Sir, - My experience with people who have done the Leaving Certificate in recent years is that the prime reason they avoid history is it presents too much to read and too much to remember. That is true even of youngsters who did well in it and in other subjects. It is even truer of those who did badly in both respects.
Too few are aware of a fact which I would sum up as this "law": the harder something is to understand the easier it is to remember, and vice versa. History presents much that is easy to understand, and therefore much that is hard to remember. The opposite holds for mathematics and related subjects.
Widening the history course only makes its reading and memory task bigger - and therefore even more to be avoided in favour of small, compact, difficult-to-understand subjects. Course providers should bear in mind de Valera's dictum: "beaganin deanta go maith." - Yours, etc.,
Joe Foyle, Director, Read Ireland Sandford Road, Ranelagh, Dublin 6.