Scrap maths too if Irish is useless
February 14, 2011
I READ Derek Ross’s letter in yesterday’s paper (Letters, February 11) with regard to the FG policy on the Irish language with some dismay. I was glad to read that he accepted the benefits of learning another language can give but unfortunately this doesn’t apply to Irish. If such a letter had been written with regard to maths on the curriculum there would be uproar. Let me put it like this. For the benefit I get from maths on a daily basis, I should have stopped learning after sixth class (or rang a sé in my case). By then I knew my tables and had been introduced to the wonders of percentages. Instead I had to stick it out for another six years, by the end of which I had any amount of theorems and formulas in my head, but only for a while, and due to a lack of use they were soon forgotten. A shocking indictment of our system isn’t it?
Twelve years of maths but all I really knew were my tables and my percentages. Therefore, compulsory maths should be scrapped. Those that continue with maths, do so as “a hobby”. Or so Mr Ross’s theory goes. And so presumably does the FG theory go. Mr Ross and the FG theory can also be applied elsewhere to great effect. Can we also scrap funding for swimming, athletics, hockey and the GAA? Surely money would be better spent on professional sports like soccer and rugby where the participants will pick up skills “that will prove more beneficial to them than to join the dwindling ranks of those that” play a sport “that has essentially become little more than a hobby”? Somehow I can’t see Mr Ross (or FG) backing either of the above.
Marcus O Buachalla
Cill Mochuda, Co Ath Cliath
Irish Independent – Litireacha chuig an Eagarthóir
