stoical works. Now we have Dickinson, Plath, Yeats, Kavanagh, Heany, etc. Poets with REAL feelings, simple language, striking images and understandable themes! Plath doesn't attempt to tackle the questions of the heavens, deep philisophical queries to which there are no answers! No, she was a miserable woman who loved her children but was at war within herself! Teenagers GET these poets...well, most of them do, there'll always be some who don't! But much of the irish poetry is just retarded!
Take for example Donncha Bán(Dun-a-ka Bawn)! This is a lament written by some woman around 200 years ago about her scumbag wino of a brother who was beheaded by some lord! The section we must learn for the Leaving Cert is 9 verses long. There's nothing to relate to in it! The language is near-incomprehensible, she says how angry she is, placing a curse on the lord, how sad she is, how she made it to his funeral with three large jumps after having a dream he died (?)! There's abosutely nothing here to relate to, no understanding, no empathy! You're left going, "wow, she is one crazy fucking crone!" There are no beautiful images, no intelligent metaphors. To answer the questions on it, you're forced to regurgitate crap you learned off about how "this image is very effective", "you can really see she is quite angry because she threatened to tear him apart!" And you learn it in irish, just to make it even harder for you. This is just a sample of the idiocy that is the Irish course! Is it any wonder guys come out of doing the exam relishing the fact that they'll never have to speak Irish again.
I have this image in my head of me walking along a beach and seeing a giant statue of Hector (the Irish speaking guy on TV who everyone likes) poking out of the sand, and me falling to my knees going a la Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes, "YOU MANIACS. YOU BLEW IT UP. DAMN YOU. GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL" upon realising that the Dept of Education have destroyed the Irish language!
I love the Irish language, I spent 8 years in primary school speaking it! I love how it sounds when spoken properly, I love it's rich history, I love the big-titted weather woman on TG4 who speaks it! But the Department of Education fuck it up so badly, I mean REALLY! People dislike it enough as it is - those poor fools who don't comprehend it's beauty, who think it's a dead language useful for nothing. And while it maybe true that there are very few practical uses for Irish, that doesn't mean you don't learn it! There are very few practical uses for quadratic equations yet people are MORE than willing to learn them! Why? Because the Irish course, despite the Dept's feeble attempts to "update" it, is still an overwhelming, unrelateable dirge of crap.
The English course was updated a few years back! Gone are relics of higher English like John Donne, Milton and other such metaphysical, high minded, stoical works. Now we have Dickinson, Plath, Yeats, Kavanagh, Heany, etc. Poets with REAL feelings, simple language, striking images and understandable themes! Plath doesn't attempt to tackle the questions of the heavens, deep philisophical queries to which there are no answers! No, she was a miserable woman who loved her children but was at war within herself! Teenagers GET these poets...well, most of them do, there'll always be some who don't! But much of the irish poetry is just retarded!
Take for example Donncha Bán(Dun-a-ka Bawn)! This is a lament written by some woman around 200 years ago about her scumbag wino of a brother who was beheaded by some lord! The section we must learn for the Leaving Cert is 9 verses long. There's nothing to relate to in it! The language is near-incomprehensible, she says how angry she is, placing a curse on the lord, how sad she is, how she made it to his funeral with three large jumps after having a dream he died (?)! There's abosutely nothing here to relate to, no understanding, no empathy! You're left going, "wow, she is one crazy fucking crone!" There are no beautiful images, no intelligent metaphors. To answer the questions on it, you're forced to regurgitate crap you learned off about how "this image is very effective", "you can really see she is quite angry because she threatened to tear him apart!" And you learn it in irish, just to make it even harder for you. This is just a sample of the idiocy that is the Irish course! Is it any wonder guys come out of doing the exam relishing the fact that they'll never have to speak Irish again.
I have this image in my head of me walking along a beach and seeing a giant statue of Hector (the Irish speaking guy on TV who everyone likes) poking out of the sand, and me falling to my knees going a la Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes, "YOU MANIACS. YOU BLEW IT UP. DAMN YOU. GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL" upon realising that the Dept of Education have destroyed the Irish language!
1 Comments:
Belated solidarity old boy,
Tusker (incognito)
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