Sir, – The Department of Education's consultation paper on foreign languages is an achievement in post factum obfuscation of which the late Sir Humphrey Appleby would be most proud ("Schools need to vary language teaching amid 'predominance of French', report suggests", August 29th).
If post-primary students have less choice in modern language learning than was the case a number of years ago, this is a direct consequence of increases to the pupil-teacher ratio in schools and other cuts to teaching staff implemented by successive governments with the connivance – willing or otherwise – of senior officials who stand behind this document.
Maintaining compulsory and other high-demand subjects has required the cutting of less popular ones in languages, science and business. In a similar manner, schools have not been able to add subjects owing to the almost impossible pressures on their timetable.
In this fog of wilful deceit, the gunboat Marlborough Street has turned its turret on French. In doing so, it perpetuates the neophile's obsession with potential rather than reality.
In this case, the reality is that France is our sixth most important export partner, with Belgium and Switzerland, home to significant French-speaking populations, actually further up the list. These nations are natural markets for indigenous Irish produce and they account for a significant share of tourism here. More to the point, the generally respected EF English Proficiency Index shows that the proportion of people in France who speak English is significantly lower than in Germany or Spain, whose languages are also widely taught in our schools.
If an intelligent conversation regarding the status of languages is to be had, there first needs to be a recognition from Government that its short-sighted decisions have brought us to this point and secondly an acknowledgement that we can ill do with a downgrading of French given the scale of our relationship with French-speaking countries and the manifest requirement to produce graduates capable of speaking their language. – Yours, etc,
BARRY HENNESSY,
Turvey Walk,
Donabate,
Co Dublin.
Sir, – Imagining that the study of French limits one to communicating only with citizens of metropolitan France and engaging only with their culture is short sighted. I studied French in secondary school up to Leaving Certificate, just like thousands of my peers. While I later completed my theology degree in France and through French for ordination as a Catholic priest, I now live in Italy and use French almost daily, socially and for work, with Québécois, Lithuanians, Poles, Czechs, Senegalese, Togolese, Berkinabè, Iraqis and Lebanese, among others. Such communication is not in any way unusual for somebody living outside an Anglophone country. The foundation for it was laid, in my case, during six years of French classes in my secondary school, Christian Brothers College, Cork.
Knowing French also makes understanding, and then learning, the other Romance languages relatively straightforward. – Yours, etc,
Fr FERGUS RYAN OP,
Collegio San Clemente,
Via Labicana,
Rome.