Sir, - Reports on literacy in this country have prompted the usual calls for Government action and public spending. There are adults who are profoundly illiterate and who, when faced by written information on a packet, can make little or nothing of it - as many of us might be were the information written in Greek characters. The members of this group need teachers.
Besides these, there are others - and they must make up the vast majority of the functionally illiterate or of those with reading difficulties - who know how to read but, because they read little, read neither easily nor well. Their state is somewhat like that of someone who can read Spanish but, because s/he does so too rarely, does not read it well. For one in this position, responsibility for improvement falls not on government or state or other organisation, but on himself or herself. Not to acknowledge this and rather, by a very common rhetorical implication, to deny it and so reinforce a culture of dependency, helps no-one, least of all those in need. - Yours, etc.,
Prof Garrett Barden, Belgrave Avenue, Cork.