Aodh - you've raised a pair of interesting questions...

1) How does the world preceive Scotland and its Gaelic culture?

2) Is there something about Scots Gaelic that makes it less accesible, or acceptable than Irish?

I think that "perceive" is the key here. Perception is everything. No? In the States, where I am basing my answer from, rather few people recognize Scotland as having a Gaelic culture at all.

As far as Scots Gaelic goes, I'm putting on my "former member of ACG" hat - there are some significant barriers in place to Scots Gaelic, many of which have been erected in a "we're not Irish" reaction. While I can think of a few folk in my area who are at least modestly fluent in Irish (mine left me long ago - from lack of use) there are NONE that I know of that are native speakers.

When I got to learning Scots Gaelic I found it was an entirely different story. I could count on one hand the number of people in my area - meaning a couple of hours drive - with a reasonable command of the language, and have 5 fingers left over.

Mind you, it has taken a long time to overcome the idea that Celtic IS Irish, and to branch the identity of Celtic (and Gaelic) out to include Scots and Welsh has been a long fight. To include the Manx, and anyone else, in the general population's view may take a much longer time.

The number of native (Scots) Gaelic speakers who emigrated to America was, I believe, much smaller than the number who emigrated to Canada - Nova Scotia and Eastern Ontario particularly. Thus, in some places, eg., Glengarry County, Ontario, you have a CHANCE of encountering someone with Gaelic, it is not terribly likely. You are, however, far more likely to find a Gaelic speaker there than say, in Alma, Michigan. For all the tourist stuff put up on Nova Scotia, the odds of finding someone comfortable with Gaelic, excluding the odd phrase or two, are not nil, but not much greater. (Though they are better than in Glengarry Co.)

To blame the decline of the language on the educational system is to put too much credit there. There have been MANY factors contributing. The fact is, Gaelic, Scots Gaelic in particular, has been in a long, slow decline since well before Culloden.

Grampian TV (if I remember right) did a three part series called "The Blood is Strong" some time ago. It is a little dated, done before the bridge to Skye was started, but the ideas are generally pretty good.

Cheers -

Pete