Tairgim:—
That the Seanad would welcome a statement from the Minister for Education on a Plan for Education recently published by the Irish National Teachers' Organisation.
Is é cúis gur chuireas síos an tairiscint seo ná chun go bhféad aimis caint shocair mhacánta réidh a dhéanamh i dtaobh oideachais anseo agus chun to bhfaghaimis tuairim cheart ar na pointí sa phlean atá foilsithe ag na múinteóirí náisiúnta le déanaí i dtaobh oideachais. Ní chun éinne do cháineadh nó éinne do mholadh a chuireas síos an tairiscint.
I should like to explain at the begining that the form in which the motion appears is one agreed upon unanimously by the Committee on Procedure and Privileges. It seemed to us that there were many subjects upon which the Seanad might desire to have a debate which we hoped would be calm, fruitful and enlightening and at which we would like to have a Minister present but a debate which would not necessarily be in the nature of a vote of censure, and would not end in a division. The motion is not put down for the purpose of finding any fault with the Minister or for the purpose either of praising or agreeing with everything in this particular plan for education.
The national teachers deserve credit for having published this pamphlet but when I say that I do not commit myself to an agreement with it all—far from it. The subject of education is a very important one. It is constantly referred to by speakers as a vital subject but it is one in which, in fact, very little interest is taken and one in which the public themselves show very little interest. This pamphlet of the National Teachers' Organisation is their second effort. They published before, in 1941, an inquiry into teaching through the medium of Irish in our schools and it is a clear, a reasonable and an excellent contribution to the subject. The points in it are well worked out and well summarised. It is not exhaustive; it is not abusive; and it is in no way either rhetorical or exaggerated. It is therefore a good basis for discussion.
So far as I am concerned I do not intend to endeavour to cover the whole ground. I should like to say at the outset that the teachers like a great many other people seem to me to over-estimate the importance of schools. We had no control of education and we had no Parliament during the 19th century and until 1922. A great many people in the 19th century over-estimated the value of Parliament and I think we still over-estimate the value of Parliament and we over-estimate at present what schools can do. At one time the main influences upon young people were their schools, their homes and their immediate environment which was not very different from their home environment. Now young people are influenced not only by schools but by the radio, the cinema, newspapers, magazines—by a great many contacts from which neither their parents nor their schoolmasters can protect them.
I have no sympathy with the people of whom one reads frequently in the newspapers who complain of our defects of character, of culture, and of taste and who lay all these defects solemnly at the door of the Minister for Education and say that if our schools were different or if our schools were better these defects of character or taste would be non-existent. I doubt that that is so, and I doubt that the school is as important now as it used to be, but at the same time that is not to take from its very great importance.
One might consider at the outset what the objects of education are and what a school is. There is a certain tendency to think that a school consists of beautiful buildings or modern equipment. The main thing in a school is the teacher and the pupils, and the most important thing in the school is the teacher. Of that there can be no doubt whatever, and the most important thing which can be arranged, I think, is that the class should not be too big for the teacher to know so that not only will he instruct them in certain subjects but his personality will be in contact with theirs and will make an impression upon them. Just as the class should not be too big, I should like also to say to the Minister that the school should not be too big. I have grave doubts as to the desirability of building enormous schools which are so big that the headmaster very often cannot be in any real contact with his class.
With regard to the influences bearing upon young people at present there is this to be said: we have a form of censorship of literature; we have censorship of films—and about these topics and particularly censorship of literature we have had a great deal of discussion—but whatever one may think about it—and some such things exist everywhere—there is a truth with which everybody will agree, that is, that the best antidote for bad books is good books, and that the best thing we could possibly do for our young people is to give them definite interests, some interests of their own which will enable them to resist the evil influences around about them. It is popularly supposed—and a great many parents going in to see teachers are firm in the belief—that the object of the school is to fit young people for jobs. That is rather the object in a slave State.
The object so far as we are concerned is surely to produce good men and women who will be good citizens, who would have principles to guide their conduct, who would be efficient at their work and who also would have interests which would enable them to use their leisure properly. If we could give to our young people in the schools sufficient positive interests we would be so to speak inoculating them, to use one metaphor, or putting armour upon them against the evil influences which come upon them from outside.
If we are to make our young people strong and preserve what was referred to in the days of our bondage as the historic Irish nation, it must be remembered that education, as this pamphlet says, is a whole. The primary schools cater for 90 per cent. of our population, that is to say, 90 per cent. of our school-going population get no further than the primary school, but primary schools, secondary schools, vocational schools and universities are one. At the same time, the primary school could not exist—it would have had no staffs —but for the secondary schools and universities. That brings us to the point that it is not in modern times possible, when children leave school at the age of 14, to give them training for future life sufficient to meet either the needs of work or the needs of leisure with which I associate character and there is an absolutely sound case for raising the school-leaving age. There are in fact several cases. There is the fact that letting them out at the age of 14 leaves them unprotected to meet the world they have to meet and which we cannot prevent them meeting. A beginning has been made in certain directions and I think the Minister has announced already that as buildings become available the intention is to keep the children at school beyond the age of 14 years. That is one reform which should certainly take place.
The other as I have said relates to the all-important person in the school, namely, the teacher. At present primary teachers are trained entirely to themselves. In fact the system which is founded upon the preparatory colleges is an extraordinary system of segregation. Young people from the Gaeltacht are selected at the age of 14. They are put in a special preparatory school for themselves and they go from that to a training college from which they come out as equipped teachers, that is to say from the age of 14 until the age of 21 they are entirely to themselves. That seems to me to be a very doubtful thing. I know its origins. I had some doubts about it at the beginning—I had no responsibility for it as it happened—but I think the worst thing we could possibly do is to segregate teachers in training, because every teacher—the primary teacher more than the secondary teacher and the secondary teacher more than the university teacher, and even the university teacher—is faced with certain dangers from the fact that he is constantly dealing with people, so to speak, of a rather lower level than himself, and to keep teachers in training entirely to themselves is a very bad thing.
The first essential for a teacher would appear to me to be that he should be a full man, using the word man to embrace women, and that he should get a normal education and should be as near as possible to the normal person in the country. I have grave doubts whether taking people at the age of 14 and paying all their expenses for six or seven years is a good thing, whether they are from the Gaeltacht or elsewhere. What the teachers demand, and quite rightly demand, and what I always believed myself to be right ever since I first came up against the problem is that teachers should do the ordinary secondary school course first and not be put together into a preparatory college. I have had experience myself of one of those preparatory colleges, at Bally-vourney, and while it is a magnificent building, well run by a keen and zealous staff, I think that the ordinary secondary school course would be a much better beginning for teachers, and let them have a university course afterwards.
There is some difficulty in this because university accommodation is very cramped but it is an idea that could be investigated and the Minister could well enter into it and a plan, looking ahead, could be made for it. Teachers would be all the better for getting a university course, not only from the point of view of the knowledge they would obtain there but from the contacts they would make with other people going on for the professions. The teachers would not consider themselves as "birds alone". They would also get that degree of responsibility in regard to their own behaviour which they do not get in a training college where they are subject to rather strict rules. I do not want to elaborate on this, but I think it would be a far better beginning in the training of a teacher. There could be a year's special training at the end. The whole question of training teachers is a problem. What is a good method for "teacher A" might not be a good method for "teacher B". There are people who can walk into a university class of 250 students and nobody says a word when they walk in. If there is a man who cannot do this, nobody can tell him how to do it. It is one of the things that cannot be imparted and one cannot make rules about it. It seems to me that teachers' training might be restricted to one year after he has obtained a university degree because when a person has actually taught for a number of years I think he is much more receptive of information about how to teach. There is another point about teachers and the school-leaving age which strikes me. There was a plan one time which was carried out by the national teachers, a scheme under which certain people could remain on at school and get secondary instruction from the teacher, who was paid for it, until the age of 16. This had the advantage of giving education without the pupil having to go into the nearest town. There is a great talk about rural bias in education and a great misunderstanding about it. Every child over the age of 14 who wants to get education has to go into the nearest town. All the vocational schools are in the towns. If it could be arranged that the national teacher was well-trained and if he was a person able to impart secondary education up to a certain point a great improvement would be effected.
One of the things of which there has been complaint is the grading system of national teachers. The teachers themselves contend that the grading of "Efficient" and "Highly Efficient" should be abolished. Senators will remember that this was a great bone of contention all during the strike but, as during all strikes, it did not get the amount of consideration to which it was entitled. I suggest to the Minister now, when the strike is over, that the grading is one of the things ripe for consideration, either by the Department and the teachers themselves or by the Department and the teachers, presided over by some outside person, and what casually strikes me at the moment is that a Maynooth professor might be a suitable person for that work. The teachers maintain, and as far as I know they are right, that the system is not in operation anywhere else. It has been abolished in Scotland and in Northern Ireland, and it is difficult to see why it is operated here. The pamphlet professes grave dissatisfaction with the spirit and the practice of inspection in national schools. It is said to be a cause of great mental strain on certain types of teachers. The secondary inspection system started in 1900 and was based upon advice, assistance and observation rather than upon the grading of teachers or the giving of grants. The type of inspector appointed was the scholarly type, the person who was polite and who treated the people he met as if they were his equals, as indeed they were. This has continued during the 25 years of Irish government, and as far as I know, and I think the Minister will agree with me, there has been practically no friction. In the case of national schools, the inspectors were a different type. It was the gentleman inspecting the native, so to speak. It had certain asperities about it, not always, of course. In the book, An tOileánach, Tómas Ó Criomhtháin describes how an inspector came along one day and talked in English to the teacher in the Blasket school with the result that she fainted. There have been cases where students talked in Irish to the teacher and she fainted. We have the same old system progressing in a different direction. I have had examples given to me by teachers of wholly foolish things said by inspectors, though I doubt that inspectors are usually objectionable in primary schools. That the teachers themselves are not satisfied is beyond doubt and the position is worth investigating. Again, inspectors themselves have great difficulties. They have an enormous number of forms to fill in. They are not coming into the schools at present to assist and advise as the secondary inspectors have always done.
This whole grading system should be investigated and changed in outlook. It would be welcomed, not only by the teachers but by the inspectors. It will be great satisfaction to Cork people, if there are any of them listening to me, to know that if the inspectors applied the same standard in Dublin as they do in Cork few would be rated "efficient" because the Cork standard is much higher than the Dublin standard. There are different standards for different places. Classes change, too, from year to year. Anyone who has any experience of teaching can walk into a class and feel if there is a change. University lecturers can sense that a class is not as good as it was the previous year or that it is better than the previous year although there is no immediate means of testing it.
Another recommendation made here is for a council of education. I would like to support that but without making use of the language which this plan for education uses. There is a good deal of talk about bureaucrats. I do not like the word "bureaucrats". If the word "bureaucrat" means that there are officials in the Department of Education who are ambitious to control the people and to direct their lives and who will not take advice from anybody, I think that is not so. As a matter of fact it may not be a popular thing to say, but it has always struck me that in some Departments, and more particularly in the Department of Education, there is need for more highly-paid officials with very little day to day work to do. I would like to see officials with some leisure to think about education and to read about education, officials who would not be buried in files or burdened with correspondence or befogged with constant interviewing, which is what the higher officials in the Department of Education are, to a very large extent, doing at the present time. I reject the notion and the idea of the bureaucrat, but it is true that while the Minister and the Minister's officials see various interests separately, they never see them together. It escapes me why the Minister objects to seeing them together since he does, in fact, see them separately.
I feel that a body of persons to advise the Minister and with no power to put their views into operation—leaving the Minister responsible to the House but having their report embodied in a report made by him—would be a very good thing. Such a plan has been adopted in Scotland, and I do not see why it would not be adopted here. The Minister has, I know, very cordial relations with various bodies interested in education. I do not see any reason why these bodies could not be brought together in council to discuss matters. I happened to be interested in a committee at University College, Dublin, a couple of years ago which was set up, in the first instance, to prepare and present a case to the Minister for Finance and to the Government in regard to certain needs of the college. We were all members of the same staff, all colleagues and rather intimate friends, but at the same time when we sat down to consider our problems we found that we made very considerable progress. The document that we produced, although it was begun for a certain purpose, developed into a plan for the development of the college and was praised even by the officials of the Department of Finance who are not what one would call extremely sympathetic to demands for money. That most recent experience of mine would show me that a committee of this kind would help the Minister and help his officials rather than hamper them. It would also do something to spread the interest, the lack of which I deplored when I was opening. Such a council could contain, I am sure, people who are not making their living out of education. I am particularly anxious myself that, if there was to be a council of education, it should contain such people. I would let the Minister handpick them, because I am inclined to regard the Minister for Education as a person who does not act upon political principles but who is interested in something which everybody should be interested in, and in which everybody desires to be helpful. I would give him permission, so far as I am concerned, to do that. I would certainly allow the Minister himself to nominate people on such a council who were not making a living out of education.
There is another matter which is only very slightly referred to that I would like to deal with before I come to the question of Irish. That is the question of the educational ladder about which there used to be so much talk. There never was a point in this country, certainly not within the last 100 years, when the educational ladder was more difficult to climb than at the present moment. It was never more difficult for the son of a real working man to get the best education that the country can afford than it is now. The scholarships are entirely inadequate, and it would be a very useful thing if an inquiry could be set on foot about that. There are some negotiations going on between the university colleges and the county councils at the moment to see how we can best utilise the talent there is in the country. I disagree entirely with the idea that a democratic education means that every body wants to go into a given school. That is, of course, absurd, but certainly a part of our wealth is represented by the intelligent young people that we have, the people who are worth educating. They should certainly be educated, and no matter how small the means of their parents may be, they should get the facilities which will bring them through the best courses.
Now this plan for education by the national teachers concludes with some discussion of the Irish language question. It is impossible to revise education in this country—to make a new plan for education—unless one were first to discuss the place of Irish in the schools. As I said in the beginning, I do not think the schools or the Minister are to be blamed for our defects of character, of culture or of taste in so far as these exist. Therefore, it does seem to me that the schools are being asked to do too much, when they are asked to give us a new mental outlook. They are being asked to do too much also when they are asked to make an immense linguistic change. I do not think that the schools can do that.
I think that we base ourselves upon a considerable amount of badly understood history. It is not true to say that the teachers killed the Irish language. I do not think it is even true to say that the British Government killed the Irish language, but whether they did or not this much is absolutely plain, that the measures taken by a foreign Government in this country to achieve a particular object cannot be adopted by a native Government to reverse the process. The things which a Chief Secretary could do in pursuance of a certain object a Minister for Education—I do not mean the present Minister but any Minister for Education responsible to an Irish Parliament—probably would find himself unable to do. I think that we have placed—I did it myself and I freely confess it—altogether too much reliance upon what the schools can do about the Irish language. The Irish language is a difficult language. It is easy to get up to a certain point in it, but there are immense difficulties to be overcome in regard to, dialects, spelling, and the fact that it is more than 300 years behind modern times—that is to say, more than 300 years behind the development of the modern town and of all the things that go with modern town life. Irish has two things behind it, and looking at the people who have studied it and the people who have certificates in it one finds them very defective in their understanding of either or both of these two things. It has an aristocratic literature, part of which our colleague, Senator the Earl of Longford, has done something to put into English, and he has done that very adequately indeed. It has as well a folk literature, and both of these, peculiarly enough, have a rural bias. Now when you teach Irish phrases, Irish verbs, grammar, or even Irish proverbs you do not do anything to get people to understand the life behind them, to understand the rural life that is behind them. I find that myself in the case of people who have done the secondary school course in Irish.
I am not criticising the teachers. No one realises more than I do the immense work that is being done by the teachers in the primary and secondary schools, their intense enthusiasm and the positively miraculous results which have been achieved in certain places by certain people. But you have to judge by what the average result is. If you ask for an explanation of cleanhnas—matchmaking—the average student who has read an Irish text thinks that matchmaking is something which is done in the dead hours of the night by a fellow with a bottle of poteen in his pocket in very comical surroundings and to a comical end. He has no idea at all that matchmaking was the dowry system which is a fundamental part of the life of the farming community not only here but elsewhere.
Ask him about comhar and you will find that he is doubtful, although anybody who lives in the country knows what interchange of labour without any money passing means. We used to abuse the British long ago for giving us the stage Irishman. One of the effects of teaching Irish in the schools is that we have now a stage Irishman, the man from the Gaeltacht, who is very poor, very pious, very inquisitive, fond of back-biting, fond of matchmaking and very often fond of poteen. He is completely divorced from the ordinary countryman that we know, the person we want to draw people's attention to above all, because he is queer. The impression made on city students, and even on country students after reading a great many Irish texts is that the Gaeltacht is full of the queerest people imaginable.
We certainly need an inquiry to know to what point we have got, where we want to go, and what steps we should take to get there. I do not know why the Minister was so complacent or so persistent in defending a system of which he is not the inventor. I am most emphatically dissatisfied with the results. I do not want to blame anyone. I am not dissatisfied with those who have worked, because they worked in a most astounding manner. Even before the Irish Legislature was established in 1922 wonderful things were done in the schools of Dublin. In one school which I knew at Blackpitts a teacher named Hehir, a Clareman, did extraordinary things under the National Board. We have not succeeded in inspiring our students or our people generally with any idea of what the Irish language stands for as distinct from verbs, nouns and idioms. A great many people get no idea in the schools of what the Gaeltacht is like, or what life in the Gaeltacht is like. I should like to see the whole question inquired into.
Undoubtedly people who are really interested are dissatisfied. Of that there can be no doubt. While I should like to see an inquiry, I do not want one by people who are cold or dry-as-dust on the subject. I want an inquiry by people who know Irish, who sympathise with the aims of the Minister as much as we all do, who are prepared to avail of the goodwill that is there in abundance for the revival of Irish, but are prepared to recognise, after 25 years, that the results are very far from what we expected to achieve.
I read recently a memorandum that was issued by the Commissioner of the Garda in 1928, in which it was contemplated that in ten years' time Irish would be essential for Guards, not from the point of view of rule-making but from the practical point of view. Twenty years have passed since 1928 and, alas, that is not the position at all. The guards generally do not need to know Irish for the doing of their work. For that reason, there is dissatisfaction with the progress that has been made and it ought to be inquired into. What we need is to take the language out of the realm of political acrimony and to see what we can do. We may be going too slow in some directions, or too fast in other directions, but we will have to abandon the attitude that everything that is being done is right and that a change of any kind would be for the worse.
As far as the Irish language is concerned there are two legs upon which it must stand. One is the survival of the language in the Gaeltacht where it is not surviving, and the other is to get people to take an interest in the Irish language for its own sake, as distinct from any other reason. At one time the study of Irish served as a joy for certain people. It gave students who loved it a living, abiding interest outside their ordinary work. It did the very thing that a good education ought to do. It gave a person, who was interested outside his work, inspiration and help and was not a mere collection of verbs and nouns. It was something live, something cherished for its own sake. There are very few people about now, about whom it could be said that they have that feeling about Irish.
I was at a summer college a few years ago, and I went to the trouble of finding out what class of people were attending, with a view to discovering if there was anybody there who had no pecuniary interest in Irish, no examination interest. I found only one person to whom Irish was, so to speak, of no use, a son of my own, who went there of his own free will. All the others were teachers or civil servants, preparing to pass the dreadful oral test and having done so it was "to hell with it". There were teachers, civil servants, solicitors' apprentices and others for the Bar examination in Irish. There were also domestic economy instructresses breaking their hearts and wondering what were the Irish words for many things. I spent one morning, before an inspector arrived, discovering words that I did not know previously about sewing and knitting. All these people worked for some particular job. I remember a time when that place was full of students whose business had nothing to do with Irish. My business was French. That is all changed now, and you meet hardly anyone who goes to such places simply for love of the language. That is not saying that I am against compulsory Irish. Certainly, the results of economic compulsion, the reaction on the school and the attitude of the adult population, are quite different from what I thought they would be 25 years after 1922. As the teachers suggest here, and they are quite right, the remedy is certainly not more compulsion or more economic preferences. Nothing is more clear than that economic preferences for Irish have not improved the position of the Irish language. Mind you, I was a firm believer in it but it has not worked.
There are two things about the schools and Irish. One is the use of Irish as a teaching medium and the other is the teaching of Irish itself. With the use of Irish as a teaching medium, in certain conditions, I am in complete agreement, but the results are sometimes very unexpected. I have met people who did an honours leaving certificate through the medium of Irish, who learned history, Greek, geography through the medium of Irish and who had no desire to talk Irish, people who knew Irish grammar extremely well but who just had not got the Irish language as something they would talk in the ordinary way and who, when they did talk it, could not have been farther from the flow and the spirit of the Irish language in the Gaeltacht. What we really have to consider is whether our scheme is the correct one or not. The Minister's scheme—it was my own scheme—I am not accusing the Minister of it—the general scheme of the State—was to spread as much Irish as possible over as many people as possible. The result has been very disappointing. I have here a letter sent to me as long ago as 1929, when the last Government was in office, by a man who was then a great supporter of Fianna Fáil and who had learned Irish extremely well—Seán Ó Cuiv. He was very disappointed in 1929 but everything he said in 1929 could be said in 1947. He said:
"Since 1922 Irish has been a compulsory subject taught within school hours, for at least one hour each day, in the national schools of the Saorstát. In addition, Irish was supposed to be used in the infants' classes in all schools where the teachers had sufficient command of the language to be able to conduct the classes without using English. Unless the teaching of the past seven years has been misdirected or misapplied, all pupils who have gone through this class should be able to speak Irish well and read with good accent and expression any piece of ordinary Irish prose or verse."
Of course, they are not. It is a fact that they are not and to say that they are is to humbug yourself. That is the thing that really is wrong with the whole business, to say that they are.
"If they cannot do both, and the general experience is that they can do neither,"
—this was Seán Ó Cuiv in 1929—
"an immediate investigation into the causes of failure is called for."
I knew Seán Ó Cuiv to the day of his death. He lived to see another Government coming into office but he never changed his mind on the subject of Irish. He was a man of extreme interest in this particular matter, a good teacher himself, and he was not then satisfied; he wanted an investigation. We never got the investigation. I think you will have to have it. You must have it because it cuts across the whole education programme and unless we can get it we are not going to make any progress.
In the secondary schools there is no oral work necessary at all. You can get the leaving certificate, answer all the extraordinary questions in grammar, without being able to speak Irish at all, without being able to understand ordinary native speakers. There are all kinds of things that could be done that are not done. The whole scheme seems to be that the more activity there is the more you are getting done. That, of course, is not so.
I do not understand why it is that we cannot sit down with teachers, with people of experience, with people of knowledge, with people of goodwill towards the Irish language and discuss all this. I have had plenty of experience of the whole business and, as I say, it is very disappointing. Take my own name "Micheál Ó hAodha". Put it in front of anybody, put it in front of a messenger boy or a caddie on a golf course. Ninety-nine per cent of them would not know what it was.