Sir, – It is hard to believe that after so many decades of complete and utter failure, Irish language advocacy groups still offer unwavering support for it to be a compulsory subject up to the Leaving Cert (Front page, August 12th) .
Have they not realised that this tactic has made a traitor of our beloved native tongue, turning it into a hated instrument of oppression for most Irish youth? Do they not know that Irish people’s traditional, ingrained reaction to oppression is resistance?
Can they not see that making the subject a matter of free choice would mean that Irish language classrooms would be filled with willing students, keen to learn, instead of a truculent and troublesome majority for whom the teaching of Irish is not just a tedious inconvenience to be endured, but a deliberate, provocation to be disrupted?
There are none so deaf as those who will not hear. – Yours, etc,
JOHN THOMPSON,
Phibsboro,
Dublin 7.