In fairness to the last speaker and to Deputy Ryan, I think the misconception which Deputy Carty appears to be labouring under is common amongst people who resent criticism of the policy for the revival of the Irish language. I thought Deputy Ryan was very clear, and I think he said he was against the method, not the language. In fact, he appeared to be very much in favour of the revival of the language. I think what he was trying to find out was whether the Minister shared his belief—and it is a very common and widely-held belief—about what has become known as compulsory Irish. That has been explained ad nauseam by other speakers time and again. The policy pursued for 40 years in relation to what has become known as compulsory Irish has practically driven the language out of existence. Certainly, it has driven it off the streets, out of the cinemas, buses, churches, out of the Dáil, and out of any public place, and in the Breac-Ghaeltacht and the Galltacht—and for other reasons in the Gaeltacht—it is rapidly dying out.
It is perfectly reasonable for a Deputy who is attached to the language and would like to see it revived, to ask a new Minister for Education to give his views on the whole matter and to ask him whether he shares his own concern about the obvious, gradual and progressive extinction of the Irish language as a spoken language. However, I am sure the Deputy will deal with the matter, but I think it is unfair of those who believe in compulsory Irish—and they have the right, if they want to—to misrepresent Deputies who have examined the whole question.
Over the years, I have dealt at great length and in detail with this Estimate. I do not propose to do that any more, certainly not in the foreseeable future, for the reason that I think it would be an act of supererogation on my part because there has been no appreciable change since the time I went into a detailed examination and analysis of the whole problem of the Department of Education and its policy in relation to the education of the children of the country.
The Minister happens to have the advantage—I suppose it could be called an advantage—of following one of the most colourless and inert Ministers for Education we have probably ever had. After the years of colourlessness and inertia of the previous Minister, he could, by making some infinitesimal progressive submission or proposal, quite readily and easily have outshone the Minister who went before him, Deputy Lynch.
If it were possible to act in another way, an obverse way, a complete reversal, the Minister appears to me to have done that. He is faced in that Department, with the exception of the Department of Industry and Commerce and the Department of Agriculture, with what is probably the most important Department in the State. On the success of the policy of the Minister's Department ultimately depends the whole prosperity of agriculture and industry, and the wellbeing of our whole society. In my view, in his opening statement, the Minister made no real attempt, no significant attempt, to deal with the many and great problems that still lie to him after the activities of successive Ministers over the years.
For many reasons I was not able to listen to the debate but I read all the speeches made by the different Deputies and I heard Deputy Ryan today. To me one of the few useful contributions appears to be that of Deputy Ryan. I wish he had gone on a little and developed his point—it may seem a small one, but it is a matter of large significance—in relation to the snobbery in schools. Our whole educational system is a class system in so far as it is a system for the higher echelons. All the Irish public schools and Universities are practically closed to the middle-income group families and certainly virtually closed to the lower income group families.
We are perpetuating a system of education here which will make certain that persons will remain close to their origins and in the same class throughout their lives and that the same will be true of their children. The carpenter's children will become carpenters; the doctor's children will become doctors; the labourer's children will become labourers. All that is grossly unfair. It is a complete negation of the ideals and aspirations of those who fought for the formation of the Republic in 1916 and of the Constitution which contains the ideal of cherishing all the children of the nation equally. The Minister has made no attempt whatever to deal with it.
Deputy Ryan is quite right in his remarks about uniformity. I derive a certain cynical amusement from a practice which is rampant throughout girls' and boys' secondary schools. There is an attempt to establish uniformity not only in clothes—which I would not mind so much, though I do object to the idea, which is silly and stupid—but also in the thinking of children. Education appears to be directed towards telling children the answers rather than asking them to reason things out for themselves. There seems to be the desire to foster in the minds of children an established attitude on thinking, on reasoning—an attitude of mind on practically everything. That has the effect of destroying the initiative of the child. It destroys the child's facility to think things out for himself.
It serves the end purpose of these schools to turn out young people with an accepted attitude on everything and, in particular, on their position in society. They accept the higher status and stratum of society to which they are lucky to belong—with all its great advantages, jobs, professions, facilities for making a lot of money and of being well paid. The average child leaving a secondary school and going on to University is quite happy that that state of society shall continue. He will not question it in practically any regard.
The absolute unanimity of thinking which eventually is achieved in these fields is in many ways quite frightening. It has given me a certain cynical amusement. One of the greatest criticisms levelled against the socialist is that he destroys initiative, individuality and insists on mass society. In fact, that is the very thing which critics of Socialism do themselves, starting with the uniforms in the schools. The unfortunate children must wear absurd uniforms right through school and up to the University stage. I speak of an attitude of mind which is universally reflected in this House—with exceptions—on every conceivable subject. I speak of the unthinking mind accepting everything that is laid down by the teacher and the professor.
The Soviet Union have a comparable system in many ways. They dedicate their educational institutions to the idea of the individual who accepts everything, who questions nothing. There appears to be no difference between the two sets of society which prostitute this most wonderful thing, the educational system, to the perpetuation of a particular system of society. I was particularly interested in Deputy Ryan's very brief reference to the very unfortunate perversion of our educational system through insistence on uniformity, whether in clothes or in whatever the child is taught.
Another interesting question which emerges from our educational system is that—I am arguing on the advantages of State intervention in these matters —with all the disadvantages which are there and which I am criticising in the State school system—in the primary system for which the State is absolutely and completely responsible—it is noticeable that the State insists on providing education for the total population up to the age of 14 years. It seems to me that in that part of our education which was left primarily to private enterprise—first of all, secondary education in schools and then the Universities—there has been a quite remarkable failure by these people to provide the necessary facilities for the proper education of children beyond the 14-plus age group. There has been failure in relation to the State's activities also.
I am not anxious nor do I intend to criticise the people who try to provide secondary education. I am asking the Minister to examine the position. He must agree that they have had 40 years to do it. They have probably done their very best in those 40 years to provide a secondary school education for all those children intellectually qualified to benefit from such education. They have made quite an outstanding failure of it, that is, relatively speaking. They may be satisfied with their efforts. We have been unable to establish a secondary school or a University educational system which will provide for all those children who require or who could benefit from such a scheme of things.
I believe that the handing over of secondary education to and attempting to allow private bodies to provide secondary education and University education has been a failure. It is understandable that it has been a failure. One of the main reasons for its failure is that these private bodies could not possibly be expected to find the money to provide all the buildings required to provide a fully-equipped secondary school arm within the educational system or, indeed, University buildings or equipment to provide University facilities which are required within this State. I do not say the State need necessarily intervene in all stages of secondary or University education but, until the Minister agrees to provide the money for the building of secondary schools in much the same way as he does for primary school buildings, these private bodies —let them try as hard as they appear to have tried—simply cannot provide education at a level or in a measure which will cater adequately for the needs of the children.
I was struck by the figures in the Minister's opening statement. They illustrate my point very well. The money spent on primary education is about £10,000,000; on secondary education, £2,500,000; and on University education, less than £1,000,000: that is, outside capital expenditure. It is quite clear that higher education is a matter of relative disinterest to the Minister and to the Department of Education. There was a time when there were tremendous demands on capital for projects such as the magnificent slum clearance achievements of successive Governments. Whether these demands justify a certain parsimony in relation to the spending of money on these different forms of education is another matter but that is no longer so. Road building and the other non-capital forming aspects of State spending no longer exist to the same extent as they did. The same amount of social capital has always been spent by different Governments and that money should now be made available to people who are anxious to build secondary schools and for the expansion of our universities.
We are assured all the time by the Government, and particularly by the Taoiseach, that there is no shortage of capital. We are buying jets and running them at a great cost and we are spending money in various parts of the country for every nationality under the sun for a great mass of industries which we hope will be successful. Surely the Minister must accept that our own children have a prior claim on any available capital? If it could be said that the building of roads and hospitals is not what one might call productive capital investment—I believe it is, but assuming it is not—surely he cannot argue or will not argue in that way in relation to investment in education?
In education we have a moral responsibility to every child gifted with a mind capable of coming to full bloom and full fruition under proper educational circumstances. We have a responsibility to give the child that education. A consideration which might operate with the Minister, and certainly would operate with his colleague, the Taoiseach, is that we should have the highest-trained, skilled technicians and technocrats who are indispensable now to the proper expansion of the industrial arm on the one side and the agricultural arm on the other side, so that whatever way the Minister looks at it, it seems to me it would be sound and productive investments to persuade the Government to canalise more money towards the secondary side of education and to the universities.
It seems to me, from the Minister's speech, that he is unbelievably complacent, in the light of things as they are. There are very serious problems such as the extension of the school leaving age from 14 to 15. In Britain they are thinking of extending it from 15 to 16 and, as Deputy Dillon pointed out, there are magnificent opportunities available for higher education in Britain and Northern Ireland. It seems to me that to turn out such a high percentage of our children with, at best, the primary school certificate, and, at worst, relatively illiterate, is a very poor preparation for life for the average child. It appals me to think of a child being asked to go out to try to earn its living at the age of 14 with only the primary school certificate. It is quite appalling to think that my children should be asked to do that. I sincerely hope they will never have to do it. But that is not good enough.
I am not satisfied that I am all right or that my children will be all right. Every child in the State has exactly the same rights and should be given the opportunity to go to a vocational school and get his training there, not simply to join up, as they all do enthusiastically at the beginning of the season, and then drift away to get 30/- a week as a petrol pump attendant or drift into some dead-end occupation. I think that the opportunity for vocational education should be afforded on the one hand, and on the other, the opportunity of staying at school until the age of 15, going later into secondary school with ultimately the prospect of going to the University. That seems to be the only rational and intelligent system for any society to adopt and it is the system suggested by Deputy Dillon.
I should like to take up the matter with Deputy Dillon in this way. It seems to me that he, as Leader of the Opposition, had a certain responsibility to pursue this proposition further than he did. It is not good enough either for him or the Minister to utter the same empty platitudes. I suggest that it is an empty platitude to say that every child should have an equal opportunity in education but that we cannot afford it. Neither the Government, the Minister nor the Leader of the Opposition should rest at that. It is not as if we were a new country adopting a novel idea. We have had our own Government for 40 years and we were in existence for centuries before that.
We have been 40 years in control of our own affairs and we adopted a particular social and economic system which has created many of the problems facing the Minister today. It is not good enough for the Minister, the Government or the Leader of the Opposition to say: "Well, when our ship comes in we shall do all these wonderful things." I think that is humbug and refusing to face the situation. The Minister for Education and Deputy Dillon know full well that if we wait for a month of Sundays, if we waited another 40 years, we would still be sitting here and the Minister— I hope he will be in the House then— and Deputy Dillon will be using the same empty platitudinous remarks.
It all boils down to the one fact, that if we are sincere about our professions that every child has the same rights, we must say that the economic system we have operated for 40 years has failed to provide us with the money to do these things and we must say, as a distinguished predecessor of the Minister once said: "If we cannot provide the money within the system, then we are prepared to go outside the system." In relation to this argument, the Minister for Education is displaced by the Minister for Social Welfare who says: "We should like to give better old age pensions but the time is not yet ripe." He is displaced by the Minister for Health who says: We should like to give the same standard of health services to everybody but we have not got the money." In turn, he is displaced by others. By the present processes, following the economic systems accepted by both sides of the House, these will continue to be apparently unattainable ideals.
I am not suggesting that they are not attainable; other countries have achieved these standards. The heirs and successors of those who fought in 1916 have failed to realise these ideals. There are other countries who, under less dramatic circumstances, set out to achieve these objectives and achieved them. There is every kind of country. There is the highly industrialised country like Great Britain. Admittedly, she had to pillage an Empire in order to subsidise the expansion of her welfare society, but there is Sweden, half industrialised and half agricultural; there is Denmark, there are Norway, Switzerland, New Zealand—every kind of country. Therefore, there is no use in saying we are a poor agricultural society, that we cannot afford it. We could afford it if we set about it in the right way. There is nothing wrong with the country or the people; it is the economic system we have to try to make work that is wrong. People who have dedicated themselves to trying to make the private capitalist system work have failed. That will not enable the Minister to make the substantial changes which are required in our educational system if every child is to get a fair crack of the whip. I am sorry I used that phrase, because I want to deal with that question later.
The Minister is not dealing adequately with these problems. There is the question of raising the school-leaving age and also the question of the size of classes. Some of the classes are small, admittedly, largely due, unfortunately, to emigration. In some of the rural schools, the classes are small, but there are city schools in which there are 60 or 70 in a class. In those circumstances, although I disapprove strongly of corporal punishment, he must have a cane if he is to try to keep order. It is completely outrageous that he should be asked to teach a class of that size. The best he can do is to keep order; he cannot be a teacher.
In this connection, the Minister did make the easy gesture of allowing married women teachers to start teaching again. That helped a little, but, according to the Minister's figures, it increased the numbers to only a very small extent. Taking into consideration the fact that the numbers in the primary schools have gone up, it is very debatable whether there is any nett gain in the teacher-pupil ratio. It is obvious that if the Minister is to achieve the objectives set for him—I would imagine he would be interested in and would be influenced by the findings of the Commission on Emigration which recommended that 40 is the optimum number of teacher-pupil proportions—he has a number of very big tasks ahead. He does not seem to have that in view in his Estimate speech. I do not see any substantial progress being planned towards reducing the very high figures for many classes. He will have to recruit very many more teachers and also provide greatly improved accommodation in many schools. He is doing neither of these things.
The school building programme is a little more than marking time. The slow-building rate of the Board of Works is inexplicable and should not be tolerated by the Minister, in view of the fact that he makes money available each year in excess of that spent by the Board of Works. How long does he intend to tolerate that position? Is it not about time he told them to get on with the work or established in his own Department a school-building section much on the lines of the Department of Health sanatoria building section which succeeded in building the necessary sanatorium accommodation?
I criticised the secondary school and University building rates. I believe the fault lies with the Board of Works in this matter and unless some progress can be made, by persuasion, with the Board of Works, he would be justified in transferring the task of school building to his own Department but he would have to act in a more dynamic way than he has in relation to other matters to ensure that the building rate is greatly increased. There are between 800 and 1,000 dilapidated schools but the annual building rate is a little over 100. There are children who will continue and will probably complete their education in these derelict schools.
The Minister is fortunate in that as far as the building trade is concerned, the slum clearance drive and the hospital building programme are coming to a standstill. Consequently, he can call on unlimited resources, building technicians, skilled craftsmen of all kinds, architects, and various other persons in order to proceed with the school building programme at the rate at which it should be going, if he is serious about providing better schools for our children.
I should like to draw the Minister's attention to another question to which he did not seem to refer at all in his speech, that is, the question of untrained teachers. Why does he stand over employing untrained teachers in our schools. As a doctor, he would not tolerate an unqualified man looking after his nearest and dearest, if they fell ill. That applies equally to other professions, architecture and engineering. Why should untrained teachers be tolerated? There are historical reasons why they are there, but why does the Minister not take a decision about it? Why does he not say: "Within a certain time, you must be qualified or you must cease teaching." Or he could accept those who have been teaching for 10 or 15 years—any figure he chooses to establish—as teachers capable of teaching and competent to teach children, and from there on accept no untrained teachers in the schools.
Is the Minister really satisfied with untrained teachers? Is an untrained teacher as competent to teach children as a trained teacher? Surely the answer is "No". If they were as competent, why have trained teachers? Is it not about time this question was settled? There is a very high proportion of untrained teachers and whatever the number is, no child should go through its educational career burdened not only with overcrowded classes and the difficulties associated with many of these dilapidated schools but with being taught by a person who has not been properly trained. It is a problem which will not be answered by sitting and looking at it.
The Irish language was mentioned. I was rather sorry to see the extent to which it dominated the debate, because it allowed Deputies, who should concern themselves with important issues such as the school-leaving age, the school-building programme, the teacher-pupil ratio, the provision of better education facilities for the children of the poor or less wealthy parents, to evade the discussion of those problems. I have very little to say about the language. We discussed it at considerable length on a motion a little while back. The Minister then referred us to a Commission which is sitting and which, we hope, will report soon and tell us what their findings are.
I believe, however, that with the best will in the world and no matter what methods are used, the likelihood of the Irish language becoming the spoken language of the people is irretrievably lost. I do not think there is any hope of reviving it as the spoken language of the country, no matter who tries or how they try. Probably the best hope is to try to retain the language to the extent we can in the Gaeltacht areas and probably expand from the Gaeltacht.
There is no reason why we should not face the facts. If we dodge the facts, we are quite incapable of analysing any situation. I hope the Taoiseach will have the courage to find out as efficiently as he can the present position in terms of figures as to the number of nominal speakers left in the country. I say "nominal" because we all know that none of us speaks the language to any extent. I speak it when I go to the Gaeltacht, but never outside it. The late Deputy Mongan spoke the language constantly and so does Deputy Ó Briain. One can count on the fingers of one's hands the number of Deputies who feel they can conduct business in Irish in this House. The same can be seen in relation to every other aspect of our society—the cinema, the church and sporting features. You have people like Michael O'Hehir who might broadcast in Irish, but there is little or no use of the language outside the Gaeltacht areas. I do not mind what the Taoiseach will find. These are the facts as we all know them.
This is due to the policy followed over the years, the policy which has become known as the compulsory Irish policy. It seems to me that there are many reasons for this. I believe one of the most important reasons is economic. The fact that the average parent knows his child will likely have to emigrate to a country in which the language is not of any use conditions his mind. The attitude is that one has very little time in which to learn anything at school and the time should not be spent on the language. There is the difficulty about teaching a language that is not spoken in the home. Then you have the tremendous impact of television, the radio, the cinema and tourism. All our newspapers, including the Dublin newspapers, are written practically completely in English, a commonsense realisation of the facts as they are. With the coming closer together of the nations, with the ending of the introverted nationalism which is becoming wonderfully prevalent throughout the world, the attempts by nations to retire into themselves will become less and less practical and less and less desirable.
I think that to a certain extent there is a considerable amount of disillusionment. There was a certain preference given because of the love for the language. Sometimes it was real and sometimes it was imaginary but it all contributed towards creating the apathy there is at present. There was some absurd propaganda. The wearing of kilts was advocated, a suggestion which would be regarded as silly to-day. Who would question the nationality, the Irishness or the essential patriotism of people like Deputy Seán MacEoin, Deputy Jack Costello, on the one hand, or Deputy Lemass, the Taoiseach, and Deputy Traynor, the Minister for Justice, on the other.
These are half-baked arguments, ill-thought out arguments which had no validity and the people saw that. The American is as American as he can ever be and he speaks English and so are the Canadians, the New Zealanders, the Australians. They speak what has now become a lingua franca, English. They are no less nationalist in their outlook. If you question them, they are no less independent. They believe in their countries. You had these silly half-baked arguments. There was the power of propaganda and there was probably a negligible amount of promotion arising out of the use of the language as a lever among political friends. All these things contributed to a greater or lesser degree. The net result—and many people regret it very much—is this hostility and apathy.
I regret it in many ways because Irish is a beautiful language. I think it is as beautiful as Italian or French. It gives me great pleasure to hear it and speak it and I should feel sad to see it go. I do not know whether it is a rational thing to worry about such a matter as losing a language. After all, language is merely a means of communication. The older Deputies will probably find it hard to accept that it can never again become what it was to many—I quite appreciate their sympathy—the symbol of resistance, the Cross of Lorraine 40 years ago. It means nothing in those terms to the young children growing up to-day.
It is remarkable how a generation can change the whole attitude of mind of people. I was interested to see in connection with a certain proposed trial that Ben Gurion was trying to bring back to the young Jewish children the memory of the behaviour of the Nazis in Germany who slaughtered millions of Jews. It amazed me that it should be necessary to try to bring back to the minds of growing young children the horrors of anti-Semitism and Nazi atrocities during the war period and it must be difficult for an adult Jew who has been through it all, who has seen it happen and knows all about it in its worst details to understand it.
It must be hard on the older generation to whom the language was a beautiful thing and a symbol of their own personal courage in resisting. Seeing that the language no longer conveys that symbolism to children must be both upsetting and disturbing. Again, it must be appreciated, and the fact must be faced, that no matter how you may try to popularise the language, you will never be able to popularise it in that particular way.
I do not subscribe to Deputy Dillon's view that the language should become an instrument in the formation of an aristocracy for higher education and that, because people learn the language and speak it, they should be granted higher education. That is a superb example of completely superficial thinking by Deputy Dillon. First of all, he says we cannot afford to provide higher education for all our children and, in the next breath, he says that, in order to revive the language, facility in it should be made a condition of higher education. If everybody learns to speak the language, Deputy Dillon will find himself faced with the problem of providing higher education for all. If that cannot be done now, how does he propose to do it then?
He is not greatly interested in the language as a spoken language. He probably shares my view that it can never be made the spoken language but he nevertheless produces again this half-baked idea of creating an intellectual aristocracy of Irish speakers. The absurdity is patently obvious. A linguist is someone who is able to learn languages. Why should a potentially brilliant mathematician, scientist, agricultural technologist, classical scholar, or philosopher be denied higher education because he cannot learn the Irish language? This is an attempt to create yet another privilege like the privilege in relation to jobs in the Civil Service, advancement in the Civil Service, and so on.
This is the sort of thing that creates nothing but hostility. There are some who can learn languages easily. I happen to be one of them. What credit is it to me if I did learn Irish? Why should I be privileged as against others who are not gifted in the same way? I am an appalling mathematician; I know little or nothing about science; I am not a philosopher; I could never become a classical scholar. Why should others be victimised and I be privileged because of some God-given gift? I do not believe Deputy Dillon has given this matter any really serious thought. If his idea worked, everybody would learn the language, everybody who could learn languages, and he would be faced with providing them all with higher education. Yet, he says now we cannot afford higher education.
Deputy Dillon baulks at the same fence at which the Minister and the Government baulk. Whether it is the treatment of old people, better health services, better allowances to the unemployed, the building of more schools quickly, the provision of grants for secondary schools and more grants for universities, we face the same situation. Under the economic system we have, we have failed to do any or all these things and, so long as we adhere to the present system, we shall still get the same answers to the same question in another ten, 20, 30 or 40 years. The country cannot afford it. There is both dishonesty and hypocrisy in this refusal by both sides of this House to face facts in relation to every Estimate we consider here. Fabulous sums of money are poured out by the Department of Industry and Commerce and we have no reason to believe that these sums will provide us with the resources we need to give our people even a modicum of social justice in matters such as education, health and old age.
The Minister is a new Minister. He is also a medical doctor. I should like to have his views on a matter which was referred to by Deputy Coogan and Deputy Lindsay. I was both amazed and consoled to discover that there was even one other member of this House who takes the view I take in relation to corporal punishment. I wonder does the Minister share my view? I am, of course, absolutely opposed to corporal punishment, either in the school or in the home. It is an outrageous practice. From a medical point of view and as Minister for Education, would the Minister not agree that a teacher who is asked to handle 60 or 70 children at a time has great difficulty in keeping order? I suppose the justification for corporal punishment is that such a teacher could not keep order, unless allowed to beat the children.
I cannot understand the rationale of beating children. We assume we are dealing with rational children. The tragedy is that in many cases we are not dealing with rational children because there are so many maladjusted children, backward children, mentally defective children. Children who are the products of broken homes are inevitably maladjusted. Those broken homes may be due to emigration. The fathers are away. The Minister must know that creates serious emotional problems for the children. There are the children from the homes of quarrelling parents. There are the children from the homes, but fortunately much fewer nowadays, of drunken parents. Such children are inevitably emotionally disturbed. That has been shown pretty convincingly as a result of certain investigations in Sweden.
The emotionally disturbed child, the recalcitrant child and the maladjusted child is invariably the product of a broken home or a disturbed domestic and family life. The reaction is for the child to misbehave in school, to get into trouble. Then it is beaten. That is akin to the old practice in Bedlam of flogging mental patients. It cannot possibly put the illness right. It will not unite the parents. It will not remove the cause of the child's maladjustment. One is beating a symptom; one is not dealing with the cause. Consequently, it is both unjust and unfair. There are not sufficient psychiatrists to care for all the children needing their attention. There are not enough hospitals to care for all our mental defectives.
The teacher is in the position of having to try to recognise, and it is very often very difficult to recognise, the maladjusted or the mentally retarded child. That is a much higher grade child than the mentally defective child. But there are those borderline cases which are impossible to sort out, certainly by the average doctor. It needs a trained psychiatrist to decide why a particular child is behaving in a bad way. It seems to me very wrong indeed that these sick children—and they are essentially sick children— should be beaten, and that is what happens in our schools. The teacher does not know any better. He may not recognise that child. Even a doctor who is not a specialist may not recognise that child. The simplest remedy is to beat it into silence.
If it were a case of a mentally defective or maladjusted adult or a recalcitrant adult, I am sure nobody would suggest such a person should be beaten. But why do we think it will help a child? Of course, it does not help a child. It just pushes the repression deeper and deeper, in which case you end up by making the child's case much worse than it was. The child needs understanding; it needs affection and an intact home. I know we cannot give it the last-named, but certainly we do not help it by beating it. These children, for one reason or another, over which none of us has any direct control, become recalcitrant, difficult and hard to handle. Our solution to that in the majority of cases, except where you get a very understanding teacher who sees the child's problem, is this business of beating the child.
It is no good for the Minister to say that children are not beaten except for disciplinary purposes. In many of our schools, the children are beaten—to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the teacher—for misbehaving themselves in any way at all. So long as the power to beat is there, there will be abuse of that power and it is the abuse of that power I am particularly concerned with, although, as I say, I am totally opposed to corporal punishment in any form. The Minister, as a medical person, must understand to some extent as well as I do myself the real problems which are created by large classes with a difficult child.
The next point in this matter of corporal punishment which I cannot understand is this. The Minister must understand that the rational child will respond to a reasoned explanation. I assume that the Minister accepts that point of view. If the child does not accept a rational explanation for a particular point of view, then the child is irrational, abnormal, is, in a way, a psychopath. But there is no doubt that the child cannot be put right by beating it. If the child does respond to rational treatment, to an explanation as to why it should do a particular thing and why it should not do another thing, why it upsets other people if it behaves badly, then there is no reason in the world why such a child cannot be taught to behave itself.
This is not an original suggestion. I am not asking the Minister to plough any novel furrow in this regard. This idea of not beating children is widely accepted in many countries of the world, countries which have no higher rate of juvenile delinquency than we have here. There are many schools which are successfully run without ever using a stick, cane or strap of any kind. Given that the children are not beaten by their parents and that you have reasonablysized classes of children, all properly examined to see they are not maladjusted or mentally retarded, given a normal classroom of rational children, the intelligent teacher can handle those children right from the time they come into his hands without ever laying a finger on them. That has been proven. That is not an experimental thing. It is accepted by educationists in many countries. What a perfect relationship, what a much finer, much better and much healthier relationship there is in that teacher-to-pupil attitude than this one built up on the use of the stick, on fear dominating the classroom !
The Minister would be well advised to think in a cool, detached way about this thing. It is about time we started to catch up with the rest of the world in some of these matters, especially when it will not cost the Government any money. We can change this attitude to corporal punishment in our schools without asking the Taoiseach to part with any of the many millions to which he tells us he had ready access for any project, other than one of social advancement of any kind. I would ask the Minister to think about this whole question again. I cannot see how there can be any justification for a grown-up hitting a child, and that is what it amounts to. The children are completely in our power. We can do anything with them. We can beat them to death if we want to, because they cannot hit back. Why is it that we should do such a shameful thing as to hit a child? The teacher is in loco parentis exercising indirect parental control. That a grown-up should hit a child is an extraordinary thing. It is accepted that a big person should not hit a little person. Yet in many of our schools throughout the country grown-ups are perpetually hitting little children.
This appears to be an unimportant thing, a trivial thing, but, in my view, it tends to condition to a considerable extent the relationship between the child and the grown-up. One of the first things the child learns is to become deceitful, to be not found out, and the relationship between the adult and the child is broken down. The adult becomes an enemy who must not find out what in fact the child is doing. That creates the deceitful child. That is, unfortunately, only too true with too many children: the docile poor infants we sometimes used to see sitting around, clean, beautiful and angelic looking. The fact, of course, was they were merely playing a part, saying to themselves: "This is the kind of little humbug these people seem to like and that is the way I will behave." But once your back is turned, they behave like the natural little children they are. That seems to me to be part of the essential relationship of hostility which is created immediately the adult lays his hands on a child.
It is an outrageous thing that a big person should hit a little person, but that an adult should hit a child is one of the things that to me have always been completely inexplicable. It is based on the idea that the child is irrational and will not respond to thoughtful, though admittedly it must be patient, argument. I am prepared to stand here and you are very kindly prepared to sit and listen to me while I try to bring forward these arguments at various times, on various Estimates, and in various instances, and I am prepared to sit here and listen to those arguments being answered. We are prepared to accept this system of rational argument in our dealings with one another; why can we not accept the same attitude in relation to the treatment of children?
The teachers' case that it is due to large classes is no answer, because it is our fault that the classes are as big as they are, and that is a simple matter to remedy. Therefore I would ask the Minister to think about this. I know he is a gentle, kind-hearted person, irrespective of all the hard things I have said about him, and when he gives it a little thought he will tend to think there is a case for treating children in a civilised, humane way. If that is done they will respond in the most wonderful way in the world. I have seen it happen in many cases and it has happened in many schools.
The main reason I stood up to speak in this debate was that the Minister did not at all mention something I expected he would have mentioned, something about which I have been patiently withholding questions from him for many weeks, and that is in relation to the extension of the scholarship schemes. I understand, in relation to a debate we had here some time ago in regard to the extension of scholarships to secondary schools and Universities, that the Minister gave an undertaking—it sounded very rosy at the time—promising that. I think it was the present Minister was concerned, not his predecessor. I asked him a question a little while ago about that and he appeared to give me the impression that we would get an announcement about a substantial expansion in relation to the provision of scholarships for children to secondary schools and to Universities. That was a motion which was agreed to by this House and it was accepted unanimously.
I know he has thrown a pittance to the Gaeltacht and that there are a few more children there who will get an education that they would not otherwise get, but to me it does not seem to be facing up to the problem of the segregation of the wealthy, the not-so-wealthy and the poor, in our educational system. It is merely the Minister trying to inject a few more native speakers into the Galltacht and the Breac-Ghalltacht in order to resuscitate the dying language. That seems to be his main purpose and it is that attitude of mind which I resent so much—the fact that he gave us this undertaking that there was to be an expansion in scholarship opportunities and that he has not brought that about, and secondly that he should allocate these only to Gaeltacht areas.
I do not want it to be said that I am opposed to expanding the opportunities for children in Gaeltacht areas for secondary and University education. I welcome those opportunities with open arms and the more we get them in the Gaeltacht and along the Western seaboard the more I like it, but again I am a stickler for this business of equality of opportunity. I do not want any particular section of the Irish people, whether they be doctors, industrialists, or whoever they may be, to have a privilege that others have not got. I just want equality of opportunity. I know I have been misrepresented on this, but if some people have been born in a particular part of the country I do not see why that should give them privileges over other members of our society. If a person happens to be born in one particular part rather than another, I do not see why that should give him a privilege be it in educational or health services. I resent this privilege in our educational system for the children of wealthy parents—the children who through no effort of their own are given a higher education.
When it is suggested, as I suggest, that we should have a welfare society in this country we are told that would undermine initiative, destroy independence and all that kind of rubbish. If I can afford to send my children, no matter what kind of dunderheads they may be, to a secondary school or a University, that is no credit to the children. It just happens that I can afford to do it. Only people who are intellectually competent to assimilate the education they get in Universities or secondary schools should go there. If my child is fit to be a doctor he should be a doctor; if he is fit to be a carpenter he should be a carpenter.
This system is merely a retention of the old "son of the manse" principle, which the whole revolution was meant to change, but instead of that we have established it more rigidly than the British. The British have scrapped all that idea of privilege in education, privilege in health services and in other things. They are the people who started this, the Tories, the Conservatives, and we are holding on to this out-dated, out-moded idea long after they have scrapped it for their own people.
It is quite obvious that there is privilege in our educational system. That it should be so has always been a matter of wonder to me when I listen to Deputies talk from time to time about the problem of Partition. There are many difficulties in the solution of the problem of Partition but I think one of the most important will be the question of educational facilities, and also the question of social services, but particularly the question of education. No intelligent Unionist in Northern Ireland will come into our society as it is at present organised. The average labourer in the dockyards in Belfast would be a damned fool to accept participation in our society as now organised—that is the intelligent Unionist and I am quite happy that the intelligent Nationalist would be equally determined not to come into our society and accept the second class citizenship which we allocate to the less wealthy and the poor in our society in matters relating to education. Taken with old age pensions and discrimination in health services these are likely to be important barriers against the solution of Partition.
One hears that the objective is that everybody will have the same opportunity in regard to education but that we cannot afford it now. That is hyprocisy. That is the real partition between our two parts of the country, —absence of equal opportunity, better health services, and a better standard of education. These are the things that are going to make Partition insoluble so long as they continue to be there, and not loyalty to monarchs and absurd ideas of that kind. There are perfectly good, reasonable explanations, because we have mis-handled the State over the last 40 years, why the thoughtful parent should say: "No, thank you. Bad and all as it is here, and it is bad enough in certain respects, it is better in regard to very important aspects of our lives."
As long as the Ministers for Health, for Social Welfare, for Finance and Education continue to operate their lackadaisical policy of complacency and inertia in relation to their various Departments, then I think the Taoiseach's present policy of saying nothing about Partition is a rational and reasonable one, and very sensible, because there is nothing useful he can say about it until these very important issues in relation to the problems I have raised here in regard to education and other matters have been dealt with. I regret to say that I have no reason to believe that the present Minister is fully appreciative of the great problems that he has in his Department, and even more I regret the fact that he appears to be completely unappreciative of the tremendous opportunities he has while he acts as a Minister for Education in a society such as ours.
