plain to see; either the Welsh language should adapt itself to its modern environment, or it must perish.
These observations are based on facts and are consistent with the educational principles underlying language teaching under modern conditions: those principles would apply in any bilingual country. Their significance for the maintenance and transmission of the language and culture of Wales in the Secondary schools of that country has now to be considered.
Conditions in the various types of secondary school now emerging will differ considerably, and the curricula will differ similarly. Some types will continue to present all or nearly all, of their pupils for public examinations as hitherto; others, less tied to such external requirements, should be free to experiment more boldly.
In the secondary modern school no difficulty should be experienced in making provision in the Welsh-speaking or bilingual areas for every pupil to study Welsh for the whole of his time either as a first or as a second language. In the anglicised areas of Wales there is no reason why at the end of the school course, a pupil from a non-Welsh- speaking home should not be able to understand a fair amount of spoken Welsh, to read simple Welsh books and Welsh periodicals with understanding and enjoyment, and to speak Welsh within narrow limits. It may be that for a time the emphasis should be on understanding spoken and written Welsh, rather than on speaking and writing Welsh. In this way the pupil will be equipped with a means of maintaining contact with the language at adult level, whereas too great a concentration on speaking will keep the general level of linguistic equipment too low to be of use to the pupil after leaving school.
The grammar schools present a different problem since Welsh has to be considered not only in relation to English but to other modern languages and to Latin and Greek.
So far as the teaching of language is concerned, the first duty of the secondary no less than of the primary school is to develop the child's knowledge and use of his mother tongue and of its literature. This means that every pupil whose mother tongue is Welsh should be taught Welsh throughout the whole period of his general course; just as a pupil whose mother tongue is English should be taught English for the same period. Nothing less than this can be regarded as satisfactory and the place of other languages should be considered only on this basis.
Very few non-Welsh-speaking pupils study Welsh as their second language, and there are schools in the anglicised areas where no Welsh is taken. But these schools no less than the others are schools in Wales, though this is sometimes forgotten, and they should consider whether, in advising their pupils in the choice of a second language, that language should not appropriately be Welsh. In so doing they would incidentally render a great service to the nation by creating a feeling of community between young people in all parts of Wales.
