Irish Language Tax Exemption

It's obvious to most people in Ireland that the Irish language is on its last legs. Historically, it's been on the decline for a long time. English has been the dominant language on the island for a long time. The education of the language on the island has been an out and out disaster. We have pathologized the proper use of language and brought in this strange rote learning torture that has ruined the language for almost everyone.

Why would you speak Irish? If you grew up in Ireland, you probably had some experience of learning Irish. You probably learned it from the age of 4/5 until you were 18 and you have no better Irish than a few days spent on Duolingo. There are a few distinct places where people speak it at home. But for the most part, everyone uses English. Growing up, there were a few book smart types that could speak Irish reasonably well. Yet for most people, once they leave secondary school, go to college and start working, Irish is a thing of the past.

My own education in Irish is a tragedy. I passed the ordinary level exam in Irish with the lowest passing grade. I have 0 Irish. I am more fluent in Spanish, German and Italian, languages I never studied, than I am in Irish.

Growing up, I saw no utility in the language. When you're a relatively smart teenager coming from a working class family, you turn to maths, physics, engineering and computer science as ways to make money and get ahead in the world. So I relegated Irish to a second-rate position.

Something interesting happens when you do this as a teenager. You view things instrumentally and so the value and the status of things with little instrumental value fall. There are many compounding effects which lead to the degraded status of Irish which I will try to express.

Little economic benefit.

Being interested in money in school, Irish only had a value in that the Leaving Certificate required we take it. It was also a mandatory requirement for nearly all Irish universities to have some level of Irish. You don't need it to study Physics. But you need to pass the exam to go to any college.

I could see almost no instances where I would be required or incentivized to speak Irish. Languages like Spanish and German were often chosen by kids because they could use them for a job. This excuse is something I often hear young kids say. But the % of them that ever get to the point of speaking these languages in these countries is probably very small.

There was only really one visible sign of getting paid to speak Irish to a child: Being an Irish teacher.

The chance to become the thing you disdain.

Imagine putting up an advertisement offering to waterboard people. You get waterboarded every day in the week for about an hour, sometimes more, and this waterboarding continues for around 12 years. Then if you really actually quite liked the waterboarding, you can get waterboarded full time for around 4 years. Then after all of this, you can graduate to become a full-time waterboarder. You get to drown the next generation of potential waterboarders.

The system of education in Ireland is a bit like this. It's not to say that learning Spanish or doing applied maths isn't waterboarding. But at least I choose to do that. And in the end, my applied maths will probably reward me with a better college course, which might get me more money, which should mean I can get a hotter girlfriend and a nicer car. But to learn Irish means that you will basically have no better job opportunities than a person who is much less smart than you. You are paying an extra price to be worse off in the long run.

When a young person sees that there is basically no economic incentive to learn Irish, they will regard it with disdain. Worse of all, make the entire vision of a person who teaches Irish something they hate. Punish them for not wanting to do it. Give them almost no benefits for actually doing it.

What's worse is that the people who actually choose to teach Irish are from absolutely different worlds than the young working class teenager. To someone who is poor and in Africa, it boggles the mind that someone would spend $250,000 on education that basically does nothing for them. They understand mathematics. They understand becoming a doctor. A child has no reason to believe that a person teaching Irish had many other economic prospects. They assume that they are basically bottom of the barrel. They show no respect. I would count on young male misbehavior to be highest in Irish classes.

An Irish applied maths and physics teacher

I once knew a guy who studied physics in university. He then went on to teach in secondary schools. He told me that he was one of the very very few teachers in the entire country that could teach physics through Irish. I never asked him what he could make.

I assume no one misunderstands him. You can quite clearly see that he could have plenty of opportunities in many different areas of life. Yes, he probably makes a bit more money than most teachers, but not by much, I imagine. But he does have the ability to be almost completely his own man.