When French was introduced into junior schools in the late Sixties it failed to take off because there were not enough language teachers to go around.

They were needed at secondary level.

While some students arrived at secondary school with the basics of French, most had no knowledge of it all.

Teachers were therefore obliged to start pupils off from the beginning, which meant a number of students had to mark time until others caught up.

What is the purpose of making everybody learn a second language? The cultural argument could just as well apply to Latin or Greek.

It is now widely admitted that English is more and more internationally reinforced by the increasingly global nature of the internet.

Perhaps it was unfortunate that Esperanto was not formally adopted by the European Union but meanwhile, from our very privileged position, we can but observe the unstoppable spread of English world wide.

-RG Jenkins, Hove