Sir, - Gabriel Rosenstock and Edmund Curtis have got it right (August 13th): Irish is a really beautiful language, and part of our heritage. And those are the reasons we should teach it to our children. However, it is not an economical language of the 21st century, and misguided efforts to present it as such to students have fooled nobody, least of all the students who quite logically relegate it to the bottom of that particular heap.
I firmly believe that if we presented it to our children in an honest fashion they would grow to love it, as they love music, art, theatre and all the (economically) useless things that make our world a nicer place to live in. So I beg the teaching profession to stop trying to teach children about "an Zu" (did you ever hear of a letter Z in Irish?) full of "elefints agus sirafs" (as in the current National School books) and instead teach them about "gairdin na n'ainmhithe" (what a lovely picture of Eden there) or better still a visit to a simple "feirm" with animals indigenous to this island and native to its language. - Yours, etc.,
Valerie Collins, Caragh Lake, Co Kerry.