Page:Handbook of Irish teaching - Mac Fhionnlaoich.djvu/10

2

HANDBOOK OF IRISH TEACHING.

must be oral. This principle is stamped with nature's approval. No mother attempts to teach a young child to speak by showing it signs and characters in a book. It is only in the case of deaf and dumb children that such a method is resorted to. In this case it is a matter of hard necessity to substitute a remaining and less appropriate sense for the sense that is missing. Yet, in teaching languages from books, pupils are placed almost on a level with the deaf and dumb, for they are expected to acquire by means of the visual organ the faculty of speech, which may be so much more easily acquired through the sense of hearing. If this principle is true in a general sense, it has special force for Gaelic Leaguers. The class of material we find in Gaelic classes is most unsuitable for student work by book methods. Many of our students have no knowledge of grammar in any language and could not, if they tried, acquire such knowledge. Many of them are beyond the age of effective student life, and cannot hope to gain proficiency in the language unless the path is made easy for them. Further, it is very necessary to bring our students into touch as soon as possible with the Irish speakers around them, and book Irish is useless for this purpose. The book lessons utterly fail the student when he is put to the practical test of conversation. Moreover, book Irish or literary Irish is generally found to present considerable differences in its words and constructions from local dialect Irish, and this interposes additional barriers between the learner of Irish and Irish speakers. The student is thus deprived of the stimulus and encouragement which he ought, to