I think that most agree that the way Irish is taught in school is a near abject failure.

The government spends more money on teaching Irish, on maintaining commissions to make sure that new housing developments use only Irish names, etc., than they do on just about any other cultural activity. In fact, more money is spent teaching Irish than is spent on teaching all other European languages, combined.

One of the major problems that faces Irish teachers is that Irish lacks a standard of pronunciation. For wholly political reasons no one has had the balls to sit down and come up with a standard pronunciation for even the simplest words. When I was doing my 'fresher in Irish at Gael Linn our two instructors nearly came to blows over the difference in Donegal Irish and Kerry Irish of the pronunciation of "fuinneoig" (window).

As far as the problem of illiteracy is concerned, this is still a problem in Ireland, and has little or nothing to do with the Irish language, either then or now. The causes are deeply rooted in both politics and religion (as well as other socio-economic issues) and are really well beyond the scope of discussion on what is, after all, a kilt forum.