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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 13 May 1943

Vol. 90 No. 2

Committee on Finance. - Vote 48—Technical Instruction.

I move:—

Go ndeontar suim ná raghaidh thar £239,740 chun slánuithe na suime is gá chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1944, chun Iocaíochtaí fén Acht Oideachais Ghairme Beatha, 1930 (Uimh. 29 de 1930), agus chun crícheánna eile i dtaobh Ceárd-Oideachais agus Oideachais Leanúnaigh.

That a sum, not exceeding £239,740, be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending the 31st day of March, 1944, for Payments under the Vocational Education Act, 1930 (No. 29 of 1930), and for other purposes connected with Technical Instruction and Continuation Education.

Surely we are going to hear something about technical instruction. If there is a plan to get these Estimates through to-night, I regret to inform the Minister that it is not going to come off.

There is no plan.

I thought there was. I wish the Minister would say something in relation to technical instruction because, in my opinion, there is a great deal to be said about it.

I said a good deal in my opening statement and I think the House might object if I were to read it again.

If the Minister is going to read it in Irish, let me say at once that there is not the least good in doing so. I suppose he has not an English translation.

I have got a translation.

Perhaps I had better say what I have to say with reference to this particular subject. First of all, in regard to the rural schools, I want to suggest that the time has come to set on foot a scheme whereunder children will be required to attend school in rural areas until they are 15 years and that children doing that will be given this alternative, that they can either stay at the primary school until they are 15 years or, at the age of 13 years, they will be allowed to leave the primary school and go into the local technical school and do their final two years at elementary agricultural science, if they want to do that.

The present situation is that you have children leaving the primary school and not infrequently drifting away from school altogether. Some of them return to the technical school and there embark on an extremely odd programme. You will get a fellow of 17 or 18 years who, after considerable persuasion, is induced to return to the technical school with the object of studying agriculture. When he returns to do that, he is confronted with the obligation to do an hour of Irish and an hour of some other cultural subject, a period of agricultural instruction and maybe a period of woodwork. Why cannot boys going to the technical school in rural Ireland do agriculture and have done with it? That is what they want to go back to the technical school for. Why must they be compelled to take subjects they do not want to take? The only effect of compelling them to do subjects they do not want to do will be to deter a number of fellows from going back to the school at all—fellows who would go back and do agriculture if they were free to do that and nothing else. They belong to one category but I want to create a new category.

I should like to create a group who would be allowed to leave the national school at the age of 13 and go to a technical school and there take, if necessary, one or two cultural subjects together with a practical subject and remain in the technical school for a period of at least two years. Many people may say that children at the age of 13 are not sufficiently equipped to go to a technical school. The truth of it is that even at the age of 14 very many of them have not sufficient education either, to enable them to absorb the instruction given in the technical school and very often they have to be taught ordinary national school subjects by the technical teachers before they can be given any effective instruction in technical subjects. One unfortunate technical officer had the courage to come out and say that down the country. All the national teachers in the country immediately jumped on his back and the poor man was forced to withdraw the statement because the life was frightened out of him. The national teachers there had control of the Vocational Instruction Committee and they went in a deputation to the poor man and put the heart across him. The poor man then realised the lion's jaws into which he had stuck his head and he withdrew his statement. He, however, spoke the truth and I know it because I heard him say it. Therefore, I think that we need not be in the least apprehensive that, by reducing the age at which children may enter these schools, we shall be imposing on technical teachers any greater burden than they are at present called on to bear. They will be in many cases dealing with semi-illiterate children but they will have to do their best to give these children the instruction which they should have received in the national school. There will be this advantage. Many "kids" when they reach the 5th or 6th class in the national school want to leave that school.

They think it is rather manly to get away from the Brothers or the Nuns. If you put the inducement in their way that by undertaking to do two years in the technical school they may leave the primary school when they reach the age of 13, many of these "kids" would make the election to undertake the extra years attendance at school, in order to get out of what they regard as the children's school. Once they made the election, I would keep their nose to the grindstone until they had completed the two years in the technical school. Of course, parental consent would be required to the child's election but would it not be much more to their advantage if, instead of spending the last year in the primary school and then leaving it to take up some blind alley occupation like that of messenger boy, they were enabled to get two years ordinary and practical instruction in the technical school? That is a matter I would urge the Minister to consider.

In regard to girls' schools, I would urge upon him most strongly to offer a similar inducement to youngsters to go into the technical schools for the purpose of acquiring a working knowledge of housecraft, to prepare them for after life. At present we are getting nowhere. I want to refer again to the astounding contents of the report dealing with evacuees in England. I do not think that we have anywhere here the intensely industrial conditions that obtain in England. I do not think conditions here are quite as bad as in some highly industrialised centres in England but the conditions revealed in that report were simply unbelievable. We were told of families being brought up by women who did not know how to cook, who maintained their children exclusively on bread, tea and canned food, for the excellent reason that they did not know even how to fry a rasher, nor did they know how to keep a room clean. The same conditions may not obtain in our cities because our cities are near the country.

They are only one or two jumps from the country. The mother or the grandmother of the family may have come from the country. There is not that long period of industrial life which divorces people from the domestic life of the country home, but after four or five generations of people living in industrial surroundings you do hear of girls who are no more accustomed to domestic economy than a man would be because for years their mothers and their grandmothers have been factory workers. I do not think, as I say, that the problem is as acute in this country as in industrial centres in England but, nevertheless, I think that a great deal of suffering in homes in this country is exacerbated by the fact that the best use is not made by mothers of the resources at their disposal, not from want of will, but from want of knowledge. We are falling down on the job if we are not providing that knowledge.

I do not think it feasible that every poor girl should spend two years in the new domestic economy college in Cathal Brugha Street, but I do think that we should not fail to take advantage of the existing technical schools and take such steps as are necessary to ensure that a majority of our girls will get a grinding in the elements of how to cook a simple meal or to keep a room clean or, as Deputy Hannigan said, to teach them the comparative value of foods; to impress upon them the advantage of drinking more milk themselves or the value of stirabout as a useful food, and the comparative uselessness of tea, jam and such comestibles as food for children. There are many simple nutritive foods which I think are completely unknown in a great many poor houses, with the result that people who sell jam make a very considerable profit out of poor people, not that they want to, but that these poor people do not spend their money to the best advantage. That is something we should remedy, emergency or no emergency. If we started on a voluntary basis we should be getting somewhere and later on we might take steps to give the scheme a more universal application. Would the Minister consider setting a scheme of that kind on foot so that his successor after the next election might bring it to a successful conclusion?

The Deputy's interest in domestic affairs almost leads me to express the hope that he might find more opportunity for the exercise of his talents in that direction after the next election. We have been trying to get convent schools throughout the country to undertake cookery classes and there has been a big increase in the number of convent schools and of the larger girls' schools doing that work. There is a difficulty, however, in providing kitchen accommodation and at present the provision of food is fairly difficult, the provision of utensils is difficult, but the provision of apparatus for cooking is the most difficult of all. We have been urging on schools the desirability of starting courses of this kind and if any words of mine can help I should like to impress upon them the necessity for doing more in that connection. As regards rural vocational schools, there are definite courses in these schools and it has been the rule that a boy or girl should follow the course he or she enters as a student. I do not think that we should compel any student to diverge from the particular course in which he is interested in order to provide facilities for other students who would like to follow other subjects.

Why not provide sufficient accommodation?

We have not sufficient accommodation.

Vote put and agreed to.
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