I beg to move the motion standing in my name: "That the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration." The Minister suggested that I was unfair to the secondary schools as to the standard attained in mathematics in these schools. I do not think anyone could read the slightest suggestion of that into what I stated here on the other day when the discussion was on. I suggested that perhaps what was bringing about the reduction of the ministerial standard of mathematics in the secondary schools was the inferior position which mathematics had in the higher classes of the primary schools. I can only take it from the statement of the Minister and from the document which has been circulated to the managers and to the representatives of the school teachers that this is a proposal which is being urged on the schools by the Department. The changes in the secondary school programme were first referred to in the Department's report for the year 1934-35, which states at page 56:—
"The Department has had under consideration for some time the question of the revision of the secondary schools programme with a view to giving schools greater freedom in their choice of subjects, and for the purpose of simplifying the rules generally. In this connection, certain proposals for the amendment of the programme were submitted by the Department in December, 1935, to the various associations of managers and teachers, and they were invited to give their views thereon."
In the report for the following year, 1935-36, reference was made to the fact that this communication had been made in December, 1935, to the Association of Managers and Teachers, and that certain proposals had been made, and it indicated what the proposals were. Part of the proposal was that in regard to mathematics it was to be a compulsory subject for the approved course for recognised junior pupils as far as boys were concerned, and that no subject should be compulsory for the intermediate certificate examination except Irish, that is, that mathematics would not continue to be compulsory: that mathematics would not be a compulsory subject for examination in secondary schools at all, particularly that the compulsory position which it held in the intermediate certificate would be dropped. Now we find that a proposal is made that for the year 1939-40 the matters which are indicated as having been under discussion at that particular time are going to be put into force. The 1935-36 report says at page 63:—
"All the associations submitted replies, and the Department is grateful to them for the care which they gave to the examination of the proposals, and for their criticisms and suggestions. There was considerable divergence of opinion regarding the proposals. Almost all of them were approved, sometimes with qualifications, by one or more of the associations, but none of them received the unqualified approval of all the bodies. The nearest approach to general agreement was in regard to the proposal to shorten the intermediate certificate course in history."
At any rate, according to the report for the year 1935-36, there was divergence of opinion, and now in the spring of 1939 we get circulated to the managers and to the teachers a draft statement, showing that it is proposed to make drastic revisions of the secondary school programme as from the beginning of the school year 1939-40. We find ourselves faced with this position, that no longer in the secondary schools need mathematics be a compulsory subject of examination. The Minister will remember that one of the proposals which were put before the managers and the teachers in 1935 was the proposal that there should be an additional public examination for students at the end of the second year of the intermediate course. Now, the Minister is surely aware of the reasons which prompted the Department to make that suggestion to the schools.
At any rate, it is common knowledge to anybody who has anything to do with secondary school students, or in fact with secondary school teachers, that the year immediately after the intermediate year—when the students are not faced with any public examination at the end of the session—is almost a blank year. There is no concentration on any kind of work, and there is definite relaxation of the discipline of study. It would be interesting to have, on the one hand, the reasons why that proposal was made by the Department of Education, and it would be interesting to have on the other hand what objection was put up to it either by the lay teachers or the Head Masters' Association. The whole history of the position of mathematics in the country must drive it home to the Minister that, with the position in which mathematics is in the primary schools, and the removal of the compulsory examination in the intermediate certificate, you are going to have a weakening of mathematics as you go higher up. I am quite prepared to accept the reports of the Department on the position with regard to mathematics in the secondary schools. In the report for 1934-35 it is stated that:
"Good mathematical work is done in the boys' school, and there is an increase in the number of pupils from these schools taking the honours course in the Leaving Certificate. There is little change in the girls' schools as to the manner of teaching or the amount of work done. In many of them they follow the full course in class and take the elementary course in the examination."
That is practically the last detailed report on the position of mathematics in the secondary schools in any of the Departmental reports. The detailed report is blank as regards 1935-36, and it is practically blank as regards 1936-37. The only thing the report says there with regard to mathematics in the secondary schools is that
"there is little if anything now to be said about teaching in history, geography, mathematics, and in Irish and commerce."
But what strikes me about the proposal, and what strikes me about the Minister's reply to it, is the thing which struck me first.
Who are the people who are reviewing serious changes in the secondary education programme? In dealing with the question of Irish the Minister to-day stated that be expressed his gratitude to the various people who had sat on the primary and whatever secondary programme conference there was dealing with the changes in the primary and the secondary school programmes in the early days of the State. We all know what a large body was set up to review the primary programme and to bring about changes in it. We are conscious of the fact that you cannot divorce the primary system or the secondary system of education— and the objectives before either one or the other—from one another in considering what we are spending money on education in the State for at all. They dovetail into one another. The success or otherwise of secondary education is going to depend on the success or otherwise of primary education, and something that comes afterwards, whether it is university education, professional education, industry or commerce, or some other thing, is going to depend on the excellence or otherwise of our secondary education.
Why have we not had, when serious changes are being brought about in the secondary education programme, a general education conference set up to deal with it? Who are the masters, and who are the heads of the Teachers' Association that are dealing with the Minister in this matter? Are we, in fact being governed, and is our educational policy being directed, say, from some unnumbered room in the Department of Education? In a country like this, which boasts that it is democratic, and boasts that it has a tradition in education—a country where we are entirely looking after our own affairs, where the legislature is looking after the laws, and where we are spending a considerable amount of money on education, where there is a big fabric of educational machinery in the country—we ought to know who our educational leaders are and who are our guides and our experts as regards the laying down of our educational policy and as regards the carrying out of that policy. There is not a single person in the House here in a position to say who our educational leaders are. There is one person who stands out, to my mind—partly because of the position he holds, and partly because I had experience of him in dealing with his outlook on education at the Primary Education Conference some years ago. I refer to the Professor of the Theory and Practice of Education in University College, Dublin. I recalled to the House, when dealing with his outlook on education generally, and particularly education as applied to the primary schools, that the Rev. Dr. Corcoran said:—
"I would almost say that next to Irish one should rely upon mathematical quality and endeavour to promote it."
And he indicated why, briefly. He said:
"We cannot give the true technical system, using modern methods of production, without a considerable addition to mathematical power. The countries that have lowered mathematics—and I may tell you that they are below ours, the American schools distinctly below ours, and English and French schools extremely low—are the countries left behind in the technical production race."
So he emphasised, bearing on the future work of the nation, the necessity of a considerable addition to our mathematical power, and he went back to show that it was essentially a tradition of our people, saying:
"The intellectual quality of the average farm labourer and the small farmer from 1775 to 1850 was ahead of the world, and in consequence they were able to take concerted action of a public character that no other people in the world at the time were even able to think of."
Now, I ask, was the professor of education in University College, Dublin, consulted in any way with regard to the proposals for changing the secondary course? Has the professor of education in University College expressed in any way his opinion for or against the dropping of the compulsory examination for boys in the intermediate certificate, or the leaving of girls entirely free from sitting down in any mathematical class once they enter a secondary school? I do not think that in any democratic country the people would be satisfied to accept, as the educational lights, members of the Department of Education alone. The real people who have experience of education, as the Minister would rather seem to have implied, are the people who are stuck out in the thick of the actual practical work. The Minister has not gone very far to convince the House with regard to the proposal to do away with mathematics as a compulsory subject for boys in the inter-termediate certificate examination, nor has he gone any distance to persuade us that that reform is a reform that is urged or approved by either the lay teachers or the head masters in the country. I think that a proposal that goes so flagrantly against what does appear to be our national tradition, which goes so flagrantly against what does appear to be a very deep-rooted conviction on the part of the professor of education in University College, Dublin, is not one that ought to be merely decided either by departmental officials or by heads of schools.
There have been occasions in the past upon which outsiders associated with officials and teachers and head masters were brought together to consider a programme, and I would urge very strongly that before mathematics is touched in this radical way, a conference should be set up that would consist of more than officials and more than teachers. The Minister must be aware that it is a very serious step to take, and he cannot be without some suspicion that whatever people are urging this—and urging it behind closed doors, because there has not been the slightest scrap of public discussion on the matter—are being impelled by the mathematical quality of the children who are reaching them from the primary schools. Now, there is no suggestion that any children are not capable of doing the mathematics that are required in the primary school programme up to, say, the sixth standard, but it is obvious, from the reports that are being made annually to the Minister, that there is something definitely wrong in the higher classes of the primary schools, and that before any radical change is brought about in the position of mathematics in the secondary school programme, even with regard to girls, there should be a more critical and systematic examination of what is happening in the primary schools than, apparently, has taken place. I gave an extract, I think, from the 1936-37 Report of the Department on the position of mathematics in the primary schools. Here is an extract from the 1935-36 Report:—
"Many of the inspectors are complaining about the teaching of arithmetic. The notes to teachers are not studied in the lower classes, large numbers being handled before small can be handled with clearness and intelligence. The children do not understand the rules, and they are unable to apply them. Sufficient attention is not paid to oral work, to the explaining of principles, and to the sequence of the work. Algebra and Euclid are only taught in the big boys' schools."
Before the Minister lies down, even under pressure coming from the secondary schools—and I do not believe pressure is coming from that direction —he should more systematically examine what is the position in the primary schools and see what remedies can, and ought to be, applied there. We have noticed appearing in some of the papers recently a statement to the effect that the Government is going to establish, in Dublin, as institute "for the encouragement of mathematical research. The proposed institute will not compete with either of the universities. It will cater only for the most advanced students, providing them with opportunities of research under the best guidance." Planning to set up a mathematical institute in this country at a time when our secondary education course is going to be that a girl need never sit down in a mathematics class or need never pass a mathematics examination, and that a boy need never pass an examination in any mathematical subject in a secondary course—to start planning a mathematical institute when we are doing that in our secondary education course seems to me like trying to stick some artificial flower on the top of an old stalk that has grown and grown, and lost every scrap of foliage that was ever on it. The idea of feeling that the mathematical knowledge of our people means nothing to our technical and industrial progress in future, and that at the same time we should lie down under the position in connection with our higher schools and primary schools, in which mathematics as a compulsory subject for any thorough secondary course are wiped out, and then start titivating our prestige and pride by establishing an institute for mathematical research under the most brilliant guidance, seems to me a piece of proud nonsense that I could not associate with a self-governing Ireland. What is going to happen under this precious scheme is that our universities, as far as mathematics are concerned, are going to become our secondary schools. We are going to have a complete frittering away of teaching power in our secondary schools, a secondary school standard of mathematics in our universities, and then a great institute.
I referred previously to Father Corcoran's historical reference to the point that the standard of mathematics was reduced from 1900 in the national school, that from 1900 to 1920 the lowering of the standard of the course lowered the teaching capacity of the teachers. He was urging at that particular time that the teaching capacity for mathematics in the country should be restored. He was urging that, in order to do that, the summer courses that used to be planned for Irish, had reached the limit at which they might be expected to do useful work at that time for Irish, that they should be turned over to mathematics and that a special summer course should be established to restore to our teachers the teaching power in regard to mathematics that teachers in this country formerly possessed. We have heard nothing from the Minister but a kind of vague statement that this programme is going ahead. If this programme goes ahead, I think the Minister for one is failing in his public duty and that headmasters and teachers are running away from the serious responsibility that is theirs, a responsibility to the country as a whole. There are reactions that will inevitably follow as a result of this but they are small when compared with the reactions that the proposal as a whole is going to have in the general mentality and character of the product of our secondary schools in future.
