asked the Minister for Education whether he will consider providing a Rural Reader similar to Baldwin's Rural Reader for the national schools, which would impart the elements of agricultural husbandry to pupils in rural national schools.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Provision of Rural Reader in National Schools.
78.
The long established practice in the matter of providing text books for national schools is that individual publishing companies prepare the draft texts. My Department's function is confined to ensuring that only those text books regarded as suitable are sanctioned for use.
I might add that the list of books approved for National Schools includes one rural reader and that the majority of the school readers on that list include reference to matters relating to rural life and to agricultural husbandry.
Surely in the absence of adequate rural readers it should be the Minister's function to take the initiative. Is he aware that Baldwin's Rural Reader was revised and brought up to date at the instance of the Minister for Agriculture and is available in that Department and requires only editing to get it published? In the absence of some initiative on the part of the Minister for Agriculture it is not likely that any publisher would publish it to compete with some inadequate publication of their own.
There is a rural reader in use and, generally in practice, the teachers are permitted to select the reader. The one mentioned by the Deputy, while it may be all right from the point of view of the Minister for Agriculture would not be very attractive to school children. It does not contain any poems and would, perhaps, make tedious reading because it is mostly about crops and manures. It may be satisfactory from the point of view of the Minister for Agriculture but the Minister for Education would not regard it as very attractive.
Would the Minister for Education not consider having it suitably edited with a view to incorporating the poems and literature essential to the rural reader and let the joint exertions of the Departments of Education and Agriculture adduce the perfect balance between literature, poetry and practical considerations for the better education of rural youth?
Is the Minister aware that the Tánaiste used to be a poet of a kind? He might be able to help out.
Never an agricultural one.
Would the Minister consider the practicability of having available a text edited so as to make it suitable according to his canons for rural schools?
The practice is to have the texts prepared by publishing firms and sanctioned as to their suitability by the Department of Education. I shall have the matter considered and see if the Baldwin Reader can be made a little more acceptable.
There was a new version of it in the Department of Agriculture.
It contains lessons about crops, animals, manures and nothing else.
That is rural husbandry.
Yes, but not very attractive to school children.
The Minister can put in the poems.