Sir, - I would like to thank Mr Kennedy (December 2nd) and Ms Ni Chathain (December 4th) for their letters, but neither seriously addressed the two issues I brought up. These are the culture of cuplafoclarism by which we pretend to ourselves and to the world that we speak one language when in fact we speak another - and much more seriously, the refusal to radically examine a language policy that is carried through with so much discrimination and at such a cost to our educational standards.
Ms Ni Chathain's letter, topped and tailed with a bow in the direction of the Irish language, but with the rest in English, is a typical example of cuplafoclarism. I hope she is not so naive as to believe that 1.4 million people speak Irish, when the true figure is probably nearer 1.4 thousand. Yes, I know that as Mr Kennedy asserts, Irish is the wave of the future. It has been for the last 80 years at least and will be into the far distant future, unless we show a little realism. There will always be some who will want to speak Irish and I have nothing against those who wish to pursue their education through the language, but I see no reason why the entire apparatus of the State should be marshalled to facilitate those who, having English, insist on dealing with the State through Irish.
As for discrimination, to be fair to Ms Ni Chathain she does refer to just one of my many examples. In her world, getting 5 per cent to 10 per cent more for answering questions in school examinations through Irish does not amount to discrimination because there is a lack of suitable textbooks in the language. Ms Ni Chathain must know that the world is full of students who learn English in order to avail of suitable textbooks. If they were told that there is a country where students deliberately eschew these books and then get extra marks in exams for doing so they would probably think that it had taken leave of its senses. She mentions studies which show that children educated bilingually do better than those educated in one language. Really? Even if one of those languages is completely outside the mainstream of European languages in both grammatical structure and vocabulary?
Mr Kennedy really does not need to lecture me on the meaning of culture and Irish is not the only aspect of our culture worth studying. Many peripheral but interesting subjects which might have contributed to a rounded learning had to be jettisoned when this State was established to make way for the inordinate proportion of school time devoted to the language. And so it persists to this day. I'm all in favour of culture, but for the many who finish school as illiterates the priority has to be the three Rs. Indeed, even Mr Kennedy's grasp of at least one of them seems to be a little suspect if he imagines that I wrote anything about paedophile priests in my letter of November 23rd.
Which leads me finally to the subject of sacred cows and the recent demotion of the Roman Catholic Church from the sacred cow national herd. Mr Kennedy might be interested to learn that I received my upbringing and education in the 1940s and 1950s as a Roman Catholic, when error had no rights and when, as an integral part of our culture, Mr Kennedy's religion (among others) got a regular lashing. I am happy to say that the good priests and brothers of the time thus gave me a firm foundation for my present atheism. God bless them all! -Yours, etc.,
David Herman, Meadow Grove, Dublin 16.