One of my regrets in life is not applying myself at school and learning Irish properly.
The problem is that it is compulsory all through school, it's a core subject you can't skip (core are English, Irish and Maths, the others you can pick and choose in later secondary school), because it was compulsory and taught in a rather old fashioned rote-learning manner, naturally any kid would reject it to some extent. Now after 14yrs you'd think something would stick, alas , very little.
I blame the teaching system that was rooted in a very boring and old style. Contrast to French which I started to learn at 12, we had tapes, videos, conversational sessions it was fun and alluring, within two years my French was better than my Irish.
I've taken more of an interest as I've become older and further from home, maybe a bit of an identity crisis :-).
It's on the cusp of a living language, my nephews live close to a Gaeltacht area ( no English spoken) and have attended a school that only speaks and teaches through Irish, they will continue through to university age in that manner.
So, about time I rolled up my sleeves as it were and rinne rionnt oibre ( did some work :-) )
When we were in school there were a lot of teachers who did not know how to teach. The curriculum also wasn't geared towards 'how to teach'. I remember that I hated history. However, as an adult, after watching history channel and movies over number of years, I find history to be fascinating. Who doesn't?!
Unfortunately, at higher lvl history was paired against Physics. After 15 I had to choose and it was science all the way. Biology ran up against another favourite , Economics and Chemistry ousted Accounting, such a shame to have to choose at such a young age, but at least there was a good general base up to 15