Throw out the textbooks. That's the advice of one former teacher in relation to the survival of the Irish language, as it comes under increasing pressure in the west.
In fact, this former teacher has already made an indirect contribution to the demise of one such textbook, Peig.
The life and bitter times of the Blasket islander, which was the bane of many a Leaving Cert pupil's existence for several decades, has been replaced by texts like Gafa, an account of a teenager hooked on heroin.
Published as Hooked in English, the author is Re O Laighleis, Mayo's current writer in residence. It is a story based on every parent's nightmare - beginning with the discovery by a mother of a needle and syringe, white powder, rubber tubing and a silver spoon under her son's bed. Even as she tries to comes to terms with it, she learns that her husband is having an affair.
Gafa won a national Oireachtas award, one of several accolades bestowed on O Laighleis for a substantial body of work in both English and Irish.
He did not deliberately set out to write it for Leaving Cert students, and emphasises that only a section of the text is on the syllabus.
But then "that's Irish, and everything that it shouldn't be, for you", he says. "Pupils are given a piecemeal offering of literature, so it is no wonder they feel it is just a bit of a language. At least, the experiences of a teenager on drugs is more relevant than some of the literature on the syllabus in the past." Born in Sallynoggin, Dublin, in 1953, O Laighleis says he "scraped" through his Leaving Cert and went abroad to work for several years before returning with enough money to go to university. Galway became his home, and he worked as a primary school teacher in Scoil Iognaid for 12 years. "We have a schooling system rather than an educational system, pandering to vested interests, with an administration that doesn't ask what education actually is," he says. "We're compelling kids to engage in a system that doesn't engage them, so we're killing the flower. What's worse, we also force them to do an exam in it!"
It was when he threw out the textbooks and began writing for his pupils that he decided to opt for it full-time. "I worked under a wonderful principal, Niall O Murchadha, who is a true educationalist and gave me the leverage to do this with the kids." He began to enjoy it, and was pleased with the reaction. Punk, his first novel, sold 40,000 copies, he says.
This was followed by Ecstasy, Gafa, Terror on the Burren, Striocai ar Thoin Seabra, and his works were translated into other European languages. He was invited to be writer in residence by Mayo County Council earlier this year, and has since had the tenure extended until Christmas. He set out with a blistering programme of creative writing workshops delivered to pupils in schools in Claremorris, Ballyhaunis, Kiltimagh and Charlestown.
In Galway, a former Mayo writer in residence has taken up a similar appointment there. Vincent Woods, once a journalist and broadcaster with RTE's current affairs division, has just been appointed to the position at NUI Galway.
Born at Tarmon, near Drumshanbo in Co Leitrim in 1960, Woods became a full-time writer following the success of his first play, John Hughdy-Tom John which was produced by the Druid Theatre Company. Other plays of his staged by Druid - At the Black Pig's Dyke which returns to Dublin from an international tour, and Song of the Yellow Bittern - received critical acclaim. He was awarded the Stewart Parker Drama Prize and the P.J. O'Connor award for radio drama.
Woods will be offering workshops in drama and poetry from January 2000, and those who wish to take part should write to him before the end of this month, c/o the Department of English, NUI Galway.