How long did it take the Parliamentary Secretary to read it? I devoted the whole of three and a half days to it, without doing anything else. I knew it was an important report; I knew it covered every detail of our organised life; and I knew it required serious and concentrated study. I spent three and a half solid days with a pencil in my hand reading it.
That was the first attempt to get a grip of what was here. How anybody who read that report, and who looked at the state of education to-day, and at what education means to us tomorrow and next year, could tell a Parliament with representatives drawn from every section and every part of the country: "Wait until the Government has taken a decision with regard to this general report," I cannot understand. The only conclusion one can come to is that the Parliamentary Secretary has not read it, and the only conclusion one can come to from what the Minister says is that nobody is going to look into the dark recesses of the Department of Education, or even to blow in any kind of organised or systematised set of ideas.
I am sorry I cannot give either the date or the column of this reference, but the Taoiseach could, and if he cannot, Sir, I will undertake to find it for you. In the short time at my disposal I was unable to get the exact reference, but this is the quotation:
"It is for that reason I think that any Minister who is going to do his work as Minister for Education under our system properly needs to have some form of advisory council with whom he can confer. I think that is absolutely necessary. Such a council does not exist, I think, at the moment. The debate here this evening ought to convince the Minister and the Department that there is need for a general stocktaking. It ought to convince him at least that if he is not prepared to take stock in a general way now, to satisfy himself and us as to where we are going in our educational system, he ought to provide himself with some permanent help in the form of an advisory council."
That was Deputy Eamon de Valera some time in the early part of the year 1931. In 1931 we wanted, in the opinion of the Taoiseach, for the Minister for Education, if he was going to do his work properly under our system, a permanent help in the form of an advisory council.
During this debate, the Minister for Education with the kind of slave mentality we have not yet been able to eliminate from a certain type of authority in this country—and nowhere do you get the slave mentality so rooted as in the person who is not fully emancipated in his mind and who has responsibility thrown on him— suggested that the proposal here is to bring us back under the British system and to set up boards which will be above the people and above the Parliament.
The next outrageous thing the Minister did was to suggest that, if this council were set up it would have power to override his functions, to take over his functions and interfere with his administration. The Vocational Commission was set up 20 years after the people of this country had got their full freedom. It reviewed every aspect of the country's life. It was almost as a side issue, but an important side issue, that education was discussed by it. The reason apparently why it did so was that every section of our people that came before the commission talked about the details of our economic and social life, and in doing so could not but refer to education, because education is the whole basis of our life, our work and our prosperity. The commission say, with regard to education, that you must have a permanent advisory body to advise the Minister. That is the recommendation of a body of Irishmen, selected by an Irish Government and living in a free Ireland for 20 years, standing over Irish conditions, considering Irish conditions to-day and only turning aside to consider education. The Irish conditions of to-day require that every single one of them would consider education because there is not an aspect of our vocational, social or economic life that the education of our people does not affect. Doubt is thrown as to what bodies, with educational contacts, came to give evidence before the commission. All that information is given in the ap pendices. Six people from the Technical Education Association gave oral evidence, three people from the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland gave oral evidence, three people from the Irish National Teachers' Organisation gave oral evidence, three people from the Schoolmasters' Association gave oral evidence, and two or three people from the Irish Union of Assistant Mistresses of Secondary Schools gave oral evidence. The report says that:—
"The Commission took evidence from many organisations of persons engaged in education. In addition, many organisations of employers and workers in agriculture, industry and commerce, expressed to it their views on general education and on the present system of education for agriculture and industry. Education is a subject in which vocational bodies naturally have a deep interest arising from their desire to have suitably qualified entrants for, and high standards of skill in, the different vocations ... Secondary, vocational and agricultural schools all complain of the defect in general education of pupils coming to them from primary schools."
We are challenged with upsetting the authority and position of the Government on the one hand, and the fabric of democratic institutions on the other, because arising out of this massive widespread review on education we ask that effect be given to its very clear recommendations. There is nothing in the report that is not clear as to what the basis of representation on the advisory council, and as to what the functions of the advisory council, should be. The road is marked out perfectly clearly, the details to be worked out later. The report says:—
"The council should contain representatives of parents, whose interests in education are preponderant and of all the bodies directly concerned in the various branches of education, religious and secular—viz., the churches, universities, headmasters, teachers. We suggest that there should also be representatives of agriculture, industry and commerce, the educational needs of which are of vital concern to the country."
The Minister did not expect that this body that was set up to make such an exhaustive review of the country's interests generally would decide on the exact numbers. They were sensible in their report, and they left that to others to do. They left it either to the Government or to Parliament to do it. What are we asking? We are asking that this Parliament would select through the Committee of Selection a representative committee, that its members would sit down with the Minister and see how the bodies mentioned in that report could best be represented on a coucil of education for the purpose of advising the Minister. Will any reasonable person, knowing the urgency of letting us know, in the Taoiseach's own words, "where we are going in our educational system to-day," object to the proposal that Parliament should carefully examine these recommendations and see how they can be put into practical operation under the chairmanship of the Minister for Education with a view to indicating to the Government the lines on which legislation should be introduced?
I think the Minister and the Taoiseach are behaving disgracefully in a matter that is of serious importance. I said, when introducing the motion, that when we were talking about education we were treading on holy ground. We speak of our natural resources and of the necessity for developing them. What natural resources have we compared with the resources that we have in our men and women? Where is there any country in the world that has risen to greatness on its natural resources? Countries have risen to greatness because their men and women had great ideals and because great institutions were built up to foster these ideals. It was not an excess of material resources that made those countries great, but rather the greatness of their men and women. There is no Deputy but knows what resources we have if we take even the young people in school to-day and give them better and bigger ideals, if we co-ordinate their work and give them better opportunities, and if our educational system is more co-ordinated and better directed. The Minister has turned nothing but an absolutely materialistic outlook on this whole discussion. We are all agreed it is a fortunate thing that, in the world to-day, we have preserved the system of managerial control and that it is in the hands of the Churches. Everyone realises that we want good schools in order to house our children properly. Everyone realises the difficulty in getting schools built entirely on parish support. The Minister accepts the difficulty of finance in regard to the building of schools, but instead of admitting that it is his function to clear that difficulty out of the way and to help to solve it—to help to keep the principle of managerial control in the hands of the religious bodies on the one hand, and help to solve the financial problem on the other—he is making of the financial side a problem and difficulty in the way of doing anything.
We have, both in our primary schools and secondary schools particularly, workers of the most devoted and self-sacrificing kind who, in a personal way, are doing and have done extraordinary work. You have it from the report here and you get the information from various other sources that a lot of their work is not as successful as it might be through lack of co-ordination; that the primary, secondary and technical schools are completely divorced from one another and that co-ordination is left to some dark room in the Department of Education. We want to see the talent, ability and devotedness that are there in the schools built up in an institutional way into a council of education on top, so that we can see what educationalists can do, so that we will bring the real educationalists together and let them harmonise their work, exchange ideas, solve the difficulties which they see in a practical way and for which they alone can provide the best solutions, and make recommendations to the Minister.
We are asked not to press this motion. I intend to press this motion for what it means. It means that we have a recommendation given to us by a specially picked body of the most outstanding men and women of the country after 20 years' experience of freedom, given in relation to present Irish conditions and with a view to an Irish future. These recommendations are published for the benefit of the whole of the Irish people. They should be known to the whole of the Irish people. This Parliament must accept its responsibilities for controlling and advising the Executive. We cannot allow the Executive to steal away into dark rooms to handle problems connected with education, and with the mind and soul and technical capacity of men and women in the country. We cannot allow the Executive to go into dark rooms and handle and control these things in whatever way they want. I challenge this Parliament, every member of it and every Party in it, that they have an educational problem to solve. It cannot be solved by the officials of the Department. It cannot be solved by the Minister or the Executive. It can only be solved by everybody here speaking his mind and accepting his responsibilities.
I think that both the nature of that report and the nature of the examination that requires to be made before we can agree to the type and to the number of the Council of Education that can be set up are such that this Parliament should set up a representative committee to examine the matter and to make recommendations. I ask that they accept their responsibilities and set up a select committee representative of the whole House. The Government Party will have their full majority on that committee which, under the chairmanship of the Minister, will have to look at the details of that report which, so far as education is concerned, compacts itself into three or four pages. How on earth a body such as I speak of could do anything but throw some light on the situation and give some guidance to the Minister is more than I know. It is a travesty of government and an insult to Parliament that this debate should have been dealt with in the way it was dealt with by the Taoiseach, the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary.
