Sir, - I was interested, but not surprised, by the poor results in the Junior Cert Irish paper. I have a nine-year-old son in fourth class of national school who "hates Irish". This is a child who was brought up with Irish until he was five years of age (I am a native Irish speaker) and even though he knew nothing about Irish grammar or spelling he could hold a fluent conversation in Irish.
I had hoped that the grounding he got in the language in his early years would be of great benefit at school. Now, after four years in school, he can hardly string a simple sentence together in Irish. This is most disappointing, and I lay the blame for this firmly at the door of the Department of Education. Irish as taught at school is a tortuous slog. It seems to consist of difficult spellings (what nine-year-old needs to know the Irish for thumbtacks - tacoidi ordoige?), grammar and learning a "sceal". This "sceal" is a story of about 65 words which has to be learned off by heart and then rewritten for a test every week.
This is how Catechism was taught in the bad old days - learning the questions and answers off by heart but not knowing what they meant.
This is how Irish is being taught in 1999. Is it any wonder my son hates it? Now I think I understand why the language is dying.- Yours, etc.,
Siun McDonald, Cahercrea, Loughrea, Co Galway.