I want to make it quite clear that I accept the Taoiseach's viewpoint as to what he thinks ought to be done in relation to compulsory Irish, and I am quite satisfied that if that were done everything would be in order. At the same time, I do not believe—and it is the opinion of many people—that that is what the Department is actually doing. I am satisfied that you could not have a greater indictment of the Department of Education than what was indicated by the Taoiseach last night. It is not that he attacked or criticised it on any particular point, but he gave us his own theories on various aspects of education, and I believe that his theories do not coincide to any great extent with those of the Department. I will give one example, although perhaps it is not a matter that the Department would be very much concerned about. The Taoiseach said, and I think a number of people may not agree with him, though perhaps I do, that if he had his way children would not be sent to school until they were seven years of age.
Committee on Finance. - Vote 45—Office of the Minister for Education (Resumed).
For formal teaching.
A number of people will not agree with that, but I do. In towns and cities there are various reasons— housing accommodation, for example— why people find it necessary to send their children to school at an early age. They find it more convenient to have the children at school, where they will be looked after. I do not see any advantage in sending tiny toddlers out to school at three and four years of age, and I object to that in the country districts particularly.
I am quite satisfied that if middle-class parents had any interest in their children and were able to provide them with a home where they could remain until they were at least seven years of age, it would be much better for the children. They could then be sent to school at seven, and they would be able to read. I am aware of one case where children, boys and girls, were not sent to a national school until the time came for them to make their first Holy Communion. When these children were sent to the school they were able to read. If they had been sent to the national school at three or four years of age, I do not believe they would be any more advanced at the age of seven.
The Taoiseach also made reference to examinations in the secondary schools. He said he thought it necessary to have an examination at a stage earlier than the leaving certificate examination, and I entirely agree. I think we could revert with great advantage to the system that obtained when most of us were at school. At that time you went to the secondary school at 13 and remained there until you matriculated and you had an opportunity of doing a public examination every year. When I attended a secondary school the pupils had a year in the preparatory section, then went to the junior grade and, if you were an average student, you did a public examination, the junior pass examination. In the following year you did the junior honours examination. Then there was the middle-grade examination and later the senior-grade examination.
What happens now is that children go at 13 from the preparatory school in the city, or the national school in the country, wait for a couple of years to do the intermediate examination, and then a couple of years elapse before they do the leaving certificate examination. There is a danger in that procedure. There may be a tendency to play up the brilliant pupils, but it takes two or three years to find out the brilliant pupils. There is then this horrible system of having a list published in the columns of the newspapers representing the results in various schools throughout the country. Sometimes it is published as if it were a racing result, indicating the pupils who passed with honours and those who merely passed. The main object of the school would seem to be to pick out the brilliant pupils who will give that school the nearest possible chance of securing 100 per cent. results in the examination.
There is this danger, and anybody who has been to a secondary school will realise it, that in every school you will have about 10 per cent. of brilliant pupils, 60 per cent. of fairly average students and 20 or 30 per cent of duds. These pupils are regarded as duds, not because of any lack of intelligence, but they are very often duds by inclination or through laziness. In my time there was a class known as the fourth junior grade and, if you were there, you were expected to remain there until you were actually pushed out of it. The pupil might as well be left there for all the good he would do afterwards.
I think it would be an excellent thing for the schools if there was a public examination every year. The old system gave us that opportunity. I am glad to see that something is being done about combining matriculation and the leaving certificate examination; there was no advantage in having any difference between the two courses. From the point of view of the leaving certificate examination, some people are inclined to think that students in the secondary schools are pushed slightly too far at a particular age, and it is considered that the examination corresponds somewhat to the first year arts examination in the university. It might mean that in order to pass that examination the brilliant students would be picked out and pushed ahead, while the rest would fall by the wayside and there would be little chance for the duds. If you have very high tests of that type, there will be little chance for the boy or girl who has to be helped along. One of the things that would give the best opportunity of finding out whether that particular child is improving or not is a yearly examination.
I do not agree with people who say that school term examinations are a very great test. There is one great difference, and that is that when you are sitting for a public examination you do not know who are setting the papers and what papers they will set. But any kind of a bright youngster doing a school term examination, if he is doing his work at all, will have a very good idea of what questions the particular professor will set; because there never yet was a professor teaching a particular subject who had not his own pet notions and questions. The bright boys always knew these and they were able to go into the examination with one certainty, that if there were ten questions on the paper there would be three of those questions amongst them, and as long as they could do these three they were all right. I think that happened in every school term examination ever held.
You might apply that even to university examination. I remember one term examination in University College, Dublin, where the subject might have been very far removed from the ordinary study of law as we know it now, but it was a certainty, at any rate, with the professor setting the papers, that we would get three questions in Brehon law. Everybody who listened to the lectures for the term knew those three questions, and if they were able to answer them there was not much danger of failing in the examination. The bright pupils will always be able to make up their minds beforehand what questions are likely to be asked at a term examination, and that is the reason I do not regard it as a test. Of course, I do not imagine that for a term examination you can think of anything better. Possibly the old system was a good one. Any of us who were taken from a national school generally got a year in the preparatory grade. I agree with Deputy Bennett when he said that in his time the boys and girls who left the national school and went into a secondary school had a high knowledge of mathematics, and that they were generally a standard higher than the children who left other preparatory schools that were not national schools, and who were of the same age. I do not agree with him, however, that the same thing is happening now. Without any undue reflection on Deputy Bennett, I may say that there was a great space of time between his entry into a secondary school and mine. I am satisfied that the secondary school boys who came up from national schools with me at that time had a much better knowledge of mathematics than the boys who came out from the city schools into that secondary school. But I also found that, as we went on, they were getting up to us in mathematics. We were learning French and Latin and doing some English literature, and we did not keep up the improvement in our mathematics, although we learned other subjects.
I am glad that when the Taoiseach was talking about the essentials in mathematics in national schools he said that as long as you can add, subtract, multiply and divide it is quite sufficient. Most people might not think that that is sufficient, but if I had to go back to school I would be delighted to see the stocks and shares knocked out of the curriculum. I could never understand what advantage it was to get one of those horrible questions about a tank of a certain cubic capacity into which water is pouring at a certain rate, and you were asked when it will be full, or about the two trains passing each other at certain speeds, one being a certain number of feet long and the other a certain number of feet long. I always felt, when these questions were put, like the man who looked at the giraffe in the zoo and said: "There is no such animal." There is no such problem in ordinary life, and I do not see any great advantage in them. Unless you are entering a section of the engineering profession or the Institute of Advanced Studies, where higher mathematics are necessary, for 99 per cent. of ordinary avocations, if you are able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide correctly, that is all that is necessary.
I have had a fair experience from dealing with the younger people in law offices, clerks, etc., and I really think the worst feature is the fact that they do not seem to know as much about the grammar of the English language as they should. They do not seem to know much about punctuation. If the Taoiseach or the Minister for Education took ten or twelve young girls or boys trained in shorthand and typewriting and dictated a normal business letter to them, he would find that the only punctuation mark recognised at present by the younger people is the full stop. Anyone who has had experience in business matters will know that that is so. What is happening to the people's writing I do not know. The older people are, the better hand they write. Formerly, at any rate in the country districts, people wrote a very good hand. People who would be regarded as illiterate in many ways wrote a very fine hand. I think they used to call it the old Civil Service hand. That is not in existence to-day. Possibly there are many reasons why commercial people do not write well. Now when the typewriter is used, it does not matter whether writing is legible or not. I am afraid, however, that the lack of knowledge of grammar is something that requires to be looked into. I quite agree that, if we are to carry on with the system which the Taoiseach outlined, we will lose in things like that.
I was surprised to hear what Deputy Hurley and Deputy Corish said. Deputy Hurley seemed to admit, in rather a side way, that there was something wrong with education. I think the words he used were that the new methods of education were the cause, and he said that these were the films, the radio, and the dance halls. I will leave out the dance halls, because children of school-going age are not allowed to go into dance halls. With regard to the films and the radio, he said they tended to contract the mind of a child. Ten years ago, in the early stages of the films and the radio, I might agree with him in that; I do not at all agree with him now.
I think that from the literary point of view or the artistic point of view, the cinema has advanced more in recent years than people would believe. You are getting innumerable films based on classical works of English literature. That was scarcely possible some years ago. That is the type of thing a person says without really thinking about it—that the films are anything like that.
Deputy Corish complained about singing and asked was singing compulsory. I think there is a reference in the Minister's statement to singing in which he says that it has clearly improved. Deputy Corish stated that the crooning they hear on the radio is having an effect on young singers; that they were crooning every song. I entirely disagree with that. That influence may have more effect in Wexford than in Cork. I say that there was never a period in which young singers had such an opportunity to bring themselves before the public owing to the competitions available for them. We had the competition held by John McCormack over the radio and that was not won by a crooner. There were some remarkably fine voices heard in that competition.
Did you hear John McCormack's remarks about crooning?
I did. I also noticed that the people who won the competition in the male and female sections were both from County Cork. The pernicious effect of crooning over the radio is not, so far as I know, felt in County Cork. It is easy to overrate evil influences like that. I think myself that, amongst the young people of the country, there is a pretty fair appreciation of good music, good literature, good drama and good art, and I think the reason for that is that they have a broader outlook on their own enjoyment, even from the educational point of view, than the older people. You have, for instance in many small towns in County Cork choral unions and dramatic societies. There is a very fine choral union in the town of Mallow. It is surely a splendid thing to have a good choral union or a good dramatic society in a small country town, so that, when all is said, I think we need not take the slightest notice of what comes over the radio. The people in the country have not many opportunities of hearing good instrumental music. Therefore, they have reason to appreciate what comes over the radio. I would be very sorry to see the very fine instrumental music that we hear from Central European stations stopped from coming over the radio. Our native music does not lend itself very well for instrumental purposes.
Deputy Mullen suggested that, when defence was taken out of the realm of politics, the question of compulsory Irish, or of Irish, at any rate, should also be taken out of the realm of politics, and that the plan for the future should be decided by 30 people. What he actually suggested was to get together 30 people who were outside of politics. I want to solemnly warn the Taoiseach that, whatever 30 people he may get, let him for goodness sake not get 30 who are outside of politics. Speaking for myself, I would be terrified to have anything to do with anyone in this country who said he was not a politician. That is the one thing to be avoided—the person who says he has no politics. Generally, he is the biggest rogue of the whole lot. Whatever chance one might have of arriving at a decision with one's biggest political opponents, one would have no chance whatever of coming to a decision with the fellow who is going to agree with everyone. Suppose we assume that the Taoiseach and Deputy Dillon set up a sub-committee of 30 people who are outside of politics, when they met Deputy Dillon they would agree with him, and when they met the Taoiseach they would agree with him, so that nothing would ever come out of their efforts. I think it would be much better that the Taoiseach and Deputy Dillon should try to hammer out some plan themselves, or if they feel there is no chance of their doing that, they should call in Deputy Corry and myself rather than have 30 people who say they have no politics. With regard to the vocational and technical schools, the Minister in his report makes a very true statement where he says:
"The main difficulty in this respect seems to be that the people look on vocational schools as a means for obtaining jobs for their children in towns and cities, rather than as a means of bettering life and work on the land...".
You have, I am afraid, in these schools a very large number of young people whose one object in life is to learn shorthand and typewriting in order to walk into an office job. You have an extraordinary position in small country towns in regard to office work of that sort. The supply of fairly skilled shorthand-typists and of typists must exceed the demand by three to one. If there is a vacancy in a local office for a typist, you have from 25 to 30 applicants. Very often you have applicants who are prepared to take the job for the experience to be gained through it. As a result of their training, these people are unfitted for any other type of occupation. The number of boys and girls who are being encouraged by their families to learn shorthand and typing, simply because they feel it may get them into a better social position in life, is out of all proportion in this country. I was informed to-day that there are some vocational committees in the country which have refused to put shorthand and typewriting on the list of subjects taught in their schools. I think that is a very good idea. The country will certainly be getting very little value from the money that is being spent on vocational and technical education if we are going to have so many of our young people drifting into employment of the kind I speak of.
The Minister, in his statement, indicates, in regard to rural science classes, that the problem there is not merely to supply the classes but to get boys to attend them. It is almost certain that if you have twenty young fellows coming to a vocational or a technical school their purpose is to attend the commercial classes and not the rural science classes. As long as the present trend remains, if classes in commercial subjects are provided, those boys will attend them. It might be a drastic thing to do but, in my view, these commercial subjects—the teaching of shorthand and typewriting—should not be provided in rural areas at all. I say that because their study takes the young people out of their natural environment. I know a convent school where commercial subjects are taught. They may keep a girl there for three years with the object of making her a shorthand-typist. In my opinion, it would be much better if those girls went back to their own homes when they were 14 years of age, and developed their lives in the ordinary normal way. Their work at home might not be as attractive as if they had a job as a shorthand-typist in some country town, but it would be of more value to the nation. There is one side of technical education that is quite good, and that deserves every praise. I refer to the woodworking and engineering classes, the holding of which is of the greatest advantage to young fellows who may be apprenticed to carpenters, to farmers' sons and to labourers' sons. It is amazing the very fine training they get from attendance at these classes. So far as the rural areas are concerned, I would scrap the commercial side of the education that is given in these vocational and technical schools.
I am afraid the Minister has fallen into the very same trap as Deputy Corish and Deputy Hurley because, in the course of his statement, he says:
"Apart from the fact that evening Irish classes suffer in a greater degree than those of any other subject, from the counter-attractions of the film, the radio, the dance and the whist-drive...."
That may be so with regard to the cities, but I do not think it is right so far as the county towns are concerned. I am speaking from my knowledge of the rural districts. Take any fairly large-sized town in which there is a technical school. The Irish classes are held on, say, five nights a week. The film, the radio and the whist-drive attractions in that town are not so overwhelmingly great as to prevent young people from going to the Irish classes. In a very small town, there is no cinema at all, in a fairly large-sized one there may be a picture showing on one or two nights a week, and maybe a dance on a Sunday night. What I am certain of is that none of these attractions keeps our young people from the Irish classes. In my opinion, it is entirely wrong to suggest that the radio is responsible for a lot of our educational troubles. I think that if people are not attending the evening Irish classes it is for the reason which the Minister gives later in his report, namely, that they do not feel they are going to get anything out of Irish. The Minister goes on to say that:
"While most of the other subjects studied in evening technical classes have a direct utilitarian value, there is no such incentive with regard to Irish."
That is the real trouble. They will attend the commercial classes and learn shorthand and typewriting because they expect to get some job out of a knowledge of these subjects. As I have said, it would be much better if, instead of studying these commercial subjects, the young people went back home and developed their lives in the ordinary normal way. They consider, however, that a knowledge of shorthand and typewriting will give them an easier way of making a living. Girls, as I have said, are prepared to take positions as shorthand-typists in small towns at a miserable wage rather than employment in the country where the work may not be as pleasant.
There is another subject that is always advanced here on the Department of Education Vote. Everybody seems to criticise the operation of the School Attendance Act. I do not agree for a moment that the operation of the School Attendance Act is in any way lax in the country districts. Deputy O'Rourke may say it is.
It is non-existent.
I will put it this way, that as long as the question of averages and the School Attendance Act are inextricably mixed together every teacher will say that the Act is not enforced. That is probably the real problem behind the School Attendance Act, that it is mixed up with the question of averages to a certain extent. They may be very lax in their duty in Roscommon. I speak only from my own knowledge, but, as far as I know, in West Kerry, South Limerick and North Cork the Act is being properly administered. I should like to know whether the people who talk about laxity in the operation of the Act have any conception at all of what they are talking about. Let us say there are 120 school days in a particular period. A Civic Guard comes along and gives evidence. A child attended for 105 days and was absent for 15. The justice asks for an explanation, and he is told that the child was sick or that the weather was bad. If a notice was not sent to the teacher, the parent is told that that should have been done. That is what the teachers object to, because generally at the first prosecution the parent does not understand that a notice should have been sent to the teacher when the child remained at home. Very often the teachers are not satisfied about the notice. I may put this to the people who think the Act is not being properly administered: Let us assume that you get a very wet week in the country, that there are children living on the side of a hill three miles away from the school, as very often happens, who are not too well clad to meet the rigours of that weather. Legally, the parent is bound to send notice to the teacher if the children do not attend school. If the parent does not do it for three or four days while the weather is very bad, and then sends the children to school, surely to the Lord it is no breach of the School Attendance Act if the Civic Guard comes along to inquire why the children were not sent to school, and the father says: "Do you not remember the three or four terrible days we got last week? How could I send them to school?" I cannot see where the laxity is at all. The speeches I heard in the House seem to suggest that there must be some districts where there are no prosecutions at all.
That is quite so.
If that is so, it is wrong, but as far as my experience in the District Courts is concerned I find that prosecutions under the School Attendance Act are just like those for dog licences or bicycle lights; they are things we expect regularly every year. There is a set way of dealing with them. In the case of the first offence, the Probation Act is applied. For the second offence, there is a fine; if there are subsequent offences, the fines are heavier. The procedure is quite progressive. If Deputy O'Rourke is correct in saying that there are no prosecutions at all, that means that somebody is not doing his duty. If that is so, I suggest that it is Deputy O'Rourke's job in the House to direct the Minister for Justice to the people who are not bringing the prosecutions. I do not believe for a moment— even allowing for his prejudice from the teacher's point of view—that there is any area in this country where the operation of the School Attendance Act is so lax as to be detrimental to the interests of the children or of the teachers.
I would be glad to see it wiped out.
My personal opinion is that the parents of this country are not so careless about the future of their children that they will not send them to school. I know that in the old days in the poorer areas—not so very long ago either—there was a certain amount of time wasted. The children were started into farm work earlier than they are now. There was a habit of employing children doing smaller jobs on the farm at an early age, but that is dying out. Everybody knows that 30 years ago quite a number of boys attending the ordinary national school left at what is called fourth book. The happy young man who remained at the national school long enough to be what used to be termed "out of books", when it was felt that the teacher had no more books to teach him from, as he was so advanced, was regarded as likely to become an Archbishop in the future. They were the exceptional people. Look at what happened; they remained on as pupil teachers, and afterwards became teachers. The worst effect of the School Attendance Act is that, as it is compulsory to keep the children at school until they are 14, they are taken away immediately afterwards. In the old days a certain little group of pupils remained on under the wing of the principal teacher, and they were advanced along the lines of a good secondary education. I have known old teachers in my own town who had those continuation classes after the national schools 40 years ago, and they turned out men who filled very high positions in the Civil Service of this State and in the British and Colonial Service. That is one bad effect of the School Attendance Act. It is just like everything else that is compulsory; if you must do a thing up to 10 O'clock at night you will not carry on till 10.30.
In general, this is a great subject for theorising. Even the Taoiseach theorised in regard to it. Everybody in the House, whether he is a teacher or not, has his own pet theories. I have one pet theory. I think that one great lack in education at the present time is lack of reading. That is not because the books are not there, but it seems to me that the young children do not read anything at all nowadays. Whether that is a fault of the system of education or the fault of the teachers I do not know. The youngsters certainly do not read, whether that is due to the radio or the dance hall or some fault of the teachers. When I was a little boy of 12 or 13 we read all sorts of things, Buffalo Bill, Sexton Blake, and various other 2d. books. There was a wild rush for them every Friday evening when they came in. But children are not doing that now. Mind you, it is a great loss to them, and I will tell you why. It is a loss to them because from that type of reading which, mind you, from my point of view, was very moral reading because right was always triumphant in the end, which is more than can be said of most modern literature, they would be led on to general reading of English literature. If we take our better Irish novelists, Kickham, Canon Sheehan, and that fine modern Irish novelist, Maurice Walsh, how many boys and girls of 18 years have read their books? I am afraid they are very few, even though at the present time we have county libraries containing those books for everybody who wants them. The great drawback in education at the present time is that the people read nothing. I am afraid one of the great causes of the trouble is this, that in order to be fashionable at the moment, even in the country areas, you must read the most extraordinary stuff, because just like art and science and everything else the more bizarre you are the more literary and highbrow you are. The people who are really responsible for bad reading in this country are the people who make most noise about literature. We had one perfect example of that some time ago when a certain well-known Irish novelist died, and every paper in the State was full of the most glowing tributes to him, as if Shakespeare and everyone else who ever wrote in their lives were nothing as compared with him. That is the highbrow type of attitude.
If I found any child in this country reading any one of that novelist's books I would kick that child from here to Nelson's Pillar. When a modern Irish novelist writes a decent modern novel about Irish historical life, for example like Maurice Walsh's Blackcock’s Feathers, you will never see the highbrows or the papers going into hysterics and saying what a wonderful book it is, and that if you want to be with the brilliant people you should read it. They are being told by the intelligentsia what they ought to read, and very often the result is that they read nothing at all. The sooner we get back to reading even the decent detective sort of book like Buffalo Bill or Sexton Blake, and not mind the modern tommyrot, the better.
Mr. Byrne
After the interesting speech by Deputy Linehan, it is difficult to find anything to criticise in the Minister's statement, but I wish to draw attention to one part of it, which makes very sad reading, that is the paragraph in which he says that there are 300 insanitary and unhealthy schools, and that there is no early prospect of these schools being made sanitary and healthy. I wish the Minister would hold out some hope to the school managers and parents of school-going children that some of these hovels which he describes as insanitary will soon be put in proper order and that teachers and pupils will be enabled to enjoy some comfort.
I should like also to draw the attention of the House to the reduction in the grant for free school books. I do not think that the managers or the pupils are responsible for the scheme not being fully availed of. I believe it is due to the operation of the means test, the form which has to be filled and the questions which have to be answered in connection with the issue of these books. This test creates an atmosphere amongst the children in which one may think himself better than another. The test is too severe, and I ask the Minister to withdraw it, or to give authority to the managers to use their discretion in the matter of supplying a child with books. A case was brought to my notice only a fortnight ago. I met two women who told me that one of their children was sent home from school to get 3d. for a book and told that he was not entitled to a free book because his father was employed by the State. The child's father was a member of the National Army enjoying a wage of £2 18s. per fortnight for the support of his wife and, I think, four children.
I do not think that was the intention of the Minister when he brought in the regulations in connection with this scheme. I was told of another case, in respect of which I ask the Minister to give an instruction through his inspectors, if he does not wish to issue an order, of a child who was deprived of milk under the free milk scheme simply because the father was employed by the State. It was the same woman who told me that story. I think that child was entitled to the free books and to all the advantages of the free milk scheme. There is, I understand, another objection also which some people have to these books. They are labelled all over with the statement that the book is the property of the State and must be returned, and I believe that many people would prefer to do without certain necessaries in order to provide the 3d. for the book themselves. I do not think it desirable, and I do not think the Minister desired, that the means test should be used to such an extent as that.
I want to touch lightly on some of the points made by other speakers. I agree with their complaints about handwriting because I know of cases in which people made application in writing for appointments, which they failed to secure because of the handwriting in their applications. I agree also with previous speakers who put forward the proposal for a council of education to tender advice to the Minister's Department. I think much benefit and good results would come from such a body. Another matter brought to my notice recently was that in certain areas there are no halls for public purposes, or for State, or semi-State purposes. The school in the area is closed after 3 O'clock and remains closed until the following morning. Certain managers probably do not desire that their schools should be used after hours for public purposes, because of the expense of cleaning, heating and lighting, but I think there ought to be some method by which these schools could be used, where there is no hall available, and that their use should not be prohibited merely because of the small sum of money involved in the cleaning, heating and lighting of them.
Several speakers have suggested that the School Attendance Act is not being fully enforced. I cannot say that that is true of Dublin. Our school attendance officers are very hard-working men and I know that, in many cases, they have introduced the personal touch in relation to attendance at school. On more than one occasion, school attendance officers have provided out of their own pockets a pair of boots to enable a child to go to school. I think that considerations of poor clothing, poor feeding and poor footwear should be taken into consideration and that, in such cases, there should be no prosecution, but that some assistance should be given to such families to see that the children are properly clothed and fed, and have proper boots and shoes. If that is done, I feel confident that school attendance will improve.
I should like to know from the Minister whether he has given any attention to a matter I raised last year, and to which he gave what appeared to me to be a very reasonable reply, while asking for further recommendations. A number of ladies who have taken a keen interest in children have asked for a break in the day and the provision of a hot meal for children, and I think it is only about two months since a good deal of space was given in the newspapers to the organisation which seeks to arrange for a break in the day, in the interests of the health of the children.
Possibly I did not read the Minister's statement carefully enough, but I should have liked to have seen some reference to the plays put on in the Mansion House for the last few years by teachers from all over Ireland. They are deserving of great praise. Some of the plays that were put on were magnificent. I saw them and heard them in both languages, and they were certainly a great credit to the schools that produced those who competed for the various honours. I think that a word of encouragement should be given to those people, and I do not think that a word of praise in the report would have done any harm. I think it would have done much good, and have given greater encouragement.
I had not intended taking part in the general discussion so far as this Vote is concerned, but it is not easy to sit here in the House and listen to all these things being said about education without saying anything one's self. My colleague, Deputy Linehan, said that we all have our pet theories on education. Well, I hope I have none. I have a deadly fear of those who have pet theories on education, and I have a strong hope that they will not do too much damage to the children of this country, either to their brains or to their minds. There has been a lot of chopping and changing in this matter of education, not merely since this State came into existence, but for the last 50 years. I shall not go back farther than that, nor shall I pursue Deputy Bennett and the Taoiseach into the pre-historic times of their childhood days, when, I presume, they both learned their mathematics in Limerick. I come down, then, to more modern times. Although it is quite useful that, occasionally, there might be an examination as to how the system was doing.
I think that the Minister, without admitting that it involves any serious criticism of the value of the type of education that is being given, might consider that it would be well, even from the point of view of the public mind, if he could get an inquiry into the whole business. Now, I myself, do not believe, when you have set a plant, in plucking up the roots every month or so to see if it is growing, and I know that, for the last 15 years, that, more or less, seems to be the idea in the minds of a good many people. Leaving aside our aims about the Irish language—and I think there is no great difference in many parts of the House so far as our aims are concerned—I suggest to the Minister that it might be well to inquire as to whether, in all instances, the proper means are being taken or whether better means could not be got to bring about that common end.
I think Deputy Mullen referred last evening to the politicians. Now, I do not say that politicians, necessarily, should be excluded. Supposing a man on these benches is in favour of pushing on Irish and that a man on the benches opposite is also in favour of pushing on Irish. I do not see why they should not discuss what is the best way to do it. They might differ as to the best way to do it, but surely it is not a question of Fine Gael versus Fianna Fáil, in this particular matter anyway. In fact, I may say candidly— although I have not taken part for a long time in the debate on this particular Vote—that I think these is less politics introduced into debates on this particular Estimate than in the case of any other Estimate that comes before us. If men give their views, there will be differences of opinion; there are bound to be differences of opinion, and it would not be healthy if there were not differences of opinion on what, after all, is a very delicate and intricate subject. I suggest to the Minister that he should get a committee together to consider this matter of our primary education, and it is of primary education that I am speaking particularly. It is no slur on him or on the work of his Department to suggest that. I know that it would be difficult to get a satisfactory committee, and I do not want to have people on it who have no politics. It is not a question of politics. I agree with Deputy Linehan there, and, as a matter of fact, I have a lot of suspicion of the man who says he has no politics. Deputy Linehan says that such a man just agrees with everybody, but I find, rather, that he disagrees with everybody; so far as achievement goes it comes to the same thing anyhow.
As I was saying, however, what I should like to have on such a committee are people who are not committed to any particular policy. I know that it will not be easy to get men of this kind: that is, people who have an intimate knowledge of the actual working of the school, such as, possibly, the Minister himself has not or the Taoiseach has not, and that I certainly have not. But there ought to be people who know the way things work in the school, and they may be able to give useful information to the Minister and his Department. There is a danger—and again this is not criticism, it is only really a reference to human nature—that officials of any kind will run away from, that they will get out of touch with the actualities of the situation, no matter how good they are, and that the more they are, so to speak, in the office, and the less they are in touch with the "field work", the more likely that is to occur.
Perhaps the Taoiseach will forgive me, but for the last couple of months I am never sure whether he is super-Minister for Education, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education, or Chancellor of the University.
Not that I object to his activities. I think it is well that the Cabinet—and by the Cabinet I, of course, mean the Taoiseach—should take an interest in these matters. I think it is all to the good. From what I heard of the tone of his speech yesterday, however, or perhaps I should say the prolonged few observations that he cast—"cast", perhaps, is a bad word to use, because you generally speak of casting pearls before certain objectionable people— but that he gave to the House last night—and unfortunately I missed them—it would appear from the whole tone of his speech that it is quite obvious that the Cabinet has a different view from the Minister, so far as the Minister represents the office.
No.
Well, I am only speaking at third-hand, but that was the impression given to me by those who listened to the Taoiseach, and we all know his power of clarity in making his views known to everybody. The impression that was conveyed, however, was that there were really two different horses pulling this unfortunate educational chariot, and if they pulled in the one way it would not be so bad. I do not say that they were pulling exactly in opposite directions, but so far as the methods are concerned, it did seem to me from what I was told, and from the report that I read in what I was going to call the Taoiseach's organ, but in the one which we are assured is not his organ —the Irish Press—and which contained the most elaborate report of his speech, I think there is a difference.
Thanks be to God!
I only put that forward merely to say that it may be that the time has come for a real, genuine, impartial examination into this question of promoting Irish. It need not upset anybody, or it need not get you to change your ideals. As far as I can gather, many of the people who are keen on the spread of the Irish language have grave doubts as to the system. I think that the Taoiseach himself has grave doubts, and I think he more than once expressed the opinion that, had he been in command at one time, he would not have adopted the system that is now in operation. It is surely worth examining that. That does not necessarily mean that the system is bad. I hear a great deal about the damage that is done by compulsory Irish and compulsory teaching through Irish. I wonder how the small amount of teaching that is done through Irish can corrupt, not merely the Breac-Ghaeltacht, but the rest of the country, and the schools where no such attempt is made! I cannot see it doing it, but unfortunately there is that impression in the public mind and it might clear up matters if there could be a calm presentation of the case by people who are not too definitely committed to a particular method of achieving our aims.
I am not convinced that the teaching of mathematics has really deteriorated so much from the brilliant days of the Taoiseach and some other members of the House. I happen to be one of the very few people who can remember how very little I did know, either as a pupil or as a university student, and, therefore, I do not get shocked at a certain lack of knowledge on the part of the young people of the present day. I know that 40 and 50 years ago I did meet people who lamented, and they were quite sincere, a deterioration in the standard of the teaching of mathematics from their day to my day, and that was in the 'nineties. I was told that it was much better in the 'sixties. Is not that the experience of everybody?
We are all attracted by the high lights of the past, but it is only when you reflect on the type of teaching given to a number of us in the glorious days of the 'nineties that you get a better realisation of the position. I remember doing three cantos a year of one of Scott's epic poems. I remember learning 18 or 20 lines. I also remember that I never related one 20 lines to the other 20 lines. I remember being taught mathematics. I was very keen on mathematics and were it not for the good fortune that I did not happen to get a good teacher of mathematics, I might have the misfortune of being a mathematician to-day and, when I see the Taoiseach, I thank God I was spared from that catastrophe.
I well remember the teaching of mathematics in those days. Did any one of us understand what proportion meant, leaving out stocks and shares and "practice"? I quite agree I did not know what they were all about. One of the greatest mathematicians I ever came across held that you were undermining the teaching of mathematics if you tried to make the pupil understand it. He was a brilliant mathematician. He had been engaged in the teaching of mathematics, not merely in the university but in other places as well. He said that it is fatal to the teaching of mathematics if you try to make the pupils understand everything from the start; you never get the fundamentals if you try to do that. That may seem absurd, but from the point of view of practice it is very sound.
If you go through every subject taught in those glorious days of the 'nineties, and the system then imposed by the educational authorities, you will find yourself amazed that there is any brain left in Ireland at all; but still a lot of people seem to have survived it. That is one reason why I am a bit shy of those people who are going to put everything on a rational basis. There was nothing more absurd than the system that prevailed in the old days. I am not blaming the teachers— it was the system. I could not think of anything more absurd than the system at that time, and I have no doubt that if those relatives of mine who bemoaned the passing of the glorious days of the 'sixties had thrown back their minds to that period, they would have held exactly the same opinions about their youth.
I do not think the Minister need be ashamed or afraid of initiating an inquiry into these things. We have been a fairly long time at this teaching through Irish. It is not pulling things up by the roots to have an inquiry. The time will come when an inquiry of that kind will inevitably take place. Inquiries of that kind every half a generation are almost inevitable.
Talking about fashions in education, they are like fashions in medical theories. When I had pneumonia the windows were shut and the back was almost burned off me. Now the windows are thrown open and counter-irritants are not applied. Deputy Linehan would apply counter-irritants to the children who indulge in certain reading. I think that, with a reasonable effort, some improvement could be introduced. You will not get them if you simply approach the enthusiasts on the one side and the counter-enthusiasts on the other side.
I urge the Minister to consider seriously the holding of an inquiry, and I more strongly urge him, if he accedes to such an idea, to be very careful in the picking of the members of that body. If he decides on that body, I should be very glad that he is picking the members and that it is not my task. Experts are to be avoided. Take the Irish language as an example. If you want to get advice how best to forward that particular study, I suggest that you avoid the experts. You might as well expect two Irish experts to agree as two tenor singers or art critics. I have never found them to agree.
Unfortunately, I missed a great deal, perhaps all, of what the Taoiseach said, even his moving and sentimental story of the cat and the kittens. The position in relation to the family has been stressed. I know countries in Europe which have thoroughly undermined the family, but they are very keen on allowing full play to the natural maternal instinct common to all animals, and they think that is the same thing as favouring the family. I do not say the Taoiseach is under any such delusion, and, luckily, there is no tendency in that direction in this country. On the other hand, family difficulties should be realised, and I doubt the practicability or even the wisdom, especially in towns, of lowering the school age—I mean the age of compulsory attendance for formal education. I do not think five years is an unreasonable age for children to go to school.
There have been difficulties raised here about any School Attendance Act. I remember, when the School Attendance Act was brought in, I was advised that one effect would be that if you went up to a youngster on a country road and asked him why he was not at school, the all-sufficient answer would be: "I am 14." That may be so. But to learn, as I gather from an interruption by Deputy O'Rourke, that to secure better attendance in the national school the best way would be to abolish the School Attendance Act, is extraordinary. Exaggerations of that kind will not help us to solve our problem. I learned from Deputy Brennan that the Roscommon papers have published accounts of prosecutions under the School Attendance Act which shows that it is not a dead letter even in Deputy O'Rourke's county. I think that in cases of this kind exaggeration is absolutely no good.
The Taoiseach said one thing, as reported in the copy of the Irish Press that I have before me, which, I think, on the whole is the most serious criticism that may have fallen from his lips:—
"If there was anything wrong with the educational system, it was the speed with which they were trying to move forward."
That is a danger. I have always felt that it is a great hardship and a great disadvantage to a pupil, say, in a secondary school, that because he is good in one subject, he has to keep pace with that in other subjects; he is being rushed too much in other subjects. There may be a danger of that in our whole educational system; so far as certain things go we may have rushing. I think that that kind of driving, if carried even somewhat over the legitimate limit, can do great damage; a great deal more damage than going slow. I prefer, in the case of an individual youngster, and in the case of the system as a whole, rather to go slowly than run the risk of the damage that may be done by going too quickly. I have seen a number of youngsters having their education ruined by the fact that they were compelled to try what was just a little beyond them. I think in the case of many youngsters it would be better if they dropped a year and went slowly, rather than that they should be unduly pushed forward. What applies to the individual youngster might apply to the system as a whole, and I commend that to the attention of the Government.
There has been a certain amount of dissatisfaction with the standard of the leaving certificate. I should, however, like people to distinguish clearly two different things. The standard of examination is one thing; the value of the education given in the schools is a different thing. You may have too low a standard, and 90 per cent. or something like that may get honours in certain subjects. That does not say that the education is bad; neither does it say that it is good. It merely means that the standard in that particular case is not a standard that is of much use in judging. Therefore, if people say a standard is too easy, that is not a condemnation of the schools, or of the work being done by the schools under the direction of the Department. It would be a good reason for a revision of the standard.
Like other Deputies, I am glad that an effort is being made, an effort for which the Taoiseach is largely responsible, at a co-ordination of the matriculation examination and the leaving certificate. There is another matter, however, to which the Taoiseach referred. Again, I think, it is a matter that requires a great deal more thought before any step is taken in that direction, and that is the introduction of an examination prior to the intermediate certificate. It may be a personal prejudice, and I may have had the misfortune of passing through the "intermediate system" when it was at its most illogical stage and full of examinations. I remember the way we had to work for these examinations and the mental worry involved. I think they are the most horrible thing in a student's life, whether good or bad student—possibly they affect the bad students more than the good— but certainly they are a torture to young people.
That is where there is a strong competitive element?
It is very hard to avoid that. There is a great deal of talk about going back to the good old days. In the real good old days there was not that State examination system. If you can rely on your schools, that ought not to be necessary. I am putting it forward for consideration. If you can rely on your schools, two examinations ought to be sufficient. If you cannot, then you are faced with a much more difficult problem, and I doubt if an extra examination of that kind will help. Personally, I should be very much afraid of it; I could not regard it as a step in the right direction. In fact, at one period, those who suffered from that particular type of testing would have preferred that there would have been no examination whatever; that the schools would simply get the money and that they would be under some kind of inspection. If you could have got a good system of inspection, the thing might have worked. Give them the money and say: "You are responsible for the teaching of these children." I am not so sure, from the point of view of education, leaving out of account the competitive Civil Service examination afterwards, which is a different problem, that you would not get at least as good results that way as by having examinations. After all, in the last resort, it ought to be the schools that do the work. I urge that before the system of another examination is introduced a great deal of thought should be given to it. A great deal may be said for a leaving certificate from the primary schools, which has to reach a certain standard, but that is a different problem. I think that two examinations seem to be ample. However, that is a matter that might be considered fully. There was a point raised with regard to the school buildings. I mentioned this matter once or twice before.
I think there has been a great deal of misunderstanding about what is being done in the schools. I did not realise the extent of it until I became Minister for Education. There has been a request for an inquiry. I think that the time for that is not at all ripe in the big sense. But there is a thing which I think would be of great value, if the Minister for Education would accept it, and that is that a small committee of this House would just look into the system, get reports to see how it is working and satisfy themselves and make a sort of committee report to the House. It may not be the usual procedure for doing things, but I think it would help a great deal. If, say, four or five Deputies from the main Opposition Party, chosen by the Party for their practical knowledge of the work and their interest in this subject, and four or five members of the Government Party would form a committee, which would meet, say, once a week for a few hours over a short period and get such information as they might like so as to see exactly what is the programme in the schools, how far it is practicable, what is being done, and talk quietly over some of these subjects which we can only discuss in a general way on the Estimate here, it would mean, anyhow, that we would get to understand each other and know exactly where we differ, if we have differences of opinion. If it was thought that there was a sufficient difference of opinion generally amongst these, and that there was a need for it, it could be considered whether or not there was need for an inquiry. I think at the moment it would be a mistake to hold an inquiry until we see how far we understand what is happening at present, because I do not believe the public understand. I do not know what view may be taken about that on the benches opposite.
Personally, I had in mind not members of this House. Take a person like myself, I should be rather inclined to rule him out.
I would not. I think that would be a mistake.
Leaving that question aside, I should prefer if you had on it a certain number who are in rather close touch with actual working conditions.
My belief is that, in general terms, nobody will get at this better than members of the House.
I want to get away from the general to the particular. I want to get down to the people who have an intimate working knowledge——
You have such people members of the House. You have teachers here.
I do not want to urge that too much. It is a question of judgment, as to when the time would be ripe. I do not believe in a policy of pulling up to see whether the roots are sound. But we have been half a generation now at this business. I was just thinking that it might be no harm to see whether such an inquiry should be held this year, next year or the year after. To my mind that is of secondary importance.
On the question of school buildings, perhaps the Minister, in his reply, would give me some information. I think he said, in the course of his statement, that there are 300 school buildings in an unsatisfactory condition.
That have been condemned.
I have a very bad memory, but it seems to me that we are not even keeping up with the wastage, and that a number of schools are each year gradually deteriorating into the condemned class. At one time the aim of this Government and of the last Government was gradually to eat into the arrears. For a variety of reasons, the arrears seem to be growing rather than being done away with. That is a serious matter. We have to remember that two Departments are responsible for school buildings, the Department of Education and the Department of the Board of Works. I often think that too expensive buildings are demanded—ones that will last too long. I know certain objections are put forward—objections which have never convinced me—by those who say that while you put up a solid building for a primary school, you do not want such a building for a technical school. I remember that, when I had to do with these matters, you put up a technical school at about half the price of a primary school. The technical school may only last for about 40 years, while the other will last for 100 years. I think that is all to the good, because I have no doubt that in 40 years' time a new type of school would probably be demanded.
The final matter that I want to raise is a special point. Since the Estimates are being taken en bloc, perhaps I had better take it now than postpone it for the more detailed discussion. I really do not know whether it comes under the primary or the secondary branch of education, but what I want to refer to is the action taken by the Department in connection with the marriage of teachers in preparatory schools. As I understand the position it is this: the Department entered into a contract with a certain number of women teachers. The contract made no provision whatever for retirement on marriage. That was decided in a court of law. That was found to be the law, and, therefore the Department were bound to give notice. I want to put it to the Minister that any teacher who took service in a preparatory school had every right to believe that she would be kept in that position as long as she proved efficient and gave satisfaction. Because the Department of Education failed, in the contract that they made, to put in a clause for retirement on marriage should not have operated against that teacher. Whatever may have been the law requiring only six months’ notice for dismissal, a sense of justice should have operated with the Department—at least not to apply the rules retrospectively, because that is what it came to.
I am not now going into the question as to the social value of insisting on teachers retiring when they get married. That is a wide question. When that question did turn up in the case of the national schools, when the suggestion was put forward, it was accepted by some people as an absolute rule decided on irrevocably. I remember it was put forward for discussion about the time of the general election. The then Minister for Education—I will not say who he was—was lambasted because he made a rule that future women teachers, if they got married, could not keep on teaching. The Minister will remember the proviso that was put in: that that rule was not to apply to any existing teacher, and further, it was not even to apply to anybody that had entered a training college.
Now, what is the justice, in the case of these preparatory college appointments, of practically depriving those who had a very just expectation that as long as they gave efficient service and satisfaction their services would be continued? There have been cases in which attempts have been made to dispense with the services of women who kept their contracts, and against whose teaching capacity and work and conduct no complaint whatever was made. The Department deal with that in two ways. First, they insisted on retirement on marriage. I think that, in the case of a teacher in the West of Ireland, it was decided that they could not do things quite as summarily as that. According to the strict letter of the contract they had the power to give six or three months' notice—the number really does not matter very much—but they could not simply insist on immediate withdrawal as they were trying to do. Then the Department did what seems to me to be an indescribably mean thing, if I may use an adjective which the Taoiseach is keen on using himself, and that is, having, in their first attempt, the letter of the law against them—having against them what I consider much more important, any feelings of justice—what did they do? They suddenly sent out a notice of dismissal to all women teachers and then, without a day's interval, reemployed them under new conditions, except those who had got married. In other words, they violated the whole spirit of the original agreement in what I will admit was a very slick fashion. It was certainly unjust and unreasonable to throw people suddenly out of employment, not because they had violated or broken any portion of their contract, but because the Department of Education and the Minister for Education had not known what they wanted, or had been unable to express what they wanted, when employing those people. I hold, whatever may have been the fate of those teachers afterwards, that that in itself was a decidedly wrong and unjust step. It is one of the worst pieces of retrospective action that I know of.
I am not going to discuss which of the kaleidoscopic Ministers we have had was responsible for that particular action. There were such quick changes at that time in the Departments that I do not know which of the Ministers was responsible. But it was unjust. It was a trick—nothing better than that. It was sharp practice—the kind of thing that you read of in novels, where the man has kept inside the law but everybody admitted that he ought to be in jail. I do not suggest that the Minister ought to be there, but that is the only analogy I can think of. I would put it to the Minister that there ought to be still time to reconsider a matter of this kind. The Minister for Education has not in other instances been so sharp and severe in dealing with the cases of married women. There was, in full justice, a contract that was in practice, if not in the strict letter of the law, violated by the Minister. If it is not too late, I would ask the Minister to consider the position of anybody who was hit by this particular matter. This is the first opportunity I have had of bringing it before the House, because I think the actual reappointments took place on 1st August, 1940, that is the re-appointment under new conditions of contract of all the people who were not married. There is another Department in which a rather similar thing occurred, where, for all practical purposes, a binding contract was entered into and was dishonoured by a Department of Government. I do not think that is a good kind of moral education to give anybody. There was, at the beginning of the Press report of the Taoiseach's speech, a reference to the great value of truth, honesty and fair dealing. Here, technically, no lies were told. I am a bit more shaky about the honesty, but I have no doubt whatsoever about the fair dealing in that particular case. It did not exist. I am sorry that the Department is not like a child, who would learn those things in the home, their knowledge of those things being supplemented in the schools if there was anything missing. In that case, I would suggest that they should go back to school again, and learn those three fundamentals thoroughly, truth, honesty and fair dealing.
I agree with the Taoiseach that this is probably the most important Estimate which comes for consideration before this House, not only from the point of view of the volume of the sum of money that is to be expended—and it is important that we should see to it that we get good value for that sum of money, practically £5,000,000—but because it is spent on the most important work concerning the whole future welfare of our people, and the character of our people as a nation.
The development and moulding of the minds of our young people is done in the schools. The laying of the foundations of their knowledge, the shaping and directing of their minds, and the directing of their outlook on the future and on national affairs generally, are done in the schools, so it is very necessary that this House should feel satisfied that that work is being well and properly done, and that those who are entrusted with the care of our young people at a very impressionable age are fitted for their job. Reading through the Minister's report, one is inclined to come to the conclusion that he is not at all happy about the progress which has been made in our educational system in this country over a period of years. The Taoiseach, too, seems to be a bit doubtful on the subject.
I think I am right in saying that we have probably one of the most costly systems of education in the world per head of the population. That is probably because we are a very small country and the overheads are relatively high, but taking a big country like America, the cost per head of the population is lower than ours, and that is a country where university education is thrown open to all. For that reason, if there is any doubt in the minds of responsible Ministers, we ought to have the matter properly examined by people who are competent to make such an examination and report back to this House. We had from the Taoiseach last night a very long and interesting statement on the whole matter of primary and secondary education. I certainly listened to him with very great interest, and it struck me that he had a very reasonable and moderate outlook. But there does seem to be a conflict of opinion in the country about the method of teaching Irish. I do not presume to express any opinion as to how it ought to be done. I was taught Irish by the direct method. Unfortunately, I have forgotten it all, and I suppose to that extent it was time wasted. Probably it was my own fault. If we are really sincere about the preservation of the language, we ought to adopt some method of teaching on which there would be common agreement. This should not be a controversial matter, politically speaking, and I think it was very satisfactory that the Taoiseach was prepared to meet the suggestion from this side of the House that there should be common agreement.
What the people in the country generally complain of is that they are very doubtful about the wisdom of teaching all subjects through the medium of Irish. The method illustrated by the Taoiseach was a very moderate and reasonable one, but I am afraid it did not illustrate the true state of affairs. The Taoiseach suggested that, where there is difficulty in explaining things to the children in Irish, the teacher should revert to English. I do not think that is done in actual practice, and that is really the trouble. The teachers sometimes persist in sticking to the Irish language all the time, with the result that the children do not get a proper grasp of the subject at all. Hence, the time is wasted and the knowledge is not imparted. I think that is the real problem. Possibly, if the moderate method outlined by the Taoiseach last night was adhered to, there would not be this problem about the wisdom of teaching other subjects through the medium of Irish.
The Taoiseach also pointed out that, if we were to have the Irish language, a sacrifice would have to be made in respect of other subjects which have to be taught within a definite period, and that a short period. I think it reasonable to agree that that should be so. He suggested that the aim and object of the present system is to give a good foundation in the three R's. In regard to arithmetic, he pointed out that in his and Deputy Bennett's day they were taught stocks and shares, and suggested that he did not see the wisdom of that. I agree, but I should like to ask the Taoiseach and the Minister how many young fellows leaving the primary school to-day can lay off an acre of land? It is very important— the bulk of our people have to live by agriculture and have to live on the land —that the education imparted—and it is only the foundation that we can look for in the primary schools—should have an agricultural bias. It would be a very great asset to those people who have to live on the land, and it would do those people who may not have to live on the land no harm to have it.
My experience is that the bulk of the people leaving the national schools at present do not understand the simple method of laying off an acre of land. The agriculturist and, I suppose, every Deputy, will understand how essential that is, especially in view of modern methods of agriculture. If you want to distribute a given quantity of artificial manure per acre, you must lay off an acre in order to distribute it evenly and properly. The same applies to seeding land, and so on—you lay off an acre or a half-acre—and that sort of work is most essential. I find that many of our people, the older people, who live by agriculture, do not know how to do it themselves, and their sons coming from school are no better off in that respect. I agree absolutely that, while it was ridiculous to teach the bulk of our people in the primary schools stocks and shares in the past, the essential things are still neglected, and it seems to me to be ridiculous that children leaving the sixth standard are not able to lay off an acre of land. Further, on the question of an agricultural background, I suggest that the readers in the national schools should treat much more of agricultural subjects, such as the study of plant life and animal life.
It would give our people a greater appreciation of nature and of those problems which the majority of them will have to tackle in the future, and it will not be any burden for those people who are not going to live by agriculture to have that knowledge. That aspect is absolutely neglected. It often struck me, when listening to all this talk about the flight from the land and about discontent on the land, that the shaping and moulding of the minds of our young people at the impressionable ages is not being carried out in such a way as to enable our people fully to appreciate nature at its best and the advantages of living in the country rather than in the towns and cities, and in such a way as to obviate, as far as possible, the modern tendency to get away from the land and to right the wrong impression that people are going to be better off anywhere but on the land.
On the question of mathematics again, Deputy Bennett spoke about being taught how to do simple calculations. The Taoiseach dealt at great length with the point and suggested that simple calculations were most essential and that it was simple calculations that the Department aimed at. It struck me that it is not only necessary to teach young children how and when to divide and to multiply, but that there might be added to those, why they should do it. I was amazed to hear Deputy O'Sullivan telling us that an eminent mathematician here said it was fatal to the teaching of mathematics to explain them and that, as a matter of fact, the best way of teaching mathematics was simply to tell the pupil how to do it, without any further explanation. I do not propose to challenge Deputy O'Sullivan's opinion because I have no doubt that he knows more about the subject than I, but my experience of studying mathematics, or any other subject, is that if you did not know why you were doing a particular thing, you generally forgot how to do it. You were taught how it was done, but were not told why you did it in a particular way, and you generally forgot all about the method in later years. If, however, you understand your subject thoroughly and understand why it is done in a particular way, you get a proper grasp of it and never forget it.
Rightly or wrongly, I contend that that is essential. My experience is that children, when being taught mathematics at present, are taught how to calculate, how to divide and how to multiply, but are never taught why it is done.
The Taoiseach also referred to an examination at a particular time, and the Minister also referred to it in his statement. I inferred from the Taoiseach's statement that his idea was to have a sort of entrance examination for the secondary schools, and the Minister on page 6 refers to the leaving examination for primary schools not being availed of, except to the extent of 20 per cent. He said that it is availed of by the majority of convent schools and by practically 80 per cent. of Brothers' schools, but, in the case of national schools, only to the, extent of 20 per cent. I agree with the Taoiseach that there should be a test at some period, but I think it would be wise to have that examination at the end of the primary school period, because if you make it an entrance test for the secondary schools, there are quite a number of pupils who will never go to the secondary schools, and it would be useful to know what standard of knowledge they have attained before leaving the only school they can ever hope to attend. I would certainly support that proposal, no matter what it costs. I think it would be money very well spent to have a proper test made by the Department as to what standard of knowledge has been acquired by the primary school pupils.
On the question of heating and cleaning, I agree with Deputy Dillon and other Deputies in that I do not think there is anything wrong or humiliating in asking the children to sweep out the schools. I think it might be very good for them, and that it would be useful to teach them how to do it properly and thoroughly. With regard to the heating of schools, I understand that the grant is only available where the manager puts up an equal sum of money; in other words, the grant is a 50 per cent. grant. That is very severe on the poorer districts, in cases where the manager is unable to make good a sufficient sum of money to get the required plant, and it is the poorer areas and poorer schools that will suffer under the present system. It is in the poorer areas, where the children are badly clothed and poorly fed, and where artificial heat is required, possibly, more than anywhere else, that you find they are not able to obtain the grant, because the manager is not able to put up the money. I think a change in the system is necessary there, and the Minister ought to look into that matter.
There is one particular aspect of education in which I am particularly interested, and that is dealt with in the Minister's report on Vocational Education, or Continuation and Technical Education. On page 13 he says:—
"The main difficulty in this respect seems to be that the people look on vocational schools as a means for obtaining jobs for their children in towns and cities rather than as a means of bettering life and work on the land, and that the young people tend on this account to neglect the rural science classes."
He goes on to say, in a further paragraph:—
"The problem, therefore, is not merely to supply rural science classes but to get the boys to attend classes. If attendance at these classes were made compulsory, it would solve this difficulty."
Further on, speaking of the difficulty of obtaining the right type of teacher, he says:—
"Such men are, unfortunately, much more difficult to get than competent teachers of other subjects. If, for instance, a teacher has a good grasp of commercial subjects, there is little need of force of character or of mind to make the teaching of these subjects a success.... The effect of these peculiar circumstances has been undoubtedly that the development of the rural science work in the rural schools has been somewhat slow."
I think that this particular work of the teaching of rural science is a most important work for our country. The Minister has also given the figures, and he says that we have 69 vocational schools and that in those schools we have only 2,400 students studying rural science. Now, if there is one thing that has handicapped agriculture in this country it is our lack of scientific knowledge of agriculture. To my mind, we are probably the most backward country of any agricultural country in the world. We pursue the happy-go-lucky methods of our fathers and grandfathers, and we have never made any attempt at the practical application of scientific methods to agriculture.
The foundation of that scientific knowledge can be got if we provide proper schools for the study of rural science. Take one aspect of that case alone. I think we have a soil problem here that is peculiar to this country. If you go through a country like Holland, it can be truthfully said that the same identical soil extends there for 300 and 400 miles, with no variation. In this country, you have variations even in the one field, and undoubtedly you have variations on the one farm. You may have an acid soil in one part, an alkaloid soil in another part, and a neutral soil in a third part and the reactions of the different types of soil on plant life are tremendously important to the successful carrying on of a farm. How many of our people have any sort of a practical grasp of that knowledge that is essential to produce good crops? I do not believe that 5 per cent. of our people, who are supposed to be practical farmers here, know anything about soil or have studied it at all, and yet it is a problem that is peculiar to this country more than to other countries. For that reason, this is a matter that ought to be seriously tackled, and I am glad that the Minister has dealt with it here in detail.
I think it is a problem to which we ought to devote more money and more attention, and that we should get the very best brains, and get the type of teacher that the Minister suggests will have to be got in order to encourage our people to attend these classes—a man of the right type of character who will make his classes interesting and the work interesting, and who will not only get the pupils interested but their parents also, so that the parents will see the useful scientific knowledge that is being imparted and which is going to be a real asset and help to future generations of farmers in this country. Probably, in no country in the world has that aspect of farming been neglected more than here. I know of very few farmers, for instance, who could get a soil test or a chemical test as to whether soil is acid or alkaloid, or what is necessary to be done with the soil to make it neutral and fit to grow crops, and to have it physically fit to produce the best crops that can be produced. That is the type of study that can be done in these schools.
On the other hand, you have manual instruction. I suggest that in the teaching of manual work practical application ought to be made of that work so as to fit our people for their future life on the land. Those children ought to be taught how to provide, say, the best type of feeding trough for cattle, and they should study the construction of the best type of housing for animals under modern conditions; the construction of the best type of pigstyes, for instance—pigstyes that will be labour-saving. If you go to Denmark you find that, because they have provided a certain type of house there, one man can feed very many more pigs than a man working under the conditions under which we produce pigs here can, because they have up-to-date pigstyes and modern and easy methods of feeding. All that work could come under the heading of manual instruction in those vocational schools, and to my mind that aspect of the case ought not to be lost sight of. These people will be living on the land afterwards and will come up against those problems, and those problems will have to be faced and tackled—the provision of proper housing for animals and the feeding of those animals in the winter time. In connection with the education of our people we never appear to consider the agricultural background that is so necessary in the education of our people if we are going to make use of that knowledge and if it is to be a real asset to them in their future life.
In conclusion, I again would stress the importance of this work. I think it is going to be a really useful work, and it may bring about the progress we hope for and the expansion in agricultural production that we are always talking about here and outside. We hear numbers of people regretting the fact that the expansion has not taken place, and that while, in countries with which we compete, such as Holland, Denmark, and New Zealand, a tremendous expansion has taken place in recent years, we are more or less static. I think much of that can be traced to our educational system, to the need for providing a system with a proper agricultural background.
In the few remarks I wish to make on this Estimate, I should like to deal particularly with the need for some form of training of key men for our industries. In my part of the country a deputation recently visited some of the directors of a boot factory, and they asked the director if it were possible to replace, with Irish people, some of the key men who came across the Channel—to fill future vacancies with people from this country. The answer they received was that there was no textile school in the country capable of training key men, and that as long as there were no facilities for training key men, they would have to import the necessary men from across-Channel.
Looking over the figures relating to the numbers employed in our different industries, I find that under the heading of linen, cotton, jute, and hemp there are 3,000 men. Closely allied to the cotton industry you have the woollen industry, and you have a further 3,000 men employed in that industry. Allied to the woollen industry you have hosiery, and there you have 4,000 employees. That makes a total of 10,000 employed in three industries in this country. There is not a textile school or a class in a vocational or technical school wherein young people could be trained to take their part in those industries. Coming to the boot and shoe industry, there are 10,700 people employed, and we have not a textile class dealing with boot production.
Some five or six years ago I stressed the importance of getting a textile school started. In order to show how lax we are in this regard, I may mention that in England there are 20 textile schools dealing with woollen and worsted manufactures, and 15 or 16 dealing with cotton. I should like again to stress the importance of starting a textile school, or perhaps we might establish a Chair of Textiles in the university. Side by side with the textile schools that are established in England, they have Chairs of Textiles attached to the different universities.
I fully agree with the last speaker as to the importance of devoting at least half an hour every day in the primary schools to the subject of agriculture. When the Taoiseach was in Killarney at the Teachers' Congress I asked him, as a special favour, to give immediate consideration to that point because I was afraid that the youth in the rural areas were becoming more or less urbanised through the lack of education on the important subjects of agriculture and rural science.
Deputy Linehan mentioned a matter with which I agree, and that is, that there is a surplus of typists throughout the country. In Killarney and within a radius of ten miles from it, I believe there are at least 50 typists who cannot get employment. While at one time I was in favour of that class being continued, I now think it would be a mistake to continue it. I believe too many have been trained in typewriting and, now that the matter has been drawn to the attention of the Minister, perhaps he will consider whether it would be advisable to continue this class. Some parents have asked me whether, if they sent their children to a technical class, I could guarantee a certain position for them. I told them definitely that I would prefer to see a girl working at home rather than see her going to Dublin, where she might earn 30/- a week and her parents would have to send her at least 10/- or 15/- a week additional so as to enable her to live in the city.
I should like to stress the importance of getting technical schools established in the country solely for the purpose of training young people so as to fit them for the textile industries. I suggest the grouping of the woollen and worsted industries, the hosiery industry and the cotton, jute and hemp industries and the establishment of a branch department dealing with the boot and shoe industry.
The Taoiseach spoke for about one and a half hours last night on the subject of education and the whole speech boils down to this: that in rural Ireland, where there is no opportunity for children to get any education except what they can get in the primary schools, most of them will be semi-illiterate in the sense that they will know neither English, Irish nor mathematics. So far as the majority of Deputies here are concerned, whatever education they have they got it from the primary schools. The same applies to their brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts. They got their training in the primary schools and many of them, perhaps, have carved a way for themselves into good positions, all based on the groundwork they got in the national schools. I ask them now, in view of what was enunciated by the Taoiseach last night, are they going to approve of that system of education for their children and their children's children?
There is no doubt that if the proposal put forward by the Taoiseach is adopted there is little hope in this country for the average man's son or daughter. The Taoiseach considers that he is coerced to adopt that. He says that you cannot, in the time allotted, teach two languages and mathematics to the children. All that he can hope for is that they will be able to write a simple letter in Irish, a simple letter in English, and that they will be able to add, subtract and multiply. That was the sum and substance of a speech lasting an hour and a half.
The Taoiseach has given some fine performances, both inside and outside this House, during his political career. He has demonstrated his ability at artificial wool spinning, but he excelled himself last night. I do not want the House to be misled by what he said, or to be entangled in the maze of wool spinning. I fear that this House will be unfortunate enough, some time or other, to adopt that proposal, after a similar speech is made by the Taoiseach, because I believe the House will be so enshrouded in the maze of wool spinning that Deputies will not know what they are consenting to. Apparently that is what he intends to impose on this country, but if I am here I will object strongly to it and oppose it in every way I can. Surely it is too bad that for a sum of £4,000,000 odd our children who go to the primary schools will get such an education that they will be semi-illiterate. When they leave school they will be fit only to write a simple letter in Irish or English. Five or ten years after they leave school perhaps they will write only two or three letters in a year and read very little. Then they will not be fit to write either in Irish or in English or to add, subtract or multiply. What hope is there that those boys and girls will be fit to go into a shop and conduct business, or become railway clerks, book-keepers, or anything like that? There is no hope for any of them under this system. They would need to be sent to a secondary school, but how many of them can afford to go to a secondary school? Let Deputies cast their minds over the parishes in their constituencies and ask themselves how many boys from those parishes can afford to go to a secondary school. In that way they will see the effect of the proposal that the Taoiseach put forward last night. Let us have something other than that, which will leave the people of the country semi-illiterate.
Deputy Hughes referred to the fact that at present you cannot get a boy to measure an acre of land. Deputy Linehan, of course, is a solicitor and had a secondary and university education. He is terribly perturbed because boys and girls are taught about the speed of two trains passing one another and how long it would take to fill a tank of a certain capacity. Would not that be useful to a young man starting life on a farm? Deputy Linehan is shocked that children should be taught about stocks and shares. How many young men from national schools in this country went into the British Civil Service in the old days and rose to the very top of the service? Men from my own parish went into that service and rose to the top of it. What hope is there for such boys and girls in the future if the system enunciated last night is adopted? There is not one chance in ten million for them. Let us be clear and definite about that. If we are to make this country semi-illiterate and leave no hope for brilliant boys and girls, let us be sure of what we are doing.
The Minister's statement was a startling one. I do not know whether I should trouble the House by giving an analysis of it. Last year I asked the Taoiseach, when he was going up and down the country, to cast an eye around and stop occasionally when he saw what purported to be a school, and spend some time examining it. I said it was cruel, in my opinion, to ask teachers to spend their days in some of these schools, and to compel parents to send their children to them. I said then, and I repeat now, that there are some hundreds of schools to which I would refuse to send my children in spite of the law. About a week after the Taoiseach brought in the Estimate for education last year, the following appeared in an Irish newspaper in reference to schools in the Taoiseach's constituency, the County Clare. It is taken from a report of the medical officer of health for the county:—
"Fourteen schools were entirely unsuitable and should be abolished; 17 required structural alterations; 13 required larger and more suitable playgrounds; the remaining 14 were good, so far as school buildings were concerned. Approximately 25 per cent. of the schools inspected were listed for demolition. These schools were very bad indeed, and at least four of them were positively dangerous by reason of imminent peril of collapse. In one school the rats were more numerous than the scholars, and the whole place was honeycombed with rat holes. These rodents come up for crumbs and scraps of food, and it is related that one of them bit a little girl's toe during the early summer of 1939."
Last night we had an hour and a half of word-spinning. What is being done about that matter? Let us see what the Minister said:—
"With regard to the provision of school buildings, I regret to say that the amounts available have had to be curtailed owing to the heavy financial expenditure necessitated by the national emergency in other directions."
I wonder if any Deputy or any responsible citizen would say that there is anything more urgent than to provide good schools for our children? Many Deputies are members of boards of health which spend large sums of money each year on the treatment of tuberculosis. Yet we are sending children to schools like those described in that report. Is not that a greater emergency than any other emergency? Let us be frank about this. There may be an emergency, but I say that it is futile to spend £10,000,000 dealing with it when there are no weapons for those on whom the money is being spent by which they could discharge their functions. Is it justifiable for the Minister to come to the House and say that he has allowed this urgent question of school buildings to be sidestepped because of an alleged national emergency?
The Minister in his statement went on to say:—
"There are, however, still, I regret to say, over 300 national schools which are scheduled as insanitary and unsuitable, and in spite of the emergency we have to proceed with the building of new schools to replace these."
How many of them will the Minister proceed with? Will this House vote £4,000,000 to be spent in various directions and allow parents to be compelled to send their children to the schools described by the Minister? Is not that a shocking state of affairs? We hear a lot of clap-trap about a Gaelic Ireland and an Irish Ireland. An Ireland of that kind is not sufficient. After all the boosting we had about the building of houses, the replacing of these schools still remains one of the most urgent questions. There are three schools in my native parish to which I would refuse to send my children, in spite of the law. In my opinion the medical officer of health for the county should make an order for the demolition of these buildings, and a further order that no children be allowed to attend them. I would much prefer to see the children running through the fields and getting no education than have them sent to these places. While I am here I will continue to plead for the demolition of these buildings and the erection of new ones.
The statement that the Minister read to the House is, in my opinion, one of the queerest mixtures of a document which we have ever had put before us. There is reference in it to the position of oral Irish, reading Irish and arithmetic. One of the greatest muddles that I have ever come across concerns the question of examinations. What the position was in regard to examinations was not very clear to me in previous years. The Minister puts it in a more precise way in this statement. I was of the opinion that it was mandatory to hold an examination when children were leaving school at the age of 14. I discover now that the examination is optional, and the reason advanced for that is that the inspection is so efficient. In connection with certain duties which I discharge as a Parliamentary representative, I discovered quite recently that there are quite a number of schools in this State that have not been inspected for two years. In a case of that kind one would imagine that the Minister would insist on a leaving examination being held. When a question was asked as to why there had not been an inspection in these schools for two years, the reason given was that there were not enough inspectors. Surely that is no explanation in view of the fact that we have large numbers of brilliant young teachers, with university degrees, who are well fitted to be promoted to the position of inspector.
The position, at any rate, is that, so far as a large number of schools are concerned, there is no inspection system and no examination. Children can leave school at the age of 14 without any test being applied as to the standard of education they have reached. Since that is so, one is entitled to ask what sort of work is going on in these schools. Can we be told what is the efficiency of the teachers? I remember that in my school days a very efficient check was kept. The inspector visited the school two or three times a year, and held an examination of the various classes each year. Now we have no examination and no inspection, and while we are being asked to vote this huge sum of money for education we have no means of finding out what the standard of education is in our schools. We cannot say with truth to anyone that the teachers who drew part of this money actually taught anything to their pupils. I am sure they did, but so far as we are concerned, with the information before us, we cannot say that they did, the Minister cannot say it and the Department cannot say it. Apparently, there is nothing but dust and cobwebs in the Department.
The Minister's statement was so illuminating that I want to take it paragraph by paragraph. Referring to oral Irish it says that the divisional inspectors generally note some improvement. Last evening Deputy Mullen, who represents the County Dublin, said that they had put Irish into the heart of Ireland. I understand that the Deputy is a teacher, but this is what the Minister's statement has to say about oral Irish:—
"In oral Irish the divisional inspectors generally note some improvement. Mere reading aloud does not occupy so much of the time, and all the inspectors stress the efforts that are being made to secure that the pupils get an opportunity of expressing themselves frequently and at length in Irish.
"In reading—Irish and English— there is now more attention being given to silent reading, to the effort of the pupil (in the upper classes) to gather for himself the sense of a paragraph or chapter, and the explanation of reading matter is being treated more rationally."
I was rather staggered when I first came across the words "silent reading." I thought at first there was some snag in them. I do not claim to be an expert but, in my opinion, the children should be taught to read aloud in class. They should be taught to hear their own voices and encouraged to do the silent reading at home. With regard to arithmetic the statement says:—
"Arithmetic is generally described as one of the weakest subjects. It is pointed out that the old weaknesses persist—insufficient attention to oral work, long and unsuitable exercises with very large numbers, and out-of-date methods. Efforts, however, are being made in all districts to remedy this."
That is a strange confession for the Minister to make with regard to the work that is being done by the Department of which he is in charge, and for the service of which this poor country is being asked to vote over £4,000,000. Do Deputies believe that any effort will be made to remedy what has been referred to in that paragraph? I do not. For years I have been trying to get a few schools built in my native parish. I have put the case before the Minister in this House. A week ago I was told that engineers were down there to see if anything could be done to repair the old schools. It is admitted in this report that long and unsuitable exercises are given in the teaching of arithmetic. In spite of that confession, the Minister responsible for this Department comes here and asks us to vote money for it.
The Minister goes on to say:
"As regards the use of Irish as a medium of instruction in classes above infants, the reports indicate that up to Standard III and IV, the work is successful, but that there is a relucance amongst teachers of higher standards to use Irish as a medium."
It is a pity Deputy Mullen is not present to hear that. I wonder did he read this speech by the Minister before he got up to speak yesterday? If there is any meaning in that statement, what I understand from it is that in the elementary standards the teachers are quite capable of teaching Irish reasonably well, but, when they go above that, the teachers are incapable of teaching Irish to the children in a thorough manner. That is the implication of that statement. Then we are told we are making progress with Irish. As a matter of fact what we are doing, as I have repeatedly stated in this House, is killing Irish in this country. The very best thing this policy is achieving is that it is making the Fior Ghaeltacht bi-lingual. That is all. When I was a boy of from 10 to 15 years of age those people were exclusively and entirely Irish speakers. In house after house you would not hear one word of English, but now all the young people do not speak anything but English. Of course, Deputy Mullen thinks that this Government will make Ireland Irish through its policy of education. The whole thing would make anyone sick. It is all eye-wash for the platform. I never in my life, and never will for the time I am on this earth, mention the language of my country on a political platform. It is above politics. It is the concern of every man and woman in this country, and it is not for political propaganda or to get political kudos out of. The Minister's statement continues:
"This is very unfortunate as not only do the pupils make no progress in the use of Irish in over 90 per cent. of the higher standards but they tend to lose the Irish they have learned, and the teachers themselves in the higher standards tend to lose their command of the language through want of practice."
Is not that a shocking condemnation from the Minister's lips? Is it not a shocking condemnation of the clap-trap that we get from politicians who do not give one damn about Irish except to get votes by it? The whole thing is a disgraceful and dishonest campaign. In 1941 the Minister comes in and presents that statement to this House. Was he thinking at all when he put that on paper, or was it that he took his courage in his hands and said: "I am going to be honest about it, and give it to the House and the country irrespective of what they think about it?" That is a terrible indictment:—
"This is very unfortunate, as not only do the pupils make no progress in the use of Irish in over 90 per cent. of the higher standards, but they tend to lose the Irish they have learned, and the teachers themselves in the higher standards tend to lose their command of the language through want of practice."
When the Minister talks about "the higher standards" he is referring to pupils who leave school at 14 years of age. I was wondering would I take my courage in my hands in other years and say that the policy of the Department was destroying Irish in the Fíor-Ghaeltacht itself, but I was afraid of course that the busy-bodies, the people who wanted to use Irish for political propagandist purposes, would come down on me—not that that ever concerned me. I never thought the position was quite so bad. The higher standards? When I was a boy, you would get pupils at school up to 18 or 19 years of age. There were higher standards then, but those are not higher standards. These are only infants of 14 years of age, and the Minister refers to them as being in higher standards. They cannot read Irish, and the teachers themselves lose their knowledge of the language through want of practice, so they cannot teach children who have only reached the age of 14 years. Probably about 98 per cent. of children in the primary schools in Ireland are under 14 years of age. They are mere children, and the Minister refers to them as in the "higher standards". One would think he was referring to 40 or 50 years ago when the children remained at school up to 18 or 19 years of age. The Minister goes on to say:—
"In the use of Irish as the ordinary medium of communication between teachers and pupils and between pupils and pupils, development also appears to be slow."
After all that from the Minister, here is the next paragraph:—
"As regards the programme, inspectors appear to be unanimous that it is satisfactory."
When the Minister gets up to reply I wonder how he will reconcile those differences? He seems to me to have lost coherency when he dictated that, or perhaps somebody else dictated it for him. Now we come to his statement concerning examinations:—
"One of the matters that has caused concern in my Department has been the fact that though there has been a leaving examination for primary school pupils for the last decade the vast majority of the ordinary national schools through the country present no pupils for it. The position in this respect has been that while the majority of the convent national schools and practically 80 per cent. of the Brothers' schools through the country have sent their pupils for this examination every year, not 20 per cent. of the ordinary national schools have at any time entered their pupils for it."
The convent schools and the Brothers' schools have sent their children in for those examinations. Of course everybody knows that there are no convent schools or Christian Brothers' schools in rural Ireland. We can take it then that, so far as rural Ireland is concerned, practically no school—only 20 per cent. of them—presented their children for those examinations. Hence, there is no test of any kind. There is no examination. I may tell the House, in regard to some matters that arose on the Public Accounts Committee, that, according to the answers given by the Accounting Officer, there are numbers of schools in this State which have not been inspected for two years. It is time that this House, which votes this enormous sum of money, should pull itself together, take some interest in the children of the country, and see that they are fitted for the battle of life. The Minister goes on to say:—
"It may be argued that there is no need for a written leaving examination for the pupils of our national schools since the schools are inspected regularly."
Did anybody ever hear such a conglomeration of contradictions as there is in that? They are inspected regularly? I am telling the House about the evidence we got from the Accounting Officer last week or the week before at the Public Accounts Committee.
If the Public Accounts have not been submitted to the Dáil, they are not usually quoted from.
It is only by way of reference.
I thought Public Accounts were laid before the House the other day.
If they have been so laid, the Deputy is quite in order.
I think within the last fortnight.
I was under the impression that only an Interim Report was presented and ordered to be printed.
I am referring to this rather in detail, because we owe a duty in respect of the spending of this money to our constituents and to these young boys and girls who have to face the desperate battle of life in the future that lies before this world. I should like Deputies to consider their own positions, and the fact that they have risen to their present positions from humble beginnings in 98 per cent. of cases. Two things brought us here: firstly, what we got from our fathers and mothers, and, secondly, the good grounding in education which we got in the primary school. How is any boy in the future to get into this House? He will not be fit to write his name; he will scarcely be fit to sign his nomination paper, if the present position is allowed to continue. The Minister then says:
"In fact, owing to shortage of staff and time, only a portion of them can be inspected each year, and even if they could all be inspected, annual inspection is no substitute for examination as a test of the progress of individual pupils."
Deputies will see what the country is getting. It is getting neither inspection nor examination, and nobody knows what the conditions are. The serious feature is that the work may be quite good, and the teachers quite honest, but we have no assurance that anything is being done. A teacher may be grossly inefficient, and may never have bothered to teach anything at all, so far as the House knows, and the Minister cannot give us any information. That is a startling position, and the House should take serious notice of it. We have neither inspection nor examination. The Minister goes on to say:
"Inspection affords a valuable form of valuating the general work of a school, but in the nature of things it must be mainly impressionistic."
That is very good. It continues:—
"Apart from this, the information it supplies even in the schools that are inspected in any one year must be very general since the teachers grouped under that very elastic term ‘efficient' vary from those who are on the border of non-efficiency through the various degrees up to those who are definitely highly efficient."
How can the Minister truthfully say that? There is nothing malicious in what I am saying; it is merely a question of justice to the House. How can the Minister make that statement, when the schools have not been inspected or examined? Is that statement justified? If he were responsible to somebody who examined minutely the affairs in which he was interested, dare the Minister, as the administrative officer, present such a statement or say that, in face of what he sets out here, there is neither inspection nor examination? The statement goes on:—
It may be argued that the good inspector bases his judgment of a school on examination as well as inspection, but such examination of pupils as an inspector can manage must be very limited."
It is certainly very limited when it does not take place at all. The statement adds:—
"We have only 65 inspectors, and for that number of inspectors to test individually the progress of nearly 400,000 pupils is a physical impossibility."
Of course, it is. The only way to do it would be for the inspector to go at least once a year to the school and hold an examination. He could do it one day, and, if there are not enough inspectors, as we are spending such an amount of money on this service, we should spend the rest of it to ensure that the money is properly spent, or not spend the money at all. The statement continues:—
"If we are to get down to the individual pupil in such a way that we can be sure of his or her progress, it is obvious that some other more detailed test than inspection must be applied, and there is no way of supplying this additional test except by the reintroduction of the former system of a definite examination of each pupil in each subject at least at some stage towards the end of the normal primary course."
Is that not an admission that there is no definite information at all as to the conditions of the pupils in these schools?
"Until we have such an examination the public cannot have any real guarantee that the actual proportion of pupils who leave the primary schools with a satisfactory knowledge of the three R's is such as to justify our huge expenditure of nearly £4,000,000 on these schools. The ideal position to my mind would be that the teachers as a body should themselves carry out this examination with the co-operation and aid of the Department, and I had hopes that they would do so."
Now we are getting somewhere. Is that going to be done? Is there to be an end to this farcical position in which the schools are neither inspected nor examinated? Is the Minister going to put this into operation? The question then arises as to how to apply it. I quite agree that the teacher could quite efficiently hold the examination. The Department could send down the examination papers and the teacher could hand them out to the children, but this sum of money is so large for a country so poor as this, and the sum involved in the appointment of additional inspectors, for the purpose of annual inspections as well as holding these examinations, so small, that, as you are spending the larger sum, you should spend the smaller sum, and not get the teachers to hold the examination at all, because if a child is shown by the results to have done badly, the parents might say: "The master or mistress did not give our children a fair chance." If you want to have it above reproach, let the inspectors come down from the Department and hold the examination. They will not know one child from another, and it will not be possible for any allegations of that kind to be made. If the Minister proposes to adopt this system, let him arrange for the inspector to hold the examination. Apparently the teachers, for some reason or another, are opposed to that suggestion. They may have sound grounds for opposing it, but I cannot appreciate them. I think they would be right to refuse to hold the examination themselves and that such a decision by them would be wise.
This statement wobbles between inspection and examination and, of course, does not say that either is efficiently carried out, but it is drifting to the reintroduction of an examination system. I must say, speaking for myself, and only from the semi-knowledge or outside knowledge that I have of this sort of thing, that I approve of the examination method. I do not think it should ever be departed from. The only regret I have is that children are now leaving school so young—when they are mere infants—that if the inspection is left over till the last year the children know that they can then leave and they do not give a twopenny ticket what kind of an examination there is. I suggest that that may be a weakness. I think it is a tragedy that these little boys and girls in rural Ireland should leave school at 14 years of age. I do not see why their parents take them away. There is no necessity at all for them to take them away. They may want the children for a while during certain seasons of the year, such as to drop some "spuds" in the spring or to give some help with the hay and corn crops in the summer and harvest time. I think that in a country like this, where we have practically no industries, children should be left at school until they are 16 or 17 years of age. Of course, the answer to that— an answer which does not hold water at all—is that there is no school accommodation for them. If you go around the country you will see the schools, that used to hold 100 or 120 when I was at school, with only a few little children attending them, and when you see these few children scattered through the streets the place looks like a deserted village.
There is another paragraph in this report dealing with attendance at the schools. I think that there are, approximately, 85,000 children absentees from school in this State. It is very hard to come to any conclusion about that without having official information, but I wonder how much of that is due, not to any fault of the parents but to the bad condition of the school buildings and the amount of sickness that arises from the shocking condition of these schools. I should be interested to get from the Minister a return on that, because, according to the Minister, there are 300 schools that should be tossed immediately. It would be interesting to know how much annual illness arises among the children attending those 300 schools. I, for one, shall support the Minister if he comes in next year asking for a sum that will enable him to dispose finally and forever of the shocking school buildings in this State, and whenever the time comes for me to go out of public life, whether it be sooner or later, I shall be sorry to go out of it if these buildings still remain to disgrace the face of this country. I am sorry to think that, after 21 years of a native Government, such conditions should remain. I know that there was a great amount of leeway to be made up, and a certain amount of apology can be made to that extent, but that does not completely justify the existing conditions. We had ample time to deal with the matter if the question had been taken in time and grappled with.
It is of the utmost importance that that matter should be attended to. Certain progress has been made in the direction of erecting decent houses for people in this country who had been formerly housed in bad and wretched homes, but it is equally vital, if not more so, that proper school buildings should be provided. It is cruel to ask teachers to spend their lives in these buildings. They have no option. A man who takes up teaching as a profession has to live in these school buildings, and it is a terrible shame to ask the teachers to spend their lives in these wretched buildings. Under the circumstances, a man is forced to remain there.
I would refer the Minister again to that report of the conditions in County Clare. I can give him a worse case, although there are no rats in this place, because even the rats could not live in it, but I would ask the Minister to take this matter in hand and put an end to it once and for all. If he were to ask for an open cheque from this House I think he would get it willingly. At least, I should be one of the people to give it to him. Now, apparently, there is some new move on with regard to a programme in this country. I think Deputies should put an end to all this clap-trap at the hustings about Irish, unless they want to kill Irish. That report of the Minister is a condemnation of this House, in my opinion, as to its treatment of the language. This is a matter that has been referred to on many occasions, and it has been accentuated for the last 20 years—I mean the rapid decline of the Irish areas in this country. I profoundly regret that. We heard last night about how important Irish is to the nation. I wonder would I be justified in saying that this House has played a big part in the destruction of the Irish language in this country?
In connection with this Estimate, I took the opportunity of speaking, in my constituency, to about three managers of schools, a similar number of curates, about eight school masters and a number of school mistresses on the progress of the Irish language, but as I myself, like other Deputies, do not know the Irish language, I am not going to give the House the benefit of my investigation. I merely want to say, in connection with the Estimate, that I have made those investigations, and that any time the Minister desires I can give the information to him in private. We have been listening to a discussion on what has been done for education in this country, and I think the education of our people is almost the most important function of the State. I think that almost any sacrifice should be made in connection with any other service carried out by the State, in order to give the finest possible education to the people of this country. Listening to the speeches, however, and thinking of the war around our shores and what is happening to the world, it occurred to me to say something more about the lack of preparation of the younger generation in this country to face the post-war world, and to speak about what might be described as continuation education.
Obviously, the child who leaves school at the age of 14 is still too young to have been given a final and complete training so far as citizenship is concerned, and so far as his vocation or future career is concerned. I am beginning to wonder whether we are paying enough attention to the mind of, particularly, the boy from the age of 14 to 18. We have fought for 700 years for the independence of this country, and we have achieved independence, and I should like now to ask other Deputies in this House: What percentage of the younger men of this country really appreciate the value of independence? How many of them have been taught to think what independence means in so far as their position as citizens is concerned? If, after this war is over, the whole of the emergency legislation remains in force and the State continues to be all-powerful in the sense that the Government will interfere with the life and the habits of the community to a colossal degree, how many of the younger people would get used to it and accept what would amount to a virtual dictatorship without hardly a murmur?
We have had a dispute amongst ourselves for a considerable number of years. We have not been able to think constructively in terms of education for citizenship or education for the people. We have not been able to give all the attention necessary to the machine of State, because we disagreed as to what should be the machine of State; we disagreed as to its status and character. I wonder whether we can continue to neglect the training of the minds of the young people from 14 to 18 years of age?
At the present time the State is taking a greater and greater part in the whole life of the people. The State controls our imports and our exports; it strictly limits our purchasing power, and more and more decides what kind of goods we are to purchase and not to purchase. It is beginning to control capital, the private capital of the people. By means of taxation it grants us security of life, and, as far as one can see, whatever our views might be, we shall have to accept in the post-war world an eyer-growing interference by the State in the lives of the people. The post-war world will be a world in which, if we have secured and maintained our independence, we shall have to face the necessity for greater productive efficiency. We shall have to have greater genius in production. We shall have to fight with bared teeth to preserve our normal economy—that is, if we can preserve it at all.
After a certain period of years I believe there will be a greater competition between States for whatever markets exist. We can be certain that whoever wins the war we shall face a world in which there will be greater control of production. That may be done very unpleasantly for small nations, or in a way in which small nations can participate freely. That depends on the nature of the peace and what goes after it. I wonder whether the younger generation is prepared to face that new prospect. Their fathers have seen over 20 years of grievous dispute between different sections of the community, 20 years of relatively stagnant production in the sense that we are not a very much more wealthy or prosperous State than when we achieved independence. We are, perhaps, more prosperous in some directions and less prosperous in others.
So far as I can make out, many of the young men have the impression that the State is there to protect them; that it is a complicated piece of machinery which is best left to run itself; that the State can manage the lives of the people fairly efficiently or inefficiently, according to their views. I think the younger people take their independence far too much for granted, for perfectly normal, human reasons. I believe the growing influence of the State is going to destroy our individualism as a people unless we can do something in the way of education in order to mitigate the effect of increasing State control, unless we teach the people the character of the State machine, unless the people know something about the Constitution, how the State machine works and the part they play in it, so that instead of becoming cogs they will take a positive interest in the operation of State institutions.
I notice a considerable lack of interest in politics among the younger generation. The political movements of this country are run to a very considerable degree by the older people and, unless the younger generation are given an interest in things political, democracy will, without any doubt, die in this country and for us to assume that democracy can survive easily and that we can go on living the same old existence, in the same way as we have always lived, although it will be under entirely new conditions, is, I submit, not facing the issue. A lot of what I am saying is being thought by many people.
I submit that the only way to develop our resources after this war and to guide the State machine in a way that will not be harmful to human and national interests is by considering the political education of the citizen, the technical education of the citizen and also the co-operative education of the citizen. Speaking again of the ever-increasing interference of the State, one of the only ways of preventing our people from becoming a community in which the State destroys our liberties is that the people themselves devise their own co-operative institutions and, having devised them, ask the State to link them together or co-ordinate them.
We have not yet in this country properly grasped the nettle of the whole question of co-operation. The educational authorities have their share of responsibility for that. I repeat what I said on the occasion of the Budget, that there is no agricultural country in this world which competes with us in the British market which has not adopted a large farm economy or a co-operative small farm economy. Co-operation is the most difficult thing to bring about in this country because of our national character. That does not mean that we can escape from the responsibility of facing the people with the alternative of continuing to lose productive efficiency, continuing to lose prosperity and continuing to omit opportunities for obtaining wealth and employment for the people of this country. We must realise that other countries not very different from us have discovered that, so far as agriculture is concerned, they have to adopt one of those methods.
When a young person leaves school at the age of 14 he should have certain principles in so far as his relation to the State is concerned. He should be taught that this country has got to fight a grim fight in which he will play a part as an individual to develop it and retain its prosperity. That fight will become grimmer as time goes on, instead of being less severe. He should be taught some of the reasons for the failure of the country to achieve its maximum productive capacity, due to our history and to various difficulties after we achieved a measure of independence in 1921. I wonder how many citizens are aware of the tremendous trouble facing us and what part they are to play?
Similarly, the workers in industry should be taught at least a certain amount of what might be described as esprit de corps in production. Many industries in this country would be able to succeed, would become very efficient machines, would become very efficient production units with very good conditions for the workers if the maximum effort was made both by managers and workers for low production costs and efficiency. Many of them will not be efficient, will act as a deterrent to agricultural production unless that maximum effort is made. I have been told by a good number of industrialists that that spirit is absent to a certain degree, due to lack of what might be described as continuation education in such matters.
I should like to support every word spoken by other Deputies on this Estimate as to the need for agricultural instruction being treated as an absolutely vital part of our education. It always strikes me as almost insane that the principal vocation of this country should be taught by instructors on a voluntary basis, and not as part of a very important administration, not as part of the whole education machine. I have no objection to the Department of Agriculture administering agricultural education, but at least the education itself should be of a comprehensive character. I am informed by agricultural instructors with whom I have spoken, and I repeat what they said because I think it is important, that only about 10 or 15 per cent. of the agricultural community receive any agricultural instruction at any period; that about 25 per cent. receive instruction in poultry rearing—that is a higher percentage, and I have mentioned that because we must give credit where credit is due—and 25 per cent. receive instruction in horticulture. The horticultural, poultry and agricultural instructors work hard and do a very fine job, and many of them certainly work beyond civil service hours in order to bring instruction to the percentages of the people I have indicated.
I do not see how we can face the growing competition that will arise after the war, when the first period of scarcity is past, unless the agricultural population are prepared to understand the extremely complicated character of modern agricultural science. I was reading the other day a series of practical lectures, accompanied by demonstrations, on the most modern type of grass growing. All I can say is that it is a science which has become so complicated that nobody could be expected to understand it unless he had a thorough training in general agricultural science, and a knowledge of plants, soils, and soil chemistry. No one in this country can be expected to face the competition that may arise in the course of the next eight or nine years, so far as our exports are concerned, on the present basis of education; it is utterly impossible. Grass farming, from having been a comparatively simple science, is now very complicated. In places like New Zealand and areas in England, where the new science has developed, it is more complicated than tillage.
It involves as much labour, it involves tillage in its turn, and it involves knowledge of a technical kind which is quite evidently beyond the great majority of our people unless they are given a sound rural science education and instruction from the time they are 14 until they are 17. Knowing how easy it is to increase taxation and how difficult it is to produce it, I submit that if in wartime we can face an expenditure of £8,000,000 on the Army, we certainly can face in peace time the cost of a complete system of agricultural instruction, both practical and theoretical, for every citizen engaged in agriculture from the age of 14 to 17, and that to say we cannot afford it and can afford the cost of the Army is madness.
I am well aware that we have been living in circumstances of economic competition which were fairly easy. Up to the beginning of the war, at least 40 per cent. of our exports, whatever price they were sold at, were accepted by the British because they had to buy store cattle. With nearly half of our agricultural production landed, so to speak, in England, whether we lost or made money, according to the price received, there was no question, strictly speaking, of competition in that there were sufficient people who could afford British beef fattened from Irish stores to absorb that market. I doubt if the conditions will be the same after the war, and whether we can continue to neglect education, even in connection with that portion of our agricultural production.
The same problem exists in connection with domestic economy instruction and general teaching in connection with living on a very frugal allowance. I wonder what the result would be if an examination were made into poverty in this country so far as it has been caused by lack of instruction in how to make use of frugal resources in the best possible way. The Minister for Local Government stated on a recent Estimate that 90 per cent. of the malnutrition in the rural districts was due to ignorance of dietetics. That is an extraordinary statement. Much progress has been made in connection with domestic economy instruction, but a great deal more progress needs to be made, particularly, as I have said, in relation to how to live on frugal resources with the aid of what knowledge we have gained in the science of food values during the last 20 years. There, again, I do not see how we can say we cannot afford the money for a service of that kind. I would add that I have been informed that what I might describe as education in civics, or political education is taught in a number of technical schools in the country. More honour to the people who considered that and made it possible.
I should like to conclude by once more stressing the need for education of our young people, from the age of 14 onwards, either during the day or in the evening, on a far greater scale in order to fit them to face what may be a very difficult future. I would appeal also once more, bearing in mind what other Deputies have said, for a far greater and more comprehensive measure of agricultural instruction as being the most serious and urgent need so far as education is concerned at the present time.
I wish to make a few remarks on this Estimate because, as other speakers said, it is one of the most important Votes that come before the House. I agree practically with the whole of Deputy McMenamin's speech and also with that of Deputy Childers.
Much has been said about education in the primary schools and about the teaching of Irish. Unfortunately, I have not a knowledge of Irish, but while that is so I could not allow this Vote to pass without bringing to the attention of the House some of the things I have heard said throughout the country on the subject of teaching the children through the medium of Irish. I have heard it said that it is not practicable or possible. I have that definitely from teachers, and I have seen the results in the children themselves. I do not mean to cast any aspersions on the children of the present day —we have heard a great deal about the advances that we have made in our schools, our excellent school buildings and our excellent teachers—but despite all that the children do not seem to be as well educated as those of a former generation, children who, by the way, received their education under much worse conditions.
That is a correct representation of the present state of affairs. It may not, perhaps, be a popular thing to say, but it is the truth. I have been making inquiries, but without making any inquiries at all, I have been told by the heads of schools, by teachers and by parents that the children of to-day are in a complete muddle, and that it is not possible to impart knowledge to them through the medium of Irish. It is difficult enough for small children to learn Irish as a subject, especially when it is not the language of their home. Much less is it possible to have the general body of the children educated so as to fit them for the battle of life, if you endeavour to do that through the medium of a language of which they have only a slight knowledge and which, in fact, is new to the teacher.
I was not present for the Minister's statement. Even if I had been I would not be very much wiser, because I understand it was made in Irish, but, according to Deputy McMenamin's translation of it, the standard of education attained by the children on leaving school at the age of 14 is not as high as the Minister would like it to be. Surely no one can imagine that a child of 14 years of age is sufficiently educated to face the world—the grim battle of life, as it has been described, which lies ahead of every child.
At the age of 14, the child only half understands the subjects that it should know thoroughly, and that it has been trying to master for several years. It is not for the purpose of criticising that I speak on this Vote, but to give expression to the views that I have heard in going amongst the people. The Taoiseach's suggestion to set up some sort of a committee to inquire into the teaching of subjects through the medium of Irish seems to me to be an excellent one. It is the only way in which any progress can be made, especially if people are genuinely interested in the Irish language. One wonders sometimes if people are really sincere in what they say about Irish. In recent years, it has been proved that a lot of political humbug was talked by certain people on this question of Irish. People who, at one time, spoke a lot about Irish afterwards did their utmost to commercialise it. That, in my opinion, was one of the most effective methods that could be adopted for killing the language. If we want to have the language revived, we ought to have it taught as a subject in all schools. This thing of forcing it down the necks of people is doing no good. The people generally should be proud to acquire a knowledge of the language. It is their native tongue. The practical way to make it a success, therefore, would be to have it taught as a subject in all the schools. This matter of forcing the teaching of Irish on children has, in some cases that I know of, led to a nervous breakdown amongst teachers, particularly nuns. At a fairly advanced age some nuns had to try to acquire a knowledge of the language in order to keep up the standard of their school. Surely, it is not wise to expect people of middle-age to do that, and then expect them in turn to impart their limited knowledge of the language to children. That, I think, is not feasible.
The people generally are not against the revival of the Irish language. They are definitely against the use of it as a medium of instruction in other subjects. It is to be hoped that if the committee spoken of is set up that parents and others interested will be given an opportunity of presenting their views. What the present system has led to is this, that children are not being educated at all. I have been told, though I can hardly imagine it to be credible, that grammer is not now being taught in some schools. When I took steps to verify this statement I found it was true. I am not giving it to the House for truth, and I hope the Minister, when replying, will say whether that is so or not. Subjects such as grammar, arithmetic and hand-writing should receive far more attention in our schools. The children of the present day do not seem to pay any attention at all to hand-writing. I suggest that it should be impressed on them that the writing of a good hand is going to be an important matter for them in their future life.
If the school leaving age is not extended, I think that some steps should be taken to get boys and girls, after they leave school at the age of 14, to attend classes in agriculture and domestic economy. The need for the teaching of both subjects is very obvious in many places. One wonders sometimes whether we are getting any proper return at all for the enormous sum of money that is being spent on education. I am afraid that, in many cases, the children are not making the advance they should be making, considering the school provision that is made for them.
It would be an excellent thing if teachers arranged to give at least one lecture a week to the children on their duties as citizens. It must be confessed that, at the present time, there is an almost absolute disregard for public and private property. I am not saying that of children as a whole, but, generally speaking, children fail to appreciate that buildings, whether public or private, do not simply grow up. They should be told that they have been provided at great expense, and that it is part of their duty as citizens to preserve them. I think there is a great need for the lectures I speak of, because very often, in the churches on Sundays, priests are obliged to advise parents to admonish their children in connection with the wanton destruction of property. I have heard several sermons on that quite recently. I, therefore, suggest to the Minister that something might be done in the direction of arranging for a weekly lecture to the children by the teacher.
It is to be regretted that the attendance at agricultural and domestic economy classes is not as good as it ought to be. The buildings in which these classes are given have been put up at enormous expense. It is a pity that the facilities provided are not more fully availed of. One frequently hears of an attendance of 20 or 25 on one day or one evening a week at these classes, the attendance covering only a period of two hours. Could not something be gone to improve the attendance at them? Some people say that the Irish are good housekeepers; others say the opposite. There is a lot of humbug talked about culture and Irish and that sort of thing. That is all very well if one believes in it, but I think it would be much better if, instead of talking, people would do something practical to make these classes a real success. It would almost have to be made compulsory in order to make the people realise that those schools are for them to avail of in order to fit those girls for after life. That is really what we want here in Ireland at the present time. The wrong people seem to go to those schools—the people who could definitely afford to go to better schools—but the people for whom they are intended, the people who leave the ordinary national schools, do not seem to avail of them. For that reason I think it ought to be made definitely compulsory, because apparently that is the only way we can have it done here. We should make the money available for compulsory training for girls in those technical schools. I do think that would be an enormous help, not only to the family, but to the country as a whole. I think the Minister ought to consider that, and have some sort of an investigation not only as far as Irish is concerned, but also as far as the raising of the school leaving age is concerned. If the school leaving age is not raised, then attendance at these other schools should be made compulsory until 15 or 16 years of age. Those classes are not availed of at the present time, and I think it is a great pity. With this amount of money at our disposal, in a very poor country, I think we should have better educated children than we have at the end of the time. The people long ago had not the same opportunities at all, but they made good names for themselves, and were able to carry themselves better in many cases than the children at the present time. They have a grim battle before them, and it is really up to every one of us to apply our minds to the subject in order to see if some method can be found for the betterment of the children of this generation.
The debate has been very interesting, refreshing in some cases and encouraging in others. It is a source of satisfaction to me that we have had so many speakers, most of whom have contributed something useful to the discussion. I think that is all to the good, and, if the emergency situation has not brought us any other advantage, it will have served one useful purpose, at any rate, if it induces all of us to look closely, within the opportunities that are available to us, into this whole question of the educational future of our country. It is only natural that we should have regard to the situation more particularly, because, as Deputy Childers has pointed out, we do not know what kind of world may face us after the war. I, myself, feel very anxious about that matter. If it were possible for us to know when the emergency would come to an end, or what exactly the situation would be at the end of it, and particularly how we ourselves would be placed, then I would say that we should certainly get down at once to plan a programme of educational reforms suitable to the situation which would confront us. Unhappily, we are not prophets. We do not know what the situation is likely to be, and I doubt if a very comprehensive inquiry would lead us very far, for that reason. We would have the advantage, no doubt, that we would be able to carry out an exhaustive examination of the system as it exists at present, the developments which have taken place under a native Government, and the whole organisation and administration of the system as it has worked during the past 17 or 18 years, but I think the value of that investigation would be greatly impaired if we were to find afterwards that we were suddenly confronted with either a continuance of the present unfortunate situation, or some other and perhaps unforeseen situation after the war. Therefore, I think that, before an exhaustive inquiry be embarked upon, we ought to wait somewhat longer until we see whether the position will resolve itself.
There is no doubt that there is general anxiety as to whether our young people are being prepared in the best possible way for the struggle that lies before them. Quite possibly, that struggle will be far more severe in the years to come than it has ever been before. Therefore, it is incumbent upon me in particular, and upon the Government and the Oireachtas, to see that every possible facility is given our young people to prepare themselves for that future. At the present time we have to depend very largely upon the reports of our inspectors, and if, instead of circulating the statement which I made at the opening of the debate, I were to have copies circulated of all the inspectors' reports, setting out in some detail the position as they find it in their respective districts, I am not quite sure whether we would benefit greatly from that. We might benefit somewhat if we referred those reports to a smaller body, but I am not quite sure whether the debate would have benefited, because we would have gone into matters of detail. We can deal only with the broad general principles on an occasion of this kind. The statement which I made was not in the nature of a report, although many Deputies have alluded to it as such. In fact, it is a rather brief statement, as I did not wish to weary the House by making a prolonged statement. I simply gave a summary, in the shortest possible space, of points which I thought were of importance, points which I thought members of the Dáil might wish to discuss. The present, as I said, is rather a favourable opportunity. There has always been an absence of political partisanship and political controversy, generally speaking, in the discussions on this Vote, for which I am very grateful.
Would the Minister say why this is the particular moment that he selected for withholding the normal report of the Department of Education?
The Government is economising. No doubt, it has escaped the attention of the Deputy that efforts are being made in that direction. This is one of the efforts. We are not publishing reports unless it is absolutely necessary. However, I shall have the matter reconsidered.
I think that Deputy Morrissey, for example, who is in the position of being one of those Deputies who are apparently not quite clear, as the Taoiseach suggested, as to what the present position is, how efficient our educational machine may be and what results exactly we are achieving, might be more satisfied if he had an opportunity of discussing matters with some of our officers, and, quite apart from the whole question of an inquiry or committee, might I say that Deputies will be always welcome in the Education Office, or in the schools, should they express a desire at any time to get information about particular phases of the work. So far as I am concerned, I shall be only too happy indeed if Deputies, even groups of Deputies, would take the opportunity now and again to go and see for themselves the work going on in the schools. The time is not perhaps very opportune at present—I myself have tried to visit a number of schools—but I certainly think that even more value could be got out of our annual discussion on education here, which is practically the only opportunity we have of discussing educational problems in their broader national aspects, if Deputies could be brought into closer contact with the actual work, if they could ask questions of teachers, inspectors and administrators, ponder over the answers, and decide for themselves whether these are satisfactory or whether they feel that matters should be probed further.
I feel, however, in regard to the comparisons which we have had of our present results with results in the past —and who will take it upon himself to say that he is the perfect judge to decide whether, in fact, in respect of any particular subject, any particular school or branch of educational work, we are getting better or worse results now than we got 20, 30 or 40 years ago? —that it is very difficult indeed to compare these matters, particularly when we are merely comparing them on the basis of our own recollection. Something more is necessary, something more definite in the way of evidence. We require to have specimens of the examination papers that were set and the exact results achieved, and to compare with these the work of the present time, if we are to get comparisons of any value. But, then, the circumstances have changed very much. There is, for example, the whole question of Irish and other factors which have altered conditions greatly.
However, I think it is no harm for me to emphasise, for the benefit of those Deputies who have worries about the situation, that, at any rate, for the first time in our history, during recent years we have been able to point to the fact that the higher standards in our national schools have been filled, with the result that the child will have reached a much higher standard than formerly, and secondly, that he will not leave school until the age of 14. I should say that the normal child should be easily able to have passed through the sixth standard by the time he or she reaches that age, whereas, before an Irish Government came into office, and for some time afterwards, due to no fault of the Government then, a very large proportion of our school population left school at the age of 11 or 12, and even when they continued after those years, they did not reach that higher standard of attainment which is almost universal now, and which, I would say, practically all our children reach.
Our teachers also have improved. While, under the old system, a very great majority of the teachers were trained, we now have the advantage that our teachers have had a good secondary education before proceeding for training, and a certain number of them have additional qualifications. Quite a number, for example, have taken out degrees and the higher diploma of education in the university. So that whether from the point of view of the standard of attainment of the average pupil, or the standard of attainment of the teacher, which are, at any rate, two criteria as to whether the position has improved. I think if Deputies will consider these they will agree that there has been an all-round improvement. The attendances also have contributed to the good results. We have an attendance average now of well over 80 per cent.
If there is a feeling that we are not consulting teachers or others whom we ought to consult, I should like to say that so far as possible we do consult teachers. So far as primary education is concerned, the great body is the Irish National Teachers' Organisation. We are in frequent consultation with them and although the Department, like the teachers' organisation, has its own point of view and holds to it strongly, we, nevertheless, find we can achieve good results by harmonious co-operation, which, I am glad to say, is quite normal. We are also in touch with the managers' association.
It would be extremely difficult to see how we could consult the parents. I remember reading quite recently of a complaint by a prominent officer of an education department not very far away from here that the local committees responsible for the administration of the schools had not worked successfully, and that, in fact, they were practically a dead letter, because the parents—they were, I take it, parents in all cases—who constituted the membership of these committees failed to turn up to meetings.
I question very much, even if it were possible to establish a system by which parents could be brought into regular consultation with regard to school matters, or with regard to policy at the administrative headquarters, whether the system would last very long. Obviously, it is only a selected body of persons who have special knowledge of education and are intimately familiar with its various aspects who will be in a position to give advice. Anything in the nature of consulting parents as a body or representatives of parents selected as such, except perhaps in so far as members of the Dáil are representatives of the parents, would not, I feel, be successful. At the same time, it is the duty of the Department to keep in constant touch so far as it can with representative opinion. We try to do that, and, as I have explained on other occasions, from time to time, we have appointed committees and commissions to examine specific questions. I do not think, however, that a commission or council of a roving nature, which would try to inquire into everything and which would be of a permanent character, would have the advantages which those who postulate it seem to think.
At the same time, I feel that detailed inquiry is not possible at the present time, for one thing, apart from the difficulties of the emergency situation and that we do not know what the future may hold, we are rather short of staff in the Education Office as in many other Departments at present, and it is rather serious when inspectors, for example, find it difficult to attend to their normal work, owing to transport difficulties, to take them away from that work when, as I have indicated in my opening statement, they have far more than they can do at present. They are scarcely able to keep up with their duties even in normal circumstances. If some proposal on the lines of the suggestion by the Taoiseach is put forward, of course, it will be very carefully considered.
Now, Deputy Mulcahy raised two questions in his statement on the motion to refer back the Vote. One of them was the school leaving age, and the other was the question of large classes in Dublin. There were other points, but I think these were the two main points. We have been considering this question of the school leaving age, and our policy has been to proceed by way of experiment in certain suitable areas. The City of Cork, for example, was chosen for the first experiment because Cork seemed to be a specially favourable centre from the educational point of view. This experiment has been in operation for a little over two years and it is now possible to give some idea of the way in which it is working and the results that have been obtained. According to the last census of population there were 2,945 young persons of from 14 to 16 years of age resident in the city area. Prior to the inauguration of the scheme, in September, 1938, the total attendance of young persons of this age at recognised schools was 1,792, leaving a total of 1,153—556 boys and 597 girls—of this age not in attendance at any form of school.
The "compulsory courses" of the Cork City Vocational Education Committee provide for the further education of these 1,153 young persons. Instruction is provided for one five-hour day per week for 36 weeks or 180 hours' instruction in all, per year, and the obligation to attend applies to all these young persons whether in employment or not. I am very glad to be able to say that the employers have co-operated in connection with the attendance of their young employees and that the attendance is very satisfactory. We think that this experiment has worked very smoothly. In the girls' classes, for example, each class, in the course of the day's instruction, is taught to prepare a simple working-class meal and to serve it in an attractive way. At the end of the course the girls are provided with typed, bound copies of all the menus they have prepared, so that they can afterwards refer to them at any time in connection with their home duties. Opportunities are also given to the young persons to enrol voluntarily in the classes for physical training, choral singing, drama and other recreative classes. By arrangement with the city corporation they are also given the use of swimming baths and provided with competent instruction, and lantern lectures and talks of topical interest are given at regular intervals.
The State bears the entire cost of the conduct of the compulsory courses. This amounted to £4,856 11s. 4d. in the last financial year, and may be somewhat less in the current financial year. Investigations have just been completed in regard to a second area in which the Department considers that successful results could be achieved. Whether the expenditure is justifiable in prevailing conditions is an issue on which a definite decision has not yet been arrived at.
In the City of Dublin we have this exceedingly troublesome question of juvenile unemployment on which numerous representations have been made to me from time to time. There is great difficulty in finding employment for young people in the city, and I recognise that there is a very real danger in allowing such young people to remain without occupation, either industrial or educational, during a very formative period of their lives. It is difficult to state to what extent these young people get employment at present on leaving school, but I think it may be assumed that a considerable proportion of them fail to get any employment at all or to get it within a reasonable time, and that much of the employment that is available to them is, in its nature, unsettling and precarious.
There is, however, the question whether this problem of juvenile unemployment can, in fact, be solved by raising the school-leaving age. The matter was examined in some detail by a committee which examined the question some years ago, and I think that if Deputies will refer to the findings of that committee they will recognise that the contention that raising the school-leaving age is, of itself, going to solve this difficult question of juvenile unemployment is not quite as sound as it seems to be. This is often taken for granted, but if the matter is examined, even casually, it will be seen that the raising of the school-leaving age does not, in itself, provide a solution for the problem. If we leave the young people at school until they are 15 years of age, or even 16, there will still be a problem of juvenile unemployment afterwards. That does not mean to say that, from the educational point of view, there are not very strong reasons, indeed very compelling reasons, for giving young people the extra year or two years' education, but I want to emphasise that if we regard it from the point of view of solving the problem of juvenile unemployment we are not at all on as strong ground as some people seem to think.
That was not the point of view from which I raised it.
In the City of Dublin the vocational education committee is entrusted with this question of continuation education. I am not in a position to say that if the vocational education committee comes to me with proposals for raising the school-leaving age, I can promise them that the necessary finances will be available, let us say, while the emergency situation continues. I am quite sure that if such a proposal came up it would have to be considered very carefully indeed by my Department and myself. It is a matter of the utmost importance, and even if the vocational education committee is not in a position to put forward proposals of this nature, if it is the case that they do not think the time is opportune to introduce an experiment of the nature that we have had, for example, in Cork City, then at least, I would suggest to Deputies who are interested in this question, as far as the City of Dublin is concerned, that they might direct some of their energies and some of their advice to the vocational education committee itself. It is not the function of the Department of Education to put up these or similar proposals in the first instance. Everybody will recognise that before such proposals reach a concrete stage a great deal of preparatory work and investigation is necessary.
I am not sure whether that preparatory work has been carried out in Dublin. And if it has I do not know to what extent the Dublin committee would be in a position to embark upon these proposals within any reasonable time; but at any rate, even if it is the case that they do not consider the time opportune to put up proposals, or that, having put them up, they cannot get the necessary financial aid from the Government to enable them to put their proposals through, nevertheless, we would all be in this position, that we would have a definite idea of what was contemplated, we would have a definite survey, and a plan ready which could be put into operation as soon as circumstances permitted.
So the Minister's suggestion in the present emergency is that, as regards children of 14 years leaving the schools, perhaps to the extent of 5,000 boys this year, and maybe the same number of girls, it is not the function of the Department of Education, or of the Government, to take into consideration what the results of that are going to be?
I have explained that the administration of continuation and technical education in the City of Dublin is the function of the Dublin City Vocational Education Committee, under the Vocational Act, and, if the vocational committee are in a position to put forward proposals, I am not very hopeful that we can do very much; but I would like to see the position reached that we had these proposals, and had the ground cleared, and the plan ready for action as soon as circumstances improved. The raising of the school-leaving age, even by one year, in Dublin, and only on the rather limited basis of the experiment that we have carried out in Cork, would be fairly expensive, and, if the experiment were to be on the lines of raising the age from 14 to 16—that is, two years instead of one—it would be a great deal more expensive.
What would the expense be?
The estimate would go to show that raising the age from 14 to 15, on the basis of the Cork experiment, would cost about £30,000 per year, and to raise it from 15 to 16 would cost £65,000.
For one school day a week of five hours?
Yes. I am extremely doubtful that the money can be provided in existing circumstances. Then there is the question of accommodation to be considered. A certain amount of capital expenditure is necessary, particularly if we were to go further than the one school day per week, because we would require far more school accommodation, a much larger increase in teaching staff and the expenditure on overheads would be considerably greater, apart from the actual expenditure on teaching. In the City of Dublin the expenditure on overheads, as compared with actual expenditure on teaching, is higher than it is elsewhere.
Since the problem of juvenile employment is a social and economic problem rather than an educational one, educational facilities cannot of themselves provide a solution, although they make the position easier, provided they are well directed. Accordingly, I do not consider the time opportune for taking the step of raising the school-leaving age in Dublin City. I am very anxious to examine the whole question, and I have been considering, if the question of cost ruled out any move in the direction of raising the school-leaving age in the near future, whether an alternative solution for some time to come, at least until circumstances improved, might not be found by providing juvenile training centres in selected districts in which the effects of unemployment are most marked.
The advantage of these juvenile training centres would be that they could be conducted on a much freer basis than applies normally to schools. In addition to formal instruction in suitable subjects, courses at such centres could include physical culture and organised sport, lectures and recreational activities. The attendance would be voluntary and a great deal would depend on the ability of the organisers of the centres to make them as attractive as possible. Granted that competent organisers were available, I think it is clear that much useful work could be done, even during the emergency, to help and encourage young people.
What Department would deal with that?
It all depends. I think it could be done in connection with the vocational education scheme in the city, but it has not progressed very far, because here again finance is a determining factor, and if a juvenile training centre could not be planned at a very reasonable cost I fear it would not serve a useful purpose. In spite of present difficulties and the unlikelihood that any very substantial sums of money will be provided in the near future for the reform Deputy Mulcahy has in mind, I would like to assure him that the matter is, nevertheless, under constant examination, firstly, with a view to ascertaining whether, if we cannot proceed with the general scheme, we could not have some scheme which we might proceed with in a partial way, such as this one of juvenile training centres, and, secondly, if it is not possible to have even such an alternative scheme, to see that at least the position in Dublin will be carefully surveyed and plans for post-war development drawn up.
With regard to large classes, it is quite true that if one views the schools in which there are classes with up to 50 pupils on the rolls, or perhaps more than 50, the position might look rather serious. The list in the Parliamentary reply which I gave the Deputy looks rather formidable. I would like to assure him that the position has been receiving a good deal of attention and that it is not as serious as one might think from the number of large classes. I have here two reports from the divisional inspectors in Dublin City, one for North Dublin and the other for South Dublin. I think I could not do better than read what they say. I think both reports were received before the Deputy's question was put in. One of them certainly was, because, so far back as 1937, we issued a circular, a copy of which I have here, setting out certain principles on which organisation should be carried out in large schools. The first report says:—
"According to reports received by me from the district inspectors and from my own experience, the position as regards the organisation of the larger schools in the Dublin area is now generally satisfactory. There are extremely few cases in which the classes are unduly large and, in the rare cases in which this has occurred, the principal teachers are taking steps to reduce the size of the classes in accordance with the suggestions contained in the circular of August, 1937.
He then goes on to say that the matter is receiving constant attention from the inspectors.
The other divisional inspector says:
"Organisation in most of the larger city schools is, in view of all the circumstances, generally satisfactory. Instances of schools in which large classes are to be seen are not wanting, but in some of these the explanation is to be found in the lack of floor space or in the want of suitable class-room accommodation. In others the difficulty is due to the failure of distributing teaching power properly. There is, in general, a tendency to arrange work in such a way that the largest classes are found amongst the infants and first standard students. Many of the weaknesses found in the organisation of large schools could be easily remedied by periodical conferences between the principals and their staffs. One would think that any principal who supervises efficiently the work of his colleagues would have no difficulty in finding matters eminently suitable for such a conference. The actual cases in which unduly large classes of 60 and upwards are found are comparatively few and, as already mentioned, the want of floor space or proper class-room accommodation is sometimes responsible."
The divisional inspector then gives a list of schools in which he found unduly large classes, and adds that in practically all these cases steps are being taken to improve the position so far as the circumstances of the school permit. An enrolment of 55, which would mean an attendance of between 40 and 45, on a basis of 80 per cent. average attendance, would not be considered excessive under our present rules, and the larger the school, on the staffing arrangements we have, the nearer you get to the unit of 40 for each individual teacher. If we were to change that radically and try to reduce the unit to something substantially below 40, it would be a very big administrative change and would cost a very large sum of money.
The difficulties that are found at present in dealing with this question of school organisation are—(1) the principal teacher has a difficulty in dividing all the children into homogeneous groups, one under each teacher; (2) pupils in the infant classes come in at all times of the year. There is, apparently, no way in which we can ensure that infants should first come only in July, at the beginning of the school year. They come in at practically all times of the year, and this upsets the organisation of the school. But the most serious factor, I think, is the fact that the rooms and the floor space accommodation do not fit in readily with the organisation of the school which the inspector and the principal teacher would like to have if circumstances were better. The rooms may be for classes of forty or forty-five, and in that case it is difficult to arrange that the classes be smaller.
With regard to the question of preparatory colleges, referred to by Deputy MacPhaidin, the position is that in 1932 and 1933, 25 per cent. of the places in the preparatory colleges were reserved for Fíor-Gaeltacht candidates. But as preparatory college students then only represented 35 or 40 per cent. of the students going into the training colleges, the position was that not more than perhaps 10 per cent. of the training college students were Fíor-Gaeltacht people. I raised the percentage for the Fíor-Gaeltacht candidates from 25 to 40 per cent. in 1933, and it has continued so since, a further 40 per cent. being kept for fluent speakers in Irish; one-half of these reserved places to be filled by candidates from the Breac-Gaeltacht and the other half from the country in general. This obtained in 1938. Since that time we have been constantly examining the question of the preparatory colleges, and this year we are reintroducing the entrance examination for girls. Next year we hope it may be possible to reintroduce it for boys. We closed down on recruitment for the past few years, and the position for the girls' examination this year, which I hope will be the position for the boys' examination if it takes place next year, is that 50 per cent. of the vacant places in the colleges will be reserved for candidates who obtain 85 per cent. or over in oral Irish, and one-half of those, that is to say 25 per cent. of the total number of places, will be reserved for candidates from the Fíor-Gaeltacht.
How many vacancies will there be in the preparatory colleges?
Not a great many. Only about 50, I think, during the present year.
Fifty girls and no boys?
No boys this year. The preparatory colleges, if it is necessary for me to mention the matter again, were instituted for the purpose of enabling us to get a reasonable proportion of native Irish-speaking teachers, about whose facility in Irish, whose capacity to teach Irish, and to teach through Irish if necessary, there could be no doubt. Owing to the economic circumstances in the Irish-speaking areas and the fact that there were no secondary schools available, these preparatory colleges were established. Even if they were to be closed down, they have amply justified themselves.
Will the Minister deal with the training colleges?
What is the point about them?
My point is that, with the grave necessity there is for extending the school age, I do not think we can simply drop that question now, and, accompanying that, the necessity for reducing classes in the bigger centres, such as Dublin, you will undoubtedly want more teachers. If the training colleges are to be left as they are at present, and if the boys' colleges are not to be opened, then the Minister is not only putting himself in the position that he can say: "We have no money to go ahead with these things," but he is deliberately putting himself in the position that he can say: "We will have no teachers for all these things." We do not want a prophet to tell us what kind of a situation we are entering on so far as the internal situation is concerned on the educational side, and that is why I ask what the position is with regard to the training colleges. Are the colleges for men petering out so far as providing people is concerned?
That is rather a big question and would take some time to go into. We have had this difficulty about the falling attendances. Up to about 1934 it would seem that enrolments were fairly stable. They have been falling more rapidly since 1934.
The 1936 census figures revealed a very serious situation in the decrease in the number of enrolments, particularly in the rural schools. Moreover, the wastage among teachers turned out to be much less than it had been before that time. There was also the factor of a change in population from the country to the cities. Even as far back as 1933 we took steps to reduce recruitment and otherwise to restrict, as far as we could without injuring the training colleges, the opportunities for entrance into teaching here. We have been taking further steps practically every year since. In view of the difficulties in that situation, it would have been very attractive, indeed, if we could have switched our teachers over to the continuation-education schemes, particularly if we are going to embark on any general plan for raising the school-leaving age. The trouble, however, is that the ordinary primary teachers are trained for primary work. They are not trained for continuation work. We have been getting these continuation teachers as a result of holding special courses, and of putting special instructors in charge of them. The courses last over 18 months or for a shorter period. We find that we are getting very good material in that way. We are getting —and this is very necessary in the case of continuation schools—men of experience in trades, as well as men of sound educational qualifications. That is the system we have adopted. If we were to try to alter the training college system to suit the needs of continuation education, we would have to change the staffs, for example, and as well difficult questions of administrative control might arise. We have gone into the matter carefully—it is a solution which has occurred to a good many people who have been thinking about this problem of unemployment among teachers—but, unfortunately, it is not possible to use the training colleges for any other purpose than that for which they were originally intended, namely, for the training of primary teachers. They do not lend themselves to the training of teachers for continuation work. Even if we were to take a number of the primary teachers who are qualified national teachers and were to train them specially for continuation work, I am afraid that, so far as suitability is concerned they would not be as suitable, having regard to the practical qualifications that are required for continuation teachers, as the types we are getting at present.
In what institutions are the courses for continuation teachers given?
Sometimes we carry them out in the Pembroke Technical Schools sometimes in the School of Art—we have courses going on there at present—and we have had one in Cork. There is one point that I would like to emphasise to the Dáil, as the matter has been raised, and it is that this question of falling enrolments is a very serious matter. The enrolments kept fairly steady, as I have said, until about 1934. After that time, they began to fall and they are still falling. That might not have been very serious if the attendances which had been kept at a fairly level rate for a good many years, did not also begin to fall. In fact, there was a considerable fall. The 1936 Census brought out information that we had not got before.
I would like to emphasise to the House that the position in that regard is really very serious. So far as the employment of male teachers is concerned, it is likely to continue to be serious for some time to come. Even if there should be an upward trend in the population figures now, it will not, I am afraid, affect the situation in the schools for a number of years. I am afraid that for a further period—I am certain that for a period of years to come—we shall have to face further reductions—it is not a very nice thing to look forward to—in the enrolments and attendances in our rural schools. If anything could be done by way of national policy to alter that situation it certainly would be a very great matter, not merely from the point of view of ensuring employment for a large number of young men and women each year as teachers and of making the fullest and most effective use of our training and preparatory college establishments, but also from the social point of view. The country school has lost, in some cases, half its numbers in the past 20 or 30 years. This is a very serious matter socially and nationally for the country. The situation may not be so bad in all rural areas. Some counties are not as badly off as others. Some of the counties which are noted for their traits of character and intelligence, and are most representative of the Irish personality, are suffering most heavily from this terrible decline in the school population.
What does the Minister think is the cause?
Partly the change of population to the cities, and partly the transport which brings children into the town schools. There have been, undoubtedly, in a great many rural areas surprisingly few marriages over periods of a good many years. Sometimes one hears the most melancholy tidings about the absence of marriages in rural parishes over long periods of time.
Due mainly to economic reasons.
With regard to school buildings, we have provided during the present year, under Vote No. 10, the sum of £250,000. I think that is a fairly reasonable allocation. In spite of the difficult financial situation with which we are confronted, I think it is not altogether a question of finance but actually a question of materials, and that you have this position, that managers in country districts are loath to undertake buildings, the erection of which is likely to cost far more than in normal times. If they feel that they can put off building projects until happier times arrive, I do not think we can blame them. All we can do is to ask them that, in those circumstances, they will see that repairs or necessary reconstruction work is carried out to enable the schools to be put in a fairly satisfactory condition.
In the City of Dublin, where we have a large number of housing schemes, we simply must go on with the building of these large schools. A very large proportion of that £250,000 must go towards the large schools which have still to be built in the Crumlin and Cabra areas and elsewhere in Dublin, in connection with the housing schemes.
What about the Wexford one?
The Wexford one is not one of the most urgent cases.
It is very urgent.
Unless I can get more money than I am getting at present, I am not sure that we will be able to include the Wexford case in the Budget this year. Nearly all the cases in our hands that we consider very urgent and that ought to be carried out are practically ready, and we have received sanction to go ahead with them. There is a small number, included among which, unfortunately, is the Deputy's one, which will have to wait over until we see whether, when the present allocation is utilised, we can get further aid from the Minister for Finance. The amount that I have been given during the present year is £125,000, including £15,500 for excess grants in necessitous cases. When we have expended that, there may be some hope of getting something more. With regard to heating and cleaning, the position is that we could give a larger amount than we are giving in the Estimate, but, as Deputies know, the amount provided has not been expended. In a number of cases no application was made by the manager for the heating and cleaning grant. The position is that we give the manager one-half of the certified aid in cash or kind provided by the local parties in respect of the provision of fuel, and one-half of the certified aid in cash provided in respect of the cost of labour for the dusting and cleansing.
Would the Minister tell us what happens in those cases where the manager makes no application? Is there any heating or cleaning in those cases?
Well, there probably is, but the manager has not thought it worth while to make the application, or he may not have read the regulations, if such a thing is possible. He may not be aware of the fact that this money can be obtained, or may not consider it worth the trouble of applying for it.
That is a mere surmise? The Minister has no positive information on the matter?
All I know is that a considerable number—470 schools— sent in no application at all, and a large proportion of the other schools did not spend enough to qualify for the full grant. If the manager spends a certain amount on cleaning and fuel, let us say, and receives a certain amount of aid in kind from his parishioners—suppose turf is brought in—we, of course, will not give him a 50 per cent. grant in respect of the total value of what he has received. The 50 per cent. grant is only in respect of the cash which he has actually expended, but we give an allowance in respect of the amount he has received in kind, except that the total amount which we give him must not exceed the total amount that he has spent in cash in any case.
So he is penalised for local economy and local co-operation?
I see no reason why those matters cannot be dealt with locally. It was always recognised that managers had the duty of maintaining their schools, repairing them, and keeping them in a clean condition. That is still more urgent and still more necessary now when we have county medical officers of health calling attention to the unsatisfactory state of the schools in very many counties. It is an obligation which has been on the manager, and I fail to see why local provision cannot be made for it. If local co-operation means anything at all, it surely ought to mean that the State should not be asked to do all this work. We are contributing a fair share, 50 per cent. That is an amount which was increased some years ago; up to comparatively recently they were only getting the relief which they got before 1914. That amount was increased from, I think, £14,500 to £65,000. We are not expending anything like the £65,000, but, if the position should arise that we are expending it, and that the managers are expending more than £130,000 per year, then the whole situation ought to be reviewed. I cannot say that it should be reviewed in existing circumstances, but it is certainly most unsatisfactory that the money which has been provided by this House has not been asked for.
Deputy Byrne asked about free schoolbooks. We have the same position there. There is a very large number of schools in which no grants were paid in respect of free books to poor children. Of course, it was never intended that this grant should be made available to any schools in areas of moderate prosperity. It was only intended to be made available to very poor children—"necessitous children" is the term. Nevertheless, we have not expended the amount which was provided. It may be that the regulations are unduly difficult, but I cannot but feel that the generosity of the House in granting this money has not been accorded that co-operation which one might have expected. If the scheme is to continue, certainly more advantage ought to be taken of it. There is no use in asking me to abolish the means test when we have the position that there is more money being allocated by the House than is being expended at the present time. I have no desire to go into the question of Irish. The Taoiseach dealt with that matter.
I only wish to say that, as well as having Irish in the programme, and instructing the teachers and seeing, through the inspectors, that they carry out that programme, it is also necessary to have some will in regard to Irish. We might go on teaching Irish and having Irish programmes, and we might even all be absolutely unanimous that the methods we were adopting were the best and most efficacious to restore the national language as the spoken tongue, but unless we ourselves have the will to speak Irish, to encourage our children to speak it at home, to give them every assistance possible to acquire a good knowledge of it at school, and certainly not to place any obstacles in their way, we can scarcely expect that this tremendous task can be carried out as quickly or as successfully as we would wish. I am afraid that is a point of view which is not often borne in mind, and I would like to emphasise it. I believe it is the spirit which animates the teacher that counts, whether the subject is Irish or any other subject. It is that spirit which enables him to make the necessary preparation to enable him to do his work in the most efficient way, which bids him do research work, attend courses, read books and try to make himself more proficient in his subjects and a better instructor of the young people in his charge. If, on the other hand, the teacher simply takes his work as a matter of routine, as a day's task that has to be carried out with the least possible trouble and labour, we certainly will not get the results we hoped for in this matter of the restoration of the Irish language. But I would say that even if all the teachers worked every day and every year with 100 per cent. enthusiasm, which one cannot expect from teachers, having regard to the routine of their work and the tedium and drudgery associated with it, even if they overcome all these difficulties which have been pointed out during the debate, and the many others, would it not be almost impossible for the teachers of themselves, through their work in the schools, to restore the national language? Surely it is the duty of the people, of the parents, in particular, to do their share.
I hope that one of the results of this discussion will be that parents generally, through the influence of Deputies, will see that the programme in operation in the schools is a very reasonable one, and if that is not realised, arrangements can be made whereby it will be made perfectly clear to everybody that that is the position. If we are united, as I think we are, in this matter of the restoration of the language, then there is no reason why we should quarrel. There is no difficulty and no obstacle, in my opinion, as well as in the opinion of An Taoiseach, who has had personal experience of the administration of the Department of Education, which cannot be surmounted with good will and understanding, once it is agreed that we are all united as to our purpose and the aims for which we are working.
With regard to the standard of work in the schools, I think that teachers in general ought to be able to satisfy the modest requirements of the inspectors, because they are modest. The rudiments one might say—elementary calculations, reading and writing—are the main things the inspector looks for. He looks for writing and reading of Irish and English, and simple calculations, and if a teacher is able to satisfy an inspector that his pupils have achieved a reasonable standard in these subjects, it is not likely that he will be rated non-efficient, or that we will hear all about his case in the Office. There are other subjects, of course, some history and geography is necessary, singing and needlework for girls and drawing for infants, but the three Rs. undoubtedly are the subjects to which the inspectors attach importance. The first instruction which an inspector has to bear in mind in his appreciation of a teacher's work—it is set down in his official instructions—is to take due note of all the circumstances operating against a teacher. Anything that may be operating to his disadvantage in his work must be noted and account taken of it. Furthermore, the inspector takes account of the standard in the district generally. He will not go into one school and demand a higher standard than in another. When an inspector goes to a new area, he spends a certain amount of time familiarising himself with the standard of work in the schools, and gets a fairly general idea of what the average standard is. He may consider, after a preliminary period of examination and survey that that standard is not satisfactory, and, gradually, through the process of advising the teachers as to how he thinks their work might be improved, he tries to improve the standard. Practically all that work is done through personal contact, which, after all, is the most valuable means for improving the efficiency of our educational system.
I should like to say, with reference to Deputy McMenamin's arguments, that the system of general inspections which we have now is far more searching than the type of inspection with which the Deputy was acquainted. At that time, the inspector spent a day— for all I know, perhaps less than a day —in making up his mind as to whether the work of a school was satisfactory or otherwise. Nowadays, each teacher has to be examined specially in each subject, and, since the rating of a teacher in each individual subject will determine, in the long run, whether he is to be rated non-efficient or efficient, it is obviously a very serious matter indeed for the teacher. It is not as in the Civil Service, for example. A civil servant may be highly efficient, and, let us hope, gets promotion; he may be efficient, and get promotion; but, at any rate, there is no possibility of his losing his job. If a teacher, however, should be deemed to be inefficient, special reports upon his work are called for, and, after a period of exhortation, advice and inspection, unless there is some definite improvement, the teacher is in serious danger of losing his position. That happens—not in a great many cases—but the possibility is always there. Teachers may be highly efficient for a very long period, and suddenly for some reason decline to a low grade of efficiency, or even non-efficiency.
The few schools which Deputy McMenamin heard referred to at the Public Accounts Committee were not inspected for two years, because they were schools in which the teachers were highly efficient. They had been highly efficient, and reported upon as such, for two years in succession. Each inspector has a large number of schools to look after, and it would be quite impossible, in view of the very thorough nature of the general inspection which he has to carry out under the present system, for him to carry out that general inspection on each teacher each year. In this particular case, the inspector obviously had been doing his work well. He carried out a general inspection which may have taken up to three days for the school, and satisfied himself that the teacher or teachers were highly efficient. He came back the next year to make quite sure, and carried out a similar general inspection.
I think we may assume then, that, since the inspector will pay incidental visits to that school so far as he can afterwards, that teacher may be recognised as highly efficient for a period. If the inspector, in his incidental visits, finds that things are not going right, he will take note of the fact. He will call again, make his visit somewhat more formal, and if he feels that the efficiency of the teacher has deteriorated considerably, he will give the teacher six months' notice. That merely means: "I am not quite satisfied with your work. I feel that I should intimate to you that, at the end of six months, I propose to carry out a formal inspection"; but most teachers take it that the six months' notice is equivalent to notice that their rating is going to be reduced. It does not mean that. It means that the inspector feels that, either through the lapse of time or because circumstances have changed, the work is not satisfactory and that he will have to carry out a general inspection. It is simply an intimation of the fact that he proposes to hold such an inspection.
I was not dealing with efficiency or inefficiency, but with the question of inspection or examination.
A considerable percentage of the schools, as Deputies have read in my statement, are taking this primary certificate examination, and a large number of the city schools, not under the control of the religious orders are, I think, taking it also. Possibly, there are special reasons in rural areas why teachers feel that they should not be asked to take this examination. The reasons have not been mentioned, but there are reasons, and one of them, obviously, is the feeling that the teacher has, that there is an element of competition about this examination and that the children in his school will have to compete on equal terms with children in large schools who can receive special tuition in order to put them through the examination. The ordinary country teacher, in a two-teacher school, who has three or four classes to look after, is not in the happiest position, perhaps, to prepare children for the examination if we compare his circumstances with the teachers in the large schools where you have a teacher in charge of each class. At the same time, however, the number of pupils in the charge of the teacher is not very great and I myself think that he ought, not alone, as I have said, be able to satisfy the inspectors, if he is doing his work reasonably well, that he is so doing it, but that he ought also be able to get the pupils in the sixth class to pass this examination if a compulsory examination is brought in.
I want to mention to Deputy McMenamin also that there is no use in getting up in the House and telling me that he has three schools in Donegal that he would like to have replaced by new schools. Unless he does a little more than that, I am afraid they are going to remain in their present position. He must get the managers of the schools to send in applications to the Education Office, and he should try to get them to put up a local contribution. It is the duty of the manager to take the first step in these matters. It is not mine. It is the job of the manager, if he is not satisfied, and if his school has been condemned, or is an old school and unsatisfactory, to make application to the Education Office to have a new school built.
I dislike bothering the Minister, but all these matters were discussed long ago, and he is only stultifying himself in talking in the way he is. The facts to which I have referred are all there. He should let sleeping dogs lie unless he has them well muzzled.
There is one important point about the programme which I think I should mention in view of the references that have been made to the necessity for having an agricultural background in the work of our rural primary schools, and that is that it is emphasised in the programme, and also in the Notes for Teachers which have been issued to the teachers for each subject on the programme—suggestions as to how the aims of the programme might be best carried out — that the rural bias should be kept well in mind; that in the arithmetical exercises, in English composition, and in the teaching of Irish, rural themes, examples or topics should be utilised as far as possible. I am afraid that is not always done, but it is not the fault of the programme or of the inspectors. Only recently I asked the inspectors to call attention again to that matter, and to do what they could to see that in the instruction given in national schools in country districts emphasis was laid on rural topics, and that, as far as possible, rural life was dealt with and that the background of the rural economy was there.
I agree with Deputy Childers that we ought seriously to consider the question of what form of education will be best suited to our needs in the very difficult period which, I fear, lies ahead. I have explained to the House that, so far as a comprehensive formal inquiry is concerned, I do not think the present is the most suitable time, but perhaps an inquiry of another nature might take place. In any case, we can all use the present situation to ponder over the question and to consider what improvements would be valuable and in what way we think trends should be directed. In particular, I agree with the Deputies who laid emphasis on the importance of the application of science to agriculture, for example, and also the very important question of improving our standard of technical education for our industrial work. Both these questions are, I think, of prime importance. They are the kind of questions that we ought to consider very carefully, and now is an opportunity to look into them, even though we may not be able, until we see further, to carry our ideas into effect. We can at any rate, think them over, discuss them, argue them, and try to discover the best solutions.
The question of agricultural training, however, is not really a question for the Department of Education. If I had my way, I think that the best solution of that problem would be to hand over everything connected with agricultural instruction to the Minister for Agriculture, as is done in some other countries. The only connection that I really have with agricultural training or instruction is a rather slender one—through the teaching of rural science in the vocational schools. We have not a very great number of these schools nor a very great number of teachers, but good work is being done where we have such teachers, and we are trying to do better work and make the system more effective. We are trying to make more use of the rural vocational schools and, in order to make them more efficient and more useful we have got, as I have mentioned in my statement, to get teachers who have the necessary qualifications. These qualifications do not mean merely the qualifications of the ordinary primary teacher. They mean that the teacher must have a university degree in agriculture, that he must be a farmer's son or a person who has an intimate knowledge of the farming industry, such knowledge that if he is sent among farmers he will be able to argue with them and discuss matters with them, so that the farmers will not only have sufficient confidence in him to send their sons to his classes; but that they themselves may, as has happened, call on him for advice occasionally.
Does the Minister believe that every teacher of rural science in his schools has a university degree?
No, but in the future they probably will have, unless the Minister for Agriculture or the beet factories grab them up, as they have done in the past. Apparently they did not like teaching, or the prospects were not so good. We had to train our teachers of rural science as we had to train all our other teachers of continuation subjects except, perhaps, in the literary subjects.
What is the average of the annual expansion of the students attending rural science schools?
I could not give the Deputy that information. I do not think it is very great. The Deputy knows that at present the number of new schools and the extensions of schemes which committees are likely to undertake are not great. We cannot, unfortunately, keep the rural science or any other teachers under the vocational schemes in the areas in which they are first employed. Teachers like to better themselves. The particular teacher whom Deputy Dillon mentioned got a post as headmaster in another school and felt he was improving himself by accepting it. There is no way in which we can get over that. We can only, through our influence with these teachers and our interest in their work, try to impress on them that their work is of great value to the community where they are carrying out their duties.
I am sure rural science teachers will not change merely through some whim. They will only change, because they are generally very much interested in their work, where there are very definite prospects of advancement. The whole question of changes of teachers in vocational and technical schools is a rather difficult one and one about which I fear we cannot do very much. So far as the more specialised forms of agricultural instruction are concerned— rural science teaching is not agricultural instruction really; it is only instruction in the fundamentals—that is a matter more for the Minister for Agriculture.
He says it is a matter for you, and between the pair of you we get nowhere.
Reference was made by Deputy Mrs. Redmond to damage caused by young people. So far as possible, teachers ought to take advantage of every opportunity, particularly in urban areas, where they know destruction of private and public property is being done, to use their influence, first by speaking to the pupils, and, secondly, by speaking to the parents—if it is possible—to try to stop this wanton damage. I cannot feel that the schools are blameworthy in this matter. It may be that teachers could do more by way of exhortation, but we know that once boys are let out from school they are quite free from the teachers' control. What they do during the remainder of the day is a matter for the parents, and I feel it is the parents really to whom we ought to address our admonitions in most of these cases.
In approaching the points upon which I asked that this Estimate be referred back, the Minister dealt largely with the solution of juvenile employment. The Minister completely fails to realise my point if he projects that too much. We are dealing with an emergency here, and it is arising out of the economic and social situation brought about by the emergency that I asked the House to take into consideration, what it means in the City of Dublin and other large centres of population when children of 14 years are put on the streets to go to homes where the economic conditions will be poor, where the moral conditions will, perhaps, be undesirable, and where there will be no employment. The Minister says that the time is not opportune, but the question is under constant examination.
It is quite unusual to make a second speech on a motion of this kind when set speeches of considerable length have already been made. The Minister has concluded, but if the Deputy desires to ask a question, he may do so.
Does the Minister think, even if we have to assemble bayonets in this country and regiment ourselves against various dangers, that our minds should stop? Does he expect Deputies to sit on a Defence Conference, as I do, trying to help in a definite position where we are spending £8,000,000 a year on an Army, and does he think we are going to allow an economic and social and educational position to grow up in cities and towns that may be a lot more dangerous than the difficulties outside?
The Deputy therefore realises that he has not asked a genuine question, but made a speech by way of rhetorical questions.
The Minister indicated that it would take £30,000 or £60,000 to do a certain thing in Dublin. In view of the huge amount of money we are spending in other directions and in view of the amount of talk about emergency conditions, I suggest that is a very small sum to expend on the solution of what may become a very grave internal problem. Does the Minister really intend to send me back to discuss this matter with the Vocational Education Committee in the city, to tell them that he has little money, and that if they have plans the present time is not opportune? Does he mean that to be a serious answer to the points I put up?
I am afraid the Deputy did not make it clear that this is purely an emergency matter. I understood him to say that, quite apart from the emergency, he felt this matter should be gone into. I understand from the Deputy now that it is purely an extra matter arising out of the war situation, and it relates to the social difficulties that have arisen.
The war situation has brought this problem to the position when it must be dealt with. I pointed out that I brought this matter to the notice of the Government in the middle of March.
Mr. Brennan
I should like to ask the Minister a question relating to redundant teachers and panel teachers. There is a difficulty in the country with regard to the panel of teachers. The position is that a manager must take a teacher from the panel. I understand there is an agreement between the managers and the Department, but I think there ought to be some age limit. I am sure the Minister realises that it is most unfair to ask a manager to transfer a teacher of, let us say, 58 years a distance of 40 or 50 miles to teach a new school in which she has no interest, and that same teacher may be going out the following year on pension. Will the Minister consider fixing an age limit so that a manager will not be obliged to take a teacher who is on the point of going out on pension, and transfer that teacher to a new school?
I have no power in regard to that matter. The position is that this panel arrangement is agreed on by the Department of Finance, the managers of the schools and the Department of Education. It was instituted in order that teachers would not lose their positions. They got security and as the price of that security they have to fill posts which fall vacant. If we are going to make an exception in one case we will have to make an exception in another.
But you do.
We do not.
Indeed you do. There is no use in saying you do not, because I have had cases submitted to me.
There is no use in prolonging the debate by raising some question about which I know nothing. We have correspondence from managers and teachers constantly. It may have happened that a teacher, by reason of the fact that there was somebody on the panel, could not get a post and that the panel got cleared in the meantime and the teacher succeeded in getting it. That may be what Deputy Dillon has in mind. But we certainly have never, so far as my knowledge goes, departed from the terms of the panel; nor would I depart from them. The only possible case in which a question might arise is, if the teacher is definitely inefficient. If the teacher is inefficient, we cannot very well compel the manager of the school where the vacancy is to accept that teacher. But the managers raise the question constantly that they want some teacher, or the teachers themselves raise the question. If we start to break through the panel arrangement, there will be no end to the trouble we will have. I should like to say to Deputy Brennan that every teacher can make a case that she has to go a long distance or there are family circumstances or something else. If the teachers feel that there should be some amelioration of the panel arrangement, they will have to go to the Catholic Managers Association, in the first instance, and ask them to have it amended. Maternity cases, I am told, are excepted.
Mr. Brennan
The Minister misunderstood me. I have not asked for exceptional treatment. If you like, I have asked for a revision of the panel system whereby an old teacher, just on the eve of retiring, is compelled possibly to leave the school she is in because a manager 40 miles away is prepared to employ her for six months or a year. In that case you are asking the children to pay the price.
Or possibly seven years.
Mr. Brennan
Possibly.
Surely the Minister takes this point. Can the panel scheme not be amended, with universal application thereafter, so that if an elderly teacher has only a year to go she will not be required to move from one school to another? I appreciate the Minister's difficulty about getting powers to make exceptions, and I know the Committee of Public Accounts would very easily disallow cases if he purported to make exceptions too rashly. But there can be no objection to amending the panel system, and that is what Deputy Brennan suggests, so that there will be in future a universal application that a teacher with only six or 12 months to go, or whatever figure the Minister determines, shall not be required to transfer. That does seem to be a fairly reasonable arrangement, because it is not right to put a new teacher into a school who must of necessity be dismissed from the school under the age limit rule within six or eight months of her appointment, particularly if she is an elderly person.
I have not heard of any such cases.
Mr. Brennan
They are arising every day.
Tá
- Bennett, George C.
- Benson, Ernest E.
- Brennan, Michael.
- Broderick, William J.
- Brodrick, Seán.
- Browne, Patrick.
- Burke, Patrick.
- Cogan, Patrick.
- Corish, Richard.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Costello, John A.
- Davin, William.
- Dillon, James M.
- Dockrell, Henry M.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Fagan, Charles.
- O'Sullivan, John M.
- Pattison, James P.
- Redmond, Bridget M.
- Giles, Patrick.
- Hickey, James.
- Hughes, James.
- Keating, John.
- Keyes, Michael.
- Linehan, Timothy.
- Lynch, Finian.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- McGovern, Patrick.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Nally, Martin.
- Norton, William.
- O'Donovan, Timothy J.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.
- Reidy, James.
- Reynolds, Mary.
- Ryan, Jeremiah.
Níl
- Allen, Denis.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Dan.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Breslin, Cormac.
- Buckley, Seán.
- Carty, Frank.
- Childers, Erskine H.
- Cooney, Eamonn.
- Crowley, Fred Hugh.
- Crowley, Tadhg.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- Flynn, John.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Fogarty, Andrew.
- Fogarty, Patrick J.
- Gorry, Patrick J.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Hogan, Daniel.
- Keane, John J.
- Kelly, James P.
- Kelly, Thomas.
- Kennedy, Michael J.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick J.
- Lynch, James B.
- McCann, John.
- McDevitt, Henry A.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Meaney, Cornelius.
- Moran, Michael.
- Morrissey, Michael.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Mullen, Thomas.
- O Briain, Donnchadh.
- O Ceallaigh, Seán T.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Loghlen, Peter J.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- O'Rourke, Daniel.
- Rice, Brigid M.
- Ruttledge, Patrick J.
- Ryan, Martin.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Walsh, Laurence J.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Conn.
May I ask a few questions before the Vote is put?
Might it not be better to defer them until the subsidiary votes are reached?
I do not know under which I may ask the question— whether the primary or the secondary.
Under either.
Did the Minister give any reason for the extraordinary action the Department took as regards married teachers in the preparatory colleges? I put the question very clearly and very strongly to him to-day.
Is not that a legal question?
It is not. I gather then that the Minister has not replied to it. It was an order issued by the Department. The legal question was settled by the courts, but the Department then did a very mean thing. I have put the case already— that of a girl who was morally entitled, in justice, to expect a continuance of her service and was practically dismissed, whatever the legal form may have been. What was done was that all the ladies had their appointments terminated, and then they were all reappointed unless those who were married. Now that is a breach of implied trust. I have dealt with it fully, and I hope the Minister will reply to it. It is not a legal matter. It is an administrative matter for the Department. The legal point is definitely settled, and legally the Minister had the right to do what he did. That is not in dispute. Morally, I hold he had no right. The Department adopted a subterfuge which does not fit in at all with the plea for fair dealing which was stressed yesterday by the Taoiseach. I do not think the Minister can fob it off by saying that it was a legal question. It is very far from it. Here is a lady who had all the qualifications. She took up the position on the understanding that as long as she gave satisfaction she would be in that position. That is the position of every national teacher.
I admit that I do not know which of the three Ministers who are now in consultation did it, but anyhow it was done. They are a nice trinity—not holy so far as that particular business is concerned. If a national teacher was appointed and dismissed without any fault on her part except that she got married, there being no rule at the time against marriage, would not everyone admit that a gross injustice had been committed, and that a six months' notice would not be regarded as a satisfactory way of meeting the justice of her case? There is an implied contract. I admit that, legally, those people can be dismissed with a few months' notice even if they continue to give satisfaction. The only objection to these ladies was that they observed all the rules. This lady got married. There was nothing in the terms of the contract saying that marriage would be a disqualification. Then the Department of Education tried to mend their hand. After the appointment was made they tried to introduce a marriage rule which actually was not there. The case came before the courts. It was decided that there was a contract and that the obligation to resign on marriage was not a portion of the contract. In the case of the contract that had actually been entered into in the Western case, the court decided that it was broken, and that notice should have been given. Damages were given for breach of the contract. What did the Department of Education do in that case? They did not do what was done in the case of the national teacher when the rule about marriage was introduced, namely, that that rule was not made to apply to anybody who was then in office or even in the training colleges.
What they did was to break the moral contract that existed. That is not a legal point. It is a moral point, and I hope the Minister will answer it.
In that case the teacher got married. I was not the only party who had to deal with the teacher. I am afraid I had no discretion in the matter on account of the situation that existed.
Would the Minister mind explaining that to me?
The bishop of the diocese——
Of Kerry?
——is manager of the preparatory college. The original case which occurred was not, I think, in the Kerry diocese.
I am speaking now of the Kerry-diocese case. Is the Minister's case that he has no managerial responsibility in connection with this college?
The bishop is the manager.
With whom is the contract made?
I think that the contract was made with the bishop.
The Minister "thinks" the contract was made with the bishop. He does not know?
It was actually made with the Minister.
I had no opportunity of looking up the case.
The written contract was with the Minister in Mrs. MacDonald's name.
I have the papers upstairs—copies of the contract.
It does not really matter, because it was the policy of the Department that teachers should resign on marriage. We were under the impression that we had that power, and we made quite sure, by adopting the procedure we adopted, that we would have it in the future.
It was not the policy of the Department. The number of married teachers throughout the country shows the opposite. Does the Minister mean to tell me that it was the policy of the Department in the case of national teachers?
We are not talking about national teachers.
So far as these preparatory colleges are concerned, where was the precedent, except that which the Minister tried to introduce in the West of Ireland case? I have been referring to the Dingle case—the second case. Is it the contention of the Minister, firstly, that he did not make the contract and, secondly, that the Bishop of Kerry insisted on the dismissal of this lady?
The Deputy mentioned only within the last few minutes that it was the Dingle case to which he was referring. He did not make that clear in his previous speech. I am speaking about the Tourmakeady case, which is the case with which I am familiar. I should not be in a position to go into the Dingle case without having an opportunity of looking at the papers because I am not familiar with it. It was the policy of the Department while I was Minister—and I understood that it had always been the policy—that teachers in preparatory colleges should resign on marriage. No other decision than that come to in this case was possible, in my opinion.
I mentioned two cases. One was the West of Ireland case, where a legal decision was given by the court against the Minister and against his breaking his contract. What the Minister did, then, was to adopt the extraordinary expedient—"trick" is hardly too strong a word to apply to it—of giving notice to all the women teachers that their services would terminate on the 31st July, 1940. The reappointment took place on the 1st August, 1940! But they did not reinstate the teachers who were married. Is that justice? The Minister speaks of the "policy of the Department". Where was that policy shown? In the contract? Where else could it be shown, except by action and tradition? Before the dismissal in the Tourmakeady case, where was the tradition and where was the policy shown? The lady in the Dingle case was a trained national teacher. What grounds had she to expect that she would be dismissed if she got married? It practically amounted to dismissal. What grounds had she to expect that? How could she find out what was in the mind of the Minister when the House cannot find it out?
She knew that the condition was there. It was not imposed in her case or, possibly, in the case of a few other teachers appointed to these colleges when they first opened. But a condition of retiral on marriage was put into the contracts, so far as I remember, of teachers who were afterwards appointed. She knew, at least, that it was the policy of the Department.
Let us get down to facts. I understand the Minister now to allege that a contract was made before this case came off that they were not to contract marriage. The contract made with these two ladies—one in Tourmakeady and the other in Dingle—did not contain that provision, and that contract was blatantly and unjustly broken. It was a trick and it was mean. It was morally unjust. Does the Minister intend to indemnify that lady in any way? She had no reason to suspect that she would be deprived of her livelihood, having served for some years at the college—that she would be thrown on the roadside.
The Deputy did not give me an opportunity of looking into the matter. At first I thought he was raising the general question of the procedure adopted. Had he given any intimation that he was going to mention the Dingle case, I should have looked into it. I have not the particulars by me now. I cannot say whether the teacher got the usual three months' notice or not.
That is exactly my case. The Minister is relying on the three months' notice?
Why not?
That is the distinction I am trying to make. A national teacher is under the same tenure. If a national teacher gives competent service and satisfaction no manager would consider he was entitled to give that teacher three months' notice—if there were no objection to the teacher on other grounds. In the teaching profession, there is that implied contract. There was the same implied contract in the case of the others, no matter what the words of the legal contract were.
Now the Minister is trying an excuse under the plea of three months' notice. That is my whole case. Acting on the letter of the law, he is inflicting an injustice. The Minister says he is not getting notice. Is it such a usual practice of the Department to do things of this kind, and that they can get there no lodgment in the mind of the Minister?