No sooner has curriculum 2000 appeared, keeping information technology in modern foreign languages at arm’s - or e-mail - length, than the Internet gives children access to translation.

The modern language fraternity have known about this software since the early 1990s. They rejected it because it did not fit their pedaogical model.

At the political level the standards agenda has diverted intellectual effort away from a rigorous analysis of the educational consequences of such software.

This Nelsonian attitude to “inconvenient” aspects of ICT can only damage education and further alienate the Nintendo generation who take it for granted.

Michael Doyle

37 Bright Street

Skipton

North Yorkshire