Sir, - Fintan O'Toole (Exam Times, June 7th) gives a warm welcome to the new Leaving Cert syllabus in English on the grounds that it provides both for the development of functional communication skills and an appreciation of Shakespeare and the English novel.
It does nothing of the sort.
Students do not have to bother at all with the classic English novel if they so wish.
The compulsory Shakespeare requirement can be met simply by making the Shakespeare play one of three texts compared under some meaninglessly general heading such as "genre" or "cultural context".
And one of these "texts" can be a film - for example, Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves. Hence the notion that "film studies" have been introduced into the Leaving.
As for communication skills, students sitting the Leaving in 2001 will not be required to demonstrate the ability to write a standard English essay.
Elsewhere the "dumbingdown" of education has become a matter of public concern. Here, the only concern publicly expressed at the direction taken by the new syllabus that I am aware of came from a TD angry at the exclusion from the new list of prescribed texts the works of a poet late of his constituency. Enough said? - Yours etc.,
Michael McCarthy, (English teacher), Monkstown CBC, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.