Madam, - The Senate of the NUI recently agreed to a request from UCD to eliminate the requirement for entrants into its undergraduate science programmes to have a foreign language to Leaving Certificate level.
It previously removed that requirement from UCD's engineering programmes, following a decision by NUI Maynooth not to require a foreign language for its engineering courses. DCU, TCD and the University of Limerick have never had the "third language" requirement (English, Irish, plus another language) for their science courses. There are indications that other universities may follow the same path.
The rush by Irish universities to eliminate the language requirement for students entering science, engineering and related programmes is regrettable. It will have the effect of making the learning of languages less attractive to second-level students and will encourage students (and their parents and teachers) to confine language learning to English and Irish.
For practical purposes, this will mean increased English monolingualism in the population at large.
Learning a foreign language at school leads to enhanced global awareness, a better appreciation of cultural diversity and the benefit of being able to converse to at least a minimal level of competence with our neighbours in Europe and beyond.
In a context where more than half the world's population regularly uses more than one language, and where many of the people from Eastern Europe and elsewhere who have taken up residence in Ireland think nothing of being able to speak two or three languages, taking a measure such as this, which will have the effect of restraining young people from acquiring a foreign language, is a retrograde step.
Irish second-level students tend to be good all-rounders. Bright students who are capable of undertaking the study of science or engineering at third level are well able to achieve a good result at the Leaving Certificate in their foreign language (most often, French). Encouraging them to decide between a "science route" and a "languages route" at the start of their Leaving Cert programme, as this move is likely to do, will adversely affect their education generally.
By all means, let us encourage more school-leavers to study science at university; but this is not the way to do it. - Yours, etc,
Prof BILL RICHARDSON, Department of Spanish, NUI Galway.