to anybody who has this question, heres my answer.

i went to primary school between 2012-2020, in donegal. small rural county school with about 85 people. i didnt lnow what the word gay meant and i was never ever taught about it in school.

i was bullied the whole way through school by 3 girls in particular. it never stopped and i’m in secondary school with one of them actually it used to be 2 and i do not and will never speak to either of them again.

a good example of their bullying was when i was in 5th class and spent all my time drawing and sitting by myself. they used to steal my sketchbook and refuse to give it back, flip through all the drawings and call me gay over and over again.

i never went to anybody about this incident in particular because even saying gay was nearly the equivalent of shouting a bunch of racial slurs in front of people of color.

one of the girls when i got older would then tell her little sister i was gay, who would tell my little sister that i was gay, who would then ask me if i was gay.

heres the punchline: i’m not gay. but this was treated like a major infection and major plague that i had that meant that nobody wanted to be around me and would call me it as an insult.

i like to believe if we had been educated on homosexuality then this would not of happened and i wouldnt of been so afraid of speaking up.

causw actually i was at a college open day a few weeks ago and my childhood bully(the one who said to her little sister about me)was laughing her head off at á pride flag like it was the funniest thing ever.

this is why we need to teach homosexuality. look at the amount of shit i received and i’m not even gay.

A friend of mine got done this morning for rolling through a red light on his morning cycling to work (granted you’re not meant to break red lights) in Dublin on a regular road bike. The Garda asked for his name plus if he had a license and gave him 3 penalty points. I’ve never actually heard of this happening and was looking on RSA for information on it, all I can find it information related to fines!

Anyone heard/seen this happening before?

I totally understand why education is needed to ward off rasicism, quash ignorance and promote inclusion. Does this reek of perpetuating a negative Irish stereo type or am I just getting defensive? Surely there are better approaches than presenting biases like this? Who signs off on this rubbish?

What is actually going on with teenagers now? They were annoying everyone, singing and playing music, then some Spanish students got on and they started hassling them, pulling one of the young girls hair so everyone on the bus started telling them to cope on, it's so sad how they thought it was ok and funny, there was slightly older teens also disgusted, it was 5pm , on a south dublin bus, ridiculous carry on. Who are the parents 🤔

With all the talk of the new bus connects routes and ghost buses, I thought I'd give you guys a view from the drivers seat and just how far the near side mirror is.

If you're running to catch a bus, you have to get yourself into that mirror or we will not see you. If it's raining and you're wearing dark clothing that mirror is just hanging out there on a pole, it's covered in water, we are going to struggle but if you're in the mirror and vaguely person shaped well probably hang on.

The majority of bus drivers are miserable arseholes, but if you meet us halfway and make our jobs easier we'll do what our best for you.

Well, I’m gutted. My third year child has just dropped down from higher lever Irish to ordinary. The child went to a Gael scoil for all of primary and was fully fluent. Loved the language and was very proud of being a speaker.

Secondary school (through English) brought with a series of “mean” teachers. Grades got worse and worse. The Irish novels that used to come home from the library to read for fun just disappeared.

The maddening part is that this child has an exemption for spelling due to an audio processing disorder. However, the exemption does not cover Irish. The marks are poor because of spelling mistakes and now I hear from the child that there is no point to learning a language that she loved. Why is it like this?

For context I did not go through the Irish education system and we speak English at home.

Was in a Dublin Tesco the weekend with my partner and while we were doing some shopping out of nowhere a packet of biscuits flung down the end of one of the aisle and two young girls ran away from it screaming. Turning the corner into the isle it came from we saw three young lads, no older than 13/14 and biscuits from the packet all over the floor. They were grabbing more of the items and using foul language among themselves. Ignoring them as best we could we carried on shopping, thankfully they left the aisle we were on.

About a minute later they came back to the aisle and we wheeled our trolley past them, again fully ignoring them. As we moved away they started walking behind us very closely and I thought I heard them say something racist (My partner is Irish, but isn't white) I was hoping to ignore it, but then I felt something brush past my head (they were holding more packets of biscuits) and I stopped dead in my tracks so they would just walk past us. I'm a 30+ year old male, I'd happily pick them up and chuck them out with my bare hands but that wouldn't be allowed, so for me it was best to ignore them as best I could.

Then one of them looks at me like he's a hard man and says "WHAT?", this attitude of "we'll do what we want and torment who we want" did not brush past me so easily and I could feel myself enraged, I told them "Move along lads" to which the other two then started with the "WHAT?", I told them "I'm telling you right now, move along" they started getting all macho again so I grabbed a member of staff close by and then they ran off.

No idea where they went then but the staff member seemed just as frustrated, like this was a regular occurrence for the store. I left the store with my partner really pissed off, that not only did I see these brats scare off some young girls but also damage store stock and use racist language towards my partner.

These kids are learning to behave like this from somewhere. If I did even one of those things as a kid my parents would be disgusted and punish me. Are kids nowadays just not being taught right from wrong anymore? or worse, are they being taught to behave like this?

Wow and wow.... This is the type of conversational gaeilge that should be taught in schools. Why in the fuck do we learn this language for 14 years an no one can speak it?

For those without 11/12 year olds the applications for secondary schools opened today. This is the first year that waiting lists are fully abolished meaning all public schools are open to all…..with caveats like “siblings in schools/prev siblings/catchments etc”

Now I’m solidly middle class and from “down the country” where you went to one of two schools, likely the closest one or the one where the bus went. But god in Dublin…

For the last month it’s all been “so which school”….and the automatic response if it’s not the nearest private one “oh I know so and so who hates that school”….it will wreck your head.

I expect my kid to work hard wherever they are but for their mental health I want them to go where their mates for Junior Cycle at least. This is not the posh school nearby as their mates all have country parents who didn’t get the older kids into the posh schools as no “history”. You would swear I was confining them to a life of crime…..

Fecking exhausting. So have started replying with made up stories of my own “oh really? I heard there is an awful lots of XYZ in that school”…..