Sir, – The Bileog page provides a great service for struggling Irish speakers like myself who are trying to keep our school knowledge of Irish from rusting over completely.
I was struck by the reference in Deaglán de Bréadún’s article to the Teachers’ Union of Ireland boycott of Israeli academia (“Bagairt an bhaghcait”, Bileog, January 8th).
It seems ironic that the teachers in a country that has struggled for 90 years and largely failed to revive its native language should want to boycott the teachers in a country which has successfully revived its language in the same period.
At the turn of the last century, Hebrew was pretty much a dead language, with its few fluent speakers scattered among the Jewish diaspora and a few in Palestine. But within two generations it had been revived to become the lingua franca of everyday life in Israel.
I am sure the Israeli teachers cannot take all the credit for its revival, no more than the Irish teaching profession should be blamed for the demise of Irish, but I am equally sure that our teachers have a lot to learn from the Israeli experience. Sadly, it now seems that, whatever the secret sauce is, it will remain a mystery to us through our teachers’ boycott. Could our teachers’ union not have found a better way to lend support to the Palestinians? – Yours, etc,
PAUL MILNE,
Dublin Road,
Sutton, Dublin 13.