An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

(d) Manx
There has always been in Manx schools a recognition that, despite the use of the
‘English code’ from the 1872 Act […] in the Manx education system, there was a
strong flavour of Manxness about the whole arrangement. Most of the pupils bore
Manx names: (forenames) Juan, Finlo, Orry, Kiree, Joney, etc: (surnames) Cowle,
Clague, Corlett, Kelly, Mylchreest, Quine, etc. – the list goes on. They spoke an
Anglo-Manx dialect, lived in places bearing Manx names, and their teachers used the
occasional greeting of 
moghrey mai
(m r ‘mai] ‘good morning’ or 
fastyr mie
[fast ‘mai]
‘good afternoon/evening’. Efforts to have Manx taught in Island schools, which
failed in the early years of the century, did not begin to bear fruit until 1974 when a
new Director of Education, Mr Alun Davies, a native Welsh speaker, was appointed.
He was sympathetic to the idea, provided that there were people capable of teaching
Manx. The situation then was that there were a number of individuals, usually YCG
members, competent in Manx, but not trained teachers, and a few trained teachers
(about a dozen at the outside) both competent in Manx and able to teach it. The
latter were mainly concentrated in the thirty-two primary schools and were given the
opportunity of introducing Manx into the classroom when and where they saw fit.
In the five secondary schools at that time there was no teacher on the staff able in
Manx. To remedy this the Director of Education sanctioned the use of ‘laymen/
laywomen’ to teach Manx once a week during lunchtime break as a ‘club’ activity.
The first of such clubs was set up in the Easter term of 1976 at Ballakermeen High
School, Douglas. I was one of the teachers on that occasion. 
In 1982 a GCE ‘O’ Level examination in Manx was instituted, preparation for
which took place at evening classes initially for adults at the College of Further
Education (now the Isle of Man College). The idea was that teachers with an ‘O’
Level qualification would be in a position to teach Manx formally in the schools.
One or two secondary-school teachers took up this option. However, a lack of
‘takers’ for the examination caused it to be suspended four years later. Its replacement
by a GCSE examination, with more emphasis on the spoken language, is now in
preparation as part of the present (1992) scheme.