I find it difficult to understand the attitude of the Minister to this report. I think it is a matter of importance that ought to be discussed with the general part of his Estimate. When I remember some of the phrases he used when perorating ten or 15 minutes ago, and then I heard him about two minutes ago, I feel a certain amount of disturbance. He talked about the embankments and barriers we must erect against the inflow of English in the schools: that we must go ahead in a more determined way against those barriers and obstacles. He referred to the propaganda in the report. Is that to be his attitude towards buttressing the weakness and the difficulties that have been evidenced if not entirely proved by the report? With a view to drawing up this report a questionnaire was sent out for examples and suggestions. No doubt the group appointed got these together. Supposing these were produced to the Minister and showed any evidence that, while it was possible to get Irish made the living speech in the country through the continuance of present methods but that that would be accompanied by two or three other things: that there would be a lack of further training, that certain things would be defective in the make-up of the children coming from the primary schools, and that making Irish the living speech could be better brought about in other ways, would the Minister still stick to his phrases and impediments and barriers and say it was all propaganda? There is quite an amount of historical matter in the early part of the report indicating why it was necessary to have an investigation at all. Certain school teachers came to certain conclusions after having had examples before their eyes. They found that they were not alone in those views. The result was that certain resolutions were passed and a committee was set up which has got together quite a valuable body of evidence. This report brings out something which, I think, ought to merit the attention of the Minister and not merely a sort of bad-tempered reaction.
The Minister referred to page 25 of the report, in which it is pointed out that incidental conversations with the children, instructions and orders should, as far as possible, be in Irish. It is said that "the view held by 60.5 per cent. was that if this were done, and short English lessons introduced at intervals, progress in the Irish language would advance." With this view, it is stated, 39.5 per cent. disagreed. So that of the 40 per cent. who advocated the sole use of Irish, approximately half held that, while the language itself would benefit, other things would suffer. If we neglect the 60 per cent., and take merely the 40 per cent., we find that on the question of Irish as a medium of instruction in infant schools the 40 per cent. is divided, one-half holding that Irish will benefit, and the other half holding that other things will suffer. Supposing that was the conclusion of the whole report, that the teachers were evenly divided, I wonder what view the Minister would take of one-half of the teachers saying, "Carry on as you are", and the other half saying, "If you do that, certain other things are going to suffer"? How would the Minister's propaganda phrases meet that situation? Would he still hold that it was going to disrupt the work done over the last 20 years?
A fair number of pages in the report are given to the historical part, and to the situation which existed prior to the setting up of the committee and the production of the report. We are told what happened in 1922 when orders were issued that the work in the infant standards was to be entirely in Irish. It is suggested that a beginning should be made in the teaching of history and geography. Within a couple of years it was recognised that that went too far. The second programme conference, established in 1924 at the request of the National Teachers' Organisation, in its report, says: "It cannot but be convinced by the unanimous expression of opinion which it had received on that point." Since then there has been a fair amount of trial and error on this matter, and undoubtedly definite progress on certain lines. On page 12 one finds towards the end of this historical part this view:—
"Concurrent with this growing faith of the official mind that the use of Irish as a teaching medium for children from non-Irish speaking homes was not alone feasible but educationally desirable, was a growing doubt in the minds of teachers of the educational progress likely to follow from it."
Eventually the Irish National Teachers' Organisation in 1930 passed a resolution stating:—
"That this congress considers that the time is now ripe for an educational assessment of the use of Irish as a teaching medium in schools in English-speaking districts."
This was followed by a request by the Irish National Teachers' Organisation for a stock-taking. A conference was held with leading officials of the Department in the early spring of 1934. It is stated here that in the memorandum presented to that conference the Irish National Teachers' Organisation representatives stated:—
"The continuous teaching of a new language throughout the school-day imposes an undue strain on children of tender years. They tend to become weary and listless during the latter portion of the day and the teacher's energy is largely wasted."
I stress that because it has been questioned whether the teachers are good judges of the strain brought about by giving instruction in certain ways to infants.
That was the time I suggest for the Department to give their viewpoint, if they had a viewpoint, on the question as to whether the teachers were capable of giving a judgment on this matter of strain. Apparently, that view was not put forward by the officials but it is the viewpoint held by the teachers. Eventually, the congress held in Killarney in 1936 passed the resolution which formed the terms of reference of the inquiry.
The committee was asked to report on
"whether a certain teaching practice which had come into being as a result of Departmental instruction and pressure was educationally sound or not."
Then there was a request that there should be a full examination and report. In any event we have this situation: that in 1922 it was decided to go full blast on this matter, in 1924 there was a sort of withdrawal, in 1926 the second programme conference issued a report in which the original instruction was somewhat modified. There was the point of view held by the official mind and the opposite viewpoint held by the teachers who saw the machine working. In between the conference with officials of the Department, the teachers expressed their view with regard to the physical strain.
The Minister makes a great deal of another point and that is how it comes about that certain of these teachers have taught subjects through the medium of Irish when the conditions set out by the Department were not fulfilled, namely, teacher qualified and pupil competent to benefit by the instruction. They say this twice, they put it in the end of the report and they put it in the forefront of page 12 in order to put it in a certain context; that 525 out of 857 state that they did this contrary to their own opinion and that they did it as a result of official suggestion. If the Minister reads that paragraph in its context he will see that it refers to two circulars issued by the Department. In 1931 a circular was issued, as given on the top of page 12:
"The circular having drawn attention to the fact that although some 5,000 of the teachers had the bilingual or higher qualifications in Irish, commented as follows:—‘The number of schools in which considerable and progressive work through Irish is being done is comparatively small. The Department, therefore, desires teachers to address themselves earnestly and courageously to the accomplishment of this important duty of extending instruction through the medium of Irish.'"
That was followed by a further circular in February, 1934, which repeated the instructions of the November, 1922, circular and said further:—
"These instructions indicate the desirability of the use of Irish as a medium of instruction as far as possible according to the capacity of the teacher in speaking the language."
Immediately after that follows this paragraph in the report:—
"It may be noted in this connection that out of 857 teachers replying to query 24 of the questionnaire, 525 stated that as a result of official suggestion and contrary to their own opinion, they taught subjects through the medium of Irish when the conditions set out by the Department were not fulfilled—namely, teacher qualified and pupil competent to benefit by instruction."
I take that to mean in that context that there was a bit of a push made by the Department and that that is why the teachers use this phrase that official suggestion moved them to do this contrary to their own view.
However, that is the background to this report, a viewpoint that I think can be held by good patriotic people and by people who are concerned with this matter of making Irish a living language; but that the method which is being attempted now is not a proper method, that if it does achieve the aim of getting Irish a little bit further on rapidly, it will do it at a certain cost. These people have sacrificed their own leisure and in a very intelligent way set about finding out what is the situation and report in a matter-of-fact type of way, attempting to find out whether what is now being attempted will have the desired aim, and if the aim could not be accomplished with less suffering in other respects. It is embarrassing on an important Vote like this to have the Minister treating this in a wholly inadequate way and showing, not merely an amount of antagonism, but also a certain amount of bad temper in regard to the suggestion that any comment could be made on this matter; apparently taking the view that simply because the Department has had a particular point of view for many years and there has been some progress made on the lines of that point of view, it is impolitic and imprudent, if not unnational, for people to say that the same objective can be achieved with less sacrifice.
Before I come to the inquiry itself I might say that in any inquiry of this sort there are three things in which there is a possibility of error. The people to whom the result of the inquiry is given may be incapable of reporting. They may not be the sort of people who can collate information of a particular type or set a test sufficiently wide to get the information on which a judgment can be based. The second type of error might be that they did not get a big enough sample from the schools or, if the inquiry was a biased one, it may be that the inquiries were directed only to one section of the schools and their opinion would be definitely misleading. The third way would be that, supposing the proper people were addressed by those competent to collate the results, those at the end of the line, who are giving evidence of their own and the special things they observe, might not be competent observers or might report in a biased way.
I am going to rule out bias from this matter. If the questionnaire was directed in a widespread way to the schools set out in the forefront of the paragraph, I think the names that appear in the report indicate clearly that the people who were given the task of directing the inquiry were not biased against the use of Irish. With regard to competence, I can only say this. I have no personal experience of the work of primary schools, but I think anyone reading the report, particularly that section which deals with the teaching of infants, must be struck with one thing, and that is that the people who put this report together knew a good deal about child psychology, know all that is required about the approach to a child's mind, and the way in which a child's interest ought to be excited if proper results are to be obtained. I think there is internal evidence in that report from the way in which it is put together to indicate that the gentlemen who did compose it were fully qualified, provided they got the correct information, to draw up a report which would be of use to the Department, to this House and to the country generally.
The Minister has questioned the weight of the evidence and possibly he has questioned whether the people who brought the evidence forward were competent observers. I did not know when the Minister was speaking whether he had read the report itself or whether he had contented himself with reading a report on the report. At certain times I thought that he did not seem to be picking even the best passages from the report to fortify the arguments adduced. There were times even when he seemed to distort the report. He said that one might take it from the report that the bad physique of the children and the malnutrition could be ascribed to the teaching of Irish. There is nothing so clearly distinguished in the report. Those who make the report say clearly that there are quite a number of things which add difficulty to the educational process in the infant schools, and on page 14 they talk about children who are undernourished and insufficiently clad, and quote figures from the reports of the Department itself which they describe as illuminating. They talk of the number medically examined and of the defects they were suffering from. They talk about malnutrition, under-nourishment, and bad housing conditions, and they say that that is the material that has to be worked on. But they carefully distinguished that which is the product of outside influences from the effects that they find in trying to give these children some part of their instruction through the medium of Irish, when Irish is not the home language. I do not think it can be said by anybody who has read this report that there is the slightest possibility of confusion between those two things. The report carefully segregates them. When physical conditions are referred to, they are very careful to say that they do recognise that the children coming to a number of schools are not in a high state of physical development. Having said that, they talk of what they find as to the extra burden that follows from the teaching of Irish in a particular way.
As to the question of instruction in infant schools, on page 18 it is stated in this particular connection that 422 teachers replied. They say that of the 422 who replied, nine were discarded for reasons of lack of experience. Of the rest of them they say:—
"The teachers who comprised the balance were all giving satisfactory service, 115 of them being rated highly efficient and 298 efficient."
If the Minister were to conduct an inquiry on his own into this matter on whom would he rely for his information, if not on the teachers who are actively engaged day by day in the schools? If he is going to rely upon the teachers, will he get any better selection than these 422, 115 of whom are rated as highly efficient and 298 as efficient?
The first thing they mention is the question of the physical results. They say it is bad. The way they come to that conclusion is, they talk about the lack of energy and the listlessness which is observed in the school at the end of a period of instruction in this way. They say that it means that the child is stiffened with boredom, listless and inert, and the teacher's efforts are wasted. The Minister seemed to indicate that that was a matter for a doctor to examine into. I should imagine a doctor might possibly give instructions to the teachers as to what they were to observe and that they might take observations over particular periods of the day, something amounting to a measurement of fatigue. Fatigue as an outcome of school work has been measured over and over again and the results have been related in many text books. The evidence has appeared for what it is worth. These people who reached their conclusions in a particular way say that they found the children dull and listless and, at the end of the day, the teacher's efforts were merely a waste of time.
They had previously said that to the Department in 1934. They referred to the undue strain on the children, and said that the children tended to become wearied and listless towards the end of the day, and the teacher's energy was wasted. They were not reproved on that occasion. They were not told that they were not competent to come to a conclusion on that matter. I suggest that they are entirely competent, and the Minister, if he is going to exclude them, is going to abandon any proper research into this question of fatigue.
The Minister also commented upon this, that the teachers, either the body who drew up the report or the teachers who recorded their observations in that questionnaire, seemed to think that the experience was confined to school experience. There is an entirely different statement made in the report.
On page 20 of the report this appears:
"The first subject on the programme for infant schools and infant departments is language, thereby emphasising the pride of place which language occupies in the education of infants. All language development is closely related to experiences, and as school experiences are limited, opportunities for language development in school are limited."
There is a very definite statement there.
"There must be close language relationship between home and school—the home and school must supplement each other in this regard—if the child is to acquire the power to express adequately his experiences in clearly articulated speech. It must be remembered that the educative process, particularly in so far as language and power of speech expression are concerned, begins in the home. That process has been going on for almost six years before the child enters the school. While the power to form the sounds that make up speech is inherent in all children, the speech itself is learned from the parents or in the family circle. The vast majority of children are able before coming to school to give expression to their feelings, their desires, and their imaginations, through the speech education they have got prior to coming to school. That faculty which has been acquired is completely lost as an educative force if and when the child is placed in an environment where there is used, what is to him, a foreign language. In such circumstances the spontaneous chatter for which the child longs is denied to him, and he cannot, therefore, give a living description of his experiences——"
That is clearly his outside experiences—
"because his newly-acquired and very limited vocabulary does not admit of his doing so in the free and easy manner of the home language. His attempts at expression are feeble, if he does not take refuge in silence altogether."
It goes on to say that this curbing of the child retards his progress, as it destroys his natural spontaneity, stifles his attempts at expression, and makes him timid and undecided. What the Minister said is completely the reverse of the facts as set out in the report. These people say that you must build on experience if there is to be any progress at all, even in language, and they say when the child has had his experiences outside the home and comes there with a certain amount of experience, and language in which to clothe his experience at six years, and an attempt is made to extend this experience through the medium of another language, he is thrown back and becomes inarticulate and so his spontaneity is gone.
On the general matter of the medium of instruction on the mental side, I cannot understand the Minister's attitude, which apparently is that it is the wrong thing to entitle this chapter "The Medium of Instruction in Infant Schools." I observe that on page 15, where that heading is put, there is reference to the note of the Department, and the note says:—
"The work of the infant classes is to be entirely in Irish...."
If the teachers are wrong in speaking of "instruction," the Department must still be in error to a greater or lesser degree when they put in the harsher term "work." On the general attitude, these people report on page 18:—
"On the question of the comparative benefits to be derived by the pupils from instruction through the medium of Irish, and through the medium of English, 345 stated that their pupils did not derive benefit from instruction through the medium of Irish equal to that which they would derive were English the medium used. The contrary view was held by 45."
That is analysed at length in the succeeding pages. Then, on page 19, there is a broken paragraph which says:
"The first obvious fact that emerges from this inquiry is that the majority of infant teachers are opposed to using Irish as the sole medium of instruction when English is the home language, but this must not be taken to mean that they are against teaching Irish as a subject to their young charges."
There are three pages which follow before one comes to the application of Irish to number-teaching, and I cannot understand how the Minister says that the people who wrote this report forgot that the greater part of the educative process in the earlier years is through play. That is spoken of at least a dozen times in the pages that follow here, and it is one of the points on which I lean. I say that the people who wrote the report are very definitely good child psychologists, and are very proficient in the proper approach to the mind of the infant. The Minister apparently did not see that that was the foundation of their remarks. So far as the rest of the matter with regard to the infant school is concerned, it is dealt with under separate headings.
I come finally to the use of Irish and the language revival. The report is, of course, one-sided in the sense that the majority of the replies to the questionnaire make the people who produce this report right, that the benefit is not being got through the attempt to teach through Irish that might be got otherwise. Even such benefit as is got is being got at a certain cost to the people who are made undergo this method of learning. If the Minister wants a final look at the attitude of the committee on this question of teaching through play, he might look at page 24, where it is stated: "Children must be entertained to be enthused." In other words, it is by enthusiasm through entertainment that children in the earlier stages will be brought to the acquisition of any information.
The report is so detailed, so well put together and so full of information, that it is hard to get the appropriate quotations from it, on the points that really occur to one as important, but it may be said in general that the report then travels through the teaching of various subjects, through the medium of Irish. Not having ever had any experience in connection with primary schools, reading it as a complete outsider as far as that branch of education is concerned, I must say that the point of view that developed in me through this was that it is only in what are called the subjects in which "doing" plays the more important part that there is any proficiency at all or that there is equal proficiency when the subject is taught through the medium of Irish.
I think that in these matters the report says that a majority of the people who were addressed expressed the view that instruction can be done with greater benefit through the medium of Irish than in any other way. That applies to such things as singing and sewing. They also say that the school instruction, that is to say, the formal instruction given to the children about the enforcement of discipline in the school, can be done through the medium of Irish because it is a mere matter of phrases used which implant themselves and get themselves into the children's memory and arrest attention immediately. As far as the other things are concerned, this report says that the majority of the people addressed have come to certain conclusions.
A very amazing matter is referred to on page 60 of the report, where they say:
"There is a constant theme running through all the replies, which points to the fact that parents generally are opposed to a method for the Irish revival which would tend to lower the educational standard of the children, according to their values. Infant teachers have stated that it is a common practice for parents to ask that infant children be provided with English primers so that they may be given in the home the instruction in English reading denied to them in the school."
That is thrown in in a chapter headed "Conclusions."
There emerges from this report, in any event, this, that a competent body of people were asked by two congresses to get certain material together and to advise, through the medium of a report, the I.N.T.O. on this matter of teaching through Irish where Irish was not the home language. The report indicates that there has been a growing feeling amongst teachers involved in this educational process in the schools that the matter was not being correctly handled. This competent body of people got together what must be regarded as a good sample of replies in answer to their questionnaire. There emerges from their report that it is the considered opinion of the people collating these replies that this particular matter, handled in the way in which it is, is not giving the maximum benefit to the children. I think the people who brought up this report would say it is not even giving the maximum benefit to this matter of making Irish a living language, and they certainly do raise this question as to whether better progress towards both objectives, that is to say, good all-round education and the making of Irish more a living language, could not be obtained by another means. They give reasons; they give facts. I am quite certain that the replies which this committee has would probably give more facts and allow a better pamphlet to be produced if the evidence was not regarded as confidential. I suggest there is something there to be inquired into.
Last night I heard a Deputy from this Party ask the Minister could he give, even from the angle of his Department, a summary of the views that are expressed there, so that we could see on net points what are the issues as between, say, his Department, which has taken up a certain line, and the people who wrote this report. He was asked to state if there was any conflict over policy or was there a conflict merely over the means to achieve certain ends. I think it would not have taken any great trouble to give that information. One does not know just to what points attention should be directed. One does not know what conflict there is between the Department and its present practice and what is written here. I think it is a matter that could easily be attempted by the officials of his Department, to set out here, in a very brief way, with reference to the report, what are the points to which attention has been called by this report. It is worth inquiring into, even for the purpose of disproving them. The Minister knows the value of the old adage that it is the exception that proves the rule. Perhaps this whole report could be classified in that way, but it does at first sight present a body of opinion which is apparently contrary to, one might say, even the policy, certainly contrary to the method of achieving the end that the Department has before it. If the Minister wants to do it, let him put beside the experience referred to in this report the experience of those other good schools he refers to, so that the public can get a proper view of what is the policy of the Department and what it is striving towards and what are the difficulties in their way.
I suggest that the Minister should have been grateful, and his Department should have been grateful, to the people who went to this amount of work to get out this report. They should be particularly grateful to the group that have collated the replies and have given us the views, which they do not express as their views on policy, but simply as something that they have skimmed off from the replies that came in to the questionnaire. I think the Minister would certainly very definitely relieve the feelings of quite a number of people who are disturbed if he were to do what I suggest. I would say the people that are disturbed are in two classes. There are people who have for a long time thought that this attempt to force Irish was wrong and who feel that in this report they have got some backing for that view, and there are the completely opposing group who are very anxious to have Irish advanced, but who believe that this report indicates that the wrong methods are being chosen. The Minister would do a service to both these classes of people and would relieve a certain amount of anxiety if he would adopt the particular line of approach to this pamphlet that I have spoken of. I think it is one of the most valuable pamphlets produced by an independent body of people. If there is something wrong in the nature of the information they asked for, or in the collection of the information, or the way in which it is presented, the Minister has a right and a duty here to tell us where they have gone wrong.
