Deputy O.J. Flanagan has given notice that he wishes to raise on the Adjournment the subject matter of Question No. 59 on the Order Paper of Wednesday, 8th November, 1967.
Adjournment Debate. - Suitability of School Text Book.
Before I proceed with this matter on the Adjournment, I should like, as it is the first matter on the Adjournment for you, Sir, as Ceann Comhairle, to avail of the opportunity to wish you long life and happiness in the exalted position you now hold. I am very grateful for your permission to raise this question with the Minister for Education. I would ask the Minister to treat it as a serious matter and one of very grave concern to many parents.
Last week I asked the Minister for Education.
if he considers suitable for children of 13 the text book An Anthology of Short Stories used by his Department for Intermediate Certificate English, which contains on several pages certain words and phrases (details supplied); if he is aware that many parents object to the language contained in this book; what he proposes to do on the matter; and if he will take steps to have books used in schools with a better standard of language and expression which will meet with the approval of children and parents.
The Minister replied:
I consider the pieces in the new anthologies prescribed for the revised intermediate certificate programme in English to be suitable for the children concerned. The material prescribed in this programme was selected by a committee representative of all the secondary and vocational school associations and of my Department, and its judgment has been widely praised. As regards the three expressions supplied with the Deputy's question, I am satisfied that only people of very delicate sensibility indeed would object to the third of these expressions and I rely on the good sense of teachers to point out to their pupils that, while the other two expressions form an integral part of the text of what is one of the great short stories of the world, they should not include these expressions in their own vocabulary.
I am not satisfied with that reply and I feel that the Minister should have another look at this very important matter. There are very many short stories which could be used for children for reading and studying in which the language would be on a par with the standard of language used in the homes of decent children. It is typical of Irish parents that they see that their children use a very high standard of language. The language in one of these short stories is not suitable for children of 12 and 13 years and in this regard and also in regard to the impression conveyed in another short story entitled "The Trout", I think the Minister should have another look at the book. It is all very fine for Fianna Fáil Deputies to laugh at this but there are many parents who do not laugh at the use of language which is foreign to their homes.
I want to direct the attention of the Minister to "Guests of the Nation". If he reads this book, he will see on page 194 the following:
The capitalists pay the priests to tell us about the next world so that you won't notice what the bastards are up to in this.
This type of language might be expected in a low-class pitch and toss school but should not be contained in a book for young children, many of whom are in their first years of preparation for, perhaps, a religious life, or to take their place in whatever profession they are going to follow. That is an expression which could well be left out of this text book.
I would now direct attention to page 197 where the Minister will see the following:
Just as a man makes a home of a bleeding place, some bastards at headquarters thinks you're too cushy and shunts you off.
Again, I notice that this is a cause of laughter to the Fianna Fáil Party, but it is no cause of laughter to parents who are particular about the care and upbringing of their children, if language of this kind is used in the home. If it is to be taught in the schools, one would certainly not be astonished if it were used in the home. Maybe we are reaching the stage of modern teaching when everything is being modernised, but if this is the type of language to be used in our textbooks, I am sorry that we did not remain old-fashioned.
On page 198, one sees the expression "Ah, for Christ's sake". There are numerous parents who would not allow their children to use that expression. It would be wrong and improper. It is a wrong and improper phrase to use in a short story for children between the ages of 11 and 14.
Again on page 200, we find:
Give him his first. I don't mind. Poor bastard, we don't know what is happening to him now.
Further down on the same page, we see language which certainly is not what you would expect in a home in which children are well brought up: "Poor bugger". That kind of expression is an expression which would cause horror in any well-conducted and properly supervised home. Again, we see on page 202 "Then, by God ...". Teachers have to convey a proper understanding of Our Maker, of the Almighty, and children have been taught to use that expression only in prayer and with great reservation, but here it comes in as a common phrase in a story. Naturally, if it is to be used in the classroom in this fashion, it will be used in the playground, in the town and eventually in the home. You will have what I consider these vulgar and common expressions used in the everyday lives of children who take them from their schooldays.
I am not going to weary the House with the quotation from page 170 of the same book from the story, "The Trout", which I think is most suggestive. It is a paragraph which should not be put in any short story which is read in the schools. Perhaps the Minister does not see it. It is on page 170:
She sat up. Stephen was a hot lump of sleep, lazy thing. The Dark Walk would be full of little scraps of moon. She leaped up and looked out the window, and somehow it was not so lightsome now that she saw the dim mountains far away and the black firs against the breathing land and heard a dog say bark-bark. Quietly she lifted the ewer of water and climbed out the window and scuttled along the cool but cruel gravel down the maw of the tunnel.
Her pyjamas were very short so that when she splashed water, it wet her ankles. She peered into the tunnel. Something alive rustled inside there. She raced in, and up and down she raced, and flurried, and cried aloud, "Oh, gosh, I can't find it," and then at last she did. Kneeling down in the damp she put her hand into the slimy hole. When the body lashed, they were both mad with fright. But she gripped him and shoved him into the ewer and raced, with her teeth ground, out to the other end of the tunnel and down the steep paths to the river's edge.
That paragraph may be all right, but I think it is most suggestive. The Minister may tell me that this book has been approved by this committee he set up, of which the senior inspector of his Department was chairman and which included in its membership the chief inspector of the Secondary Branch, Rev. Fr. Veale of Gonzaga and Rev. Mother Enda of Eccles Street. But, with very great respect, it is the Minister himself who is responsible to this House, not Fr. Veale or Mother Enda or the other members of the committee. There is no reason why the Minister should endeavour to throw the blame for the publication of this book in our schools on Mother Enda or Fr. Veale. They are very distinguished educationists, and I would receive with admiration and sincerity any recommendation they make, but they are not responsible to this House. The Minister is and there is no reason why he should throw over his responsibility to any committee. The members of the committee only made a recommendation and expressed a view.
I respectfully ask the Minister one question: was it not possible to get, out of all the short stories written by all the great writers of our time, stories for our Intermediate Certificate English with more moderate language, stories that would not be as suggestive as those contained in this book, which would meet with the simplicity of children and homes and the requests of parents concerned about their children's upbringing? It is for parents to decide what is best for their own children. I know there are parents who view this book with the gravest concern because of the language contained in it.
This book is now in circulation and it is too late to have it altered. But I beg the Minister to take the necessary steps to see that in future the books made available for our school children will contain no suggestiveness, will be broadminded but will contain stories of an educational character, simply designed with a modest and, if possible, a well-motivated background and, for heaven's sake, not to allow profanity, not to allow the words "Chirst" and "By God" to be used as the normal language in our schools. I hope there will be a greater degree of examination of the type of book to be used in our schools from now on.
When I refer to this book, I speak as one who does not agree with it. There may be those who do agree with it. We all have our own views. We all say there is a time and place for vulgar language. But the school in the tender years of childhood is no place for vulgar language. It should be kept among vulgar people. If this standard of vulgar language is going to be used among boys and girls of tender age in our schools, I would ask the Minister to devote a little more of his time and energy to see to it that in future books of this kind will not be used, but only books which will meet with the approval of parents and which will have a high standard of decency.
At the outset I want to assure Deputy Flanagan that there is no necessity for him to exhort me to treat this question seriously. I am well aware of my responsibilities, and all the more so where the welfare and education of our children are concerned. Without being over-modest, I think I have proved that.
This position is that anyone who has read this story would not notice in any way the words quoted by Deputy Flanagan this evening. Reading the story, they fit into the context and are part and parcel of what I said on the last occasion was one of the finest short stories in the modern world. This book is an Anthology of Short Stories edited by Patricia Corr. She says in the introduction:
The modern short story, of which there are many fine examples in this anthology, is a private rather than a public art. It is an intimate communication between the writer and the individual reader. It has become a highly sophisticated art form whose techniques, though never rigid, can be analysed.
Further on she says:
The lyric poet makes direct and immediate contact with the mind and heart of his reader. Writing from his personal experience he touches our common humanity and evokes an immediate response from the receptive reader. With this consideration in mind it is easy to concede Frank O'Connor's claim. The short-story writer, both in his themes —the simple everyday happenings of life as he has experienced it—and in his manipulation of language, musical and sensuous in texture, comes close indeed to the lyric poet.
Then she concludes:
There is a common tendency among readers to cancel themselves out as they approach literature, to establish a kind of passive non-resistance to the written word. This attitude paralyses literature's maturing power. No reader is a nonentity, however narrow his experience of life. He is a unique individual, the product not only of his limited environment but also of the vast riches of national and supranational cultures. He should bring this full personality to life, and to life as it is reflected in literature.
I do not know whether Deputy Flanagan has read the whole of this story.
From cover to cover.
Mr. O'Malley
I presume he has, but certainly he must not have read the story from which he quoted the extract.
"The Trout"?
Mr. O'Malley
Yes.
Very suggestive. I did not like it.
Mr. O'Malley
The saying: Honi soit qui mal y pense was never so appropriate as it is tonight. Does the Deputy, if he has read the story, realise that it is his own vivid and excitable imagination——
No. Parents have written to me.
Mr. O'Malley
I would also point out to the Deputy that if he had read the story he would see this young girl is going into the tunnel to catch a trout and not to catch anything else. If these ideas which the Deputy is putting into Irish minds, which no doubt, as on the last occasion, will be widely published in tomorrow's papers, are all he can find in Seán Ó Faoláin's "The Trout", which has been described also as the finest story of Ó Faoláin, then I can only say "God help us", and it is a very lucky thing that Ó Faoláin and O'Connor cannot combine to write a story on the proceedings here tonight and on the last day. I know that Deputy Flanagan possibly has ambitions in another sphere and that perhaps he hopes one day to be leader of the Knights.
The Minister is——
Mr. O'Malley
I did not interrupt the Deputy.
The Minister, to conclude.
Mr. O'Malley
If that is so, I agree that Deputy Flanagan is quite entitled to aspire to such a great office, though anyone using the Catholic Church for his own material or other advancement makes me vomit. I think Our Divine Lord will have certain ideas Himself on these things, because if there was one thing about Our Divine Lord, it was that He could not tolerate hypocrisy in any form.
However, to get back to the Anthology of Short Stories, I should like to point out that in this selection there are, apart from Seán Ó Faoláin and Frank O'Connor, such authors as Ambrose Pierce, O. Henry, James Thurber, H.G. Wells, Saki, G.K. Chesterton, W. Somerset Maugham, Katherine Mansfield, V.S. Pritchett, William Golding, Daniel Corkery, Liam O'Flaherty, Michael McLaverty, Bryan MacMahon, Mary Lavin, Benedict Kiely, James Plunkett, Brendan Behan, and Brian Friel. I think that selection is a good one.
I should also like to point out to Deputy Flanagan that we did not, as he is evidently under the impression, confine these selections to Frank O'Connor's "Guests of the Nation," but also chose his "First Confession" and "The Majesty of the Law". The short story in question was, as I stated the last day, selected by a committee consisting in great majority of representatives of all managerial and teachers' associations of the secondary and vocational schools. The committee was comprised of persons distinguished for their knowledge of English literature and highly experienced in the teaching of it.
As to why the members decided to include this particular story, it is probable that the merits of the story as a piece of literature outweighed the few vulgar expressions introduced by the author into the dialogue, presumably in order the better to portray the character of the speaker. On the other hand, it may be the committee were thinking of their own duty to prepare young minds for the kind of world in which very shortly they would have to take their place, a world in which the very powerful media of communication made available as never before by modern science can, and undoubtedly will be used for ill as well as for good purposes.
These media also penetrate into the hearth and home. It is safe to say that five or ten years hence world television, to which nothing will be sacred, will be thrown open to us from one or many stations in the sky. It may have seemed to the committee that the responsible milieu of the classroom is, next to the home, the best place to prepare the pupils for what we must expect in a world of such open communication which is coming, if indeed it is not already upon us. In fairness to the committee, it should also be said that the words concerned, apart from their legal sense, do not carry, at least in Ireland, a connotation other than mild, vulgar, opprobrium. Curiously enough, if preceded by the adjective “poor”, they express sympathy. I think the Deputy will agree with that. In the south of Ireland, if one said: “John fell down a cliff, and the poor hoor, was killed”——
If he is a poor bastard or a poor hoor, he is still a bastard or a hoor.
Mr. O'Malley
If Deputy Flanagan were down in the south of Ireland at a by-election, pulled up at the side of the road and was told "John fell down a cliff and the poor hoor was killed"——
I would say: "Lord have mercy on him".
Mr. O'Malley
The Deputy would say rightly: "The Lord have mercy on him". He would not start slagging him for using that type of language. He would say: "The poor hoor, Lord have mercy on him."
I would not; I would leave out "poor hoor". I do not care for that type of language.
Mr. O'Malley
Let us come to my role as Minister for Education in this matter. The Minister for Education is, very properly, expected to consult the school managers and teachers through their associations on the texts which he has to prescribe for them. When the representatives appointed by these associations select a particular story or whatever it may be, the Minister must assume that they have taken fully and conscientiously into account the potential effect of their choice on the young people who have been entrusted to their care, with whom they are in daily or even hourly contact, whose moral education they are, next to the parents, best fitted to undertake and whose intellectual calibre and needs they understand better than anyone else. In these circumstances, it is not easy to see how the Minister or his Department could have rejected as an error of judgment the unanimous finding of a body of such very responsible and experienced persons. I was at a conference recently —I go to these places from time to time—and I saw there Time magazine. I do not know whether Deputy Flanagan would object to Time magazine being read by teenage girls.
Certainly not, but I would not have it read at school.
Mr. O'Malley
The reason I say this is that the type of language used there was far beyond anything which is contained in this anthology. However, I think the ordinary, reasonably-minded person appreciates the fact that we are doing a good service in the teaching of English literature to our children. We are insulating them to a certain extent, but, above all, anyone who has read this story would not have the slightest qualms of conscience about letting a child read it, it fits so aptly into the whole trend of the story. If the mentality of Deputy Flanagan is like that of the unfortunate girl who went into the tunnel to catch a trout, and not to catch anything else, the Lord have mercy on us all.
The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 15th November, 1967.