Section 3

SPECIFIC ISSUES IN GAELIC

Gaelic Culture

The values and knowledge which motivate cultures are deeply intertwined in their languages, but culture is more than language and literature. It is also, for example, history, music, the visual arts, dance, legend, drama, the mass media, architecture, ways of work, habits of thought and feeling, and human relationships. The  curriculum 5-14 must establish the setting for the growth of appreciation in these vital areas of the Gaelic experience.

If the first task of schools is to develop language skills and pupils' confidence in the use of language, English as well as Gaelic, then it is equally necessary to develop a parallel awareness and grasp of the richness and diversity of the culture and its significance for pupils' own lives.

In promoting Gaelic culture, port-a-beul should share curricular space with Runrig. Stories, songs and legends, powerful oral bases of the culture, should be set beside some of the easier poems of writers like lain Crichton Smith. In the middle and upper ranges of the 5-14 year group, teachers should use texts in English on Gaelic matters to supplement texts in Gaelic and, on occasion, to provide an alternative point of view. Visits should be paid to galleries, and modern theatre groups should be welcomed in the school. Television programmes should be studied. The school should organise regular ceilidhs and Gaelic arts and crafts should be displayed. Schools should participate in the feisean. There should be a sense of the future and its potentialities.

But in coping with the future it is essential to have an understanding of the past. For example, in some appropriate context teachers might show (through, perhaps, the exploration of place names) that Gaelic was once the language of most of mainland Scotland and some of Northern England. In the upper stages of the primary and early years of the secondary school, teachers should introduce pupils to other Celtic languages and explain their inter-connections. The socio-economic reasons for the dispersal of Gaelic-speaking people to the Commonwealth should also be an aspect of history. Interviews with older people, recorded on audio - or video tape, will give a picture of former ways of life and the changing nature of language.

But Gaelic is a living, growing language and the culture must be set predominantly within the contemporary world. Gaelic has currency in the home, the workplace, the churches, and in mass media. Possessing it gives an entry, as has been noted, to different forms of employment. The advantages of bilingualism should have an important place in teaching and learning, not least for the acquisition of yet more languages. In doing so, pupils will begin to appreciate linguistic diversity through the range of accents and dialects found in Gaelic and all other languages. Pupils given such experiences, and a sense of the worth of Gaelic, will also have greater empathy with those whose languages and cultures are different.

How should such things be taught? As with any other aspect of the curriculum, it should begin from where the child is in place and time - familiar experiences, the local environment, including cityscapes. From that vantage point the study of language and culture should radiate outwards, matching the child's growth in understanding, deepening and developing knowledge and skills, within a framework of increasingly rich associations.