A chara, – In correctly praising Finland’s education system, Ivan Yates (Opinion February 2012) neglects to mention that “compulsory” Finnish and Swedish are central to primary and post-primary education there. Students are also expected to, and do, learn two additional languages.
He also gets into trouble when he asserts “the critical competitive advantage of having a natural English-speaking workforce”. What we need is the critical competitive advantage of having a multi-lingual workforce in order to forge economic, diplomatic and cultural links with the rest of the world. Multinational companies here often cannot fill vacancies with Irish people because of an “English only” mentality, which has become a hallmark of the Department of Education.
A people with little regard for their own language are unlikely to respect the languages of others. Irish people, according to the European Commission, are the lowest achievers in second and third language acquisition.
Irish medium schools buck this trend.
If we are to follow the Finnish model, a model born out of post war austerity, we need to reverse decades of neglect and invest in language teaching and learning. The Finns after centuries of foreign rule have revived their language and their economy and we can do the same. – Is mise,