Should Irish Be Compulsory

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Whether or not Irish should be a compulsory in secondary schools has long been a question of sensitive debate in Ireland. On the one hand it is the language of our country and our ancestors spoke it and it is important to keep it alive by promoting our youth to learn. As the Irish saying goes a country without its own language is a country without a soul. But on the other hand, the teaching of Irish in schools is turning out to be a huge failure and many people are leaving secondary school after studying Irish for 13 years and are barely able to string a few sentences together. When compared with other countries on the continent such as Sweden where they leave school with an advanced level of English, it is quite a pitiful situation. This problem can be viewed from many different angles, from one viewpoint you could say we should get rid of Irish and concentrate on learning languages such as Spanish and Chinese to improve our economic situation in the world. We could do more business with foreign countries and this would create more jobs. For starters one can learn a language that is a living language not like Irish which is spoken by a small number of people and does not lead to as many strategic opportunities in expanding your business and so forth. The strategy being used to teach Irish is failing; many students resent learning it because they are forced into learning it and have no say in the matter this can also bring down them motivation levels in the class for the few people who do enjoy learning the language. If Irish were an optional subject then the students who do want to learn it would rise up the students morale in the classroom and many of the negative attitudes would be taken away and through this better learning might be achieved. From another perspective, Irish is part of our heritage and much of our literature and the mentality are brought
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