Irish children will soon have to spend one hour a week learning to speak a European language. It’s part of a new primary school curriculum that will be phased in in the coming years.
Normally, Irish students don’t take up foreign languages until they enter secondary school.
According to state broadcaster RTÉ:
There is no detail as yet on what any new primary school curriculum will look like, nor when these changes will begin to be felt in the classroom.
A framework to give overall shape to the new curriculum was announced today. Work on subject areas has begun but its introduction is still a number of years away.
The new framework sees the return of a modern European language to primary schools, allocating one hour per week to this from third class upwards.
A previous European languages initiative was shelved in 2012 as part of cutbacks introduced during the economic crash and there has been pressure since then to introduce a modern language.
Minister for Education Norma Foley said the framework was “very ambitious” and was the result of extensive consultation.
The Irish government needs to think three-dimensionally here.
They’ll be tempted to go with French, Spanish and Italian.
They should be bold and teach Albanian, Ukrainian and other Indo-European languages instead.
The way things are going, those will be the most commonly spoken languages in Ireland by the end of this century, if not before.
