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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 13 May 1943

Vol. 90 No. 2

Committee on Finance. - Vote 45—Office of the Minister for Education (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:
That the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration.—(Deputy O'Sullivan).

A good part of the discussion on this Estimate yesterday dealt with the effect, on the revival of the Irish language, of compulsory Irish in the schools. It might seem a little impertinent on the part of a member of this House who does not know Irish to intervene on that aspect of the discussion, but, if I do so, I do it with the intention of offering some constructive criticism in what I think most people have come to consider a very serious problem indeed. I might state that, while I have no knowledge of the language, I have always been a supporter of the revival of the language, and I would be very glad to hear it more often and to see the stage reached when it would be used equally with English in everyday speech.

I see no reason whatsoever why the future citizens of this country should not be in exactly the same position with regard to being able to speak two languages as the Flemings in the Low Countries, who speak Flemish and French, or the French Canadians, who speak French and English, or the inhabitants of Alsace Lorraine or any other border country where two languages are employed. I am aware, from my own observation, that it is very easy indeed, if the right methods are used, for children of tender years to acquire, not only the language of their own country, but a knowledge of some foreign language. If I might give an illustration, I could say that during the last war, in a certain village in France, a village with a population of 500 to 800, every man, woman and child could speak fairly good English and I suppose none of these people had ever been more than ten or 15 miles from the village. This is how they acquired their knowledge of English. During the two years before I came in contact with that village it had been occupied by English-speaking troops and the inhabitants had picked up a perfect working knowledge of the language.

I do not think we need despair in this country; if the proper system of learning is introduced, I believe the children will easily learn their native tongue. I do not think it is right to criticise the compulsory system, or even to suggest that the compulsory system has been a failure—at least, until it has been given a proper test. But after 20 years it is time to take stock. I feel, in the light of our experience now, and with certain figures before us, that there must be something wrong with the method of teaching that is at present utilised. As I understand the situation, the idea is to teach the Irish language to the children at school so that eventually it may be spoken in the streets and in the homes—that the children, after leaving school, will go to their homes and induce their parents to speak the language. That system has been in existence for something like 20 years.

From the statistics that are available, I find that the total population in 1936, between the ages of nine and 30 years, was 922,407. If the proportion is the same to-day—and I do not think there is any reason to doubt that, because there has not been a very great change in population between 1936 and 1943—we may assume that, roughly speaking, 900,000 of our people are between the ages of nine and 30, and each one of those has gone through school or is going through school and has undergone or is undergoing teaching through Irish. That represents a very considerable proportion of our population, and its relation to the total population is very remarkable because, according to the latest census, our present population is 2,989,700. It would seem from these figures that practically every third person in the country is either undergoing or has undergone teaching in Irish.

If the system in operation at the moment were in any way successful, one would imagine that one would hear the language more generally spoken. I think every credit is due to those who have not gone through this system at school, to those who have taught themselves the language and are doing all they can to revive it. As a comment on the progress of the present system, I should say it does seem strange that practically every third person in the country has undergone education in the language and yet we hear very little of it spoken. The position, so far as I can see it, is this, that unless the children who leave school take some interest in the language afterwards, use it in their homes, there will be very great difficulty indeed in making Irish a spoken language, even for a considerable minority of people outside the Irish-speaking areas.

It is wonderful the various things that contribute in their own way, small things perhaps, to results. Without wishing to say anything offensive about the foreign films that are shown in this country, I do think that there are more Americanisms introduced into the daily speech of our people than there are Irish phrases. Americanisms would seem to be more generally used, and we hear very little of the Irish language. I do not know whether it would be worth while considering the production of Irish talking films, films of an educational or amusing character suitable for growing children, films which would give them a native atmosphere. They would hear their own language and see places of Irish interest; various scenes based on Ireland would be presented to them and the Irish language would be used and the whole thing would be done away from the atmosphere of the school room, because I think that is the real difficulty in the case.

Ten or even 15 years ago I would not have said what I am saying now, but I do think that after 20 years' experience we will agree that we have not made much progress. If we have not progressed very far in 20 years, what will the position be like in 40 or 60 years? Will we ever get any further? Quite frankly, I think the compulsory teaching of Irish, the system under which it is being taught, was a genuine and praiseworthy effort to revive the language, but I think we all must agree in the light of our experience that it has not produced the results that we expected. Our children are just as intelligent as the children of any other country. There are plenty of countries in which two languages are spoken, in which the children change with great ease from one language to the other, and where they can think in either language the same as grown-up people. There are millions of people in this world who speak two languages with equal fluency. I believe it is only a question of hitting on the right way of dealing with the problem and then we will achieve the desired results in this country.

I am not in any way hostile to the progress of the language. I have been a Nationalist all my life, and I have always supported movements established to encourage the revival of the Irish language. I do not happen to belong to the generation that has got such opportunities of learning the language, and at the moment I fear I would not have the ability or the energy to acquire a knowledge of it. Anything that would further the Irish language would have my full support. Any remarks I have made here have not been for the purpose of condemning the Irish language, but for the purpose of pointing out that there is some weakness in the structure upon which we seek to build it.

I believe that this is one of the most important Estimates that we have to consider. I believe a good, sound educational system is fundamental to the future of our country. There should not be any great difficulty in this country because in generations past, when educational facilities were not available, in fact, when education was definitely prohibited, great efforts were made to obtain education, and great respect was shown to it. Education was valued very highly by the people. We have, of course, at the present time, some difficulties. I take it that many of those difficulties have arisen during the recent war, because it is not so easy, under modern conditions, to teach children unless there is a proper school available.

Unfortunately, very many of our schools are not object lessons. Each Government has done its best to improve that condition of affairs. We have quite a few new schools that are most edifying and show good example to the children but there are many others, not in a good condition, that are degrading. There are some schools without sanitary arrangements and in many schools there is no playground. The children have to amuse themselves on the public road, often under great danger. They go on the public road, where they are out of the control of the teacher. These are difficulties that we can surmount.

The teacher forms the next important part of the school. They, of course, have had a great deal of work thrown on them, especially since the introduction of compulsory Irish. Many of those teachers did not know Irish and had to qualify themselves to teach it. They deserve a great deal of praise for the heroic efforts they have made to overcome the difficulty. I am not one who believes that the child has any difficulty in learning Irish or French or any other language. I am not one who believes that we should have this thing done over night. I have some little experience and I do know that it is the mother and the father who really will teach Irish and until the mother and father have a fair grasp of Irish and are able to speak it to the child, the child may have a partial knowledge of the language but will not have the conversational knowledge that is necessary to speak it fluently. In many countries children of Irish parents pick up the language of that country through association with the nurse or whoever may be attending them and will speak that language, no matter what is done. If we are to look for success in the restoration of Irish, we must look to the homes.

The teachers have had a very heavy onus cast upon them and I think they are eminently successful. I hear many people contradict that, but I think they are quite wrong. In my opinion, Irish has made very rapid strides but we are inclined to expect too much in a short time. It takes quite a time to develop, but the foundations of Irish have already been laid in this country. Some organisation may be necessary in order to develop the teaching and speaking of Irish. It takes one type of machine to get a thing going and another type of machine to keep it going. Consequently, something might be done in that direction. I think it could be done through the teachers. They have worked very hard to bring Irish to its present stage and there could be perhaps a little organisation in the different school areas with a view to keeping up conversational Irish and giving it some added interest. I have no doubt that Irish has come to stay. We have laid very solid foundations.

I have been told that the children are not nearly as well educated now as they were in other years. Many years ago I had the good fortune to go to an extremely good national school, possibly one of the best in Ireland. Perhaps it did give a somewhat better education than is obtained in the national school to-day mainly because in that school they had additions to the ordinary school programme. They taught agriculture and possibly the authorities may have segregated distribution and production and possibly gave pupils leaving school a better idea of the two things. One of the difficulties to-day is in regard to children in the vocational schools. It is a very excellent system and there are very excellent teachers in the schools but it could not be described as being a success mainly because, in the national schools, the children did not grasp thoroughly the meaning of education. The word "job" seems to have been written over everything. Every child wants to get into a job, not into production. I think we should make an effort to make a sort of segregation station of the schools in order to create some sort of balance so that all the children leaving school will not have the idea that they should get a good job if they pass the examination. I am afraid that is the predominant idea at present. We may in future become rather overbalanced and will have a greater proportion of distributors looking for positions than we have producers. This question of national education is a most important one judged from that point of view.

I know that the teachers are efficient and that their system is good. I have watched the situation fairly carefully and have discussed matters with the teachers. The teachers give every incentive to pupils. They try to select, perhaps, the bright pupils or pupils who are hard workers as leaders of the class. I have known teachers in difficulty because they had not one such pupil, and the class remained rather dull, and it was rather heavy work on the teacher. The teachers have recognised the importance of segregation, and of selecting the best pupils as leaders. The results generally are extremely successful. Consequently, I could not honestly say that national education to-day is a failure. It is a failure only in so far as it does not teach quite as much as it did in former days.

I would ask the Minister seriously to consider the question of having some form of elementary agricultural education in the national schools in order to call the children's attention to its importance and to give them some idea of the theory and practice of agriculture. I think there should be attached to every school a reasonable garden and also a department in which elementary domestic economy could be taught because there is a danger that people are getting out of production and away from the idea of production. That is sometimes referred to as the flight from the land. I hear a good deal about that. I often wonder what could they mean. I think a lot of them do not really know what they mean by that phrase. I think the flight from the land is due largely to that. People learn too much about distribution and not enough about production. Perhaps that was the old system in which children were educated. It is possible that many of our secondary schools also pay too much attention to that question of distribution. I am glad to see that the Minister has announced his intention of putting a little brake on the secondary schools, so that they will come to pay more attention to agricultural subjects, and thereby help to keep people on the land. There is not much use in people remaining on the land if there is not more respect taught for it. The place to do that is in the schools.

So far as the future of the country is concerned, one of the things of course that the schools can do is to discipline the children. There are difficulties in the way. The task is rendered more difficult where the children have to take their recreation on the roadside rather than in an enclosed playground. I think the Minister for Justice adverted to that some time ago. To discipline the children, you must start below. Parents, of course, should co-operate to the fullest extent. The mother does most of the teaching in the home. Sometimes the father takes a hand in it, but in this matter of enforcing discipline both can be of the greatest possible help to the teacher. With regard to the vocational education system, I am afraid, if there is any failure in that system, that it is due to the fact that fathers and mothers do not appreciate its importance. They should not rely too much on the fact that if the children do well in the national schools, and then go to vocational schools, they are bound to get a job. There are not jobs for all, but the more production there is the more jobs there will be. The policy of the Department and of the Minister should be to see that that little hallucination is removed from the coming generation: that everybody cannot get a job, and that somebody must produce the wherewithal to pay for the job. I think that if attention were given to that it might help to ease our unemployment problem. It is connected up with the question of the cities and the towns. Most of our young people, when they come to the cities, come unarmed. The most they can do is to use a brush in sweeping the streets. There are too many of that type. I think that if the unemployment figures were segregated it would be found that there is more unemployment amongst those who have had no training than among those who have had it.

I believe that the Minister has done his utmost. The war has put difficulties in the way of providing decent, substantial, clean schools. The managers of the schools are anxious to have improvements carried out. In the County Meath, for example, we have a number of old schools that are really demoralising, and unhealthy as well. The children can get no chance in them, and their health suffers. We all hope that when the war is over every effort will be made to get rid of those old schools and to build new ones. The teachers require all the sympathy they can get because they have a very difficult task to perform. During the last four, five, six or seven years very heavy tasks have been imposed on them. They have come through the ordeal very well. I cannot agree with those who say that the teaching of Irish in the schools has been a failure. I think it has been a great success. Supposing the children were not being taught Irish, I think the object should be to teach them a second language. The people in most modern countries have a command of two languages. I think that in the near future it will be necessary for the Guards to have a knowledge of two languages. Distance has been eliminated by this war, so that later on we may expect to become more international in our interests. It would be well, I think, to lay the foundations now. I know the Minister appreciates its importance and will do his utmost to meet the need.

The motion appearing in my name to refer back this Estimate was moved for me by Deputy O'Sullivan. It would have gone hard on my feelings to move the motion after the Minister's speech. I would have felt that it was not worth while doing it. I agree with Deputy O'Reilly that this is one of the most important Votes that come before the House. If we can have the Minister for Education in Great Britain declaring that education is the main arm with which they must win the future peace, if we can have educationists, trade unionists and industrialists in Great Britain concentrating their minds on education at the present time, we ought to realise what it means to us for the future. We, who are undisturbed by the actual impact of the military operations of war, ought to be preparing for the future through the institutions and machinery that we have in an unrestricted way. We have all the machinery we require for educational processes. We have our human resources, our teachers and our training schools. They are empty, as I know, and are likely to be more empty. We have, as I say, all these things in an undisturbed way, and yet we are not showing signs that we are going to make any use of them. If we are to take the speech of the Minister in introducing the Estimate and the speech of the Taoiseach last night—I understood that he was to intervene again to-day—then I should consider it of no use at all if the Minister were to accept my motion and take back the Estimate for reconsideration. If the speeches of the Minister and of the Taoiseach on education were to be issued in some kind of pamphlet, the inscription, that might I suggest, be put on it is: "The road to nowhere." The Minister would like to lead us in what he is pleased to call a linguistic war. Where the Taoiseach would lead us, I do not know, but, between the two, anything they have to say on education can only be described as "The road to nowhere."

We have no educational guidance in this country. Whatever chance we have of trying to get a bird's eye view of what is being done in the schools, the Department of Education has somewhat effectively denied to us. It has done so by its failure to publish the normal report on the Department of Education. For the two years 1938-39 and 1939-40 it has ceased to publish any kind of a detailed report on the position of education in the country, and confines itself to the issue of statistical tables. They have now gone back, to some extent, in the reports for the year 1940-41 and they have published a kind of report.

We have no educational guidance in this country from the Ministry or from the Taoiseach. The Taoiseach intervened two years ago and made a very long and elaborate speech. Having contemplated the simplicity of the world, by looking out his window on a mother cat teaching her kittens how to rub their noses, he crystallised the simple scheme for the education of, I suppose, 80 per cent. of the total number of children in this country, to be reading, writing and arithmetic. He would even cut out, because of the short number of years that had to be spent in teaching to-day, such things as rural science or dressmaking. He became simple in his outlook, and he repeated that simplicity of outlook last night. When he tries to guide us by intervention in this debate, he simply emphasises what I have said— that we have no educational guidance and that, in particular, we do not get it either from the Minister or the Taoiseach. To him there is simply reading, writing and arithmetic.

Then, in theory and outlook, he is just full of doubts. According to him, it is difficult to say what, in modern circumstances, is the best type of education to give children in primary schools. According to him, the best they could hope for was reading, writing and arithmetic: if they had those, they could be able to go further themselves. He raises the question as to whether children should learn things by rote and he seems to think they should, although he warns us that educationists might not agree with him. Then he thinks that people in the schools to-day are reasoning with children before they are old enough to reason, and does not know whether that is right or not. He harps back to his own days, before there was any Irish in the schools, and says that, even then, many people leaving the schools were not able to write a simple letter—implying that people, even to-day, are not able to write a simple letter. That is the way the Taoiseach helps us.

One thing more than anything else seems to bedaub, disturb and destroy the greater part of what we call our cultural, intellectual, national or political life—it is what I call "snarley-gob"—the kind of person who, through envy, jealousy, spite, inferiority complex, efficiency or pride of one kind or another, sees nothing good in his neighbour, objects to the idea of persons living a full, vigorous personal life, and reserves to himself the right to say what is proper in any aspect of either personal or national conduct. The "snarleygob" is known in every direction, and you see his dirty daub in nearly every aspect of our national life. Too many of our people are afraid of his sooty hand and, if there is one thing more than another that is making people dissatisfied with the Department of Education—even assuming that they do not understand the Department or have no knowledge of its work—and if there is one thing that is bringing about the wide lack of public confidence in that Department at the present time, it is that, in some way or another, the Department has personalised to them this kind of "snarleygob" I speak about; or the public are persuaded that the Department stands in the same cowardly relations to other organisations of people in the country.

There may not have been any real grounds for that, or any truth in it, until the Minister made his speech on the introduction of this Estimate. At the end of his speech, he said:

"Ní féidir linn an Ghaedhilg do shlánú gan sár-iarracht do dhéanamh i gcoinnibh Béarla agus uaireanta i gcoinnibh an náduir dhaonna féin, i dtreó go mairfeadh an teanga. Ní féidir cogadh mí-chuíbheasach teangan den tsórt san do choimeád ar siúl gan íbirt, agus gan iarrachtaí diana, buan-tseasmhacha—agus níl a mhalairt sin de roga againn muna mian linn leigint don Ghaedhilg bás d'fháil mar theangain labhartha."

"Snarleygob" in excelsis! The official translation says:

"We cannot save Irish without waging a most intense war against English and against human nature itself for the life of the language. Such desperate linguistic war cannot be carried on without sacrifice and persistent effort and struggle, but we have no choice unless we intend to let Irish die as a living language."

Then he goes on, in a subsequent paragraph, which is translated as follows:

"That the Irish people would be willing to accept such a choice is very difficult to believe. Our whole history is proof of the realisation by our people that a nation cannot live wholly for to-day, that any one generation of a nation is only part of a great entity, that a nation receives an essential heritage from the past which it must bequeath to the future. Our people have shown in all the centuries that they are ready to die so that the life of the nation may continue. With such a passionate conviction of nationality, it seems incredible that they could be willing to let our greatest national heritage be lost in this generation by refusing to accept the only method by which it could possibly be saved."

We are not clear what the only method is by which the Irish language, living as a language in the minds and hearts of the people, could be saved; but the implication is that it can only be saved by waging a most intense struggle against English and against human nature. That a Minister for Education in this country could use language of that particular kind makes it clear to me that there is no use in referring back this Estimate to the present Minister or his colleagues. It makes me really gratified that we are approaching a time when this great people, which has stood so valiantly in the past to maintain the national tradition and hand it on to the future, with a proper estimate of what is valuable in the life of the nation and of what they have to hand on, will have an opportunity to show who are to rule the educational destinies of this country in the future.

When we discussed this question the last time, I asked who our educationists are? Like many other people who ought to be energetic and who ought to be standing out in the full blaze of public life in the country, doing their work openly, they are keeping in back places for the same reason that other classes are keeping in back places—that is, that the hand of the Department is too uncertain in the way in which it handles people, the object and the policy of the Department are too uncertain for them to risk their convenience or their reputations by getting into conflict in any way with the Department.

We should be satisfied that educational leadership in this country will not come from the political head of a Ministry or from, I might say, any political section of the people. We want to get educational leadership and guidance, particularly in present circumstances and in view of our past, from men whose work in educational fields has been such as to secure that they will be regarded, when they appear before the people as such, as educationists. The last performance of the Minister has made it absolutely clear to me that unless we set up a council of education, not concerned with university, primary, secondary or technical education, but to act as a body giving lead and light and guidance and holding up an ideal for education generally in the country we will not face the future with either the advice or the inspiring lead that is absolutely necessary if the people are to be given confidence that their educational future is being properly provided for. I ask the Minister what does he mean by saying that we must make war on English and what does he mean by saying that we must make war on human nature? I do not see the Minister throwing either himself or the machinery of the Department in a constructive way into this fight.

I have repeatedly pointed out focal points in this question of education in relation to the Irish language that ought to be reviewed and strengthened, and nothing has been done about them. But, on the general question of war on English, I would refer the Minister to a small publication by Professor Tierney, Education in a Free Ireland, published about the time that the struggle to set up this State was beginning, probably published about 1919. On page 44 he says:

"The nationalism which will be the basis of our education will not I hope be of this narrow, unreasoning type, it must recognise its own place in the world, and exalt Ireland not as the greatest and most holy and bravest and purest of all countries, but as embodying the idea of a national culture among a number of equals. The greatest discovery of the young twentieth century has been this: that nationality and internationalism cannot exist apart, that the nation tends to destroy itself if it has no other aim than the national one, and that without free separate nations, as the very word implies, there can be no internationality. Our philosophy of politics in Ireland must be based on this dual ideal, our national culture will be of value to us only as an addition to the small stock of human wealth, not as a thing to be used for the crushing of other nations."

If we look at the discussions taking place in Great Britain on the question of education we realise two things: that they are looking for a spiritual ideal to make vivid and life-like the general position of education and, in the second place, that they want to harmonise their education with progressive industry and that the industrialists, as much as the idealists, are claiming that the foundation of training for better work in industry must be a general education. In every line that is written and everything that is published they are looking for a spiritual ideal in their education, even though they are principally concerned in their education to equip their people more and more to take advantage of the greater intensity of technical development in both industry and agriculture there. Here we are now given as our educational ideal that we have to fight English and to fight even human nature at that. It seems to me that we have no ideal at all encouraging our teachers in their work, on the one hand; that we have no ideal at all gathering together in one kind of uniform mind the people whom we should look to as being the leaders of education and thought in this country and that, so far as the children are concerned, whatever good work may be done in the schools, no good work could be done in the schools if the idealism of the Minister were to find its echo there, because the children could not understand it.

When some of us look back over our contact with the Irish language and what invited us to develop a knowledge of it and to encourage it as a policy in education, we find it was something that does not seem to exude at all from those who speak and think and argue about Irish at present. Why is it that Father O'Leary's name stands out as an Irish writer in the past? It is because he gave us in Irish things that meant something to us. He gave us systematically, over a certain number of years, the Four Gospels, and Sgealuidheacht as an Bíobla Naomhtha—stories of the Old Testament. He gave us Aithris ar Chríost. He gave us some of the old stories of the early literary period in Ireland. He gave us Marbhán, Guaire and Eisirt, stories that painted, or helped to paint, the picture to us of good and evil. We were learning something. There was something that appealed to our minds and to our souls. When we were introduced, through the language, to people, they were people in the Irish-speaking districts who retained happy, laughing literary traditions handed down from fireside to fireside from very old days. We picked up our stories and our poems and bits of songs there by the fire and we were being given through the language a vision of the life of our people. In going through the Irish-speaking districts to-day you find that the whine and the whinge and the complaint of latter-day politics has sullied the language in some kind of way.

While there has been a lot of talk about the way in which Irish should be developed in schools in the English-speaking districts, as much could be done and should be done in the Irish-speaking districts for the holding of the language there as a medium of advancing education and is not being done.

If there is one thing that should be done, it is the fostering of the language in the Irish-speaking districts as the language of education. Small grants are being given to people to encourage them to speak Irish in their homes in the Irish-speaking districts, but there has been a resolute and deliberate refusal on the part of the Department to make the Irish-speaking districts a separate inspectorate, where the inspectors could concentrate entirely on the considerations which have to be borne in mind in respect of maintaining and strengthening, through the schools, Irish as the living, every-day language of these ordinary places. Why, even the Irish-speaking districts are being used to depress the standard of teaching in the primary schools. It is only a couple of months since the Minister lowered the standard for entry into the preparatory training colleges in order to meet lower educational conditions existing in the Irish-speaking districts. Instead of doing something to raise the educational standard in the primary schools in the Irish-speaking districts, he deliberately brought down the standard for entrance to the preparatory training colleges, because, if the standard was not brought down, an injustice would be done to the pupils attending schools in the Irish-speaking districts.

A language cannot be saved unless we have some national idealism and that national idealism must be a constructive, growing thing, positive in the expression of something which is in ourselves and in this nation, and we can do nothing but undermine our whole cultural outlook and our whole courage in ourselves if we feel that we cannot spread Irish in this country without making war on England. I do not know what it means, and it is a disastrous thing for our own conception of our intelligence and our reputation among other people that the Minister should use such a phrase, without, at any rate, attempting to give it some kind of meaning, because, as it stands, there is only one meaning to be taken from it.

Why we should have to make an attack on human nature in order to save the Irish language is more than I know. The people who made sacrifices and who suffered in various ways for the continued existence of this country did so in order that the people they left here, after they had perhaps sacrificed their lives, might be able to do their work with a laugh, with a smile on their lips, and if we cannot save the Irish language with smiles on our faces and with a light footstep, we will not save it at all. Why phrases of that kind should be thrown in at present is more than I know, unless, in some kind of obscure way, appealing to national tradition, the Minister is trying to keep some half-understood hordes off either his doorstep or his reputation.

We had a political war in 1922 and 1923. Then we had to have an economic war and now we want to have a linguistic war. When we in the past were attracted to Irish, we were attracted to an Irish whose national traditions in our minds suggested to us men stepping over the seas like St. Brendan and stepping over Europe like the various saints who spread the light of learning through Europe and Great Britain. We did not dream then that our hearts were swelling and our minds aflame because we had ancestors who went out and made war on the neighbouring languages, or who made war on their own human nature. They used their human nature, and they had ideals for themselves and for their country and, although they laboured, their labour was a life to them, and no labour in Ireland in respect of future education or in any other way is going to do anything for the country unless it is, at the same time, a life to our people.

The details which one would like to discuss under the various headings of the Estimate are such as to pale into insignificance in the light of the Minister's general statement, and there is only one to which I want to refer. I want to relate this to the Minister's wanting to have a vigorous war on England. I put questions to him the other day in respect of 25th February, as to the position with regard to attendances in nine schools in the north-east sector of the city. The number of children on the roll in these schools was 5,483. Of these, 3,301 were in classes of 50 and upwards. That is, 60 per cent. of 5,400 children were in classes of 50 and upwards, and 1,709, or 30.6 per cent., of the entire number on the roll, were in classes of 60 and upwards, while there were 366 children in classes of 70 and upwards. That was in February. When we discussed the matter before, I discussed it on the basis of classes in April, and the Minister indicated that classes are filled up with new entrants in April, and overcrowding takes place in a natural way from April to June, but here we have a normal period of the year.

Again, I ask the Minister what kind of education can children in the City of Dublin get if they are overcrowded in classes in that way, the position be-in ing, as I think we all must realise, that our national future, politically, depends upon education, because it is only the education of our people which is going to enable them to run their democratic institutions, only education which is going to make our people realise how our agricultural industry can be improved, and only education which is going to bring our people's hand in a tempered way to increasing industrial development here.

The situation in the country is that nobody has any confidence in the Department of Education. There is also the situation that our training colleges are practically empty, and they are going to be more empty. What is absolutely necessary now is that we should get a new and a progressive outlook in the matter of education. That has to be done at once and we shall have to see that we make use immediately of our educational institutions to increase the number of teachers who will be available and we shall have to take whatever teachers are capable of additional courses in the subjects that are necessary in order to widen and extend the technical side of our education. We have to go ahead with this scheme at once. As to the type of person who has to be recruited as a teacher, that matter has to be completely reviewed, because I think consultation with the authorities of our training colleges will give the Minister clearly to understand how unsatisfactory the present arrangements are. However, there would seem to be little use in talking to the present Minister on these matters. We here as a Parliament have to realise the importance of education and we have to get our people to realise it. We have to get them to realise that immediate and urgent action is necessary in order to restore the confidence of the people in the Department of Education, for what it is worth; to make it more worthy of their confidence by seeing that more progressive and immediate steps are taken to prepare for the better education of future generations.

I agree with the previous Deputy that education is a very important matter for this country, but I am convinced that there is too much inequality in our educational system. There are many children, more particularly the children of the wage-earners, who have very limited opportunities for receiving education. After a totally inadequate period in school, those children are let loose upon industry and agriculture. They are very immature and ill-prepared as wage-earners. Listening to Deputy O'Reilly a while ago, when he spoke about the views that are instilled into the minds of these children, more especially as to the value of education as a means of getting a job, one would be inclined to agree with him in some respects. There is undoubtedly that feeling among children going to school, that the object of education is to land them in a good, comfortable job.

I am inclined to think that our educational system is not developing the social sense sufficiently. There is one thing that we do not stress sufficiently, and that is the formation of character. When I think of the amount of money that is spent on education every year, I often wonder if we are getting good value for it. There was information given to us recently regarding an increase in juvenile crime, and we have statements from city and county managers indicating vandalism on the part of growing children. When we take these matters into consideration, we begin to wonder do we really get any value for the vast amount that we spend on education. If there is one thing we lack in our educational system, it is the teaching of a sense of civic responsibility. I think that is entirely neglected.

I also agree with Deputy O'Reilly with regard to the teaching in country schools. To learn that agriculture is not taught to the children in the country schools is something of a surprise to most people. I remember that when I was going to a country school I had two books on agriculture and, even though many years have elapsed since I left school, I can still remember some of the things I learned from those books about agriculture. Having had occasion to go back to the scenes of my early days in school, I was surprised to discover that there is nothing taught in relation to agriculture in that school at the moment. I think that is a great defect in our educational system.

So far as many of our country schools are concerned, I think they are simply a disgrace. I happened recently to go to the national school where I was taught years ago and I was astonished to find that it is still the same old school. Any person would be inclined to regard it now as something like a cattle shed. It is there on the side of the road without even a perch of ground on which the children could play and absolutely no sanitary arrangements. To have a school like that on the roadside near an important town is something of which we should be ashamed.

There is another thing that we have more or less forgotten, and that is the establishment of museums in the larger centres of population. One hears a lot about the National Gallery and the National Museum in Dublin, but the people in County Cork or County Kerry, who are contributing to the upkeep of the National Gallery and the National Museum, have very few opportunities of seeing them. I think those people are well entitled to have museums within a reasonable distance of where they are living, and I believe these things would gradually tend towards the cultural development of our people. I suggest it is very desirable that we should have museums established in the larger centres of population. In other countries, small museums in the larger cities and towns are taken advantage of, and our people should be given similar facilities. In a place like Cork City, with a population of over 80,000, we have no such facilities. I hope the Minister will give that matter sympathetic consideration.

There is another matter that the Minister should take cognisance of, and that is the effect of films on the juvenile mind. I believe there is a certain advantage from the point of view of educating children to be gained by the use of certain films, and I think we have neglected that aspect altogether in this country. There are, of course, other types of films, and, if the Minister has anything to do with the censorship of films, he should ensure that certain films would not be allowed into this country, because they are definitely harmful not alone for growing children but even for adults. They are absolutely demoralising, and they give very false ideas to children. I am inclined to believe that much of the juvenile crime that we hear about is inspired by some of the films that are shown in this country.

Deputy Mulcahy talked about the Irish language. I regret that I cannot speak it. I had not an opportunity of learning it, but I am a great believer in the language revival. I should like to see the language developed. I have done everything I could to encourage that idea among my own children. So far as national ideals are concerned, I agree with Deputy Mulcahy and I think the greatest insult that could be offered to the Irish language was the incident which occurred recently in our National University. If we cannot get inspiration from the men at the top, where will we get it? We have an institution of that kind which should be the spearpoint of national ideals and we know what happened there. In such circumstances, it is hard to blame the poor people who have not the opportunities of learning Irish. They have not got much inspiration to learn Irish from the incident to which I have referred. Those responsible for the National University who have not a knowledge of Irish should be dealt with in a suitable manner.

The Deputy is aware that the universities enjoy autonomy.

I know they have, but this State is contributing a big sum of money towards the upkeep of those institutions.

Nevertheless, they are autonomous.

I regret to say that that is so. I think, so far as the schools are concerned, the school leaving age should be increased. As regards the one-day school, I think it would be hard for boys who have to go out to work to take advantage of the one-day school. I have experience of that in Cork. We have boys who are expected to go to work and who want to supplement the family income, but it has not been so much of a success.

I believe that there is not sufficient attention paid to the boy or girl with genius. I have in mind a number of boys and girls in respect of whom the school teachers urge their mothers to allow them to continue at school, because of their aptitude for education. It is a pity to take them from school in order to take up a job in a factory where they may earn 7/- or 8/- a week and will be subject to half time and all that sort of thing. I think that is a matter that should be dealt with. The child with special aptitude or the child of special genius should, in the interests of the community, be allowed to continue the education.

I would again appeal to the Minister on the question of films. I do not go to the pictures very often but I happened to be in Dublin recently on a Saturday evening and went to a picture and I think it is the greatest tragedy that such a picture should be shown to any audience. The film portrayed gangsterdom and showed a group selecting the most reckless man amongst them as leader. There were children at that picture seeing men shooting each other. That is a matter nobody can smile at. Is it possible that we could not have more rigid censorship so that things like that would not be put before our people? There are many other things that should not be shown to young people. If children are allowed to see films, there should be special hours and special films set apart for them to see. I make that suggestion to the Minister.

There is a good deal to be said for much of the education in this country and I do not think it is fair to suggest that the children of this country to-day are less capable of being educated than were the children in the past. I know from my own children that they get a lot of subjects to study at night and I am just wondering if too many subjects are not crammed into their minds and if there is not too much expected of them in evening study.

In regard to the teaching of Irish, I think it is a tragedy that, having spent so much on Irish, we do not hear more of it spoken in the homes or in the streets or in the meeting places. I wonder what is wrong that we do not hear it. I think it only requires encouragement. We want to bring back that national spirit and that idealism that existed in this country some 22 years ago. There is a great deal of disillusionment in the minds of the people since then and I think you cannot separate that from social and economic conditions. I want again to say that we are not getting value for the amount of money spent on education. I would like to see civics compulsorily taught in the schools in order to develop that social sense and the idea that education is not merely preparation for a job, that it is a preparation for life and that the children when they grow up are expected to give service to the community and to display a sense of obligation to the community when they go into the world to earn their living.

Education is a subject upon which practically every citizen and practically every Deputy has ideas of his own and suggestions to make. In this respect the Minister for Education is rather more fortunate than other Ministers because so many ideas are suggested to him that he has a good field in which to explore. On one point practically all the Deputies who have spoken appear to be agreed, namely, that there is dissatisfaction in regard to the amount of progress that has been made in the teaching of Irish. The suggestion was made by a number of Deputies, and I think that it was not definitely turned down by the Taoiseach when he was speaking, that an inquiry into the position of the language and into the amount of progress which had been made over a period of 20 years would be desirable. Such an inquiry, provided it was made by experts and by people who had a real desire to advance the interests of the language, could not fail to do useful service. In my opinion, the lack of progress during the last 20 years has been due to the fact that enthusiasm for the language has completely declined. That may be due to a variety of factors, but I think amongst them might be counted the fact that too intensive an effort has been made to enforce the language in respect of the younger children. I am convinced that there are only two ways of teaching a new language to children, either to isolate them completely from all contact with another language or if, as is the present position, the children must acquire a knowledge of the English language in their homes, they should be allowed to develop a fundamental knowledge in that language during the first two or three years in the national schools before being introduced to a new language. That is why I think the Irish language should not be introduced to children until they reach about the third standard. We must realise that, no matter what progress may be made, we shall continue to have two languages spoken in this country and I do not think anyone can hope to alter that position.

Another suggestion which I have frequently heard in regard to the Irish language is that, since it is comparatively new to the overwhelming majority of the people, an effort should be made to simplify it in regard to spelling and grammar and in every other respect so as to make it easier of acquisition. I do not see any reason why the absurdities and difficulties in grammar and spelling which at present exist in the Irish language should be perpetuated. The difficulty which the ordinary person has in understanding the pronunciation of Irish from the manner in which it is spelt was brought home to me by the many ways in which even Deputies pronounce the words "Ceann Comhairle." As long as you have a position in which spelling and the pronunciation are so much at variance you are putting a great handicap on the language. I think it an unnecessary handicap. I do not see what useful purpose it serves. It is difficult, of course, to make a change in the case of an old language which is spoken by everybody, but in the case of a language that is new to the overwhelming majority of the people it is easy, I think, to make advance and improvement.

I think that all those difficulties, and many others which suggest themselves, could be very adequately inquired into if we had a commission of inquiry such as has been suggested. On general principles, I am not in favour of commissions of inquiry, but this is a matter on which the experts differ very much and on which the ordinary average citizen cannot have the knowledge which is necessary in order to form a judgment, or even to make any suggestion. I want to be perfectly fair in regard to the progress which is being made in national schools. I have heard complaints from national teachers of the difficulty which the teaching of subjects through the medium of Irish and the teaching of Irish to the very young children cause them. As far as my personal knowledge is concerned, knowledge brought to me by the experience of my own children in a national school, I find that they have a definitely superior knowledge in English, in reading and writing and in other essential subjects, to that which prevailed amongst the children in my own schooldays. That may be due to the fact that the teachers in this school are exceptionally good, or it may be general. At any rate, it is certainly true that the standard in this school with which I am intimately acquainted is very high.

This brings forward another question which is creating a good deal of controversy at the present time, and that is the question of the retirement of married women teachers. On general principles, I think everyone would agree that when a woman teacher marries, her husband should be in a position to provide for her maintenance and support. But on this question another very important consideration arises, and that is that there are no professions for which women are more suited than teaching and nursing. In these two professions they show themselves superior to men, and particularly in the teaching of infant classes. I do not think that education in this country can afford to lose the services of trained, experienced women teachers on marriage. There is no doubt but that teaching is a difficult profession. It is one which calls for the exercise of great patience, fortitude, unselfishness and zeal, and there is no doubt but that women, and particularly married women, possess those virtues to a greater extent than men. I think that, as far as the infant classes are concerned, it would be a definite injury to education to compel women teachers to retire on marriage, because, in my view, they can never be replaced in the national schools.

As I said before, every Deputy has original ideas of his own to put before the Minister. Deputy Dillon, for example, suggested that all our small rural schools should be closed down and the children taken by bus transport to larger centres. Although he appeared to be very emphatic and dogmatic in making that suggestion, I do not believe he can be fully convinced of its desirability. We all know the difficulty we have at the present time in keeping our young people in the rural areas. That difficulty, I believe, would be increased if we were to close down the smaller schools and concentrate the children in larger ones. Moreover, it would add to the complexity of life. We all want to make life as simple as possible. I think that the little rural school, within easy reach of the children which they can reach without any mechanical aid, is the more desirable system. I do not believe that the proposed change would bring about any real improvement in the standard of education. Under the present system you have one teacher dealing with two or three classes. I think that any qualified principal teacher is quite competent to do that successfully. That system is even better than if you had one teacher confined to one particular class. I think that, as far as the rural areas are concerned, the putting into force of such a suggestion as that would only make matters worse. What is really needed in the rural areas is an education with an agricultural bias.

Practically every Deputy who has spoken has referred to the fact that the education given 30, 40 or 50 years ago in the national schools was more of an agricultural type than that which is being given to-day. I agree. I do not think an education provided by having, say, school readers or books on agriculture, is adequate. It does not get the children very far. What is needed is a practical agricultural education, and that can only be provided by having a well-managed vegetable garden attached to each national school. There the boys can be taught to produce plants, vegetables and flowers. The knowledge they derive in that way will be of use to them in after life. It will also provide a useful foundation in the way of instilling into the children a proper civic spirit. The boy who has been taught to plant vegetables knows the amount of labour that is involved in preparing the land, sowing the seed and tending the crop afterwards. Therefore, he is not likely in after years to be so easily drawn into the commission of acts of sabotage and destruction where vegetables and plants are concerned.

Respect for manual labour and for its products would be instilled to a greater extent by practical experiment-than by any knowledge that could be conveyed through books. In addition, the whole system of primary education has to be altered so as to embody in the primary programme this manual knowledge. If we provide gardening, vegetable growing or horticulture, for boys in rural areas, it is necessary also to provide a little manual or technical instruction for the higher classes, wherever possible. This can be done very easily by providing at least a workshop attached to every school. There would be the foundation for a sound manual knowledge amongst our children. To every national school should be added a practical, well-run vegetable garden, and a well-run workshop, and the teachers could give some instruction there, and could also avail of the services of the local authorities' horticultural, agricultural and manual instructors. That would, perhaps, suffice as a foundation for manual education for boys.

In addition, it is necessary to provide suitable education for girls: domestic economy, cookery and needlework should be taught much more extensively in the schools; and, where they are situated in rural areas, it should be possible to provide school meals for the children, and to ensure that they consist, to a considerable extent, of the vegetables grown in the school gardens and prepared and cooked by the pupils. That would be a sound foundation in general knowledge for a country which is purely agricultural, where the majority of the people have to live by agriculture, and in which the majority of the girls, we hope, have to become housewives.

It has been suggested, and it is certainly true, that most people look upon education as a step to a job. There seems to be here a distinction between agriculture, ordinary productive work, and jobs. I do not see why productive work should not be as good a job as any other. Until that is so, you cannot prevent intelligent and ambitious boys and girls from seeking positions other than in agriculture or in productive work, as a result of their education. That, however, would be outside the sphere of the Minister's activities.

Finally, I wish to say that, in the criticism I have offered to the working of the Minister's Department, I am influenced and do not leave out of consideration for one moment the fact that, to my personal knowledge, the standard of education, in some of the schools at least, is not very low; and I think that is comparatively satisfactory. The lack of progress in Irish might be offset, to a great extent, if we had in the national schools a greater appeal to national sentiment. There is no reason why any boy or girl should leave a national school, having completed their primary education, without being able to sing a good national song or without having a good knowledge of Irish history and some knowledge of Irish culture. In that way, enthusiasm for the language can be aroused. I have pointed out here before that, without that enthusiasm, the work done by the Department of Education in regard to Irish and the enormous sums being spent on the promotion of Irish are, to a great extent, being wasted. It is necessary to make the children and their parents conscious of the desirability and urgent need for an extensive knowledge of Irish, and in that way to strengthen the national spirit and outlook of our people. The Minister would be very unwise to ignore the appeal made to him here to-day and yesterday, to hold an inquiry into the whole position.

Deputy Cogan is, probably, unaware of the fact that it is quite a number of years now since the simplification of the spelling of Irish was adumbrated. It is some 30 years or more since the late Seán O Cuiv put forward his system, called Litriú Simplí. It was never popular as a method of spelling, and I do not think it made the spelling of Irish any easier. What Deputy Cogan means by the simplification of the grammar, I cannot understand. The grammar of a language is merely a set of rules that are formed from the language as you find it, and when you have a language and get the set of rules, how you can make them any simpler than they are, when based on the language, I do not know, unless it is based on a different language altogether. The question of simpler spelling and simpler grammar has nothing whatever to do with the progress of the study of Irish in the schools. To think it has would be to look at this matter from a very wrong viewpoint.

Deputy O'Sullivan made an unanswerable case for a stock-taking of the results of the policy pursued in the last 17 or 18 years in the teaching of Irish. He was the Minister who sponsored this programme originally when it was taken up generally throughout the schools. He does not feel that it would be any slight or reflection on him if now, after the years that have passed, we should have an inquiry to see the results of the policy adumbrated by him. Therefore, I cannot see that it would be any reflection on the present Minister for Education, or on the Department, that they should assent to such an inquiry. Nobody knows what the result might be: the persons appointed may find that the present system is working satisfactorily and should be carried on for another 10, 15 or 20 years. Some Deputies, of course, have already prejudged the matter. Deputy Dillon, while he was strongly supporting Deputy O'Sullivan, voiced the opinion that the system was entirely wrong. But, at the same time, he went no further than to ask that the inquiry should be held.

I think Deputy Dillon based his conclusions as to the failure of the system on three matters. He said his reason for being opposed to the teaching of other subjects through the medium of Irish to children whose vernacular was English, was, first of all, based on the fact that the children have grown to hate the language and, secondly, that a great many parents also have grown to hate the language. His third reason was on philosophical grounds.

I think it is perfectly natural for all children to hate all school subjects. My own recollection of my time in a national school and other schools was that I hated every subject in the curriculum. I do not think it is any argument to say that the children have got to hate the language. I think they always hated it. Whether it was used as a medium or not, they hated it the same as they hated algebra, geometry, geography, or something else. Children, naturally, do not like having to learn. It is one of the things they have to do for their sins or in order to be fit for after-life. But I do not accept as a serious argument the hatred of the children for the language. If it were a special hatred, it might be a serious matter. It would be unfortunate, indeed, if the system bred a particular dislike of the language that the children might carry with them into their adult years. I do not take that seriously, however, as an objection to the present system. There is, I presume, something in what the Deputy said, that he had some instances he could quote of the opposition of parents to the system, that it has made them hate the language. If so, it would be very unfortunate and one would have to consider the position if such hatred or dislike of the language was growing as a result of any system of education carried on in the country.

As to his third reason, the philosophical grounds, there was a time when I might entirely agree with him on philosophical grounds, but I am not at all so sure now that he is right. There was a time when I was cocksure that he was right. I remember when this question of teaching through the medium of Irish was introduced here. Professor MacNeill, I think, was the first person to advocate such a system. I spoke in this House then against it, comparatively fresh as I was then from having done a post-graduate course in educational science, having sat with the Ceann Comhairle at the feet of the late Dr. Corcoran, filled up with psychology and experimental education and all the rest. I remember quoting in the house what had been drummed into us and into every person who studied educational science, that the basis of all education was that you had to proceed from the known to the unknown. As I said, I was perfectly convinced of the truth of that 16 or 17 years ago. I am not so convinced of it now. I know that in many schools this system of teaching infants, the minute they get them into the school, through the medium of Irish has been a success.

Mr. Lynch

I would not say "Hear, hear" yet if I were Deputy O Briain, because he will find that I do not perhaps agree generally with what he might advocate. I know a few schools where certainly it has been a success and that has shaken me as to the general truth of the tag, that in all education you must take as a basis that you "proceed from the known to the unknown." I am not at all sure, though, that it is generally true that this has been a success. It has been a success where you have the ideal teacher, the perfect teacher. The perfect teacher can always get it across; but it takes a really good teacher to do it, and it would be too much to expect that all the teachers, or even the majority, are so good that they can get that across, that they can succeed thoroughly in teaching small infants, whose vernacular is English, through the medium of Irish. I entirely disagree with Deputy Cogan in saying that we should wait until the children are six or seven or eight or nine years of age. Whatever hope there is lies in taking them early, before their vernacular becomes English more and more, before they have grown more and more into the use of English. Your best chance is to take them before that point is reached. The longer the period is before you start in with Irish, the less chance you have of succeeding in arriving at the time when you can say that Irish is the ordinary medium of instruction in the schools.

Having said all that, I may say that I have a completely open mind on this question as to whether or not it has been a success. I know it has been a success in some places where you have really good teachers. I know equally well that it has not been a success in other schools where you have equally zealous teachers who just had not that ability or capacity for putting it across that the other teachers had. That being so, I can see no reason whatever why there should be opposition to having a stocktaking of the whole position to see where we are going after 16 or 17 years, or whatever number of years this programme has been in effect. That cannot be in any way derogatory to the dignity of the Department or the Minister. The Minister who actually introduced this system and made it the policy of the country does not think it would be any reflection on him. In fact, he is extremely keen, as he said yesterday in a very able speech, that we should now find out what the result of that policy has been; that, after all, a sufficient number of years have gone by to enable us to make up our minds as to the results.

I agree with Deputies who referred to the desirability of having an agricultural bias in rural schools. Deputy Cogan referred to school gardens. I do not know whether there are any such now. I know that very many years ago they were instituted. I remember the agricultural readers, to which Deputies have referred, in my days in the national school and, for my sins, I also had to get off some of that agriculture. In those days, it was taught as an extra subject, for which there were extra fees, and, if I remember rightly, the school which got the best results in agriculture was a school in the centre of the City of Dublin. Agriculture, as I have said, was taught as an extra subject with fees paid for the number of pupils who passed, and I think I am right in saying that it was the late Tom Hayes in Aughrim Street, or a teacher in a school in that district, who produced the best results in the whole of the country, although his pupils probably saw a beast only once a week at the cattle market and certainly would not know what a plough was for. I was a national teacher in a big school in the City of Dublin in the pre-Rising days and I remember asking the children, when the word "plough" came into the reader, what it was for, and they told me it was for clipping hedges.

Agriculture, as it was then taught, was of very little use. It had some use just as anything one learns by rote has presumably some very considerable use. The proof of that, if you like, is in the teaching of the ordinary penny Catechism. How many children know what they are saying or learning when they are learning the Catechism? They get it off by heart, and, in future years, its meaning becomes clear to them. Just as learning that by rote is of use, so also learning any subject by rote is eventually of some use, and, whether by rote or otherwise, agriculture should be taught in the rural schools, but it should be taught intelligently, and, as Deputy Cogan has said, the school garden system should be extended. I presume that some of these school gardens initiated 25 or 30 years ago are still in existence.

I am afraid they are not.

Mr. Lynch

They were introduced in the early years of the century and it was an optional matter for the teacher, where land was available, but they were fairly generally adopted where the teacher was able to get a school plot. The Land Commission has land available from time to time in the neighbourhood of schools and some arrangement could be made by which plots would be got from the Land Commission for use as demonstration plots. It is, perhaps, throwing a little too much on the ordinary teacher to expect him to run this plot and give a full agricultural course, and if the officer of the county committee of agriculture, or of the Department, in the neighbourhood could be brought in to assist by giving a weekly lecture in the plot, it might be helpful.

There was one other matter which Deputy Cogan raised and which I also intended to raise, that is, the marriage ban. It is not my intention to go into the general question because I am afraid that is now a settled part of Government policy. I must say that I agree with Deputy Cogan that there is at least as much to be said against that marriage ban as there is for it. For it, of course, there is the argument of the unemployment amongst younger teachers coming out of training, of which there was a good deal a few years ago. I do not believe there is any such now. As a matter of fact, I have heard from teachers who wanted substitutes for a month or two that they searched high and low and could not find, or found it extremely difficult to find, any young teachers to take on jobs as substitutes, so that apparently there is now no question of serious unemployment amongst the younger teachers. It would be very strange if there were because the training colleges are, I understand, practically closed down.

Whatever may be said as to whether or not it is desirable to enforce this ban from a certain period, I think there is a very strong case for not enforcing it against those who had entered on their teaching career at the time the rule was promulgated. The rule was promulgated in 1934, and, in my view, it is unfair that it should be made applicable to persons who had already become pupil teachers, or who had entered the preparatory colleges with a view to subsequent entry into the training colleges or who had entered the training colleges. I raised the question with the Minister some time ago and the answer he gave me was that if that suggestion were adopted, it would postpone the application of the rule for a further period of five years, that is, until 1939. We have carried on without that marriage ban for a period of about 100 years and I do not see how carrying on without it for a further five years would have caused the sky to fall.

The Minister would remove all genuine grievance if he removed the application of the ban so far as all girls who had entered on their career at the time of the ban was promulgated are concerned. Those who have started off on a teaching career, with the rule there, have no such grievance as these girls have. I think these girls have a genuine grievance. A very peculiar thing about it is that certain concessions have been made which have really been more annoying than otherwise to those who are excluded. I am very glad that the concessions have been made to the few—I think there were only about a dozen—who have benefited; but there was a number of girls who, in the examination for entry to the training colleges in 1934, failed to get places and subsequently took positions as junior assistant mistresses. They got sufficiently high marks in the examination to qualify as junior assistant mistresses, but not to be called to training. The girls who got the higher marks and were called to training come within the ban, while the girls who failed to be called and who became junior assistant mistresses after the promulgation of the ban are outside it, so that, in fact, the girls who failed are now far better off than the girls who succeeded in being called to training, because they can continue their jobs as junior assistant mistresses after marriage, if they so wish. The girls who succeeded in being called to training, coming within the married ban, must retire if they marry. I think that is an absurdity. It is, as it were, putting a premium on failure. I think there is a case for not enforcing the ban against those who had entered on their teaching career before the ban was introduced, and I ask the Minister to reconsider it from that point of view. He would then have removed, I think, every genuine grievance about the ban.

Another matter I am anxious to raise with the Minister is the question of the old pensioned teachers. I should like to appeal on behalf of those old pensioned teachers that they should be granted the same cost-of-living bonus as has been granted to their colleagues who are at the moment teaching. I know the Minister has turned this down. He indicated that in reply to a question put to him some months ago by Deputy Dillon. I was putting in a similar question at the same time, when I was told that there was one already put in by Deputy Dillon. The national teachers are a most unfortunate body in this, that every Government, whether it was the British Government, our former Government, or the present Government, did not treat them as they should be treated. When it suited the Government of the day to call them civil servants, they did so; but if the teachers asked for Civil Service treatment in other respects, they were told: "You are not civil servants at all; you are appointed by the managers; you are not in any sense civil servants and you cannot have Civil Service rights or conditions."

I gathered from the reply given to Deputy Dillon's question that the objection to granting pensioned teachers the bonus that the present teachers are getting was that it would be a precedent for other pensioned public servants, civil servants. The fact of the matter is that there is no analogy between the pensioned teachers and pensioned civil servants. The very highest pension that any teacher can get is half his salary at the time of retirement. I do not know what the present Civil Service arrangement is, but some years ago the position was that the civil servant had the option of taking a lump sum and half his salary as pension, or two-thirds of his salary as pension without a lump sum. I do not know whether that is the position now. I think the present position is that every civil servant on retirement gets a lump sum equivalent to a year's salary and he gets his pension besides, and it amounts to at least half his salary on retirement. The national teacher gets no lump sum on retirement and he finds himself transferred from a salary of, say, £300 a year to a pension of £150 a year. I may tell you that £150 a year is a high pension among those teachers. The man who receives that pension is the millionaire among the national teacher pensioners because the vast majority of them are on a far lower pension basis. There are very many of the old pensioned teachers with something like £1 a week.

I do not know whether many Deputies here have had the experience in the country that I have had of these old warriors. The old national teacher in the country was in 90 per cent. of the cases a most extraordinary man. He was not only the teacher in his school, but he was the guide, philosopher, and friend of the whole community. All their joys and sorrows were brought to him. These teachers were extraordinarily hard workers. Their interest in their pupils while in school, during their young manhood and right up to their middle age was something that no amount of money could reward. I think that the very least we could do for those men who gave such unselfish service to the State and to the people of the country would be to give them some little comfort in their declining years. The cost-of-living bonus which has been given to existing teachers would be a welcome addition to their meagre pensions.

With regard to the primary certificate, I do not know whether there was any consultation with the Department or whether there was an effort to reach some agreement with the Irish National Teachers' Organisation before this idea was enforced. I do know that it is not considered sound educational policy to have any formal written examinations such as are proposed. I think the Minister will admit that wherever inquiries have been made in other countries— wherever commissions have been set up and have reported on that matter —the general view everywhere has been that it is unsound to have formal examinations of the kind proposed in this case for pupils under 14 years of age.

Deputy O'Sullivan yesterday gave very many reasons why those examinations should not be held this year and with all he said I entirely agree. I think it is inadvisable to enforce this and I do not think any good purpose can be served. It has a suggestion, to my mind at any rate, of retrogression, of an attempt to go back in a roundabout way to the old results system which was scrapped 43 years ago. What is going to be the effect of it? Whatever the Education Department may say now, the effect of it will be that the teacher who will not succeed in having a big percentage of the boys in 6th Standard successful at this primary certificate examination will find himself reduced in his marking. If he has been, as very many of the teachers have, in receipt of the mark "highly efficient", he will find that if his 6th Standard does not show a fair percentage of passes in the primary certificate examination, after a very short time it will be discovered that after all he is only "efficient". That may be all right in some ways, but it is a marking of teachers on results, the system which was scrapped as a very unsound system over 40 years ago. I cannot find that that system has ever been reverted to in any country where it was abandoned.

I think the Minister ought to reconsider this question of primary certificates, and he certainly should not have an examination for boys who are about 12 years of age—as they should be in the 6th Standard. He should not have the examination until the boys are due to leave school; that is, when they will be just about 14 years of age. There should be some system under which a boy, just before he leaves school, on his 14th birthday, might be asked to sit for an examination. I think it is educationally wrong to have it at all, but at least it should not be applied to boys or girls —when I mention boys I include girls as well—until they are just leaving the primary school.

I think that a great many of these problems could be solved if there were more consultation with the teachers themselves or with the central executive of the teachers' organisation. One would imagine that the teachers' organisation should have been consulted, for instance, in connection with the marriage ban. Surely that is the body that is primarily concerned with the question of unemployment amongst members of the organisation? So far as I know, the Irish National Teachers' Organisation is opposed to the application of a marriage ban at all. In the same way, the teachers at their recent congress expressed their dislike of the primary certificate examination and, in fact, passed resolutions pledging themselves to non-co-operation with the Department in carrying it out. I think that is a very unfortunate situation to arise between the Department and the body primarily responsible for education in the country. I think that the Minister before he goes any further should consider the matter in consultation with the central executive of the national teachers' organisation.

Bím ag éisteacht gach bliain le deich mbliana anuas, nuair a bhíonn meastachán an Oideachais dá phlé. Níl bliain dár tháinig ná raibh scéal na Gaedhilge dá chíoradh, go mór-mhór chó fada is a bhaineann an scéal san le bun-oideachas annso. Múineadh tríd an nGaedhilg an t-abhar conspóide is mó eadrainn. Is truagh go mbeadh aon easaontas annso i dtaobh na ceiste sin nó i dtaobh aon cheiste eile a bhaineann le haithbheochaint na Gaedhilge. Táim sásta ón eolas atá agam féin ná fuil aon bhun leis an ngearán atá ag Teachtaí áirithe, go bhfuil múineadh tré Ghaedhilg ag milleadh na Teangan. Caithfear a mheabhrú go soiléir ná fuil ach fíor-bheagán scol ar iomlán na mbun-scoil san nGalltacht in a bhfuil an Ghaedhilg mar ghléas teagaisc ionnta. Ní chreidim go bhfuil aon ghá le fiosrúchán chun a fháil amach cionnus tá eirithe leis an iarracht chun na Gaedhilge d'aithbheochaint. Bhéinn sásta le h-aon rud, ámh, a chuirfeadh stop leis an olagón so a bhíonn dá chasadh go dubhach i dtaobh múineadh tré Ghaedhilg agus dá bhrí sin, bhéinn sásta dá gcuirtí fiosrúchán ar bun chun a mholadh don Aire agus don Roinn cionnus do bfhearr feabhas do chur ar obair na Gaedhilge ins na bun-scoileanna agus ins na meán-scoileanna agus ins na Ceárd-scoileanna agus ins an Ollscoil. Measaim féin go bhfuil dianghá le fiosrúchán de shaghas éigin i dtaobh stáid na Gaedhilge ins na h-ollscoileanna, ach tá súil agam go mbeidh caoi eile againn chun ceist na n-ollscol a chíoradh. D'airigh mé Teachtaí, áirithe annso ag cur i gcoinnibh an Aire sa mhéid a dubhairt sé i dtaobh an chogaidh atá ar siúl annso idir an Béarla agus an Ghaedhilg. Tá an ceart ag an Aire, dar liom, sa mhéid a dubhairt sé ar sin. Chreideas i gcomhnuí agus creidim fós nach féidir leis an dá theangain bheith beo taobh le chéile, go bhfaghaidh ceann amháin acu an lámh in uachtar agus caithfimíd-ne féachaint chuige gurab í an Ghaedhilg a bhéas in uachtar ar deireadh. Sí an Ghaedhilg atá i mbaol a báis. Níl aon bhaol ar an mBéarla go fóill, is oth liom a admháil. Do réir na cainnte a cloistear annso go minic agus in áiteanna eile chó maith, ba dhóigh le duine gur eagal leo go gcaillfí an Béarla. Ní bhéadh aon bhrón orm-sa, mar le duine amháin, dá bhfeicinn an lá san.

Tuigim go rí-mhaith agus ba chóir go dtuigfeadh gách aoinne go bhfuil suim acu san nGaedhilg nach aon obair bhog aithbheocaint teangan a bhí i mbéalaibh báis leath-chéad bliain ó shoin. Obair fathaigh iseadh an obair sin. Bóthar cuirceach, cnocach iseadh bóthar na Gaedhilge agus chun ceann cúrsa a bhaint amach, ní mór dúthracht agus deagh-thoil gach aon dreama atá annso agus cabhair an phobuil i gcoitinn. Is gráin agus is fuath liom an screadaíl a bhíonn ar siúl annso chuile bhliain ag an dTeachta Diolún. Níl colas ar bith aige, dar liom, ar stáid na Gaedhilge ins na bun-scoileanna. An raibh sé riamh ag caint le h-oide scoile go bhfuil obair a scoile dá dhéanamh tríd an Ghaedhilg aige? Ar labhair sé riamh i nGaedhilg le scoláirí bun-scoile annso agus annsúd ar fud na tíre? Ní dóigh liom gur labhair; dá ndeineadh bheadh a mhalairt de phort aige. Labhraim-se i nGaedhilg leis an aos óg ar gach aon ócáid a gcastar orm iad agus tá áthas orm a rá go mbraithim feabhas mór ar labhairt na Gaedhilge imease an aos bun-scoile. Sin creidiúint mhór dar liom do na h-oidí scoile.

Sé an laige is mó atá ag goilliúint ar an nGaedhilg fé láthair ná ná leanann an t-aos óg di, tréis na scoile fhágaint dóibh. Dá bhrí sin, chuir sé áthas orm-sa chlos ón Aire go raibh cúrsa eile dá chur ar bun go luath ag an Roinn chun breis timthirí Gaedhilge d'oiliúint. Na timthirí a h-oileadh cúpla bliain o shoin is eol dom go bhfuilid ag obair go maith agus go dúthrachtach ar son na Gaedhilge agus ar son Gaedhealachais i measc na ndaoine óg atá tréis na scoile fhágaint. Caithfear leanacht go dlúth den tsaghas oibre atá ar siubhal ag na timthirí sin. San am chéadna ní mór cumann mór láidir nea-spleách i measc an phobail a spreagfaidh a suim sa nGaedhilg mar bheo-theangain, a thabharfaidh na daoine go láidir ar a taoibh, a mheallfaidh aon dream atá eascáirdeach no patfhuar.

Bhí scéal eile ag an Aire dhúinn i mbliana go gcuirfear fáilte roimis. Cuir sé in úil go bhfuiltear chun tosnuithe ar eolaíocht talmhaíochta a theagasc ins na meán-scoileanna. Táthar ann a deir nár cheart a leithéid de theasgasc a bheith ar siubhal i meán-no i mbun-scoil, ná fuil a leithéid do theagasc oiriúnach in aon scoil ach amháin i Scoil Talmhaíochta fé leith. Ceapaim-se, ámh, gur céim chun cinn fóghanta é seo. Ba shuimiúil an tuairisc a thug an tAire dhúinn ar a bhfuil dá dhéanamh cheana féin sa ní seo in aon choláiste amháin. Ba chóir, dár liom, é bheith mar chuspóir ag Roinn an Oideachais eolas ar chúrsaí na talmhan agus ar chúrsaí feirmeoireachta a bheith le fáil diaidh ár ndiaidh ins gach meánscoil idir beag is mór, ag gach dalta, is cuma ciaca dalta tuaithe no dalta cathrach é.

Is eagla liom ná fuil aon tsuim ag scoláirí meán-scoile i gcoitinn i dtalmhaíocht agus i bhfeirmeoireacht. Is eagal liom go dtagann droch-mheas go minic chuig daltaí meán-scoileanna ar an dtuaith, ar fheirmeoireacht, agus ar ghnóthaí na talmhan. Má leigheastar an droch-mheas agus an neamh-shuim sin de bhárr na n-athruithe seo atá beartuithe i gclar na meán-scol, is mór an buntáiste don tír é. Dá mhéid eolas a bhéas ag aos óg na tíre seo in iomlán ar chúrsaí na tuaithe agus ar chúrsaí na talmhan, iseadh is fearr don tír é, iseadh is mó a díreofar aghaidh na ndaoine óg ar bhun-tsaidhbhreas agus ar bhun-mhaoin na tíre seo, is é sin an talamh.

It appears to me that our educational system is certainly not as closely related to the economic needs and the social and cultural requirements of our people as it ought to be. I do not think anybody will deny or claim to be ignorant of the fact that a very large number of technicians are trained in this country, in one sphere of activity or another, for whom no possible prospect of employment exists. I refer, of course, to the large number of doctors who qualify, to mechanical and civil engineers, and to analytical chemists, who have no prospect of employment in this country. I think, therefore, that there is a real need for the setting up of a board of inquiry into our educational system. That board should inquire into not only university education but into our primary and secondary and vocational system.

A problem which is causing a great deal of uneasiness to local authorities at present is the alarming increase in damage done to civic property. In Dublin in recent months it has been found necessary for a committee of the Dublin Corporation to make special representations to the Archbishop of Dublin, with a view to seeing what steps might be taken in the direction of curtailing this type of vandalism. Many people have expressed the view that a great deal might be done in that direction if civics were made a compulsory subject in the primary and secondary schools. I understand that many years ago the Rathmines Technical School, under the principalship of Mr. Clampett, instituted classes for the teaching of civics, which were a remarkable success. It would appear to me that there are very good grounds for making this subject compulsory in the primary schools throughout the country, and in the cities in particular.

There is a number of other subjects which I should also like to see made compulsory. I do not propose to add my view to the numerous views which have already been expressed on the Department's policy with regard to teaching through the medium of Irish. I think every possible point of view that could be expressed has already been expressed in so far as that matter is concerned. I do, however, take this opportunity of stating that, whilst everybody recognises the fact that one of the fundamental aims of the Department is to promote the wider use of the Irish language, I lean to the view expressed by many people whom I regard as having sound experience, people who are lovers of the language and are genuinely interested in it, that the Department's policy is defeating its own purpose. However, I do not propose to go any further into that matter. I do think that, in rural schools agricultural science should be a compulsory subject, just as in city schools manual science should be compulsory. I think too, it would be far better if, instead of having girls of 15 or 16 years versed in Einstein's theory of relativity, they were well versed in domestic economy. I would also urge that greater scope should be given for physical culture. There is just one further point that I want to urge in relation to girls' schools, and that is that subjects such as hygiene and physiology should be taught. Children at a certain age become purists. The Minister quite understands what I mean. That is the age when those subjects ought to be taught, and by that means we would clear away a great deal of the nonsense—the very harmful nonsense— that is in the minds of a large number of our juvenile population.

I think the time is long overdue for the provision of special schools for mentally defective children. If you go into any school in Dublin you will see, interspersed amongst the pupils, children who are sub-standard in intelligence. Those children have not an earthly chance, because their teaching requires specialised methods and very special attention. There is clearly need for the provision of that type of school. As well as making the schools more attractive in a general way with regard to proper heating, better lighting and ventilation, there is another matter which I regard as of considerable importance. I think the Minister would be surprised if he were to be made aware of the number of children attending school who are deaf. Nobody would dream of failing to provide children with spectacles when they require them, but this other equally important matter is neglected. There is a system whereby schools can be provided with aid-hearing equipment. They have had it for several years in England. A child does not have to bring anything to school with him or take anything away. A machine can be fitted up at very low cost, and it only requires the distribution of headphones to give those children the chance that they should have. Those are matters to which I think the Department should give serious attention. I have not the slightest shadow of doubt that there would be no more sympathetic person than the Minister himself in regard to the last matter to which I have referred. As I have said, I am quite certain that he would be very much surprised if he were made aware—as he can be made aware through medical inspection—of the number of deaf children in our schools.

The last point to which I want to refer is the desirability of increasing the school-leaving age. Children leaving school at 14 years have very little prospect of being absorbed into useful employment. In all probability the relationship between the increase in juvenile crime and the too early school-leaving age is closer than most of us imagine.

Perhaps I might again stress the necessity for the setting up of a board to examine our educational system. That board should be as widely representative as possible. I would suggest that not only those connected with the Department and with the teaching profession but members of local authorities and of labour and industrial organisations ought to be represented on it.

On this subject of education, of course, there are many viewpoints that one could take, but it seems to me that there is altogether too much controversy about the question of the revival of the Irish language. Our fixed policy in this country has been to revive the Irish language and to make it the ordinary language of the people, and I believe that we should have that in our minds as a primary consideration in connection with matters of education, because, after all, the revival of the Irish language was one of the things for which we fought in the old days, but I agree with Deputy O'Sullivan and other Deputies who have spoken that it is only right to have a review of the general position now, in order to find out whether we are on the right lines, and, if we are not on the right lines, to change to some better way of achieving our object. It must be clearly understood, of course, by the whole country that it is a definitely fixed policy to revive the Irish language. It seems to me that there are too many people who are too fond of criticising our present methods of education, who do not understand the technicalities of education. I must say that I like to hear people like Deputy O'Sullivan and other Deputies who have spoken on this matter, speaking on a subject about which they know a lot. Such people as Deputy O'Sullivan and other Deputies who have spoken know what they are talking about. They are not ordinary "ignoramuses" like myself; they are not the type of people who would try to tell the teachers what to do without knowing anything about the difficulties of their job.

I think that we have been going too far during the last few years in criticising our teachers, and I believe that a lot of nonsense has been talked about this matter of the revival of the Irish language. I admit that it may be a bit more difficult for the child to learn two languages, but as far as I can see, the ordinary person who has been educated in this country during the last few years is just as sound in his or her education as we were in our days. It must be realised, however, that you cannot provide brains for children who have none. I know that in my own locality—and I am sure that this would be true of other localities—in a school of 30 or 40 children you will find, perhaps, 20 or 30 children with good brains, and, perhaps, 10 very dull children, or children with no brains at all. With regard to these dull children you can do practically nothing at all; if you can try to get them to learn to read and write, that is about all you can do.

Of course, I think we must all admit that nowadays there is not sufficient attention being paid to the bringing-up of children in their own homes. I am afraid that there is very much laxity as to the training of children in their own homes, the result of which is that when these children go to school their teachers have a very big job in the matter of training them into ordinary ways of steadiness, so as to enable the children to obtain and hold jobs when they leave school. I believe that parents, nowadays are too fond of petting their children. The children are all little darlings, according to their parents, but I believe that if these children got a little more scutching of the rod, as we got when we were children, the teachers would not have half the trouble they have at the present day. As things are at the moment, it would seem that the teacher's hands are tied. If he gives a boy a slap or a scutch of the rod, the next thing that happens is that a Civic Guard is brought in and the teacher is brought up in court. Well, when I was going to school, I often had black marks on my legs or hands, but I did not tell my parents about it. Nowadays the whole thing is different, and how can you expect a proper education or up-bringing to be given to children when their parents are too fond of petting them? I think that if some of those children got a little more "roughing" they would be better fitted, when they leave school, to take on a job and to hold it. As things are at the moment, these boys and girls only want to get some kind of a fancy job, even at very small pay, whereas, if they were prepared to go into service, as servant boys or servant girls, they would be in a much better position. At any rate they would be well fed and well trained, and could get a certain amount of culture. In these latter days, however, nobody wants to be a servant boy or a servant girl at all. If they attend a technical school, they think they are the élite of the country, but when they come out of those technical schools they find that there is no job for them. For every one boy or girl who gets a job from a technical school, there are about ten who are left on the scrap-heap, so to speak, and the result is that they become a burden on their people. That is why I blame the home life of these children, and I think that parents, in the up-bringing of their children, ought to be guided by what they themselves had to do when they were young. I think that this country would be better off if a lot of this nonsense was knocked on the head.

There has been some talk about establishing agricultural centres in connection with our schools, and I believe that that would be a very good thing. Of course, I quite understand that it would be almost impossible to have something in the nature of a rural garden attached to every school in the country, because that would entail the engagement of special teachers and would lead to great expense, but I think it should be possible to have within, say, a five mile radius, some hall to which, two or three times a week, lecturers on agriculture or horticulture would come and instruct the people who have a leaning towards agriculture. If those young people were given lectures on practical agriculture, in the way I have suggested, I feel that that would give them a bias towards agriculture instead of, as at present, giving them a bias towards coming up to Dublin to get work which is not natural for them. I think that if the Minister would give more attention to that matter, it would tend to develop the minds of our young people to stay at home on the land, instead of coming up to Dublin or emigrating to seek work. There is plenty of work on the land, and a good living can be made out of it, but many of our young people are leaving the land and following life in the easiest way they can.

What is really wrong with this country is that there are too many people talking absolute nonsense about almost everything, whereas the right type of people, who are actually in a position to talk on these matters, are not listened to. As regards education, there is not very much wrong with our people at all. The only thing that is wrong is the economy of the country, and if we had more prosperity here, and peace in the world, and a willingness to return to work on the land, a lot of that kind of nonsensical talk would die down. It is for that reason that I say that a lot of that kind of talk is a result of the want of a proper economy here. I think, therefore, that the Minister would be well advised to take the advice of Deputy O'Sullivan, and others who have spoken, in this matter of the revival of the Irish language, with a view to seeing whether or not, after 25 years of trial, we are on the right lines. I admit that I am not an Irish speaker and that I do not know much about the Irish language, as I do not come from an Irish-speaking district, but I think it is absolutely essential to revive the language if we are to carry on the traditions of our glorious past. It seems to me that it is necessary for us to have the two languages, both Irish and English, and I do not see why we should not have them. Even if it meant that ordinary education were to be slightly retarded, I think it would be well worth while if we could get the Irish language revived and restored to its proper place in our national culture.

Of course, I know that if anybody wants to seek popularity at the present moment, he can say that all our children are being made dunces and cannot read or write because they have to learn two languages. That is a thing that I do not believe in, and to which I certainly would not lend myself, because one of the things on which we based our fight for freedom was the restoration of the Irish language. However, I would join with Deputy O'Sullivan and other Deputies in asking the Minister to review the position in the light of what has taken place during the last 25 years. I would also ask the Minister to give more help to the teachers, because they have the hardest task in connection with the revival of the Irish language. They are worried from all quarters. Sometimes, they have complaints from parents, and sometimes from the public Press. They are even abused in the streets on some occasions, and I think they should be given all the help that can be given to them, because their task is the hardest. I should also like to join in the request that was made by Deputy Lynch as to the payment of a cost-of-living bonus to old teachers. I think it is only right that something in the way of a war bonus should be given to such people, because they are living in great hardship at the present time.

I do not presume to be any authority on this question of education, but I have been impressed by the case that was made by Deputies such as Deputy O'Sullivan, to the effect that the time has come, after a period of 25 years, to take stock of our progress in regard to the teaching of Irish, and to have the whole system examined with a view to finding out what progress has been made— whether we are moving along the right lines or, if not, what alternative method might be pursued.

It appears to me, listening to Deputy O'Sullivan and to Deputy Dillon on these matters, that the Minister should be impressed that the case is made— not only by those Deputies, but by people outside the House, by a powerful, influential and experienced body of teachers expressing views on these matters, having gone to the trouble of making an examination and coming to a very definite conclusion—for an examination of this whole matter with a view to deciding the best course of action for the future. I think an examination, not only with respect to the teaching of Irish but in respect to our whole educational system, is not only desirable but essential. I think the system is founded on wrong and faulty principles. I was impressed by the teacher who referred to the system of mass production.

In my opinion, the fault lies in standardisation. That seems to be, in one word, what is fundamentally wrong with our system. Surely the aim of education is to make the most of the inherent and vastly differing aptitudes of every single individual. As long as we have stabilisation we cannot give the individual an opportunity of developing his particular talent. In other words, as long as the whole system of education is prescribed, there is the minimum of scope for the individual. I suppose we have inherited the British system based on the urbanised and industrial outlook of the British. We have maintained that system even after a period of 20 years. I do not think it is suitable to our requirements here. That mass production system cannot be adapted to the needs of an agricultural people. Every school is tied down to a particular process, a standardised process. In my opinion that in itself is wrong and will not achieve good results. It is much easier to teach a pupil merely with a view to cramming for an examination than it is to educate him to acquire knowledge, to think, to observe and to contemplate, which, surely, is the essence of education. After all, any education is merely the ground work, merely the foundation. A man's education continues during his life-time and if the foundation is not properly laid, if he is not trained to think, to observe, to contemplate, he cannot continue to educate himself after he has left school.

I do not see how it can be maintained that the present system lays that very essential basis of education. I think the basis of our education has undoubtedly accentuated the drift from the country. The student is not taught to observe nature. One would expect that at least some provision should be made in the curriculum for bringing classes to the country and teaching them what is happening there, teaching them to observe plant and animal life and all the other matters that are essential to our existence. It is amazing—Deputy Dillon has referred to it—how ignorant our agriculturists are in regard to the most essential questions in agriculture. Deputy Dillon told us the story about the man who went in to buy grass seed and did not know what he was buying; he wanted to buy grass seeds but knew nothing about the different varieties about which it is essential to know if you are to have good results. The older man, because his reader treated some of these subjects, had some elementary knowledge at all events. There was some attempt, I believe, in those days to lay some foundation of knowledge that would be useful and beneficial to the agriculturist. In recent years that has been departed from because of our British, urbanised outlook and because of our standardised system and the methods of cramming for examinations.

How many young fellows who leave the national school could lay off an acre of land? It is most essential that every farmer should be able to lay off an acre of land because, as the Minister will appreciate, if you are to sow a field of grain at so many stones per acre, you cannot set a machine. The grain will vary in condition and quality and in the speed at which it will run through the machine. The machine will have to be set and adjusted to the different qualities of grain and the man must first try out a half-acre or an acre in order to see that it will get a proper seeding. My experience is that we do our work in that respect in a happy-go-lucky, haphazard way.

Very often a man does not know what he is sowing per acre until he has his field covered and then he discovers it is either too thick or too thin. Surely survey work should form one of the subjects of education in an agricultural country. Every student leaving school should have, at all events, an elementary knowledge of that so that he could go out without sending for anyone and lay off an acre in any field or step a field. I will put it this way, that successful education in this country must be bound up to some extent with agriculture. Our education definitely should have an agricultural bias. If, in fact, a commission were set up for the purpose of examining this matter it might even go farther and examine whether or not we should have schools specialising in particular subjects, whether or not we should have rural schools dealing almost exclusively with pupils who would normally earn their livelihood by agriculture. I must say I am glad the Minister is making a start anyway in providing agricultural courses. I am satisfied that whatever stagnation is affecting agriculture in this country is due in no small measure to the fact that our educational system is wrong in that it is not based on the requirements of an agricultural country. I think these are matters that the Minister ought to think about, and if, and when, a commission of the kind suggested by Deputy O'Sullivan is set up, its terms of reference ought to embrace not only an inquiry into the method of teaching Irish, but an examination of our present system of education as a whole as to whether it is suited to our requirements.

I support Deputy O'Sullivan's motion to refer back this Estimate, not because I think the Minister is proposing to spend too much on education. My opinion is that we could not spend too much on it. In fact, I think there should be no limit to our expenditure on education. When speaking last night on the proposal to bring forward the school-leaving age by a year or two, and of the expense involved, the Taoiseach said that, if we could afford it, it would be money well spent. I think that in saying that he was putting the cart before the horse. If the object is one that money could be well spent on, then we can definitely afford to spend it. When the House decides that money must be spent on such-and-such a scheme, the money is found somewhere or other. I agree with other Deputies that education is our most important Department of State, and that we should be extremely generous where the spending of money on it is concerned.

I endorse the reasons that Deputy O'Sullivan advanced in favour of his proposal. I must say that I do not like the Government's attitude to the very reasonable request that has been put forward by the teachers' organisation, members of this House and a very large section of the people to have a stocktaking of the results obtained from the system of teaching young children other subjects through the medium of Irish, children whose home language is English. I think that the Minister's bulldog refusal to listen to reason shows that he and the Government are fanatics in the matter, and are carrying their fanaticism too far. Therefore, we must take with a grain of salt the various arguments which the Minister has tried to put forward in support of his refusal to set up the inquiry asked for. I do not know if there is any use in adding my appeal to those already made to the Minister. I am sorry to say that I think it is probable the Government will continue in their bulldog attitude unless there is a break somewhere. Until something serious happens they will not listen to the voice of the public or to the people's representatives in this House.

With other Deputies, I want to know what positive advance has resulted from the present system. Personally, I do not think there has been any advance. Deputy Dillon told us last night that the young people of his day used to assemble at the bandstand in Stephen's Green on Saturday nights for the sole purpose of speaking Irish, and of propagating the use of it. The young people of to-day will not do that. They certainly are not doing it in any appreciable numbers. The numbers leaving school who will do that are becoming less and less every year because they have grown through their schooldays to hate the language. Deputy Fionan Lynch is of opinion that schoolchildren do not hate the language any more than they hate other subjects. I feel that if an inquiry were made it would be found that they do. I suggest to the Minister that he should take a stroll through some of our Dublin streets. Dublin kids are very friendly towards strangers and usually want to talk to them. You do not have to say "hello" to them. They will be the first to say "hello" to you. If, as I suggest, the Minister takes a stroll through Gardiner Street, Summerhill or Henrietta Street, he will find that the toddlers to be met there will be anxious to talk to him, and if he says to them "Conus tá tú” or “Cé caoi bhfuil tú” he will, I suggest, in nine cases out of ten, get the answer: “Ah, Mister, we get enough of that in school.” The fact, of course, is that they do get enough of it in school. They get too much of it. In the one case out of ten the kid will probably say “What does that mean?” The Minister in the course of his introductory statement said:

As a result of such teaching, a minority of enthusiasts in every generation would probably use Irish more or less as a spoken language, but the vast majority of people would forget it when they had left school, as they forget Latin or French.

He was there, of course, speaking about what might happen in the future. I say that is what is happening now. The young people are so fed up with Irish that, when they leave school, they determine to forget it. The big trouble now is that there are young people of 18, 20 and 22 who hate the language so much for those reasons that when they marry they pass on that hatred to their children. There is the danger.

The Minister states that we cannot save Irish without waging a most intense struggle against English and against human nature itself for the life of the language. If that is so, I query whether the language is worth saving—if we must, in order to save it, wage an intense struggle against English and against human nature. Mark that I am probably the first Deputy who has spoken in this whole debate who has queried that. All the other Deputies have run with the hare and hunted with the hounds. They have emphasised that they are very keen to save the language, but that they are not so keen on the methods being used. They must follow that to its logical conclusion and, if the methods are going to lead to an intense struggle against English and against human nature, I want them to ask themselves, when that is necessary in order to save the language, if the language is worth saving.

I have heard many persons describing what is generally known as compulsory Irish as compulsory illiteracy, and in my contact with the world to-day I must say that I find a very great amount of illiteracy. I do not know whether there is more than there was 10, 20, 50 or 100 years ago, but there is still with us a great amount of illiteracy. I do not think that any Deputy will deny that, as all Deputies receive an enormous number of letters; and if a Deputy is honest with himself he will admit that most of those letters show a very bad knowledge of the English language.

I think of a true story, of an unfortunate Irishman who was sent away to work in Britain. His life in Britain was one of very great hardship; he could talk to nobody, he could not mix with anybody and had no social life, as he knew not one word of English. At the moment, many of our young people find themselves at work in Great Britain, and that particular incident is worth pondering over.

The Minister said something, in reply to a question a month or so ago, similar to what the Taoiseach said last night—that teachers are not teaching through the medium of Irish unless certain conditions are fulfilled. I have here a report of the Committee of Inquiry set up by the Irish National Teachers' Organisation. I know that this report has been very fully considered by the Minister, by a number of Deputies, and by anyone who has an interest in the matter. The Minister professes that he does not believe in it and will not put much value in what they say, but I do. I believe in that report; I believe that every word of it is absolutely correct, and anybody who reads it impartially will agree with me. On page 12, that report states that out of 857 replying to query 24 of the questionnaire, 525 stated that, as the result of official suggestion and contrary to their own opinion, they had taught subjects through the medium of Irish when the conditions set out by the Department were not fulfilled. Are we to believe the 525 out of the 857 or are we to believe the Minister? The Minister's attitude all along has been fanatical and, whilst believing in his sincerity in the matter, I think he has brought his sincerity to such an extent that he has become over-zealous and a fanatic, and unable to look at the matter through impartial eyes.

I repeat that my support of the motion to refer back is based purely on my belief that the teaching of other subjects through Irish, to children whose home language is English, is a very great hardship, is torture and cruelty to the children. At the same time, I repeat my belief that we could not spend too much money on education.

That speech by Deputy Byrne is a remarkable one to hear in this House—that we are illiterate, both in Irish and English, at the present time. As well as I remember —and I have been 20 years in this House—it is the most anti-Irish speech ever made. I am not an Irish speaker myself, but we are one little nation with a language of our own and, if the children have suffered, I would like the Minister to answer as to the number of professional people going out of the three universities, and who were taught through the medium of Irish, who have got positions in other countries. Asking the Minister to go down some of the side streets in Dublin is asking for a lot. Doctors veterinary surgeons, engineers and other professional men have been taught through the medium of Irish for a number of years. Many of these men have got some of the best positions in the British colonies. Even if they did not practise the use of Irish they gained their positions. Probably, however, the Minister or the Government may be going a bit too far and it may be necessary to have an inquiry into the whole matter. But I know young boys down the country going to convent schools —and I believe they have to leave the convent schools at the age of seven —who find Irish much easier to learn than English and who can answer their parents or anyone else in Irish. I do not see that it is doing any harm or that we are so illiterate as Deputy Byrne says. Certainly the Minister might have an inquiry to find out whether we may not be going a bit too far in regard to this matter.

I was against the efforts of a previous Government in the matter of forcing Irish on youngsters, but I find now that the youngsters practise the language. If we look back to 25 years ago, we find that Irish teachers were going around the country teaching the Irish language at a very small salary. They cycled through the country putting in a night at a hall or schoolhouse or barn and all the people were anxious to learn Irish at that time, because they knew it was the language of the country. They sacrificed their time in learning it and they sacrificed their money in trying to pay teachers a small salary. I knew instances of teachers starting in the month of October or November and continuing until May teaching Irish and Irish dancing in these halls or schoolhouses or barns. We see the effect of that to-day. We are not illiterate in any way. Those professional men, who are not able to get employment in this country, are able to get it in any other country. They must be superior when they are able to hold these positions in other countries. If the voice of the House is for an inquiry to see whether or not we are going too far in this matter, the Minister should hold that inquiry. I have not seen that the education or intelligence of our youngsters has suffered anything by the action of the two Governments during the last 20 years in the matter of the Irish language. You can never have a nation unless you have a language. I would ask Deputy Byrne, or any other Deputy who uses the terms he used, to think of that.

Who taught our republicanism? Was it not Northern Ireland Protestants like Wolfe Tone?

Mr. Brodrick

If Deputy Byrne thinks of Padraic Pearse, James Con-genc nolly and Seán MacDermott he will know where we stand.

Deputy Hannigan referred to the matter of the school-leaving age, and perhaps I should first take the opportunity to say, as I mentioned in my opening statement, that the provisions of Part V of the Vocational Education Act continue to be applied with satisfactory results in the City of Cork, and all young persons between 14 and 16 years of age, who would otherwise come under no educational influence at that formative period of their lives, are required to attend a part-time course of continuation education. I mentioned also that a beginning had been made during the past year in the application of this measure to the City of Limerick and that arrangements for its extension to the City of Waterford are at present under consideration. The next centre in which it is proposed to apply these provisions is the City of Dublin.

As I have already explained, another scheme is being introduced to deal with the problem of young persons in this city who are not attending school or who are not under any educational influence, by the establishment of training centres, and I should like to pay a well-deserved tribute here to the manner in which the special committee, Comhairle le Leas-Oige, have approached this problem. The chairman of the committee, the Rev. Dr. Vaughan, and all its members have been unsparing in their efforts to do the very best for the young persons who come under the influence of the training centres. Attendance at these centres is, however, on a voluntary basis and their benefits may not reach some of the young persons who are most in need of them. In order to ensure that all young persons between the ages of 14 and 16 years receive the advantage of further education and training, it is proposed to apply the provisions of Part V of the Vocational Education Act to the City of Dublin as soon as the necessary arrangements for the purpose are made by the Vocational Education Committee. To avoid misunderstanding, I might add that, owing to the size and complicated nature of the problem involved, the making of these arrangements will take considerable time, and I could give no definite indication at present as to when the measure will begin to operate here in Dublin. I merely wish to make it clear that the problem is not being overlooked and that it is my intention that the necessary preparations be made with as little delay as possible.

Deputy Mulcahy raised the question of large classes in some of the city schools. That is a problem which has been engaging attention for some time past. In a small number of city schools, we have exceptionally large classes, and I think the position which had been serious, but which the figures this year indicate to have grown graver in these special cases, was due to the fact that we had a very high percentage of attendance during the early months of this year and indeed all through the winter. The comparative mildness of the weather and the fact that there was, with some exceptions, a general absence of epidemics contributed to making the situation in that respect better than usual, and that and the fact that we have had the schools' meals service may between them have contributed to that result. I have asked the inspectors to examine the situation carefully, not alone in Dublin, but in other centres where large classes exist and to report to me their observations as to whether this problem is one of staffing.

The position, as I understand, in previous years was that, generally speaking, in the average school, if the work is distributed properly and if the school organisation is carried out on the lines which the Department officially recognise, there will not be very large classes. I am not sure that these instructions are being carried out in the cases which have arisen. It may happen, for example, that there is a greater concentration of teaching power in the higher classes than in the lower. If there is a secondary top in a school, there may be an intensive concentration of power there which may affect the staffing in the lower classes. The grouping of the standards also has a good deal to do with the most efficient utilisation of the school staff, but there is one matter which makes it extremely difficult to deal with this problem where it occurs, that is, where there is lack of accommodation, where there are not in fact sufficient rooms or where the rooms may not be sufficiently large to accommodate the number of pupils in attendance. In that case, it may be that no solution is possible of the problem of very large classes, if there are such in a school, except the provision of additional accommodation.

I have asked the inspectors, however, in giving me their observations, to report if suitable accommodation is not in fact available under any reorganisation of the staff, and it is found necessary to ask a certain number of pupils not to continue to attend these schools, to ask the managers of the schools to take steps to regulate the numbers in attendance where alternative accommodation will be found. If the inspectors report in these special cases that the trouble is one of lack of staff, the matter will certainly be dealt with on that basis, but I feel that there is a number of circumstances that will have to be taken into consideration and that we shall probably find that the question of accommodation and the organisation of the school affects the situation also.

Deputy Lynch and Deputy O Briain referred to the "marriage ban" in respect of women teachers. This ban was not introduced originally with a view to solving the unemployment problem or assisting in its solution. It was brought in on its merits. Since that time, unemployment among teachers has grown. Under the panel system, the older teachers have been guaranteed a certain security of tenure. It is true that they have to change to another district, perhaps with inconvenience, but their positions are secured so long as they accept the vacancies offered to them. That reacts on the employment of young teachers. Besides, we have had a fall in our school population and even if there is a slight trend in the other direction, it will take a number of years, as I said in my opening statement, before we know whether this slight upward trend is going to be substantial, or in fact whether it is going to continue.

At present there are teachers unemployed. I have explained to the teachers' organisation officially that, in spite of the fact that women teachers may have difficulty in providing substitutes, it is not the case that there is no unemployment. On the contrary, there is so far as I know a good deal of unemployment among teachers. We are trying to get more up-to-date figures, but I believe they will corroborate the estimates which we already have in the Department showing that there is a definite number of unemployed teachers. I believe that these young teachers are averse to going long journeys at present and particularly to out-of-the-way places for a period of weeks to act as substitutes for other teachers. They prefer to remain at home or in the larger centres, in the hope that employment of a permanent nature may be available for them. That may not be the explanation, but in any case our figures do not tally at all with the statement that there is no unemployment at present.

If we were to interfere with this matter of the "marriage ban", as it is called, where are we to stop? Deputy O Briain referred to the Coláistí Ullmhucháin. I had been under the impression that perhaps he wished us to exempt only those teachers who had entered for training, but in fact he mentioned the preparatory colleges, and, if we are to open the door at all, we shall be asked to do more. That is always the position. The teachers got good notice of the bringing in of this rule. I think it is necessary and can be justified on general grounds, and, in view of the unemployment situation, I regret that I cannot hold out any hope at present that it can be modified. The position is that we have had to ask women teachers to resign at 60, even in cases where they had given very exceptional service, because we had to try to provide for the unemployed teacher. We had to bring in that measure as one of a number of measures, in order to try to relieve the unemployment situation. It is only in cases of special hardship where the woman teacher has no other income except her own, and where she has young children at school or perhaps invalids depending on her, that I feel we can make an exception.

When Deputy Lynch referred to the junior assistant mistresses as being better off than the teachers who had gone on for training, perhaps he did not consider that the junior assistant mistresses have to work at a much lower rate of pay. They remain junior assistant mistresses, but the girls who are in the training college will become assistant teachers and will have an opportunity of becoming principals. Their remuneration and status will be better from the moment they start teaching than those of the junior assistant mistresses, so, if it is said that we have made a concession to the junior assistant mistresses which we have not made to the others, nevertheless, the others also have an advantage. The Deputy said that if we equalise this matter every genuine grievance the teachers have will be removed, but I am of the opinion that every genuine grievance they had in this matter has already been removed.

As regards the pensioned teacher, I cannot do anything in the case of one class of public servant drawing superannuation from public funds unless something similar is done in the case of all other classes. Take the case of civil servants. The Minister for Finance has had representations made to him on behalf of retired civil servants and probably there are numbers of these also who are on comparatively low pensions.

Deputy O'Sullivan, in moving that the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration, mentioned two important matters and I propose to deal with the second point first—that is, the question of the primary schools certificate examination. I think that in the same way as he claimed credit for the institution of the present programme in the national schools, adopted when he was Minister for Education, the Deputy might also have claimed credit for the institution of this primary certificate examination. There was a committee set up in 1927 on the inspection of primary schools. They reported on the 16th February, 1927, and they dealt with the whole inspection system, made recommendations as to a reorganisation of the system, and, included in their recommendations, was one regarding the primary schools certificate. They said:

"We recognise the advantages of a State primary school certificate which would testify, with the full authority of the Department, to the creditable completion of a primary course and which would have a standard value all over the country. Though the institution of such a certificate at the present time involves many difficulties, we believe that the following plan could be put into operation with the minimum of expense."

This plan was adopted by the Department then and has been in operation since. The report also said:

"While we strongly suggest that the above scheme should be adopted, we recognise that it is not possible or advisable in present circumstances to make it obligatory on teachers to present pupils for this examination.

The examination which we suggest should be merely a qualifying one, and all publication of results, either by managers, inspectors, teachers or the Department, should be forbidden. Its standard should be well within the reach of any diligent pupil of average capacity. The certificate should testify merely to the successful passage through the sixth standard of a primary course and be given to all pupils who attain the specified qualifying percentage of marks.

By the adoption of this scheme, teachers would get a clearer knowledge of the standards after which they are expected to strive. The formal character of the examination would be a powerful stimulus to the pupil. The certificate would come to be recognised as qualifying for entrance to post-primary, continuation, junior technical or secondary schools and should have a considerable value for the purpose of obtaining employment."

The Department issued a circular regarding the regulations for the award of the primary school certificate in March, 1928, in which it was stated:

"(1) A scheme for the award of a primary school certificate to pupils will come into force during the 1928-29 school year.

(2) The certificate will testify to the successful completion by the pupil of standard six course of the school programme and will be awarded as the result of examination to all pupils who attain the specified qualifying percentage of marks.

(3) It is expected that all schools will present pupils for the examination, but for the present it is not obligatory upon them to do so."

As I have said, the examination has been in progress since on this basis, but in no year since its inception have more than about 20 per cent. of the schools presented pupils for examination. Amongst the schools submitting pupils, convents and monasteries were largely represented.

If these schools were excluded from the reckoning, less than 17 per cent. of the lay schools utilised the examination. Not more than one-quarter of the eligible pupils have been presented in any year. The position is that the percentage presented has fluctuated from 17 per cent., roughly, to about 22 per cent. Last year it was 20.7 per cent. The number of schools presenting pupils, while showing an upward tendency for the past two years, is on the decline and only 1,101 schools presented pupils in 1942 as against 1,294 schools in 1929.

Owing to the failure, therefore, of the examination to attract greater support, for which it was thought the methods of its constitution might be partly responsible, it was appreciated that an effort should be made to provide a scheme which would enlist considerably greater support, though retaining the optional basis. In 1934, the Irish National Teachers' Organisation submitted a scheme making teachers and the Department jointly responsible at all stages for the examination, including the setting of the paper. The scheme did not commend itself to the Department, largely because of the surrender of Departmental responsibility involved; but, before consideration of the proposals had been completed, the Teachers' Congress passed a resolution calling for the abolition of the examination and instructing its representatives on the central joint committee to withdraw co-operation. This was a committee representing the teachers and the Department's inspectors which submitted recommendations as to the standard of the paper after each examination and investigated the marking as done by the local examiners. For the past eight years, the Irish National Teachers' Organisation has not been represented on the committee and only members of Orders of Brothers have served on the committee on behalf of the teaching element. The resolution I have referred to was passed in 1935 by the Irish National Teachers' Organisation Congress.

In 1936 and 1937 the Department proceeded with this proposal and in June, 1937, submitted for the consideration of the managers and teachers this new scheme, which provided for greater decentralisation than the original scheme and not so much delegation of responsibility to the teachers as their own scheme had involved. The scheme still was to be voluntary. The Managers' Association made no objection to the scheme but the Irish National Teachers' Organisation refused their co-operation. In 1939, in an effort to formulate a more satisfactory scheme than the one in operation, it was decided to accept, with certain modifications, the Irish National Teachers' Organisation scheme of 1934, but although the executive were apparently willing to consider the proposals favourably, a special congress held in October, 1939, rejected the idea of co-operation. In 1941, in view of the failure to achieve co-operation on a voluntary basis, it was decided to proceed with the consideration of a compulsory scheme.

I do not think, in view of the history of our negotiations with the teachers, and of the fact that this matter is one of considerable importance to parents and children and to our educational future, that I would be justified in postponing the matter, as Deputy O'Sullivan seems to suggest until a later period. I found that we could make the necessary arrangements to carry out the examination. Of course, it is a very big task, the holding for the first time of an examination in every national school in the country, an examination at which, as I have said, possibly between 40,000 and 50,000 pupils will attend. I am confident that parents will do everything possible to cooperate. I am happy to say that managers have shown that they are keenly interested in this matter and that, generally speaking, we have their hearty co-operation in trying to carry out the examination successfully.

I would appeal for the support and co-operation of all concerned in making this very big experiment which we are starting this year a success. Not merely, as I have said, will it show parents that the work in the schools is being satisfactorily carried out but it will give pupils who obtain this certificate an opportunity, I hope, later on of utilising it, if necessary, to secure employment if it is not of any use to them in pursuing an educational career. I think that parents generally will welcome it as being in the educational interests of their children and that they will be gratified that we have now a scheme, as I said in my opening statement, which gives an equal opportunity to all pupils of receiving a certificate that they have satisfactorily completed the primary programme.

As regards the question of teaching through Irish, this is a matter that has become a hardy annual. I emphasised when speaking to the teachers recently the tremendous and unparalleled nature of the task that we are asking them to fulfil, to revive our national language. I said that in no other country in the world had teachers been asked to carry out such a task as they were asked to fulfil. Not alone were we asking them to do the ordinary educational work that teachers have to do in other countries, but we were in fact giving them a double task. I said that I fully appreciated the difficulties of the burden that has been placed upon the teachers in their endeavour to carry out this task successfully. If they were not devoted to the work, if they did not feel that the matter of Irish was in a very special category and that it could not be treated merely as a school subject, that it was a big national purpose which we had asked them to carry out, we could not expect to achieve the results we hoped for. We never expected in the Department of Education that quick results could be obtained in this matter but we did expect that if the teachers were earnest in their work, if they applied themselves to it in the spirit—perhaps it would be difficult to attain that standard—of the workers in the old days of the Gaelic League, then certainly great results could be achieved.

Deputy O'Sullivan and Deputy Mulcahy made play with a remark of mine in my opening statement on the Estimates, when I said that the struggle to save Irish is a linguistic war that has to be waged, not merely against English, but against human nature. They seemed to think that an argument against our policy and our methods, on the grounds that we should not carry on war against English and that if the struggle was one against human nature, then there was something wrong in our methods in the schools. Of course the war against human nature is not the struggle that is taking place in the schools. It is the struggle the schools have to wage against the Anglicised world outside which inundates the children with English every day when they leave school and, when they finally leave it, drowns the Irish they have learned in the schools under a deluge of English for the rest of their lives. When I referred to making war against human nature it was in this connection. I meant, of course, that human nature goes normally with the stream. Most people go with the crowd and I wanted to emphasise that it was this mighty flood of English bursting upon each one of us in our everyday lives and in all our occupations that we have to resist. Human nature tends to go with the current instead of struggling against it. If there is objection to the words "linguistic war against English", there is no use, I suggest, in blinking the fact that for over 700 years there has been a linguistic war in Ireland between the invading language and the native language, that the invading language has carried on this war with every weapon, laws, bans, social and commercial prestige, and that for over a century it has been driving the native language back to its last fastnesses.

If anybody thinks that I am exaggerating I should like to read a little statement I took some time ago from a statistical account of a parish in County Kilkenny, Tullaroan, in the year 1819. I think the local parson was the author of the passage dealing with this parish. This is what he said in relation to the language question at that time:—

"Both the English and Irish languages are spoken in the parish. The latter is greatly on the decrease, and must continue to decrease rapidly, both here and in every part of the nation, from two principal causes: first, the hedge schools, where English alone is taught, and secondly, the necessity imposed upon the country people of speaking English in all their trafficking. They are fond of bargaining both in buying and selling, and, as very few of the corn and pig dealers and town shopkeepers can speak Irish, they feel the want of English a serious inconvenience, and they cannot bear to traffic through an interpreter. Our paper circulation, likewise, makes it necessary for them to read English, especially as they have suffered so severely by the failure of country banks, in consequence of which a country fellow will often walk about a fair with notes in his hand asking every person the amount and the bank, etc., and is scarcely satisfied with the answers. Through this the English language rapidly advances, for so anxious are the people to speak it in the country that the mountain farmers who cannot speak English and who send their children to hedge schools will scarcely allow them to speak Irish when at home.

Irish will thus soon fall into disuse in the South, and probably also in most parts of Ireland, and it is desirable that it should be disused amongst a people who think themselves a sort of aboriginal race, and that the majority of the land holders are invaders and intruders, which, added to their natural jealousy and hatred of the English, keeps up a spirit of discontent and suspicion of oppression that make them ready instruments of insurrection in the hands of agitators, for those men instil into them the opinion that their connection with the English nation is the cause of all their sufferings, and the prejudices of their education induce a ready assent to this doctrine. Hence, everything that tends to destroy the distinction between the two people, as to their language, manners, dresses, or other similar points, would assist greatly in removing these invidious feelings."

I think it is quite clear to anybody who has a knowledge of the ebb of the Irish language for the past few hundred years that a deadly linguistic war has been waged, not a war on English but a war to save Irish, which was being attacked and defeated and slaughtered. In one of La Fontaine's novels somebody complains about a hunted beast: "Cet animal est très mechant. Quand on l'attaque, il se defend”—that animal is very naughty; when one attacks him, he defends himself. On that principle it is undoubtedly wrong of the Gael to wage a defensive war against English, but I think Deputy O'Sullivan can hardly mean that, and, unless he does, his objection to the words I have quoted is unsustainable. However, it is not to a form of words or to a phrase picked out of speeches that we ought to devote our attention, but to an examination of this whole matter of the revival of our national tongue.

I think the fact that the question of Irish is not discussed publicly except on a single occasion during the year in the National Assembly, and that even then so few persons speak in Irish, would go to show that a lead is badly needed from those in control of affairs in this country, and in particular from the members of the Oireachtas. I have a good deal of sympathy with the teachers when they point to the discouragement that they feel at the fact that progress is not being made in other directions, and that, after 20 years of effort, everybody still seems to regard the schools as the main avenue, the sole instrument, for the revival of the language. That was the object of the programme instituted in the national schools in 1922, and renewed in 1926, after the Report of the Conferences of 1925, but I think that those who signed that report and those who brought it into operation must feel, if they would voice their opinions, that after such a long period of time we certainly should have results in other directions too.

I think that Deputy Byrne perhaps illustrated the situation very well when he suggested that I ought to speak to the children in Gardiner Street in Irish, and I would see what kind of reply I would get. The fact that I would get a reply of that nature—if I did get it—from the children in Gardiner Street would not really make me blame those children, but would make me blame their parents and those who have to deal with them generally for not giving them that encouragement which is necessary if they are to accept the language as something about which they have to make an effort, and if they are ever to understand that it is something which they are expected to use outside the schools. How can children be expected to use Irish with complete strangers if they receive no encouragement from those who are dealing with them, particularly their own fathers and mothers, every day of their lives, and if, instead of receiving encouragement, they receive discouragement, or, as Deputy O'Sullivan said, possibly hostility and indifference?

As Deputy Lynch said, even if Irish were taught in the most attractive manner possible, if there were some easy way in which Irish could be acquired without that mental toil and stress that are necessary for learning any school subject, and if in addition to that easy method they had the full encouragement of all the teachers and all the parents and all the adults who come into contact with them, it would be difficult to believe that even then Irish would be as popular with the children as some of us would like. But I fear that in fact outside the schools little encouragement is given to the children. Therefore, since the children do not understand the meaning and the purpose of the endeavour to revive Irish as the spoken language of our country, and since those to whom they are immediately responsible do not explain to them the position that Irish holds or should hold in our national life, in our history and in our traditions, it is very hard for the poor children to get to understand that for themselves.

Most of us knew very little about nationality and took very little interest in the language movement until long after we had left school, and during our period we had, as Deputy O'Sullivan mentioned, a wonderful spirit of national enthusiasm which not alone carried us to the point of having an Irish State set up here, the first for hundreds of years, but, through the momentum which it caused, had the effect also of putting into operation this Irish programme in the schools which is being so much criticised at the present time. Even if we had not a civil war, and the dissensions amongst ourselves which tended to spread a spirit of cynicism and defeatism, even if we were united, we were bound to have a certain ebb after that tremendous national effort. Tremendous national movements of that kind do not spring up except over long periods of time. I am hoping that we older people, who took part in that movement, people like Deputy Brodrick and myself who learned in Galway Gaol the meaning of those things in a way that Deputy Byrne could perhaps not understand, will see please God in our time the young people rising up in a similar movement, because it would be a mistake to think that the schools by themselves can ever accomplish this work.

The people as a whole, in a great national movement, must also participate in it if it is going to be successful. I do not think there is any greater hostility or indifference about Irish to-day than at any time, but we are in a period when, as I have said, the generation which took its full part in one great national movement is passing away, and the rising generation has not yet come to the stage, which I hope it will reach in the not far distant future, when it will take up this work of reviving our language in the same serious way that we took up the work in the struggle for national independence.

I am glad that the matter is not being discussed on the basis of Party politics, and, although some people may be inclined to use it in order to secure votes at the present time, I am very glad to hear from my friends on the back benches generally who are interested in this matter that there is no disposition whatever to under-rate the extent of the task that we have to face, nor is there any tendency to stand back and assume that there is some easy way to get that task accomplished. They realise, as I would expect them to realise, that we must all be enthusiastic or we cannot have the success that we would wish. In the same way, if we are going to treat it, from the point of view of the teachers, as a matter in which trade union principles must rule, instead of in the spirit of Pearse and Tomás Ashe, we are not likely to get the results that we would wish. We have, as I have said, the children who cannot be expected to be keen on Irish, even in homes where, very often, everything possible has been done to make Irish attractive to them and to encourage them. It may be that in some cases parents are disappointed with the response. You cannot expect parents who are not able to give their children the assistance they would like to give them, as a result of the work being done through the medium of Irish, to feel very enthusiastic about the matter. While it is perhaps natural that parents would feel disturbed at not being able to give their children the assistance they would like to give them, it is also natural that they would be more disturbed when the child starts off at school by being taught Irish, later on is taught subjects through the medium of Irish, and then there is a sudden reversal, in the middle of the child's school course, to an English curriculum, where subjects would be taught through English.

That is the difficulty at the present time. It has been our difficulty for some time past, and I think it will be a difficulty for some years to come. It must be remembered that we are only in a transitional stage and that the programme in the schools was definitely intended to be transitional. You will also have the difficulty that some parents, and even a large number of the teachers, say that the Irish programme in the schools is affecting adversely the children's future, and that, so long as that programme is there, they will not get the same chance to prepare themselves for the battle of life as they would get otherwise. It will also be argued that the language is not essential for national culture: that you can be just as good a citizen, from the point of view of national culture or national interests so long as you are domiciled here and belong to the Irish community, as if you were an Irish speaker.

You have all these arguments, and it seems to me, in view of the attacks that have been made on the Gaelic League, that the making of the case for Irish is left very largely to me in these annual discussions. I should like to repeat some of the points I have already made with regard to the inquiry which the teachers set up on this matter of the teaching of subjects through Irish in the schools. At the outset, I should like to discount the statement that I have treated this report with contempt, or that I ignored it. The fact is that before the report was published it had been a subject of discussion between the teachers and the inspectors. It had been the subject of consideration by the higher inspectors in the Department, and the Chief Inspector on the primary schools' side had devoted a good deal of attention to examining it in detail. As well, therefore, as having my own opinions on the report, I am fortified in my opinions by having the advice of the higher inspectors in the Department, in addition to that of such officials as the Secretary and Assistant Secretary —all men who have spent a lifetime in dealing with educational problems.

It has been suggested that this body of public servants has some axe to grind. I should like to know on what basis that accusation can be made. Why is it necessary, if there is some other way of making Irish the spoken language in the schools and, eventually, in the country, to allege that these officials are prejudiced against other superior methods of reviving Irish when their attention is called to them? We have found no answer to the case I have frequently made: that out of the 14 or 15 hours of the child's waking day, he spends about four or five hours at school, and that he spends eight, nine, ten or 11 of the remaining hours, in many cases, in a wholly English environment. I asked last year what chance there was for the restoration of the Irish language if, in addition to the eight, nine, ten or 11 hours outside school, when the child lived his ordinary life in an English environment, there was not to be an Irish environment for the four or five hours the child spent in school, and if Irish were to be relegated to the position of an ordinary school subject, instead of being the ordinary vernacular of the child which, eventually, would be the medium through which he would be taught other subjects.

The conference which reported in 1926 carried on the programme which was instituted as a result of the recommendations of the teachers themselves in the 1922 programme, and when this report was being made in 1926, it was not, therefore, an entirely new thing. A certain amount of experience had been gained. On page 9, of the 1926 Report, the signatories say:

"We believe, however, that, at the present time, circumstances are far more propitious for our educational future than they were three years ago. As the aim of the national programme has gained more general acceptance, and as the qualifications of the teachers for forwarding that aim are now considerably improved, there is more reason for hoping that a successful working of a new programme may be achieved.

We have striven so to frame this new programme that it may set before our schools the same high purpose which the national programme set before them, and will differ from the national programme only in so far as it will be transitional, being indicative of gradual steps in a steady progress towards an ideal, and being adjustable to the varying circumstances of our schools."

Not alone, therefore, were the conference in a position to get their programme going under improved circumstances in the country, generally, but they gave advice, in the course of their introductory statement, on some of the difficulties which the teachers had to contend with in the initial stages of its operation in the schools. On page 10, they state:

"It was in connection with Irish that the chief causes of trouble were found. Some teachers and managers —but not many, we think—understood that the Department's circular of November, 1922, modifying the application of the programme rules about Irish, was a tacit renunciation of the programme ideal as being unattainable."

There are some people who will always regard inquiries as renunciations of the ideal.

"Others—the majority—made strenuous efforts to carry out the programme in its perfection. In the cases of teachers who were sufficiently qualified, those efforts were crowned with gratifying success. Where, however, teachers were not adequately prepared—and most of them were in this condition—their efforts, while entailing a severe strain, sometimes resulted in an impairing of the educational value of their work."

On page 10, the following appears:

"Some teachers, in thus striving to do the impossible, were moved by their own excess of zeal; many of them imagined that they were carrying out the intentions of the Department and many alleged that they were being urged on by express or implied wishes of the Department's officials. To what extent this last charge is sustainable we had no means of investigating and no authority to do so. Nor had we any need to do so; the one fact which was of importance to us was made perfectly plain—namely, that there existed a widely-felt impression (whether well-founded or not) that unreasonable demands were often being made on the teachers."

It was as a result of this impression that the conference went on to make the greater number of the suggestions which they placed before the people. The first—and perhaps the most important—was this:

"One of the leading characteristics of that programme is its insistence on the principle of teaching the infant classes through the medium of Irish. The members of our conference agreed on the supreme importance of giving effect, as far as possible, to this principle and in confirmation of their belief they received authoritative evidence. It was argued with much weight that a ‘direct' method of teaching Irish, continued during the length of an ordinary schoolday for a few years between the ages of four and eight, would be quite sufficient—given trained and fluent teachers—to impart to children a vernacular power over the language; while, in the case of older children, it was shown that such a result would be more difficult of attainment. The members of the conference were, therefore, at one in holding that the true and only method of establishing Irish as a vernacular is the effective teaching of it to the infants."

On page 11, it is stated:

"Yet, in this matter of teaching Irish to the very young children, it was felt by us that the principle of the motto festina lente is especially applicable. The Note, which in the national programme stood at the head of the course for infants, while in some cases it proved of the greatest utility, in other instances had some harmful results. Its wording, being absolute and making no allowance for difficulties, made a literal obedience to it sometimes impossible and often inadvisable.”

Continuing, the report says:—

"The same principle guided us with regard to the teaching of Irish in the standards. We were much impressed by the success which rewarded the generally good spirit of the teachers and enabled so many of them to impart to their pupils a fluent power of dealing with various subjects in the Irish language. At the same time, we received evidence that when — as often happened— teachers were insufficiently prepared, the effort to teach history, geography or mathematics through Irish resulted in an indifferent teaching of these subjects and, consequently, in giving colour to some adverse criticism of the general teaching standard of our schools. Though we believe that some of this criticism was inspired by prejudice or exaggerated by foolish rumour, we are also convinced that some of it was quite well-founded."

The House will see that some of the complaints made in the teachers' report had been made already in the early stages of the programme in the schools and that they were dealt with by the conference, which re-affirmed the principles already laid down— that the schools were to be regarded as the main, if not in many cases, the sole instrument of restoring Irish as the true vernacular of the country and that, in particular, efforts should be made to teach Irish to children between the ages of four and eight years. It was felt that, in that way, the best preparation would be made and the foundations of the vernacular laid. The conference also went on to affirm what had been previously agreed upon—that the extension of the use of Irish as a teaching medium should be made gradually and progressively through all parts of the school. On page 28, they laid down the principles which have guided the Department since and which are embodied in the official circulars and instructions to teachers managers and inspectors:—

"Where a teacher is competent to teach through Irish and where the children can assimilate the instruction so given, the teacher should endeavour to extend the use of Irish as a medium of instruction so far as possible. When these conditions do not exist, such teaching through Irish is not obligatory. Teachers who hold bilingual or higher certificates will, unless there is evidence to the contrary, be regarded as competent, but the possession of these certificates is not an essential condition for such teaching."

The conference of 1926, on the evidence before them and on their knowledge of the operation of the programme for the years preceding, were, presumably, confident that they were doing the right thing by the language in recommending the substantial continuance of the then existing programme and they took into account the fact that, at that time, the machinery was not as efficient as it is now. They must have realised from the evidence given that the teachers were not very well equipped for the task. A great many of them would have had no certificate in Irish—even the ordinary certificate —while only a smaller number would have had the higher certificate which would enable them to carry out the programme recommended by the conference. The programme, which I have said was transitory, might be described also as being an ideal and an aim. I have not the slightest doubt, however, and I do not think that anybody reading it will have the slightest doubt, that the representative men who recommended it felt it was an ideal or an aim which should, certainly, be attained when circumstances were more favourable and when the teachers would have acquired the necessary qualifications.

In the year 1926 the number of teachers who had higher qualifications which would enable them to be regarded as possibly qualified to undertake teaching through Irish was only 1,100. In 1936, when the teachers' report was published there were 7,800 teachers so qualified, and since then 1,200, approximately, have secured these qualifications. So that there are now over 9,000 teachers who are qualified to give instruction through Irish. That does not mean, however, that all teachers have these qualifications. It means that about two-thirds of them have obtained the qualifications necessary. A further period of years will be necessary before the other one-third attain these qualifications, and the question arises whether, until all the schools are equally well equipped and until it is clear that all our teachers are qualified to teach the programme laid down so far back as 1926, we are not apt to come to wrong conclusions if we undertake an inquiry in the meantime.

There is no doubt that the foundations have been laid, but, because results are not visible outside, we cannot, as I suggested in the beginning, blame the schools for that. The task of the teachers is to see that the children are equipped with a fluent oral knowledge of Irish and to maintain the existing standards of education in the ordinary primary subjects. As the Taoiseach explained last night, we are rather apt to think that in our own school days we were more brilliant than we were. We think of the best pupils in the class and we think of those who could do the examples in Haugh's Arithmetic, but most of us realise that what we did know was really very little. The Taoiseach, who seems to have been an earnest student and who has shown his earnestness by the fact that he is able to recall at this stage what he learned in the national school in some detail, must have done better than the remainder of us. If we bear clearly in mind what the standards were at that time and up to the period when the Compulsory School Attendance Act was introduced, I think we need not have the slightest doubt that the results now are better.

I would certainly like to invite Deputies, Senators and public men to go to the schools themselves—they will be welcome visitors—and compare the results which are achieved in the average school where the work, or some of it, is being done through Irish, with the results which they remember from their own school days.

Evidence was given before the conference by one of the most distinguished educationists of our time, whose death was such a great loss to our country, the late Rev. Dr. Corcoran. He undoubtedly had a very big part in the formulation of the principles laid down in this programme, and I think it was largely as a result of his experienced and specialised evidence that certain of the recommendations were made. In any case, it is clear that the policy was to teach the language in the infants' classes so that, leaving the infants' classes, the children would have a sufficient vocabulary in Irish to enable them not only to have a colloquial knowledge of the language and to keep up conversation with their equals or perhaps even with their elders, but would have a sufficient grasp of the language also to follow instruction through it in other subjects when they reached the higher classes. There is no doubt whatever that if the practice in the infant classes, which is almost universal in the country, of teaching them Irish solely, is not kept up in the upper classes, if the teachers are not in a position to maintain the continuity, then there is likely to be serious loss, and not only is there likely to be serious loss but, as I have suggested, there is likely to be disgruntlement and dissatisfaction and, unfortunately, it is the language that is likely to suffer. But even in the period in which we are now living, and for some years past, the amount of teaching through Irish is not as great as some would lead one to expect. One would imagine that there was a policy of badgering teachers and schools into doing everything possible to extend the use of Irish as a teaching medium. I am informed by the inspectors that there are very few classes now in our schools in which a a little more teaching through Irish could not be adopted, and that there are undoubtedly numbers of classes in which more could be done without any harm whatever to the child educationally.

About 6 per cent. of our schools in the Galltacht, leaving the Fíor-Ghaeltacht area out of consideration, are doing all their work through Irish and a further percentage, I think up to about 50 per cent., are doing a certain amount, in certain classes, sometimes teaching the whole of the class all the subjects through Irish, sometimes teaching some of the subjects through Irish, sometimes teaching subjects partly in Irish and partly in English. As this is a fluctuating matter, it is difficult to give precise estimates but, in any case, 54.3 of our schools where there are infant classes teach everything through Irish to the infants, 30 per cent. of similar schools teach one subject or more than one subject through Irish to the infants and in 15.7 per cent. of such schools nothing is taught to the infants through the medium of Irish except Irish.

These statistics cannot be right because you began by saying that 50 per cent. teach everything through Irish to the infants and you end by saying 15 per cent.

I include teaching not altogether through Irish, but where a proportion of the work is being done through Irish.

Are you talking about all the children or only the infants?

I have given the figures in the form in which they were given to me. Another form is this: Schools in which every subject is taught wholly through Irish in the Galltacht, 6.3 per cent.; schools in addition to those in which every subject is taught wholly through Irish to the infants only, 20.6 per cent.; schools in which everything is taught through Irish up to 1st class, 9.2 per cent.; up to 2nd class, 9.3 per cent.; up to 3rd class, 1.8 per cent.; up to 4th class, 1.7 per per cent.; up to 5th class, .5 per cent.; up to 6th class, .2 per cent. That is to say, in addition to the 6.3 per cent. in which everything is taught through Irish, you have 43.3 per cent., including 20.6 per cent. infants, where all the work in certain classes is done through Irish, based on the percentages I have read out. So that you have 6.3 plus 43.3 per cent. in which either the whole of the work is done through Irish or where the infants' work is done through Irish or classes up to the highest class, according to the varying percentages, are taught through Irish.

I do not understand those figures.

The figures fluctuate. I gave them in the House before and probably the Deputy did not think it worth his while to read them, as he knows so much about the policy of the Department in getting children who do not know Irish taught through Irish by teachers who are unable to do it. He has not the time to go into any figures or any facts on the matter. I simply want to draw the attention of the House to the fact that over the 3rd Standard the amount done wholly through Irish, except in 6 per cent. of the schools where all the work is being done through Irish, is really very small. This is very noticeable in the teaching of arithmetic, which one would think develops from the tables and the elementary ideas of number, that the programme says infants should be taught in order to enable them to build up the necessary vocabulary that I have spoken of. It is very extraordinary that the teachers find it so difficult to teach arithmetic through Irish. In fact, they say that it is quite impossible. If we accept what they say about arithmetic, that it is impossible to teach it through Irish, I wonder with what justification will we be able to claim that other subjects can be taught through Irish. However, before I deal with the point regarding arithmetic I would like to deal with the question of the infants.

I understood the Minister to say that in 9.2 of the schools all subjects were taught through the medium of Irish up to 2nd class. He then went on to say that in 9.3 of the schools all subjects were taught through Irish up to the 3rd class. These two statements cannot be true, because if 9.3 are taught through Irish up to the 3rd class, there must be more than 9.2 being taught through Irish up to the 2nd class. That seems self-evident.

These are the figures officially supplied. The problem would be more simple than it is if, when the teaching through Irish was begun, it was continued right up. According to the teachers, one of the great grievances is that:

When the vernacular is used as the teaching medium the school work is a continuation of, or a complement to, what has been learned in the home, or in the course of out-of-school activities. When Irish is used there is a conflict between what has been learned in a natural atmosphere and what is being taught in an artificial atmosphere.

That is repeated on several occasions. I was simply going to explain to the House that out of the thousands of teachers who are teaching through Irish some hundreds of them replied to the questionnaire of the teachers' organisation. For example, in regard to infants there must be some 4,000 or 5,000 teachers in the country who are responsible for the teaching of infants, and in that part of the questionnaire, dealing with the infant schools, 422 teachers replied. I should say here in answer to Deputy Dillon—I do not want in the slightest to cloud the issue with figures—that over 90 per cent. of the infant classes are being taught through Irish. There is no doubt or question about that.

The Minister said a moment ago that only 50 per cent. were being taught.

That is the pupils in all classes. I am distinguishing between infants and the schools as a whole. With regard to the infant classes, of the 422 replies received, 115 represent the views of highly efficient teachers. Their average service was 19 years. That is to say, they were 19 years teaching in 1936, and, therefore, must have been teaching before the new programme was brought in. Although highly efficient, I believe, not having any other knowledge of them, not having been in a position to examine them, ask them questions or visit their schools, we cannot assume that in all these cases they were fully competent to teach the programme to the infant classes.

Even though this was the memorandum sent out from the trade union organisation representing the teachers, and even though a campaign had been carried on for some years on the basis that severe harm was being caused to the children, that a terrific strain was being imposed upon them and that the programme in operation was bad for the children not only educationally but in regard to their health and physical welfare: in spite of all that, almost 40 per cent. of these infant teachers said that the present programme was necessary and was the best thing in the interests of the language. On page 25 the report says:

"With this view, however, 39.5 per cent. disagreed. They held that if proficiency in the Irish language is the aim, the instruction during the infant years should be in Irish, and English should be rigidly excluded. The vast majority of children in the Galltacht have no outside opportunity of hearing Irish spoken and the very most should be made of the comparatively short school-day period. The children will learn the language only by speaking it, and the natural impulse to speak will result in the child's striving to acquire forms of expression in the new language when those of his home language are denied him. In this way the continuous use of Irish gives a tremendous impetus to the language."

Whether the minority or the majority were right, whether they were even representative of the teachers as a body or whether they were those who were best able to give us information about this problem, at any rate 40 per cent. of those infant teachers held that view.

I was going on to deal with the tables on page 28 dealing with the teaching of arithmetic. We find that 641 teachers of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Standards replied to this section of the questionnaire, that is, those who were teaching arithmetic through the medium of Irish to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Standards. The report says:

"Of these teachers approximately 50 per cent. gave arithmetic instruction solely through the medium of Irish, the remainder having taught it bilingually."

It goes on to say that 213 replies were from highly efficient teachers and 414 from efficient teachers. The average service of the 641 teachers who replied was 16 years. The average period during which they were trying to teach some arithmetic through Irish was five years.

"Five hundred and fifty-four, roughly, 86 per cent. of the replies to the query: ‘Do all the pupils receive benefit from instruction through Irish equal to that which they would receive through English?" were in the negative. Eighty-seven, or 14 per cent., held the contrary view. As in the case of infants, the view was generally expressed that the vast majority of the pupils do not receive benefit from instruction in arithmetic through the medium of Irish equal to that which they would receive had the medium been the home language of the child."

One does not know precisely what the expression "benefit from the instruction" means. Does it mean efficiency or competence in the particular subject? Does it mean benefit generally from the instruction? And, in either case, how has the competence of the child, in arithmetic, in subjects generally or in regard to his mental development—through the use of Irish, for example—been appreciated and assessed? I would call the attention of the House to this:

"In teaching arithmetic through the medium of Irish, 415 gave it as their experience that tables were readily reproduced, while 189 did not agree with this. Four hundred and thirty-nine had the experience that the pupils' grasp of numerical processes when Irish was the medium of instruction was not at all equal to, or as thorough, as if the home language had been used, while 163 held the contrary point of view."

Observe that a majority of the teachers in these three standards who replied to the questionnaire found that the tables were reproduced, at least, as well—"readily reproduced", which I presume, means that there was no difficulty in teaching the tables. Nevertheless, the report goes on, for the next page or more, to question the finding with regard to the tables, and even quoting reports in other countries, without giving the source—saying, for example:

"To have this power the child must know his tables through and through as certainly as he knows his own name, and must know them in such a way that each separate formula constitutes a self-contained system and is completely usable without reference to any preceding formula."

Further on, they say:

"It is hardly reasonable to expect that the child in the primary school should be able to justify the process he employs, say, in subtraction or division. This requires too difficult an exercise of the reasoning powers."

These are taken from an English report and the teachers suggest that something in the nature of explanation of arithmetical processes as well as problems are required in these standards. I think that that is reading into the programme something that it does not contain.

I want again to emphasise the fact that it is, according to the majority, possible to teach the tables satisfactorily. I would like to impress on the House that, if we have the position in the schools that that instruction cannot be continued, owing to lack of qualifications on the part of the teachers, lack of application on their part, or lack of preparation—a matter that was referred to even in the report of the conference of 1926—we are not likely to reach that ideal which was aimed at when it was put forward. On page 31 the report says:

"Even when the conditions and facts of the problem are couched in the simple vernacular, it is the experience of teachers in all schools, right up even to the university, that pupils very often miss these conditions and facts."

But it is not admitted that arithmetic has been successfully taught, not alone in primary schools but in secondary schools, and that mathematics has been taught successfully through Irish in some of our university colleges. The report says:

"Those who composed the minority held that as, in their opinion, Irish is a more exact language than English, the pupil is not at all so likely to miss the meaning of a particular word or phrase in a problem when set in Irish and that, in consequence, he gets a clearer grasp of what he is required to do in order to arrive at a correct solution."

I believe that there are many highly qualified teachers of arithmetic throughout the country who will corroborate that view, not that it is impossible to teach arithmetic except in the vernacular, nor that it is impossible to secure the standard of competence that one attains by teaching through English, but that, in fact, better results can be obtained when the conditions laid down in the Department's instructions, notes to teachers, and circulars are carried out. Where those are obeyed, where the advice we have given is followed and where the instructions are carried out, I have no doubt whatever that good results can be obtained.

In regard to the necessity for continuity, the report says, on page 36:

"One is compelled to conclude from all this that, if arithmetical progress is to be achieved, and the continuity of arithmetical thought ensured, the medium of instruction should be the vernacular."

That means giving up instruction through Irish wholly, or even partially, as I shall show in a few moments. In the upper classes, either a certain number of teachers were not sufficiently equipped or the children were not sufficiently equipped, to continue to teach them the arithmetical course through Irish, and over 62 per cent. of those who sent in their replies to the questionnaire had only been able to give bilingual instruction, not solely through Irish. The report on page 36 says:

"This shows that there is a general tendency to fall back on the vernacular to make good the deficiency in teaching arising from the use of the non-vernacular."

But why is there a general tendency on the part of teachers in the upper classes in the national schools to fall back on the vernacular, when the children have been taught through the non-vernacular, as it is termed, since the infant classes, perhaps? Why must we have this colossal loss, which must be serious educationally to children and parents, but which is very serious to Irish, because of the implications that we are not serious about the policy, when engines can be reversed in the middle of the child's school course?

I think the teachers themselves, while not perhaps anxious to make any strong statements which would seem to weaken their own case, have rather admitted, on page 35, the reason why we are not able to continue the success, or partial success, that has been achieved and that, I suggest, has been proved to have been achieved, in the infant and lower classes:

"IN THE SENIOR DIVISION— ARITHMETIC.

. . . The first striking fact in connection with this summary is that, while 641 teachers replied to the portion of the questionnaire dealing with the teaching of arithmetic through Irish to Standards I, II and III, only 329 replied to the portion dealing with the teaching of arithmetic through Irish to the senior standards."

That is, 329 teachers out of several thousands. Let us see about these 329:

"This would seem to show that the proportion of teachers who use Irish as the medium of instruction in the higher standards is much lower than in the junior standards. There are reasons for the difference in these proportions. The average age of teachers in charge of the senior standards is fairly high, and consequently many of those teachers may not feel themselves as competent to teach through Irish as are their younger colleagues."

Nevertheless, the case against the teaching through Irish in the schools— the case against the Department of Education—is made on the basis of replies sent in to a questionnaire by teachers who may not feel themselves as competent to teach through Irish as are their younger colleagues.

The report goes on to say:

"While this reason holds to some extent, the general tenor of the replies received would go to show that the main, and more important, reason is that the feeling is common among teachers of senior standards that justice cannot be done either to the child or to the subject by the use of a teaching medium other than the vernacular in work that is becoming increasingly complicated, and that requires infinitely more concentration on the arithmetical process than on the language, if adequate progress is to be made. As proof of the existence of this feeling, many cases were cited in the replies of teachers using Irish as the teaching medium in arithmetic in the middle division and changing over to English when that division became senior."

With the emphasis on the possibility of teaching the tables, with a recognition of the fact that the tables must be the basis of instruction in the lower standards, that very little is being asked for in the way of arithmetic until, at least, the 4th Standard is reached, it seems extraordinary, if we are asked to come to a conclusion on the policy of teaching arithmetic through Irish, that we have only the statements of this small number of teachers—who admit they have not felt themselves competent to teach through Irish, as their younger colleagues have done—that the work is becoming increasingly complicated, that justice could not be done either to the child or to the subject and, finally, that they had to change over to English. If that is the position, I suggest that we cannot blame the programme exclusively. We may reasonably inquire whether there may not be some other cause, taking into consideration the successful efforts of earnest and highly-qualified teachers to carry out the programme in the lower classes. Arithmetic is, after all, the only important subject outside Irish and English being taught in the lower classes in our national schools. Very little history or geography is taught. When you have that position with regard to the important subject of arithmetic, and when we are asked to condemn the teaching of arithmetic through Irish on that basis, I suggest to the House that we really have not sufficient data to come to a conclusion.

Hear, hear. Therefore hold an inquiry and get the data.

I think that a good many of the teachers seem either to have carried out work that was beyond their powers or were genuinely unfitted for it; that they had not the qualifications. But of 891 teachers, 525 stated that they had been coerced in some way into doing what they felt they were not able to do and what was not in the interests of the children. No opportunity has been given to me to investigate that statement, and I do not believe there is any way in which that statement can be investigated.

The report issued by the Minister states entirely the reverse—that teachers are not doing as much as they are qualified to do.

I said that in my opening remarks, but I say that the fact that this report is based upon answers to questionnaires submitted to teachers, who admit that they undertook teaching through Irish and gave it up afterwards—whatever the circumstances may be under which they undertook it—cannot lead us to the conclusion that the findings in the report are based on evidence submitted by teachers who have made a success of this work; they are largely the result of replies sent in by teachers who either feel they are not competent or who have had to give up the work for some other reason.

As regards the question of the inquiry, I have stated that I do not believe the Department has anything whatever to fear. I have always tried to meet the teachers and to discuss any matter affecting them, and I have no prejudice whatever in the matter. My sole interest, like others who have spoken, is to endeavour to see that the programme in the schools is the most effective that can be devised to make Irish the spoken language of the schools in the shortest possible time. The statements made in the House were based largely, I think, on hearsay. Deputy O'Sullivan said that complaints had been made to him by friends of his who were keenly interested in Irish and who felt that damage was being done in some way. I should like to know the nature of the evidence which these gentlemen have at their disposal; if they have had an opportunity of going into the schools, if they discussed the matter with teachers, or on what premises they base their conclusions.

Deputy O'Sullivan said they were teachers themselves.

I do not know that he said that—perhaps he did.

Fianna Fáil teachers.

That was in another part of his speech. Since the matter has been last under discussion here, I visited a number of schools in Dublin with some of the higher inspectors. We spoke to the children. I got the inspectors to ask them questions and I asked questions myself. I spoke to the teachers and I discussed their problems with them: the attendance, the programme, the accommodation, books, and the equipment generally. Frequently I discussed with them the children's lives outside the school, whether their parents were working people and so on. I can say to the House without any reservation whatever that in the great majority of the schools which I visited—and I picked out about one dozen or 15 typical schools, among the largest schools, a fair number of them in the poorer areas of the city; my endeavour was to get as representative a selection as possible—I thought the work was satisfactory and sometimes very satisfactory or highly efficient from the opinions I formed myself and the opportunities I had of discussing the work with the inspectors who accompanied me.

With regard to the infants in general —the main purpose of my visit was to inspect the infant classes or departments—I could see no sign of strain or hardship—quite the contrary. I found that in the infant schools generally there was a pleasing atmosphere. It was quite evident that the family atmosphere, which I spoke about in the House when I mentioned this matter last, was being cultivated, and that the teacher was not endeavouring to force any kind of formal teaching on the children. She was trying to make them happy, treating them as a family, giving them occupation, and inducing them gradually, by the substitution of Irish for their very limited English vocabulary, to build up the basic vocabulary of which I have spoken.

I cannot say that the work was satisfactory in all cases—some of the teachers were better qualified than others—but it was generally satisfactory. There may have been patches here and there where, even to an observer like myself, it would not seem that everything was quite satisfactory, but, having regard to the qualifications of the teachers and the general circumstances, I would say that on the whole conditions in these schools were satisfactory. I would say further that as the schools are staffed by teachers with better qualifications in Irish and as it will be possible to follow up the excellent work being done in the majority of schools in the infant classes, by continuing the instruction through Irish at the hands of skilful teachers in the upper classes, I am sure that good results will be achieved, and I am very confident that the position which the signatories to the programme conference hoped to achieve will be achieved.

The teachers as an organisation have taken up a certain standpoint with regard to this matter of teaching through Irish, and I do not know whether anybody thinks that, in the face of any further inquiry which might be held, they are likely to depart so far as their official body is concerned from the opinions to which they have committed themselves here. We have been asked, on the one hand, to have a commission which will be favourable to Irish, the personnel of which will be staunch in regard to Irish and the object of which will be to see that the best programme possible in the interests of Irish is adopted in the schools. Any recommendations they would make would be in that direction. On the other hand, we are told to have independent persons who are not wedded, as the saying is, to particular methods, who are not of the rapid development type of teacher and not, as some of my colleagues in the House have kindly put it, fanatical about Irish, so that it is very difficult to know what kind of commission it is going to be.

It is very difficult to know whether we are to have people about whose earnestness and sincerity in regard to Irish there can be no doubt whatever, but who have never wedded themselves publicly in any case to advocacy of any particular method of teaching Irish in the schools. Secondly, it seems that we shall have difficulty in getting persons who will have that familiarity with the work of the schools which will enable them to assess it to the satisfaction of those who are interested in the matter. When the old conference came together, propaganda was being carried on—and it continued for some years after—against what was called compulsory Irish. It was going on even when this conference sat, and I relate that campaign of propaganda to a good deal of the type of propaganda which we have at present with regard to teaching through Irish. Judging by some of the speeches we have listened to, even though, as I have said, the majority of them showed that the speakers were quite sincere about the matter, there is no doubt that there are others who feel— and no doubt there is a body of opinion outside which feels—that any inquiry is simply going to be a climb-down and that any change, even though for the better, making for more efficiency, is going to be welcomed rapturously by certain organs and certain spokesmen outside the House as being a definite departure from the aims we put before us.

As I have said, if in respect of the personnel of this commission we are to satisfy these qualifications in regard to Irish and in regard to education and to get persons who have that intimate knowledge of the work of the schools which will enable them to say with definiteness and finality whether the work is satisfactory or not, it is not going to be an easy task. All I can say at the moment is that if it is in the general interests of Irish and of the work of our schools, I am not opposed to the setting up of such an inquiry. I do not think it should be set up now, but I can assure the House that I shall attend to the matter and give it every consideration.

That is some progress, in any case. It took us seven years to knock that out of you, but better late than never.

Question—"That the Vote be referred back for reconsideration"—put and declared lost.
Vote put and agreed to.
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