Perhaps the fact that the discussion has been so disappointing is accounted for by the fact that, as Deputy MacDermot pointed out, he was rather taken at a disadvantage. I must say that I have not been taken at a disadvantage because the arguments that I have heard from Deputy MacDermot this evening are simply a rehash of arguments we have read in the newspapers for the past year or two. If these arguments were the arguments of persons with qualifications to speak on the subject of modern language teaching, or with experience of the work that is being done in our secondary schools at present, or with anything to show that they themselves were qualified to deal with this question of teaching through the medium of Irish, one would concede that the matter merited consideration.
But I submit to the House that no evidence whatever has been produced to show that there is any foundation for the statements that have been made—very foolish statements calculated to create a good deal of damage to the Irish language movement, which is in urgent need of all the aid it can get. Why these particular gentlemen, who tell us they are interested in Irish, come out to attack one aspect of the Government's policy, not alone of this Government but of the last Government, which has been notably successful, that is teaching through Irish in the secondary schools, is quite beyond me to understand. In this country we have the reputation of being rather violent critics and when we take a dislike to a policy, or when we feel it is not right, we sometimes go beyond what is fair and reasonable. But I do not think that any public matter of importance has been treated in the same haphazard fashion or subjected to the same ignorant or unfounded criticism; not even a proper understanding of the position in our schools at present has been evinced by some of these critics in the daily newspapers.
Now the Deputy started off by telling us that he hates shams, that he hates pretentiousness, and that what we want is clear thinking. There is no want of clear thinking in regard to the Government's policy about Irish either now or at any time during the past ten years. We are not out to teach Irish as a literary subject in the schools; we are out to make Irish the living, spoken language of this country; and the sooner these people who criticise methods, because they have a kind of romantic affection for old Irish, a romantic affection for Irish as a literary or academic subject, but no appreciation apparently of the tremendous difficulties that face us in bringing this language, which has not been in general use for a couple of hundred of years, up to the necessary standard to enable us to do all our work, all our business, and carry on our affairs through it, realise that the better.
Why is it this question is tackled as if Irish were merely a literary and academic subject, as if it were merely a question of carrying on the study of old Irish or of the old Irish Sagas? The question is one of reviving the Irish language as a spoken language, and we are not alone in our belief that the proper place to begin with the revival of the Irish language as a spoken language is in our schools. The Commission on Welsh education which sat in 1929 reported also that in their view the key to the whole position for the maintenance of the Welsh language was in the elementary schools, and whether we completely agree or not with those who put the present programme into operation, we have to admit that it is reasonable and it is common sense to suggest and to carry out a policy based upon the plan of teaching the children first to have a good fluent knowledge of Irish. That is what we are trying to do in our infant schools.
It has been suggested that subjects are being taught through Irish to infants. That is not so. The sole object is to teach infants the Irish language, and anything in the way of a subject that is being taught is being taught purely as in the case of elementary ideas of number or location, because it is necessary in language training. The earlier we get our children to study the language, the more effective, in my opinion, and the more useful it will be to them, and the more fluent they will become. Those who have been in a position to give special training to their own children in languages will agree that the earlier a child is taught, the better, the more quickly, and the more easily he or she will absorb the language. The policy has been very successful in spite of the fact that we have a large number of teachers who not alone are not native speakers of Irish, but who are actually, under the arrangements that were brought into operation in 1922, where they are over a certain age, exempted from the necessity of getting qualifications in Irish, let alone teaching through Irish. Yet, still we have a constant campaign in the newspapers, carried into this House to-day, on the entirely misleading and wrongful assumption that somebody is forcing teachers, who are quite incapable of teaching through Irish, or even of teaching Irish, because they have not sufficient knowledge of it, to do something impossible.
Deputy MacDermot almost repeated here the ridiculous misrepresentation that a professor of the National University used in public outside— encouraging teachers whose Irish is far from perfect to teach subjects in Irish to pupils whose Irish is worse. I have stated to-day again in reply to Deputy MacDermot, that where teachers have not the qualifications to teach through Irish they are not asked to teach through Irish; that even in the infant schools they are not asked to teach through Irish where it is clear that they have not the requisite qualifications. If that were not sufficient, I have two circulars here which I need not worry the House to read except to clarify the position, one of them issued in 1931 and the other, at my request, quite recently in 1936, both calling attention to the fact that before a teacher undertakes to give instruction in Irish he should be satisfied, and the inspectors of the Department of Education should be satisfied, that he is capable of teaching through that medium.
The first circular states: "Where a teacher is competent to teach through Irish and where the children can assimilate the instruction so given, the teacher should endeavour to extend the use of Irish as a medium of instruction as far as possible. When these conditions do not exist, such teaching through Irish is not obligatory." In the recent circular we stated: "With regard to the teaching of Irish, there is reason to think that more time is being given to reading and writing than the pupils' progress in speaking the language warrants. The Department wishes to point out that the main purpose of the teaching, particularly in the lower standards, is to secure that the pupils speak the language freely and fluently. In regard to the question of teaching through the medium of Irish, it is considered necessary to draw inspectors' attention to the circular of July, 1931, dealing with this question and particularly to the warning it contains against using Irish as a teaching medium in schools or classes where the conditions set out in the circular as necessary for the success of such teaching are not present."
It would be absolutely impracticable for us to staff our schools completely with native-speaking teachers. We are endeavouring to get a very large percentage of native-speaking teachers. I wonder is it demanded, with regard to other subjects, either in the ordinary or in the secondary schools, that the teachers of languages should be specialists. Deputy MacDermot, in my opinion, insulted the Irish secondary teachers here this evening in a most unjustifiable way. I say that if the Irish revival ever succeeds it is the secondary schools in the Irish Free State, who have been teaching through Irish, are primarily responsible and to them the credit is due. I think it is a sorry state of affairs that in the chief Assembly of the country those teachers, who have been shouldering the burden of the Irish language, while others have been screaming in the newspapers and doing nothing whatever about Irish, should be attacked in this way, and told that their qualifications and their standard of culture are not as good as those of other teachers. If their standard of culture is not as good as the standard of others, then I say it must be the standard of the university from which the critics of the teaching of Irish have come is wrong, and that these gentlemen in the university should look to their own position.
The teaching of Irish has been successful in our secondary schools, because a very large number of them—I think over 202 out of 300—have accepted the principle that teaching through Irish is right and has proved sound educationally. Nobody has forced them to do it. Nobody has dragooned them into doing it. True enough, they have been encouraged by the Department who adopt that policy, but I challenge here now any case where any pressure was brought to bear on a secondary school manager to adopt this policy. The secondary schools are under private control. They can have Irish or not, as they wish. Certainly, as long as I am Minister for Education, I will see—and I have seen—that a school that refuses to put Irish on its programme as an ordinary subject will not get a Government grant. We have not compelled secondary schools, nor would we be in a position to do so if we tried, to teach through Irish. The imputation is that teachers teaching Irish, at least some of them, in these schools are not capable of doing so; first and foremost, that the secondary schools are playing fast and loose, are not acting up to the right standard of conduct and honour, but are drawing money from the Government for doing certain work which they are not doing, and that, in addition, they are doing damage to education in this country by permitting people to teach through the Irish they know—because if people in the university know it, then the headmasters in the schools ought to know it—who apparently are not capable because they have not the same cultural attainments as the teachers of other languages.
I would like a single title of proof to show that the teachers of Irish are not as good as regards academic qualifications and general culture as teachers of Greek, Latin, German and French. Of all the teachers on the register 50 per cent. possess university degrees of some kind, and 21 per cent. possess honours degrees. Of the teachers who qualified last year for teaching through Irish 65 per cent. possess university degrees of some kind and 37 per cent. possess honours degrees, all I suppose from the National University. Yet we are told that these people have not proper cultural standards to do this work. I say God help us if we were depending for the revival of the Irish language on scholars who seldom seem to produce a work, and who if spoken to in the language in which they profess to be specialists are unable to carry on a conversation in it. You might as well try to build up a country's foreign trade on a mathematical inflection as to talk of the recovery of the national language through lexicography and grammar. No doubt these things are very important, but it is an extraordinary thing that it is only now, when the secondary schools are sending to the universities every year large numbers of students who have done their entire secondary school course through Irish, and who naturally expect that the universities should be able to provide the same facilities, that we hear this talk of scholarship. When I became Minister for Education I told a professor in the National University that if he put any proposals before me by which the graduates of the National University could undertake original research work I would recommend it to the Government. Nothing came of it. Surely if there are questions of scholarship it is the university authorities in the first instance are concerned. It is the universities should keep up the standard of scholarship and pure research in this country. It is not for the Government to approach the universities, although they are quite prepared to do so. I have given an example. If the universities at any time come to us about aid for research and pure scholarship I am sure the Government will consider the matter very carefully.
With regard to the secondary schools, there is a conflict of opinion between those like myself, the two Governments we have had in the Free State, and the vast majority of Deputies who stand for the policy of restoring Irish and making it a living language in ordinary use, and another body of opinion tha, regards Irish as an academic subject, one for which they have a romantic affection, and would like to keep in touch. They have an altogether different conception of the problem from what we have, and when they tell us that we have not clear ideas we realise that it is they who are not clear. We have the feeling when we educate through the medium of Irish, and on other aspects of the educational policy regarding Irish, that there is a lack of conviction behind them, which apparently arises from the fact that they cannot understand the policy—having no sympathy with it—of making Irish a living language in the ordinary sense. Had there been a charge made against the Government in this debate of failure to take adequate steps to ensure the success of the Irish revival in other directions, I would have listened to it almost with pleasure, but I wonder what is wrong with this country and what is wrong with our people, when the only interest that seems to be taken by the public—by those like Deputy MacDermot who profess to speak for culture and enlightenment and so on—when the only thing they can say about the Irish language revival is that it is altogether mistaken, that it is, as the Deputy said, "a vicious plan." They would have us go back to the position where Irish would be a subject in the school programme. We are not going back to that position. There may be things in the present position with which we are not satisfied. We are in a transition stage. We are making allowance for the fact that this language has not been used, for purposes for which it is now sought to utilise it, for a couple of hundred years.
We have the position that we have only a very small territory of native Irish speakers in this country. The position is not, as Deputy MacDermot would have us believe, that the professions and the civil servants are being compelled to learn Irish. Irish is indeed compulsory for the civil servants who are now entering, but in regard to the professions nothing could be further from the truth than the suggestion that they are being forced to learn Irish. In some of their entrance examinations they may have to do a small amount of Irish. But what is that?
The fact is that we have no complaints from the poor people of this country, the people who send their children to those national schools where Dublin Irish is spoken. Why, if Deputy MacDermot spoke English in some of those schools they would hardly understand him. Apparently he is not acquainted with the English that is spoken in some parts of Dublin, or if he were down in Galway he would find there still an Elizabethan accent. The Deputy would not be at all satisfied with the kind of English we have in this country, and why should he, when it is not English at all, but half Irish? I was going to say that it is extremely significant that we have no complaints from the poor people who are subscribing money to try to get their children down to the Gaeltacht; who have to buy a double supply of books, books in Irish as well as in English, at a high cost, and to whom is being preached every day by the critics of Irish this doctrine that Irish is a terrible mistake, a waste of time.
Their children, according to Deputy Anthony, are going to grow up illiterate. Those poor people have no fault to find. They are prepared to fall in with the national policy. Their instincts tell them that it is right that Ireland, an old Mother Country, should have a language and a culture of her own. They see in that language not merely a vehicle of speech but the depository of our national aspirations and traditions. Everything that was bound up with the lives of our people for thousands of years is in that language. It is not merely the words of the language, the vocabulary, that we have in mind; it is everything that is connoted by the language that we have in mind when we say that we want to revive it. But the intelligentsia in the National University would like, perhaps, to keep a certain distance between themselves and this Dublin Irish or even the Irish of Connemara. Perhaps there is at the back of their minds the idea that this language of peasants and fishermen is not good enough for them. A language in which, according to Eugene O'Curry, up to the year 1600 every Irish priest and scholar was trained, in which every Irish priest and scholar got his full education, is not good enough for those gentlemen, and cannot be used for modern purposes.
We are keen, also, a Chinn Comhairle, on Irish in the secondary schools, because it is from the secondary schools that our educated classes of the future will come—our professional classes. Although nothing much is being done at present to make those classes Gaelic speaking after they leave the schools, nevertheless I think those who are really interested in the Irish revival must appreciate that it is true to say that the revival of Irish as a medium of intercourse between educated persons depends upon the continuation and extension of instruction through Irish in the secondary schools. It is not because we learned English as a subject at school that we have become fluent speakers of English, able to talk on a great variety of matters; it is because our whole schooling was conducted through the medium of the English language. We believe that the instruction through the medium of Irish is good educationally and is good nationally. We believe also that it gives the Irish language a prestige and a position in the eyes of the pupils that it can never have while it is taught as an ordinary subject. When the pupils see that Irish can be used for the ordinary business of life, the ordinary work of the school, when they see that history and geography and such subjects can be taught and discussed through its medium, they realise that Irish is a very different thing indeed from Irish as it was taught to us older people when we were at school.
In any event, we have, by some means or other, to bring back the Irish language to ordinary use. The pity of it is that while so little is being done in other directions, the schools and the teachers—who are bearing the whole burden of this tremendous work, the like of which, I suppose, is not being done in any other country—are to be subjected apparently to this constant criticism. If we compare those secondary schools, their results and the work that is being done in them, with the work that was being done there before the task of restoring Irish was put upon them, I think I can venture to say that we will find there has been an enormous improvement, an enormous raising in the standard of education in those schools. Similarly, if we compare the schools in which work is being done through Irish, either wholly or partially, with the schools in which it is not, I think we need have no fears but that the schools where Irish is being used as a medium of instruction will bear favourable comparison with the others.
Deputy Anthony referred to the problem of the parents helping the child. That problem affects other subjects as well as Irish. A great many teachers would prefer that parents should avoid assisting the children, even when they think they are able to do so. As you, a Chinn Comhairle, and I know, having had some experience of the matter, it is not by any means important to the pupils' work that the parents should have a hand in it. Even in the case of mathematics—where the parent might think that he, as a child, was far in advance of what his son or daughter is learning at the present time at the same age—when the parent tries to help it is not always a success, because the methods may have changed, and the parent may not alone be wasting time but actually teaching the child wrong methods altogether, methods that have been dropped. The same is obviously true in regard to Irish. Are we to take up the position with regard to Irish that we are to wait until the parents know Irish? How is that going to happen? Apparently, the most we can hope for in the present generation is that the pupils now attending school, when they grow up, will at least have a knowledge of Irish sufficient to instruct their children, and perhaps to have Irish spoken at home.
In the same way in regard to teaching through Irish, are we simply to make no effort to teach through Irish? Are those critics so much against the principle of teaching through Irish that they would have no teaching through its medium? If they concede that there must be some teaching through Irish, having regard to the fact that it is the intention to use Irish for the ordinary business of life when the pupils leave school, then it is only a question of degree. We may be going too rapidly, or we may be going too slowly, but I have given the House a sufficient indication from the official circulars—and I could quote further from the report of the National Programme Conference of 1926—to show that, while the aim has been to make Irish the language of the schools, care has been taken to point out the dangers of going too fast; care has been taken to warn teachers against undertaking tasks which they are unable to carry out.
