- The Irish language is then considered a major unifying and consolidating factor in the Irish nation. As a consequence it became national policy to introduce Irish into the curriculum of all primary schools in Eire. Irish is, however, an example of a language being used in schools to promote the feeling of national identity even though the language is not native to the majority of the population.
- A more genuine mother-tongue education can be found in the teaching of Eskimo children in Alaska. Trifonovitch discovered (1976) that one import- ant by-product of the bilingual education programme in Alaska, which had introduced the tuition of Eskimo children in their mother tongue, was an increasing awareness of their cultural and ethnic identity. In contrast to this, the monolingual English education of Apache children in North America was leading to suicides among the children (Paulston, 1980) or a complete rejection of American culture (Liebe-Harkort, 1980) as their own ethnic identity was being negated.