Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 7 Feb 1968

Vol. 232 No. 4

Committee on Finance. - Vote 27—Office of the Minister for Education (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:

That a supplementary sum not exceeding £10 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1968, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Minister for Education (including Institutions of Science and Art), for certain Miscellaneous Educational and Cultural Services, and for payment of sundry Grants-in-Aid.

—(Minister for Education).

Mr. Gilhawley

When the House adjourned last night, I was dealing with the question of retarded children, children slow to learn, and I pointed out that the present position in respect of the education of those children is not up to date. Teachers in national schools have not an opportunity of giving individual attention to those children because otherwise they would have to neglect or slow down the children who are advanced. I also suggested that in future a special school might be erected in each parish, and that retarded children should be taught there by a specially trained teacher. I think slow-learning children would make much more progress and that the children in the ordinary national school would also do the same. The importance of the primary school in laying the true foundation for all further education cannot be overstressed. This true education foundation is most important for post-primary education. A child who does not get a good foundation in the national school will be slow to learn in post-primary school, whether it be secondary or technical.

We know now that primary education is no longer sufficient if young people are to play a significant role in the world of today and tomorrow. Primary education is no longer sufficient if we aspire to enter the Common Market. With that in mind, and the importance of primary schools, I revert to the substandard schools. Children cannot be properly taught in a national school if it is not a proper building, if it has not proper sanitary and heating facilities and if its surroundings are not pleasant. In some of the substandard schools we have, we know the surroundings are anything but conducive to good teaching.

I would like to put on record that I support fully the INTO stand on, and their attitude towards, some of these substandard schools. I taught in one of those schools some time ago and the conditions there were a disgrace to any civilised country. There were dry closets which were cleaned only once a year and sometimes once every two years. I often saw the filth and dirt being taken in to the floor of the school. Such a position should not obtain in any civilised country. In this respect I have nothing but praise for the present Minister who has to cope with the accumulated neglect of school buildings over many years. I consider he is doing a fine job on this and I would like sincerely to wish him success in speeding up the eradication of all those substandard schools. I know he is a man of action, but the job is very big, and nobody can expect that it will be remedied overnight.

Before leaving the subject of national schools, I should like to mention equipment. The equipment in most rural national schools is substandard also. It is difficult to know just where to lay the blame. I have taught in a school where the map of the world was at least 50 years old. We know that the names of countries and also the names of towns in Europe have changed but Petrograd is still to be seen on some of those old maps of the world. It is difficult for a teacher to teach geography with such equipment. I do not know, as I say, where the blame lies. It is not the duty of the teacher to purchase this equipment. I would suggest to the Minister that through his inspectors, he should have first-hand information on each school and that where this type of map is to be found, it should be removed and replaced by a new map.

I would also like to refer to wall charts. The Department of Education should think this one out and supply suitable wall charts. There are charts supplied to the junior division but in the senior division, the only ones I have seen are those issued by the Shell Oil Company, which are very informative indeed. They are charts of birds, fish and so on.

There is another matter I should like to refer to in respect of national schools, that is, the system of inspection. I know the system was altered in the proper direction some years ago but we still have inspectors who do not appreciate that when they come into a school, their role should be that of adviser and helper rather than that of a critic. I am sorry to say—I am sure the Minister would wish to hear this— that I have had many complaints about a particular inspector who approaches the examination of children with the idea of sticking them. I have had very pleasant associations with the Department of Education, with the officials and inspectors, all my life and I have found that inspectors will never stick a child. If they see that a child is stuck, they will alter the question and bring it around so that the child will never get the impression that he is stuck. However, this particular inspector appears to take a delight in sticking a child and in turning around to the teacher— which I think is a cardinal error—and asking: "Did you not teach him this?" That type of inspection should not be allowed.

The same man is fond of giving six months' notice here and there, where there does not appear to be any need for it at all. I have heard many other complaints about him. For instance, I have heard that his Irish is such that the children do not understand it. When he asks a child a question, the child does not know what he is being asked. The teacher has to repeat the question and then the child will answer. The role of an inspector should be that of an adviser and helper rather than that of a critic. In particular, criticism should never be made of a teacher in front of the children. I suggest to the Minister that occasionally a circular might be issued to inspectors on the subject of their approach in examining children in national and other schools.

The curriculum has not changed for many years. It is much the same as it has been since the foundation of the State. Certainly it is not attractive. I suggest to the Minister that he might have the curriculum examined to see if a more attractive one can be drawn up.

I wish to compliment the Minister on the withdrawal of the primary school certificate. It served no useful purpose. Down through the years, the INTO asked for its withdrawal and this Minister for Education has had the courage to do so. He is to be complimented on putting an end to this certificate examination and on its replacement by a system of record cards. I think few educationalists will regret the passing of that certificate. It merely tended to cram the children and to neglect a broader education.

The filling of the record cards should not be taken lightly. It gives new professional responsibilities to the teachers, especially in principal teacher schools. Their integrity as a professional body is being put to the test. I hope and I expect that a truthful assessment of each child's work will be available to the parents and to the post-primary education authorities. I have little doubt that those record cards will be a success and that they will be filled in conscientiously and truthfully.

Passing on now to secondary education and post-primary education, I should like to say that when the Minister spoke about free transport for children, most people thought he was a visionary. The high degree of success of the scheme, in such a short time, is almost incredible. The Minister showed he was not a visionary but a realist. However, like all schemes of this magnitude that have been introduced—and successfully, might I say—there are bound to be teething troubles and there are teething troubles here, too. I am sure the Minister, with his foresight, will have any such problems ironed out in the near future. I have a few points here which the Minister might like to know about.

I know of one case, not in my constituency, where 14 children—depending on how many are travelling—are put into a five-cwt. van to be brought to secondary school. That is not desirable. I am sure the Minister would like to hear if such a thing has happened. It is dangerous for the children, for a start. In the event of an accident, there would be very little hope. A part from that, I do not think it is desirable from a health point of view.

Another type of case which is fairly widespread is this. There is a school bus coming from Dromore West to Sligo town. It collects the post-primary children attending Ballisodare school, which is the first school on the way. It arrives at both schools in time for school. There are children in the catchment area of Ballisodare who are attending school in Sligo. The parents offered to pay on the school bus for them but this was not accepted. Consequently, they had to travel on the ordinary bus which left them an hour late for school. This may seem a small, technical matter but it means a lot to the children. If I give the Minister the facts, I am sure he will look at them favourably.

I come then to the question of scholarships. Scholarships for university education are far too few and the amount of money is also too small. It takes in the region of £350 to £400 a year to send a child to the university. The most Sligo County Council is providing is in the region of £200. I realise that everything cannot be tackled together. The Minister said on one occasion, and I thoroughly agree with him, that he would ensure that no child with ability would be deprived of a university education because his parents were unable to pay for him. I believe the Minister means that. It is a difficult problem and how he will solve it I do not know but, in view of his achievements already in various spheres of education, I think he is quite capable of dealing with this problem.

As a Deputy, I know the Minister's Department very well. I have received the greatest co-operation from the officials and the Minister. He has done a very fine job in adverse circumstances. I conclude by saying that it will be recognised that he has done more in one year than has been done in the past 17 to 25 years.

Mr. Andrews

I will be brief on this very important topic. I shall begin by taking the first opportunity of expressing my point of view on the report of the Commission on Higher Education. It should go on the records of this House that they have my support and the support of many other people in relation to the making of this report. This Commission had their inaugural meeting on 8th November, 1960. In fact, they began work on January 1st 1961. They concluded their present deliberations on 24th February, 1967. In all, the Commission met in that period of six years on 309 occasions: effectively, they sat one whole year out of the six or one day per week over a six-year period.

A lot of the criticism and snide asides on this Commission have been totally unfair and totally unjustified. Here we have a group of men coming together, prepared to give their time and prepared to give their services to the nation over a period of six years. There has been a lot of criticism of the length of time they took to publish the report. I do not subscribe to that criticism at all.

It was said here last night that university education has been in the doldrums since the present Minister took over. When we talk about university education being in the doldrums until now, we speak about the time when Cardinal Newman took over in the middle of the last century. In fact, we can say that university education has been in the doldrums over a century, and this Commission took only six years to deliberate on it. I express my gratitude for the very excellent report they made available which is a marvellous source of reference and one to which many people will refer from time to time.

Speakers in the Seanad, from going through their reports, were critical of the Commission and the length of time they took in reporting. They said that university education and the efforts being made by the Department of Education in relation to the universities had come to a standstill during the period of the Commission's report. This, of course, is unfounded and can be disproved by the production of financial figures. During the course of the first financial year, 1961-62, the sum made available to the universities was £1,152,000. During the present financial year the figure is £3,792,000. I agree that the first figure may be a low one. Financial aid had in fact increased to the universities almost four times since 1961-62. Those figures will give the lie to the suggestion that the universities were not getting assistance during the sitting and the deliberations of the Commission.

Also in the Seanad Debates, there was a very unreasonable case, I thought, made for the introduction of more honours subjects for university entrants. I do not subscribe to this. We all know that from September next there will be two honours subjects necessary to qualify for entry to our universities. Fair enough; let us stop at that. My view is that a good pass student is equally as good as, if not better than, an honours student. I do not think that examinations tell very much. In my own short period at university, young men coming out of schools as geniuses come out of the university stream as fools. Emphasis should be placed on the aptitude of university entrants and less emphasis of the examinations.

The Commission dealt with the whole question of legal education and again I can speak from my own experience here. The Commission stated that there should be closer consultation and co-operation between the universities and the law societies. At the present time I do not believe this exists. I left University College, Dublin, six years ago. In conjunction with my attendance at UCD, I attended the King's Inns. I was doing a law degree, BL, at the King's Inns and what happened? We would have a contract lecture in the morning at UCD and have a lecture in the same subject at the King's Inns the same evening, which was a duplication of subjects. Here I believe we should support this recommendation, that the law societies should get together with the universities and have one professional legal training centre in the city of Dublin.

I support entirely the Minister's views in relation to the amalgamation and integration of University College, Dublin, and Trinity College, Dublin. It will do away with all this duplication of education which exists.

Deputy T. O'Donnell mentioned yesterday that having read the report of the Commission on Higher Education, he felt that the first priority was in relation to the New Colleges. I do not go along with that at all. My priorities are, the need for better facilities in our present university structure and the need for a more comprehensive building programme in relation to our present university piles.

The first question relates to better facilities in relation to staffing, student/ staff ratio. At the moment there are 18 to 20 students per head of staff in our universities, and apart from the fact that all of our universities are understaffed, the Commission make a recommendation that there be 12 students per head of staff. In other words, there should be 12 students to one lecturer or one tutor. Comparisions are somewhat unrealistic and invidious. The situation is in England that you have seven students per head of staff on an average in the English university stream. It is not necessary to aim at that figure in this country.

I made an effort to get away from the psychological link with Britain in terms of education at any rate and went to some trouble to get figures in relation to the student ratio content in continental universities. However, I failed, and received the figures for American universities. Having examined these figures, the Commission's recommendations come somewhat nearer to the American university average, in relation to student-staff ratio. If I may give some figures, the University of Houston, Texas, one of the biggest and richest in the United States, has a student-staff ratio of 20-1; in the University of Kansas, it is 16-1; in New York State University, 15-1; and in the University of Virginia, 20-1; There are of course some better-off universities in this respect. You have the University of Harvard, again one of the biggest and wealthiest in the States, with a ratio of 4-1. At the other end of the scale, you have Ohio State University, in which there are 38,000 students and where the ratio is 35-1. Taking all in all, the Commission's recommendations are in line with American universities.

This question of lowering the present student-staff ratio in our universities would be my first priority. The second would be the question of a building programme. The Minister indicated what has been done and what he intends to do in relation to the universities, but he also pointed out there is need for a vast building programme. He tells us that in ten years time the number of our university students will have doubled. Again, the Commission's recommendations should be noted, have been noted and must be put into action without delay.

During the course of this debate, there has been a call for free post-secondary education. The Minister has expressed his own views in this. He says that this situation will come about, and we accept his word for it. When people believed we would not have post-primary education here, the Minister came up with it, again to give the lie to the doubting Thomases. I have no reason to doubt that when the Minister says he will do something he will do it, and I accept unequivocally what he says in respect of making free university education available to those who cannot afford it.

I was recently reading a report undertaken by the Institute for University Studies of the EEC. It is entitled the Poignant Report. The point made in it is that the lower income group within the EEC lack opportunities for higher education. It states that the largest proportion of children attending institutions of higher education in the EEC countries have family backgrounds in the professional classes. This is the frightening feature of the report. The children of manual workers are at the other end of the scale. In France, only three per cent of the children of agricultural workers and 1.4 per cent of those of industrial workers go to university. In Britain, the proportion is four per cent of the children of skilled workers and two per cent of children of semi-skilled and unskilled workers. I am open to correction in what I am going to say next but I believe the figure for Ireland is ten per cent.

Mr. Treacy

On what does the Deputy base that assessment?

Mr. Andrews

On this report. They are on the scene and I am sure they know what they are talking about.

Mr. Treacy

Do they actually give a figure for Ireland?

Mr. Andrews

No. This report deals only with the countries of the Six. We on this side of the House are anxious to have education available to all. Members of every Party would welcome the introduction of a free education scheme for the children of those parents who cannot afford to send them to university. During the recent by-elections, in which I took part, the question of scholarships was mentioned. The point here is that certainly young people get scholarships to go to university but then the question of maintaining them there arises. In some cases the young people could not take advantage of the scholarships due to this lack of a maintenance or subsistence grant.

Another subject dear to my heart is the teaching of our national language. Again, I believe the fact that we no longer have a brutal approach to the teaching of the language is directly attributable to the present Minister for Education. Some of these people who have been critical of that very excellent programme Buntús Cainte should take note—these critics of miniskirted young ladies giving out our native language in a most beautiful and excellent fashion. It does not matter to me how Irish is taught. If Irish is taught through the medium of miniskirts all the better: rather miniskirts than sack-cloth and ashes. This is another non-brutal approach to the teaching of Irish. These two pleasant young ladies come on the air for five minutes every evening—not a long time. They have met with considerable praise. Indeed these people who attack the programme purely on the basis of their appearance ought to have their heads examined. I mean that. Some of the Minister's Departmental psychologists on examining some of these heads would come up with a lot of support for the theories of Sigmund Freud. I welcome this Buntús Cainte programme. It has done a lot for the Irish language and I hope it continues as long as it possibly can.

Again, we have the question of audio-visual aids. We must refer to an tAthair Colman Ó hUllacháin and his teanglann or language laboratory at Gormanston. I visited this language laboratory and it is really magnificent. Now that our only honorary citizen, Chester Beatty, is dead, I suggest the Government might consider honorary citizenship for an tAthair Colman Ó hUllacháin because I believe he is one of the real saviours of our national tongue. A lot of the credit for what is now happening to our language must go to him and indeed to the Minister for his encouragement and his recognition of the modern method of language teaching. The Minister also said that he was attempting to get as many of these language aids into as many schools as he possibly could. This is very encouraging. These language aids should not be confined to Irish but should be available for French, Spanish and German, and indeed the English language could well be taught through them.

Might I digress for a moment to the constituency I represent, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown? At the moment there is a very thorny problem there in relation to the transport of children going to schools over three miles from their homes. This is a very difficult problem and I do not wish to set the city off against the country or County Dublin off against the rest of the country. However, I would appeal to the Minister to consider a scheme of State subvention in respect of children in the city and county of Dublin who are going to schools over three miles away from their homes. Recently I heard of a parent in one part of the constituency, Clonskeagh, who was sending her four daughters to school in Dublin, and, by the way, had been sending them to this schools well before the free education scheme was introduced by the Minister; up to 31st December, 1967, she had been paying bus fares of 30/-, and she now finds the bus fares have increased to £2 13s, arising out of the increases brought about by CIE on 1st January last. I would ask the Minister to examine the possibility of issuing to schoolgoing children in the city and county of Dublin some sort of pass, or of giving some sort of aid to the parents of such children.

Let me assure the Minister that this is a real problem. In Ballybrack, which is near Killiney, there are a lot of young people who have to take two buses to get from Ballybrack to Dún Laoghaire technical school or to Dún Laoghaire Christian Brothers School for all I know. It is very difficult for the parents of these young children to pay this type of money weekly when the wage earner may be getting only £15 a week. To have that wage eroded to the extent of £2 to £3 a week is a very real hardship. I would ask the Minister to keep this point in mind when he is replying on the Estimate.

Last year I pointed out the need for career guidance in our schools. Many past pupils' unions have been doing a first-class job in this respect. They have been going back to the schools and telling them in the final year class what job opportunities are available, what their experiences are in relation to their own jobs, and in that way have been doing excellent work. Again we might look to the Church in this respect. The Church has a great capacity for sending around trained priests seeking out vocations from the schools. We are going to have a trained corps of career guidance officers going around the schools of the country telling the children of job opportunities, finding out what their aptitudes are, and so on. Many children in their final year at school have not got an idea what they want to do. It would be a great advantage to have these career guidance officers telling them what the job opportunities are and helping them to come to a decision. I look to the Minister to improve the situation and to help young boys and girls leaving school to find their proper niche in life.

The Minister also mentioned the question of the mentally handicapped and retarded and the increase in accommodation forthcoming. In this city and county of Dublin, certainly from the letters I receive from my own constituents, there would appear to be a singular lack of accommodation for the slow of learning, for our mentally handicapped children. However, as the Minister is aware of the situation and has undertaken to do something about it, I am certainly happy to leave it in his hands.

The Minister also mentioned a scheme of building grants. This scheme of building grants was brought into operation by the Government in February of 1964, and it has been of great value in securing additional accommodation in our secondary schools throughout the country. I would, however, plead with the Minister to do something to alleviate the financial burden on those schools which commenced building just before the scheme was announced. I realise that when a scheme like this is announced, there has to be a finality, but think it is unfair to penalise a school that began its building programme a day before the scheme was announced. It is in relation to this that I refer to a rapidly expanding part of the constituency which I represent. I refer to a community of nuns who were asked by the diocesan authorities in 1963 to build a girls' secondary school. They, of course, at once bought land, and by the end of 1963, building was well under way. If they had delayed this undertaking by a couple of months, they would have been eligible for the grant under the scheme announced in February, 1964. As a result of all this, this convent is £140,000 in debt and bank interest alone runs to about £11,000 a year.

Let me say in favour of this convent —and, indeed, I would not advocate their case if they had not entered the free education scheme—that they were one of the first convents to enter the free education scheme, and that is why I undertook to espouse their cause here in Dáil Éireann. As I say, they readily opted to go into the free post-primary education scheme, and this meant a drop in their income of £20 a year per pupil, that is, the difference between the school fee and the Department's grant. To help towards relieving the building debt the parents agreed to make a voluntary contribution of £20 a year per pupil, but even with this, it is clear that, having regard to the community's limited resources, they will not be able to defray the £11,000 a year bank interest, not to mention the capital debt of £140,000. The parents' committee has made a vigorous plea to the Department in support of the community's application for a building grant but, unfortunately, to no avail to date. Sooner or later the Department will have to come to the aid of communities such as this, and I would urge the Minister to make it sooner rather than later.

It has been suggested that, if the Minister could not see his way to give this school the full 70 per cent grant, there are a number of other ways in which he could assist. He could, for example, reduce slightly the percentage rate of grants for schools which were begun in 1963. Alternatively, his Department could make a substantial contribution towards payment of the bank interest, by matching £ for £ the community's contribution towards bank interest. Another way he could help would be for his Department to take over these building debts and get the communities to repay principal as well as interest at a nominal rate over an extended period of years. I realise that, on administrative grounds and on other grounds, cases can be made against all these proposals, but something will definitely have to be done about schools with this type of problem. When I have concluded, I will make available to the Minister the facts I put before the House and the name of the community I have in mind. I will ask the Minister to devise some means of reducing the enormous burden this community has to bear.

On the question of examinations, our whole educational system should be examined. Examinations are utilised solely as a means of selection and guidance. In this sense, they are justified for the purpose of entrance to universities. We should see if there is any means by which the pupils could be guided rather than selected. The Minister has eroded the principle of strict adherence to the examination system by the introduction of a record card system in our primary schools in substitution for primary certificate examinations. This is a very welcome development.

I mention this question of university entrance examinations because some of our more erudite brethren in the Seanad felt there should be more honours subjects in the leaving certificate for entrance to the university. They are judging people by their own intellectual attainments and by their own intellectual standards. That is not reasonable. These people in the Seanad are university professors and so on, and it is not fair to subject children and school-leavers to this type of mental scrutiny. I would ask the Minister not to erode this principle of two honours subjects in the leaving certificate for entrance to the university. This is a very important principle.

Finally, I should like to thank the Minister for the magnificent job he has done for education. He has introduced new developments, new ideas and new excitements, as it were, into the whole educational structure. He has given the parents of young boys and girls hope, for the first time, that in time they will have secondary or university education. This, I believe, is important and I would ask the Minister to ensure that the hopes of these young parents are realised for their children.

Mrs. Hogan O'Higgins

I hope the Minister will forgive me for my scattered remarks this evening. I had intended to prepare comprehensive notes for this debate, but the problems in my constituency seem to be more numerous every week-end and I did not have an opportunity to make notes. I will give the Minister my few thoughts in connection with primary, secondary and university education.

I have always held the view that our primary schools are our most important schools because the education, such as it is, that children get in primary schools will govern their entire lives. If they do not get a good start in the primary schools, they will never catch up in the secondary schools, and they will not be fit to go on to the university. Since I came into public life, I am sure I have met every national teacher in my constituency. I can say that they are of the highest quality, and they are devoted to their duty. There is always the odd person in every walk of life. These people work harder than most other professional people because they do not just teach. In a rural community a teacher is like a Deputy—all things to all people. He fills in forms, hears complaints, arbitrates, gives advice and teaches the children. He follows their progress to the secondary school and the university.

That is why I deplore the trend which is developing, of getting rid of the small national schools and lumping them together in a big centre. That is a step in the wrong direction. I had an argument with the former Minister when he was about to close four schools in my constituency, and the Minister said that the children would get an urban influence if they went into a big town. Who wants to give them an urban influence? The only thing that does for them, as far as I can see, is to make brats of them, and they acquire that soon enough without assistance from us.

I have theories about the teaching of the Irish language. I know that members of the Government Party are inclined to put it over in their own paper that they are the only people who are interested in Irish, and that they are the true patriots. That is all eyewash. I do not believe there is any Deputy who is not interested in the future of the Irish language, but we all have our own ideas about preserving it. I have my own views. I do not believe that very small children should be taught through the medium of Irish. I am glad that on Buntús Cainte, Irish is being taught through the medium of English. The girl says a sentence in English and then repeats it in Irish, or says it in Irish and repeats it in English. That is not done in some schools where it is all done through the medium of Irish. I do not think that should be the case where Irish is not the spoken language in the home. It confuses small children.

I know from people who deal with mentally handicapped children and disturbed children that if children are inclined to be slow, teaching them two languages confuses them in both. I had a conversation recently with parents who discovered that their ten-year-old child was not able to read in English but was fluent in Irish, although English was the language of the home. Some children are unable to assimilate more than one language. In that case the child must have been taught more Irish and not enough English. That is a mistake.

To get back to primary schools, we have excellent primary schools, on the whole, in my constituency, but we will not have good primary schools in ten years time unless we try to attract the best type of teachers to primary teaching. Heretofore that was done, but I do not think we are doing it now. We are not giving enough inducements. We should be offering the highest possible salaries. Every inducement should be offered to trap the cream of those leaving secondary schools into the training colleges. When they get to the training colleges, they should be given a much better education than they get now. From my own practical experience I know that teachers, who qualified 20 years ago and more, are much better educated than the young people coming out now. I do not know why that is so. I heard one young teacher say that they go through a crash course and are let out in two years to teach.

A few nights ago I was at a non-political meeting and I heard three or four young teachers speaking. I was horrified at the amount of bad grammar used by them. That is not good enough. The Minister for Health may laugh but if we cannot get our teachers properly educated, how are we to educate our children? I saw the corrected exercise book of a ten-year-old child who had written a composition on what she did when she went home from school. She had written: "I had my lunch, and I did my lessons at 4 o'clock." There were two red lines drawn through the word "did", and the word "done" was written over it: "I had my lunch and I done my lessons at 4 o'clock." That is not good enough. No teacher should get through training college and come out and say: "I done my lessons."

I do not know the answer to this. Perhaps they come from schools where they are taught through the medium of Irish and their English has suffered, but their English must be as good as their Irish if they are to teach young children. I have very strong views on this and I am appalled by the slipshod conditions in which these youngsters seem to come out of training colleges at present. They are obviously clever children, because the standard is high, but the training they are getting in the colleges is not as good as that given to the teachers who came out 20 years ago. I am absolutely sure of that. Perhaps the distractions of present day life have something to do with it. I do not think people read as much as they did prior to television. One must read and keep on reading if ever one is to consider oneself educated.

You will not get the best possible teachers unless you pay them the best possible salaries and give them the best possible schools in which to teach. We hear a lot nowadays about substandard schools, of which there are plenty, even in my own constituency. That is not good enough. It is no use blaming the managers. The managerial system is a hangover from the British. I have a good deal of sympathy for the managers who get all the blame, no thanks and no remuneration. It is time the Department and the managers reached some agreement. I do not know what can be done. The clergy will probably feel they would like to have control of the schools but when a school gets into a certain condition, it is said that it is the manager's fault. The Department should be able to put a finger on it and say: "You must have this put right."

In my constituency there are two schools closed for repair since last July. It is not good enough in one small parish to have two schools closed. Children will miss an entire year's education. I understand one school is to be opened in the near future but the other does not seem to be in any reasonable state of repair yet. I am reliably informed by the parents that if these schools are not soon reopened, they need not bother reopening them as the children will have got accommodation elsewhere. That is all I have to say on this. I did intend to make quite comprehensive notes but I did not get a minute over the week-end.

On secondary education, it is difficult this year to say what one wants to say because we now have what we call the free scheme. I do not like the words "free scheme" because everybody knows the taxpayer must pay for this scheme. If he has to pay, he should have some rights. I have some theories about this free scheme. In theory, it is marvellous, but in practice, it will not work as it is working at the moment. Obviously, the ideal thing is that every child in the country should have a good education but I do not believe that every child leaving the national schools last year and going into secondary schools was fit for academic secondary education. I spoke to a teacher last night and asked him how his children got on. He replied that two of them had gone into the nuns' school and they did not know how to read. He said it was not his fault because God had not given them sufficient grey matter.

I believe we must have some sort of screening of children going into secondary schools. I know that the 11-Plus system in England does not work and that they are thinking of changing to something else. At the moment every parent's idea and ambition is to get the children into secondary school. We must educate the parents to realise that the necessity for technical education is just as great as the necessity for secondary education and that a large number of children will not benefit from secondary education but will benefit tremendously from technical education. I believe—and this is a terrible thing in this country— that instead of trying to improve and enlighten our people as to the uses of farming education at rural agricultural schools these schools have been passed over completely and are considered by parents as only fit for those who will not fit into either secondary or technical schools. Only then do they go to Athenry or some of these places. That is a terrible pity.

We should make technical schools attractive to them. We are moving into a technical age and if we do not move quickly enough we shall find ourselves without technicians and we may be in difficulties. If it were pointed out to children, particularly to those with a flair in that direction, that they will get vast remuneration when properly qualified it should have a good effect. The day is coming fast when technical experts will, I believe, be paid much more than professional people. If the idea was made attractive to children and their parents more children would go into the technical schools. I think we are going mad on secondary education while we have fallen terribly behind in farm education. We have excellent schools but they are not made sufficiently attractive. There is a sort of feeling generally that the bright child will go to the secondary school, the less bright to the technical school and "Johnny who has not got a brain in his head" will go to the farming school. But Johnny must have education and the best possible education because farming will be competitive if he is to stay on the farm. We need educated farmers if we hope to survive and to get into the Common Market.

Last night in my constituency when I should have been in the House there was a meeting at a place called Coolarne. The Minister will be well aware of it. It is just five miles outside Athenry, a small thickly-populated centre in County Galway. Some three years ago the nuns in the domestic school decided after consultation with various parents that it might be worthwhile to start a secondary school. They made contact with the Department which welcomed them with open arms and said: "If you have one accredited teacher and 12 pupils, we will recognise you as a secondary school." They went into that. They reconditioned an old school building and renovated it and it is a beautiful school. I was there last night for the first time. Now, after three years they have 84 pupils this year and would have had more but for the fact that it is stated that the Department is going to close down Coolarne. I understand the Minister has given a decision that it must be closed. I am making an appeal to him at this late stage.

I went to this meeting at which 300 parents were present. The children were there; the clergy were there and everybody aired their views but what struck me about the school was that the parents, the children and the teachers were all anxious that it should continue. The Department does not agree. But the parents are the people who will be paying for the so-called free education through taxation. Surely they have a right to say where their children will be educated. Surely they have a basic right when it comes to the education of their children. This school teaches 13 subjects. It has seven excellent qualified teachers, all university graduates and some with honours MA degrees. It is a co-ed school with 48 girls and 34 boys, and I am assured that if the school is left in Coolarne for the next five years, it will have over 200 pupils. That is a big thing in a small rural area.

I know that the Department's idea is to get the children out of the small centres into the big towns. This is not what the parents want because in this district they go in for a good deal of market gardening and if the children are home from secondary school at 3.30, as they are from Coolarne, they can give a hand on the farm and also get their lessons done. This keeps their interest in the country and gives the parents a degree of control that they will not have if the children are in town all day and do not know what is going on. It also keeps them in a rural atmosphere.

We are talking about saving the West and about sending Departments to the West, but you will not save the West by taking the children out of the country and putting them into a town atmosphere, or by taking them away from their farms. This is an area in which there are really good farms, I will say that for them. This particular school is close to Athenry and they get teachers and instructors from the Agricultural Colleges to give lectures to them. This is providing them with a secondary education with a rural influence, something which is badly the Macra na Tuaithe quiz and won needed in this country. It is also keeping them at home. The parents assured me that they do not mind this because they have more supervision over their children when they are going to and coming from school. Everybody watches children going to and from school and one parent can tell another what her Johnny was doing today on his way to school.

One parent stood up last night and said that her children were educated before this school was opened and they went to Tuam. Four of them were going to school for a full term and one of them, a boy, who is also going for the full term, travelled in by bus but he never put a foot in the school for the whole term. Instead he was hanging around the town. That could not have happened if he had been going to a rural school. Another thing about Coolarne school is that it is situated in 200 acres of land. They have their own playing fields there and on Sunday, they had a hurling match, boys and girls together, and it was well worth watching. They have a tremendous spirit. They also have a beautiful science laboratory which they built themselves.

The arguments advanced in favour of closing the school are (a) children would be transported to school and (b) they would be in an urban atmosphere. As far as the people in charge can ascertain, no provision has been made in Athenry to receive these 100 children and no provision has been made in Tuam either. The school in Athenry is a small secondary school and there would be no room for them. Last night the parents assured me that they would be quite satisfied if they felt that their children were going to get a better education, better facilities and better chances, but they honestly believe that their children are getting the best education at home and, mark you, I agree with them. With 84 children and seven qualified teachers, they must be. So far they have no results to show because they started only three years ago and this is their first year for intermediate certificate.

However, they have results to show in other directions. They competed in it; they sent two children to the cookery competitions and won, and they sent children to Athlone for elocution competitions and won there also. They are giving the children a good all-round education there and I do not think the Department has any right to tell the parents where they should send their children to school. We have gone too far in this country and now we are completely bureaucratic. The thing that matters now is that the buses run on time. It would be easier to run buses to Athenry and Tuam. I do not see why they could not take some of the children from Athenry and put them into this school at Coolarne. What we have to remember and consider are the children and do not let us get away from this.

It is very easy to criticise the school transport system; it is very new and it was bound to run into teething troubles. Certainly in my constituency it has run into a fair amount of teething trouble. I do not know what the answer is; I do not know whether there is an answer. In one town in my constituency, the girls from the secondary school are out at 3 o'clock and the boys' school closes at 4 o'clock and the technical school finishes at 4.30. The girls are out at 3 o'clock and they have to wait until 4.30 for the bus, and although a room is made available for them, they do not use it but are hanging around the town being a nuisance to everybody and flirting with the handsome young guards and so on. This is not doing them any good. It is all right for the Minister to laugh but if they were my children, I would drive in and collect them.

Sending young children to school in towns is not going to do them any good. They will grow up quick enough and be brats quick enough without our helping them in this way. I have made a number of representations about these school buses but I do not see how the problem can be solved. I do not think it is good for children to leave home at 8 o'clock in the morning and to return at 5.30 in the evening. We talk about free education but the parents must provide them with a mid-day meal and that costs money. I have looked at this problem from every angle and I do not see the answer. I do not think there is an answer and I will let the Department worry it out. It should be possible to have the schools closed at the same time, or certainly within a reasonable time of each other, because a difference of 1½ hours is too much. I am sure that this could be done.

The Department should also try to get across to the people who run the secondary schools the necessity for channelling children, when they find they are not fit for secondary schools, into technical schools. At the moment a fearful type of snobbery exists in the country in regard to children going to secondary schools or technical schools. Only last week I was talking to some nuns in a particular convent about the problem of buses and the nuns wanted a bus for their own pupils only. One of the arguments advanced by the Reverend Mother was: "We do not want our children mixing with the children from the technical school." I told her that those children came out of the same sort of homes and were returning to them, that they should mix now. We have to break down this type of attitude. There is this petty snobbery and it is pathetic. It is being kept up by the secondary schools and this is a tragedy. The children in the technical schools at the moment are considered inferior to the children in the secondary schools. It is ludicrous and it will have to be eradicated by the Department.

That is all I want to say on this subject. I had intended to say more because this school in Coolarne is worrying me a lot. I know that the Minister has made his decision but I hope he will be open to receive a little light. His predecessor once made a decision and then reversed it for me. I hope that if we get working on him, he may do the same now.

I am not in a position to say anything about university education but I think, like Deputy Andrews, that we should not get to the stage that we will make university entrance standards so high that university education will only be for the very brilliant. I think it was the President of Cork University who recently referred to four honours being necessary for children going to university. I believe that under our secondary educational system as it stands, very few children will obtain four honours in the leaving certificate. I do not think that is fair. A great number of children do not realise the necessity for cramming for examinations until it is too late. They think that if they get the leaving certificate, everything will be grand, but the leaving certificate is not worth the paper it is written on if they do not qualify for something later. I do not think we should limit them by requiring four honours.

The entrance standard should be kept reasonably low and as they go up, requirements should get stiffer because the child will then be more adult and will realise the necessity to work. If he does not realise it then, he never will. Remember many children leave secondary school at 17 years of age. They do not realise at that age how competitive the world is and the necessity to work and to get four and five honours in the leaving certificate. I do not agree with the extra ten per cent for doing subjects through Irish because I believe that children coming from a home where English is the spoken language and being taught through Irish get a worse education than the children who are taught through the medium of English. I realise how important Irish is. One can argue that we have a cultural heritage. Very well, we have; but it is equally important for the children to have a good basic knowledge of English and at the moment children in secondary schools in this country have not a good basic knowledge of English.

A lot has been said about the merger of the two universities. This is grand in theory. It is a very good thing but I feel it would be a tragedy if, in the merger, Trinity lost the niche which it has in this country. Whether we like it or not, it has a tradition and it would be a loss to this country if we made it synonymous with UCD. It would be a great pity.

Each year when speaking on the Estimate for the Department of Education, I mention the problem of schools for mentally retarded children and each year the Minister, when replying, throws in a few words and each year we are promised something. This is a big problem in my constituency. The Minister for Health, who is in the House now, knows that the further west you go in this country, the more mentally retarded children there are. I do not know why, but statistics have proved that. In my constituency we have quite a number of mentally retarded children. I believe it is all the intermarriage in the West that has caused it.

We have two schools for these children. We have one run by the Brothers in Clarenbridge, an excellent school for mildly mentally retarded boys. There is another school in Galway for more severely handicapped boys. I should like to appeal to the Minister to provide a minibus for the Loughrea area to collect our children and take them to the school in Galway which is a day school. I know that priests and various societies have been on to the Department about this. We have quite a number of these children in the Loughrea area—by which I mean the area from Loughrea across into Woodford and Gort—who could be collected by a minibus and brought into Galway. Surely we have more of a duty to these children than to our fully capable children? Surely we have a social duty, a moral duty and every kind of duty to these children who are handicapped and will find life so hard anyway? I do not see why, if we can produce buses for every normal child in the country, a minibus cannot be provided for mentally retarded children. I would appeal to the Minister to give consideration to that.

I have nothing else to say except to remind the Minister for Health to pass on to his colleague, the Minister for Education, my words about Coolarne school because I know this is the last inch. My main argument is that the parents are the primary educators of the children and as such they have the right to decide where their children will be sent to school and anyway, let us face it, are the parents not the people who will have to pay for the education and surely they have a right to decide how it will be done.

Mr. S. Flanagan

The Deputy has done so well she has proved that she does not need to keep notes.

Mr. Dowling

I shall be very brief. First of all, I should like to congratulate the last speaker on her excellent speech which was fairly presented and at least she was not critical without indicating some type of remedy for what she regarded as a defect.

In relation to primary schools, two of the most important aspects of the pupil's life are optical and dental treatment. There are schools in my area which are fee-paying schools. They charge a very small fee and provide a very good service in so far as the overcrowded conditions that exist in a national school are cushioned off by these schools. There is also the question of the location of the child. These are factors which urge the parents to send their children to these schools at a very low fee and in some cases no fee at all. I would urge the Minister to take into consideration extending the optical and dental service to this type of school. The children could be examined in the national schools. I believe that this is in the interests of the children and of the educational system. The child would be qualified when he would enter the school to absorb the education. I would ask the Minister to make these services available to schools with children in the region of four years to ten years which provide a very useful service. I feel that most of the pupils would avail of it.

In relation to the intermediate certificate, I should like to make a few comments. There is no pass for boys unless they qualify in mathematics. If they pass a number of other subjects, they have no certificate to indicate to an employer that they are up to intermediate certificate standard in these other subjects, although they may be the subjects which are required for the job the child is seeking. I believe there should be some type of certificate issued to indicate that a child reached intermediate certificate standard in the other subjects. Some children get a note from the school which is not generally accepted but a certificate from the Department would be appreciated by the children who sometimes are unable to proceed to further education because of family circumstances.

In relation to the leaving certificate, I believe that honours and pass should be the one paper. I believe the child, in relation to mathematics, should have the option of doing the pass or the honours. Last year I believe the honours paper was far simpler than the pass paper and many of the children who failed the pass paper could easily have passed the honours paper. If this is so, and I believe it is, a child should have the option of doing the honours or the pass paper in a particular subject. I know this is not possible for all subjects. I can see no reason why both pass and honours questions cannot be embodied in one paper, indicating the questions that should be taken in order to obtain honours and those that should be taken in order to obtain a pass. This is a very important matter especially when there is so much emphasis on honours in relation to university entrance and, also, the fact that there are commercial firms who look for a certain number of honours when recruiting staff.

The theses for the MA Degree and the Degree of Master of Economic Science and of Political Science are selected by the students. In my view, the subject for the theses should be by direction. This would mean greater benefit to the community. For instance, students could be directed to write theses on such subjects as the industrial development of the western region, which would involve very comprehensive research, the results of which might be very useful. Such subjects as the problems of the fifteenth century are chosen as subjects for theses, but current affairs could be examined and the useful matter contained in such theses could be extracted and made available to the Government or others interested in the particular problems. For instance, soil survey in Carlow, the development of the Burren district in Clare, the provision of small industries in the West are matters that could be selected for theses and the resultant information could be made available and might be of great value.

Bus fares in Dublin have been referred to by a number of speakers. The Minister should have another look at the situation. I do not know whether he is aware of the position in Dublin. I made representations recently in connection with a boy attending the Catholic University School, Leeson Street, who has to pay 2/- for four journeys per day. CIE will give no reduction unless there is 1s 4d paid in one journey to the school. This defeats the concessions that are granted. There are concessions granted of which some children cannot avail. The boy to whom I refer is 18 years of age and has to pay adult fare.

The suggestion has already been made that some type of ticket or identity card should be issued that would be acceptable to CIE. This is a very important matter. In some cases there is a family tradition of attendance at a school. There are many children from Ballyfermot and Crumlin attending schools to which their families have a traditional attachment. A great burden is placed on families. The facilities that are available are not being properly utilised and the difficulties could be removed if some examination were carried out into the matter.

In the area which I represent, a workingclass area, there is a problem caused by the fact that a child who attends school up to a certain age has nothing to show at the end of his school period, apart from a printed or typed slip which is not accepted by employers. If some documents in such cases issued by the Department in such cases indicating that a certain standard had been achieved, that would fill the bill.

Mr. Lindsay

An Estimate of this kind at this time affords us all an opportunity of reviewing, to some extent, the more important aspects of our education system. Education is a subject that has given rise since the foundation of the State and, indeed, long before that, to considerable care and attention, not alone on the part of legislators and administrators but on the part of many voluntary bodies, both lay and clerical. At the present time there is an emphasis on talking about education: education has become the fashionable subject. It is at this point that we need to take particular care because when a subject becomes fashionable, it is on the way to becoming decadent. The interest expressed by the fashionable might well amount to something spurious never dreamed of by the persons concerned, parents, teachers or children.

As I have said, from the inception of the State, the education system and related matters have been the subject of considerable care and attention and great study, perhaps all of it not as comprehensive as it might have been. By and large, our trouble has been that we have been engaging in ad hoc activities. When a situation arose we chose to deal with it in isolation and thereby lost sight of the effect on the national scene.

Many of the things that are said in the course of debates on Education Estimates and hailed as new by people reading the newspapers and by those who might have a vested interest in the spoken word of a particular Minister are not new at all. They are things that have been agitating the minds of many people over the decades and about which these people have spoken but appeared not to have attracted the attention their subject merited because they were not, so to speak, voicing their opinions in the fashionable era in which we now appear to be in relation to education.

Education in this country has made advances. It has had its difficulties; it has had its failures. Probably the greatest failure of all in the realm of education here has been the lack of real achievement following concentrated effort to make our language the spoken language of the country. That being so, stock must be taken urgently in order to ascertain where we went wrong and how the mistakes that were made can be corrected. I believe that two linguistic plants, as it were, grew together, starting on terms of equality, one being the growth of the sincere band of Irish language enthusiasts who sought to achieve a noble and patriotic aim, and the other, the plant of hypocrisy, which naturally gained strength faster and finally became inter-twined with the patriotic plant. We have now reached the stage at which the plant hypocrisy has almost choked out of existence the plant of patriotism.

Anybody who searches his heart or, to use the old-fashioned and well-recorded phrase, looks into his heart, must admit that that is precisely what has happened. The very fact that this debate, touching, as it does, on the teaching and development of languages, not alone Irish but English, French, German and all the other languages our children have to learn and we ourselves have to practise, is conducted in the main in English, is, I think, adequate proof that in this year, 1968, the patriotic objective has not been achieved. There are, of course, subsidiary reasons: emigration, the growing shortness of travel as between countries that speak different languages, our position particularly between the two great English-speaking nations of the world, Great Britain and the United States of America, and the close association through emigration, either forced or voluntary, that exists between our people and the peoples of these two great countries. That is, I think, the biggest factor militating against the survival and spread of the Irish language, next to the hypocrisy that is associated with it.

The Minister came in here with a 26-page script and, faithful to the hypocritical cant, on the first page, there are ten lines in the Irish language. Admittedly, that is an improvement because last year there were only 8½ lines. What is said in those ten lines has, of course, no bearing on the proposals contained in the remaining 25 pages and no bearing on any of the propositions laid down in relation to any of the branches of education for which the Minister is responsible. That is the kind of hypocrisy I am talking about; that is one part of it.

There are Deputies who come in here and say a few words in Irish; they get their names in Irish in the paper and hope, as a result of that, to rank with the patriots because they engage in this little piece of hypocrisy in relation to the national language. It is a pity that those who work so hard towards achieving this national objective—teachers, lay and clerical, writers of all ages who devote their time, their energy and their talents to research and scholarship towards a particular end—should be treated with such scant regard in this national Assembly of our people.

Fundamentally, and this is true of any subject, you either know the language or you do not. Being able to say "A cháirde Gael" or "Tá suil agam go ndéanfaidh sibh an rud ceart linn", does not mean that you are an Irish speaker; it means at most that you have learned the little phrase necessary to keep the cant going. I have no small regard for the present Minister for Education. I believe he tries to get things done; he has succeeded in getting things done. But I would have far more regard for him if he left these ten lines and one word out of his speech, calculated, as they are, to give the impression that here is the great bilingual effort. It is no such thing. It is cant at the highest level. It is cant coming from the highest source of educational responsibility. However, I suppose things will always be like that. In spite of the efforts to curtail it, or knock it, or prevent it, you will always have the person who is prepared to put his hand on his breast and say: "I am not like other men; in addition to the tongue of the stranger, I can speak my own tongue as well." That amounts to nothing more than deceit: to paraphrase the poet, it is identical with the man who talks with one hand on his white shirt front and the other holding a knife behind his back. Either do it right or forget about it altogether.

We have in this Estimate this year a repetition of the pattern of earlier years, the division into the different spheres for which the Minister has responsibility in the educational field —primary, secondary, or post-primary, as it is now called, vocational, which is also post-primary, and university education. Then there are a few annual compliments paid to the College of Art, the National Theatre, and to those other bodies which get a grant-in-aid and which are always complimented for the manner in which they spend the money. All to the good, of course. Praise is very necessary, but searching and careful examination prior to praise is, in my view, vitally necessary. If one has not got the prior examination and the prior knowledge of the workings of these various establishments, then it would be better to remain silent rather than praise or blame, ignorant of the proper quantum of them.

In primary education in this country at present we are in a position of extreme difficulty from a financial point of view. With the ever-decreasing value of money and the higher costs of materials, the progress made in building new schools and repairing decaying or dilapidated schools necessarily must be slow or curtailed to some extent. We cannot hope to have all that is necessary done in a year, two years, three years or even five years; but during past years, when materials were cheaper and money had a higher purchasing power, the Department of Education under the guidance of successive Ministers were rather slow. They contented themselves with doing so many jobs each year, with very little regard for priorities.

Be that as it may, we have now reached a situation in which the condition of our primary schools, both from the point of view of room for classes for proper teaching therein and sanitary and recreational facilities, is very bad indeed. While there are people in this country, in letters to the newspapers and in private talk in pubs and bars, paying tribute to the INTO for their action in relation to the primary schools in a bad state of repair, though one must give them personal credit for doing something some time, one may equally pertinently ask: "Why did you not do this long before now?"

A great deal of blame, too is to be attached to the parents of schoolgoing children, particularly in rural Ireland —and I speak more of rural Ireland than of anywhere else—who allowed sanitary conditions to exist which they knew existed and who did not bring them to the notice of the persons responsible for sanitation and cleansing. There is a fair measure of praise due to the INTO now, but an equal measure of blame is due to them and all others concerned for being so late in taking this action, because it is quite clear that when the teachers' services were withdrawn in those schools in County Kerry during the past few weeks, action followed: whoever was responsible for the repairs did them and did them quickly.

What was possible in 1968 was possible in 1928, 1938, 1948 and in 1958 and, indeed, in each intervening year. For myself, I am particularly happy to see this action taking place, to see services withdrawn and that as a result of the services being withdrawn, action has followed so promptly.

The next matter that interests me in schools is the pupil-teacher ratio. Indeed, that applies to all schools, primary, post-primary and university. I am glad to see that the number of trained teachers is increasing and that it is hoped the number will increase further in the years ahead. I wonder does anybody ever pause to think of what the pupil-teacher ratio has been in most of our schools, particularly in the larger centres and until the last two decades in the rural schools of one, two and even three rooms where teachers struggled with large numbers of children of two, maybe three classes in one room, classes numbering 35, 40, may be 45, and these classes made up not of any kind of intelligent segregation or as a result of any kind of screening, but simply on the basis of the children's ages in a particular year in which they started school.

Admittedly, here and there one heard of a case of a child who did not go from second to third class, from third to fourth or from fourth to fifth, but that would be rare because one could sympathise with a teacher, particularly in a rural area, who did not do that kind of thing in order psychologically to assuage the feelings of the parents of children who might not be so advanced—who might be retarded by comparison with others—and they were all jumbled together, of varying degrees of ability, varying degrees of capacity of absorption; and one man or one woman, in a cold draughty school with bad sanitary services and big classes, achieved what was achieved during the years in this country.

Considering these circumstances, one cannot help but pay tribute to that body of men and women, the national teachers, who not alone ensured that every child, even the most retarded, could at least write his name and do simple arithmetic to enable him to go into the world with some little educational passport, but in addition, side by side with the parents, the teachers and the teachers alone made certain that inculcated in those children were the tenets of their Church. For all of this—for the development of the three Rs, for the preservation of the tenets of Christianity and for the development of the children's national feelings and aspirations—no words of thanks can be loud enough, elaborate enough or adequate enough to pay tribute to the work of the national teachers of this country.

Mind you, they did all that on the minimum of training and I am disappointed that in addition to the reference in his speech here yesterday to the increase in the number of teachers, the Minister did not say anything about the oft-advanced proposal to lengthen the time of training and to broaden the education generally of the trainee teachers during that time. The principal of St. Patrick's College, Reverend Fr. Cregan, suggested it about a year ago; and as everybody appears to be praising the Minister for Education at the present time, I shall praise myself because I suggested it in my maiden speech on education in this House in 1955, 13 years ago. Since then, nothing has happened in that respect.

As I said then, and as I think now— and many educationists agree with me—the mechanics of teaching should be and must be done in the training colleges with all the modern aids that can be given to them. At the same time, during an extended period of training, the people attending those colleges should be attending university courses and proceeding to a degree. Having got that degree, I would then think the system which we advocate in the Fine Gael policy on education should be followed, that teachers should be able to move freely from primary schools to secondary schools and vocational schools, teaching classes suited to their own educational qualifications. In that way you would have better teachers, men and women with broader and more liberal minds.

I want to direct the attention of the House to what was happening in the educational field before the introduction of the preparatory college system. Then you had teachers admittedly who only had the two years training in St. Patrick's College or somewhere else, but they had the great advantage of doing apprenticeship as monitors or monitoresses with already good people in the local schools in their areas. Anybody sufficiently old will remember the old style of teacher who was a man of tremendous parts and who is referred to in Goldsmith's poem The Deserted Village.

I remember these men and women who were pillars of society in their areas. They commanded the respect not alone of the children who attended their school but of the parents of those children. They were men and women of power. They had the stamp of culture. Their learning was of the broadest possible kind in the period of training allowed to them and their reading was deep. In those days, in addition to what is being taught now, you had rural science, Latin and Greek roots and all those extra things that tend to make man a fuller man. Then came the system, the abolition of which I also advocated in 1955, and which is now gone, by which the boys and girls who came to a specific secondary school—call it a preparatory college—and mingled with the same kind of people, who moved from there to the training college, the same sort of herd from one type of grass to another, and having left that, went back to the various parts of their own countryside, gained nothing in that journey from having the initial examination to the final training college. Now that that has been abolished and there is more of a competitive spirit, the necessity for extending the training college period becomes more vital, so as to get back again the type of teacher we at one time had in this country, teachers with the stamp of culture who not alone commanded but deserved respect from the whole of the community.

Indeed, the vast majority of teachers are now tending towards the professional, whereas in my view a vocation is more important in the selection of teachers. It certainly is equally as important as it might be in any other walk of life where the term vocation is used. A teacher's life, particularly a teacher who is dedicated to the teaching of little tots right through to the end of the primary stage, is a life of great courage and great dedication. It is a hard life and is a tremendous drain on the physical and mental capacity of that man or woman. It is for that reason that it always makes me a little sad to find this group, primary, secondary or anything else, involved in the quarrel about either increased pay or parity of pay. I know that the State finances and the State resources are limited, but I also know that in the matter of priorities, the people who teach our children at any level should never be made the subject matter of trade disputes.

It should be the business of a vigilant Minister and an equally vigilant set of advisers to anticipate trouble of that kind and to make provision for it because it is bad for the teachers, it is bad for the pupils and it is bad for the whole of the community in which it takes place. I may be seeking after a Utopian kind of country or a Utopian kind of society. I do not think so. If we could get even one-tenth of the way every year towards what I am advocating, I am satisfied that this country would then be well on the way towards a good educational foundation and a good educational basis for advancement.

We have now the situation, in the selection of teachers, particularly primary teachers, in which they can be recruited from secondary schools. More and more important then becomes the question of career guidance. I do not think it should be left to any boy or girl to have to decide for himself or herself. There should be attention paid to this question of career guidance, of course keeping an eye on the particular boy's or girl's capacity to follow a particular career, but if career guidance is established in each school in the way in which it should be done, then I feel you will get the proper recruits. There will be fallings-off but it is only in that kind of man to man talk at career guidance level that it is possible to get the kind of recruit, either boy or girl, who will make the best teacher and be the dedicated and courageous type of boy or girl, subsequently man or woman, the teaching profession needs at all times. There can be no gaps. You cannot have a bad crop this year and a good one next year, followed by two good crops and several other bad crops. This is an area where the screening must be done with great care, not alone every year but every day and every week and every month during every year, so that the material for this teacher-producing machine will be of excellent character.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.