I move:
That Seanad Éireann notes the Murphy Report on Adult Education in Ireland.
Report on Adult Education in Ireland: Motion.
I take it the Senator is satisfied that he has the permission of Senator M.D. Higgins to move the motion today.
I am so satisfied. In fact, the last discussion I had on this matter with Senator M.D. Higgins was one in which both of us were expressing in language not totally unlike that which has found recent expression in the Oval office of the White House our disapproval of the lengthy delay which has attended the motions in both our names. The overriding——
All I need is an assurance and I will ask you then to proceed.
While I am happy to debate the motion in the absence of the Minister I am not entirely satisfied. At the same time I should like to point out that perhaps there is an option available to Senators of any persuasion, who would like to hear the Minister, that, at any stage during this discussion, they may propose the indefinite adjournment of the debate to allow the Minister to intervene on another occasion before the conclusion of the debate. That seems to me to meet a particular objection which I felt was reasonably well founded.
The first point I should like to make on this motion which deals with the Murphy Report on Adult Education is the enormous importance of the whole subject of adult education. It is not often realised how important this subject is, how important it can be, but any brief look at the statistics of education in Ireland will convince us of it. It may not be, for example, as widely known as it should be that more than half of the adult population over 25 years in this country have no more than primary education. When I say no more than primary education I do not want to belittle the efforts of the trade union, which is led by Senator Brosnahan, but it is now widely regarded as a fact that primary education by itself is not enough to equip citizens for the task of living in a complex and often a threatening society.
Naturally this situation varies with regions because different regions have different degrees of participation in education at different levels. For example, we read in the report that some three out of four young farmers in the west of Ireland have no more than primary school education. This is a situation which was first highlighted by the Report on Investment in Education, which has improved to a certain extent since then, but which still demands our active concern. If I may buttress my argument at this point I should like to quote certain figures to you from the report itself. These relate to the results of the certificate examinations in 1971 and indicate, according to the report, first of all, that a substantial number of 16-year-olds had finished with formal schooling; that 20 per cent approximately of those who sat for the Leaving Certificate failed to qualify; that 27 per cent of those who sat for the Intermediate Certificate failed to qualify; that 50 per cent approximately of those who entered for the Group Certificate failed to qualify. It then goes on to say:
"... investment in education in its estimation of the total outflow from the educational sector in 1961-1971 give the following figures: 29 per cent with no qualifications, 24 per cent with primary certificates, 40 per cent with second level certificates, 7 per cent with third level certificates".
The same report also predicted that during the ten year period the demand for second level junior certificates would exceed the supply by some 76,000. On the other hand, the survey team predicted that there would be a surplus of approximately 1,000 third level certificates, a surplus of approximately 70,000 with no post-primary education. If we accept these figures and predictions, it is obvious that in Ireland we are educating in the academic stream beyond the availability of posts for people who are academically educated. That is one of the problems which the report has outlined very starkly.
There are some people who are simply not getting enough education of any description and there are many more people who are being educated for jobs which do not exist. In the circumstances, it seems to me that there is a call now on the Government for a massive investment in adult education. I would define adult education as the education of people in the formal school system. This brings the whole concept of adult education right down into the upper teams. When we recollect that of 17-18 year olds, that age group doing the Leaving Certificate, less than 50 per cent are engaged in formal schooling, we have got to ask ourselves what are our responsibilities towards the other 50 per cent. This is only at the level of formal schooling. This is only within the age range where formal schooling is still operative.
What about the tens of thousands of people over 25, and perhaps even more so in the upper age groups of the 50's, the 60's and perhaps even the 70's, who have been deprived of educational opportunity in their youth and who have now been condemned to a permanent deprivation in the same sphere.
The interim report of this committee mentioned a functional disability called functional illiteracy. It was unclear as to the extent of functional illiteracy in Ireland but it suggested that it was a major problem. Its concern in this area is repeated in its final report.
We often know more people who are functionally illiterate than we care to admit. Those of us who have been or who have known people who are returning officers at elections will know of the case of the elderly person who will come and ask for assistance to fill up the ballot paper, the reason given being that he or she left their glasses behind. In this sort of situation the likelihood is that such a person did not leave her glasses behind, possibly never had glasses; can certainly neither read nor write and is unwilling to admit to something that could be construed as a social stigma.
One very small case in my own experience concerns an itinerant girl, a young mother—again totally illiterate—whom I met some time ago. When I asked her what was the main sort of problem she encountered by being illiterate she pointed out that the main problem for her was that she could not read or distinguish between the different types of baby food on the shelf in the supermarket. This is where illiteracy really hits people; this is where it really hurts them. This is the sort of problem to which an Adult Education Report in Ireland should be directing attention as indeed does this one.
We all know, in modern society, that to get anything one has to fill up a form. I often wonder how well equipped are people—even the people who are turned out of, post-primary schools—to cope with some of the forms flooding from our bureaucracy. Unfortunately we seem to have devised a system in which, instead of people being entitled to their rights, as of right, they have to overcome a barrage of form filling and bureaucracy in order to establish their entitlement. I believe myself that the whole emphasis of social welfare should be the other way around. But, until such time as a change like this is made and the form filling remains a necessary activity, we have got to ensure that people—especially the people in the lower socio-economic groups—who are desperately entitled to this help should not be debarred simply by their literal inability to fill out forms. This is where it really counts. For the itinerant mother of three children it is not a question of wanting to, or being able to, read Dickens, Dostoevsky or Tolstoy or anybody else. It is the question of the sheer struggle for survival. All of us, I presume, can read and, because we can read, we are often very unaware of the frightening world in which live the people who cannot read. This is the major plank of this report and something which should be endorsed by any Government.
There are, however, a few weaknesses in the report to which I think I should draw attention. In the first place, it is not, to my mind, adequately supported by research. When we read the interim Report on Adult Education in Ireland—in particular its remarks on functional illiteracy—I think we were looking forward to the final report in the hope that it would contain statistics which would show us how bad the problem really was, not just so that we could engage in an exercise of self-flagellation, but so that we would have a realistic appraisal of the problems to be faced. We find, between the interim and final reports, very little or no extra research has been done. I must blame the Department of Education for not making the necessary funds available to do this and contributing to what is a weakness in a report that is otherwise, in many respects, a valuable one.
There are three other brief faults in the report to which I would like to draw attention. I find it, to a certain extent paternalistic. It does seem to talk down to the student and, when we consider that in adult education, the student can be anything from 16 to 60 and even older in age, the less paternalism we have the better. There is not an awful lot in this report about the creative role the student himself can play in adult education. He does not want a cultural handout; he is an adult human being with his own sensibilities, his own passions, his own politics; all these he brings to any system of adult education. He should be encouraged to bring them and any system of adult education which is set up should be such that he can make use of them.
Another point on which I think the report is slightly at fault is that it makes no reference to the question of fee paying. There are numerous adult education courses run in various locations in this country. The fees vary; they can be as low as £3 or £4; they can be as high—I am thinking of one university extra mural course in particular—as about £18. I think that a firm decision to make adult education totally free, for whomsoever it is provided, would do more to encourage participation in adult education than any other single gesture. It is not often realised how much £4 or £5 can mean to the sort of person who might be thinking of involving themselves in adult education literacy courses or things like that. Of course, it is usually the poor, and the poorest of the poor, who are most in need of these courses, which I think adds strength to my argument about the need to remove fees.
The final point of criticism I would make of the report is that it seems to be singularly uninformed with regard to developments in Northern Ireland. This is an endemic problem in our educational system. We have a considerable amount of knowledge and punditry about educational systems in every country in the world. Yet we have this enormous blind spot about that part of an island to the north-east of us which is closest to us physically at least, and one might suggest also in many respects culturally, than any other part of the world. I believe that Northern Ireland's experience in the field of adult education has a lot to contribute to us down here and we should not, for whatever reason, turn a blind eye to it.
I should like now to turn to the report proper and mention one or two of its fundamental aspects which I think are important. One of its main, positive contributions is that it insists that adult education should be part of an integrated system of educational administration. It suggests a fairly complex but, at the same time, logical system of educational administration based on county and regional education committees. This is the first time I think that thinking on this level about the administration of education generally was done in this country. The present Minister for Education's proposals—ante-dated in terms of their time of publication vis-a-vis the release of the report— from the timetable of the publication of the report, it is quite obvious that the detailed proposals on regionalisation and on the creation of some form of local education authority structure, which is included in the report, were already in existence for quite some time before the Minister spoke.
I think tribute should be paid to the authors of the report for their foresight in this matter. At the same time I would tend to take issue with them a little about the degree of emphasis they give to county committees. I feel that the county is perhaps too small a unit for really adequate educational administration, especially when you think of an educational service that will have to include everything from nursery schools—as I hope it will eventually —to adult education.
I know that county feeling is a very strong thing in this country and a very valuable thing in many respects. But in terms of real decentralisation, in terms of creating regions which are big enough and important enough to stand up against central authority when necessary and to have the kind of financial fire power to enable them to support creative and innovative experiments within their own areas, we have to look beyond the county. We should really be thinking more in terms of regions, with the counties tied in with them as much as possible. I feel that this heavy insistence on the county committees as the fundamental unit for educational administration is based on a misunderstanding of the whole principle of devolution and the whole principle of regionalisation.
We hear a lot about the strength of the local education authorities in Britain, but if we read our cuttings more carefully we would realise that the local education authorities we hear about are the really big ones. The Inner London Education Authority, the Yorkshire West Riding Education Authority, these are hugh authorities catering for, in the case of London, over a million people. These are the authorities that make the news because they are powerful and because they have the degree of independence that a decentralised administration needs.
There are lots of other local education authorities in Britain which, because they are small, because they are almost the equivalent of the county system here proposed, do not have the power or the same punch.
The general conclusions, as reported on page 99, suggest that a realistic attempt to service the more urgent needs of adult education in Ireland will require: first, a general acceptance by all of the need, urgency and importance of adult education— easily done until the time you put your hand in your pocket; two, a statement of Government policy on the objectives of this report. This report has been out for quite some time. I hope that we will have a statement of Government policy other than broad approval; a detailed programme for action within the very near future. Thirdly, they talk about the allocation of finance necessary to provide for the extension of existing facilities, technological aids, training and remuneration of adult educators and for administrative purposes. Fourthly, there is reference to the greater involvement of university education departments, the institutes of higher education and the regional technical colleges in adult education for training and research. I think this is a particularly important one. The whole stress of our educational system to date, in which the universities of course are a major part, has been on the child between four and 22, if you like.
Some institutions of education, perhaps in particular the third level institutions of education, have not taken their social roles seriously enough. The same charge could be levelled, as it is levelled in this report, against many of our secondary schools, that they are establishments which cater for education only for a very narrowly defined class of person, only at very clearly delimited times of the day. There is a call in this report for every educational institution to take its social role more seriously.
Some of the other recommendations of the report refer to things like the need for training adult educators. This should be one of the first things. It is ironic that in almost all aspects of educational change sometimes the last people they get around to are the teachers. They will change the schools and transport service, raise the grants, and finally when the whole thing has begun to crumble around their ears, they will suddenly realise that they have missed out on something. This is because they have missed out on the teachers. To my mind, any programme of education, innovation and change must start with the teachers. If it does not start with the teachers, it runs a great risk of not getting off the ground at all.
Again, the report refers to the development of radio and television services, of correspondence courses and the provision of an effective information and counselling service for adults. It is astonishing that so little use has been made of the media in this country. Television, a comparative latecomer, certainly has done quite a lot both formally and informally in terms of adult education. Radio has been distinctly underused. This is a great pity. Correspondence courses are virtually non-existent. Yet the combination of these three, as has been shown by the Open University in Britain, can be an extraordinarily successful way of bringing second-chance, recurrent, education to people who are inclined to apply for it. The initial experience of the Open University in Britain was not very happy in that the people who tended to apply were people who were already extraordinarily well qualified from the educational point of view. My information is that the latest crop of applicants to that particular institution are far more heavily represented among the low socio-economic groups, for whom this institution was set up in the first place. We must look at this type of alternative education more seriously.
I have just come back from a visit to the Soviet Union. In one of the republics that I visited more than 30 per cent of all university education was carried out by correspondence and distance-learning of that kind. This is a subject which as yet is in its infancy—something to which the adult education report draws our attention and something which we would do well to study.
The report recommends: the annual publication of a directory of adult education agencies; the possible establishment of an institute of industrial relations; the provision of a non-residential trade union college; the continuous assessment of adult education provisions; a re-assessment and co-ordination of all agencies involved in adult education. This is particularly important. There is a vast amount of duplication and overlapping. A lot of people are fishing in a very small pool and ignoring the fact that their lines are getting tangled and that there are other much larger pools a very short distance away.
The report suggests the integration of youth education, adult education and community development services at national and local levels. If this adult education service, as outlined in the report, is going to be the sort of service that is required, we would have to have integration. We would have to give up the demarcation disputes, which are such a prominent part of Irish administrative life, and focus on the student as the person whose needs should determine the structure. This is a very important thing. I underline and underwrite this recommendation of the report.
The report is very strong on community development and the need to develop people so that they can play a full enlightened part in all the social and political affairs of their community. I feel at times it begs some of the questions about community development. When we talk about community development, we sometimes seem to assume that the community about which we are talking—whether it is the community in Ireland, in Dublin, Ballyfermot, Westport or wherever—is a group of people, all, generally speaking, of the same social class, all sharing the same political ambitions and the same value system. Communities are not like that. The report might have done us a service if it had had adverted in a more detailed way to the very complex strand which exists in communities and to the role of adult education in relation to these communities.
Here I should like to quote from an article by Mr. Bob Ashcroft, who is a Research Associate at the Institute of Extension Studies, University of Liverpool, commenting precisely on the adult education report.
Local communities, are rarely a homogeneous mass with a common prospective and common goals. They are, on the contrary, full of factions which can be categorised as reactionary, conservative, progressive, etc. If one runs more or less conventional classes in e.g. History, then one may expect a reasonably heterogeneous grouping of local people. But to present oneself as the adult educator in a political action situation is to invite, and rightly so, an accusation of partisanship; soldarity with some at the price of alienation from others. The community developer, value-free though he may pretend or even wish to be, is in essentially the same position.
Again quoting from the same article he said:
.... what precisely is it that we have to offer as adult educationalists, in the relatively advanced industrial societies in which we live, which is conducive to "desirable" socal change. The answer is probably very little. We should perhaps stick to teaching history, etc., and aim to be doing just that. Preferably teaching history to groups who would like to learn it but have previously been denied the resources to do so.
I think that comment is important because it points out one of the problems of the whole educational service. Many people engaged in the educational service believe, with the best of intentions, that they are there to give something to other people. They tend to think of it as a sort of handout situation in which they are giving something to somebody he has not got already. The idea of the community itself as an educational resource, the idea that people of all ages should participate more actively in determining the content of their own educational system, is still relatively new in this country. If the report on adult education stirs up debate on this very important issue it will have done a very important job. As I have said already I think the report has weaknesses but it also has strengths. Above all, it is a very important document and it must not be allowed to gather dust on any shelf in any part of the country.
In seconding this motion I should like to support Senator Horgan. This is a great opportunity for the Seanad to debate the question of adult education, and it is very useful that the proposer of the motion is in a unique position to have a broad perspective relating to the whole field of education. Not only is Senator Horgan the representative of the universities but he is also editor of The Education Times. In that capacity he receives information on all aspects of education in Ireland which puts him in a unique position to assess the validity of the recommendations made in the Murphy Report. He has reinforced the arguments in the Murphy Report for a massive investment in adult education in this country. This must be examined from an overall perspective. Education must be viewed as a continuing process and our approach must emphasise the need for an integrated system. Education is not something which must be divided into separate units to be considered in a sectional way with the result that those units will vie ultimately for public moneys.
Senator Horgan listed the categories of people who have an interest in adult education: those who either dropped out of school or received inadequate formal schooling and those who wish to tune in once again to educational opportunity. I should like to reinforce this by referring to a category of person which Senator Horgan has not mentioned—the many married women in this country who, shortly after they left formal schooling, married and had children and remained in the home environment to rear those children. A large number of these women would like at a later stage, perhaps when they are in their thirties, to return to participation in the life of the community in a full sense. They would like to extend themselves by participating in new activities and by contributing to the community in some way. But there are relatively no facilities to help them do this. There are no re-training facilities, no adequate adult education course which would be relevant to them and no encouragement to them at this particular point to equip themselves for what is a new life in the community and a new way of realising their identity.
There are far too many married women at a certain stage in their lives who are of the opinion that they have no contribution to make, who are not encouraged to come back into the mainstream of Irish life to make a positive contribution, and to be equipped to do that.
I noted that the committee which brought in this report on adult education were established by Senator Lenihan in 1969 when he was Minister for Education. I should be interested to hear the contribution of Senator Lenihan on this report, in the absence of the present Government Minister responsible, because it is equally important that the Opposition party formulate a positive response to important reports such as this one on adult education. Therefore, I look forward to Senator Lenihan's contribution. Indeed it would be a good idea to accept the proposal made by Senator Horgan that, instead of closing the debate on this motion today, the House might agree to adjourn so that the Minister for Education would have an opportunity to reply formally to the contributions made by Senators. This would give a useful platform to the Minister for Education to say in what measure the Government accept the positive conclusions and recommendations of the report and on what time scale they propose to implement these important conclusions.
I agree with Senator Horgan that the emphasis must be on the training of professional adult educators, because as he said, this is a vital preliminary to having an adequate system of adult education. Until there are centres providing this training and providing encouragement to those who are involved in adult education to be given the opportunity to equip themselves fully and to have the specialist knowledge in this field, it will not be possible to implement, satisfactorily some of the other recommendations of the report.
I was impressed, reading the general conclusions, with the number of very practical suggestions that were made which could in many instances be implemented without the immediate spending of Government moneys, such as the use of the media, the institution of further correspondence courses and so on.
I was interested also to see the extent to which the report has emphasised the necessity for the link between youth and adult education. When one talks about adult education the phrase includes and applies to all the persons who are no longer in formal schooling. Very often these are young persons who could benefit from seeing education as a continuing process so that they do not think that, by leaving formal schooling, they have cut themselves off from the whole educational process, that they no longer have an opportunity to increase their own potential and open up further opportunities for themselves.
I agree also with the point Senator Horgan made about the degree of functional illiteracy in this country, and the enormous handicap to people in that situation. I noted yesterday in the daily newspapers the extensive coverage of the improvements in social welfare benefits. These were set out clearly for those who can read and who know where to look. But to what extent are these social welfare benefits lost to those who need them most, those persons who are not able to read and understand the matter contained therein? There is a danger that bureaucracy will address itself in a formal way to those who are well equipped to understand and to read and will completely by-pass those in greatest need.
This whole question of education cannot be separated from the approach to poverty, the approach in general to deprivation, and the realisation that here again it is those who are at the lowest end of the economic scale who are also suffering from educational deprivation. Perhaps the Murphy Report can stimulate a response which encourages us to think of education as a totality, as an integrated process. We must commission adequate re-research to know where the real demand is, to know in what direction the statistics point as to the number of persons who are in need of a particular educational opportunity, and then divide whatever moneys there may be for education more equitably on this basis so using the resources of the country to the maximum.
In relation to this question of the poverty groups, the report states at page 81:
A recent national Conference on Poverty in Ireland and the subsequent publication of papers presented there emphasised the fact that poverty, in the most complete and full sense of that word, exists in Ireland. There is physical, mental, emotional and social poverty and alienation; very often this poverty condition develops as a result of or effect of rapid social change (e.g. technology, urbanisation, mass media). Adult education has a clear mission in respect of such poverty situations on human conditions:—
(1) to explain to the adult community what are the total facts, i.e. the culture and the social system which produces the problems;
(2) to discover the extent of the problems, and to examine their causes;
(3) to explore possible solutions;
(4) to help choose the best solution and to help in its implementation;
(5) to assess the results of the implemented action.
This programme of adult education activities implies the co-operation of all adult education agencies, statutory bodies, professional and voluntary community workers, the mass media and all members of the community. The well developed principles, techniques and methods of adult learning are of course pre-supposed throughout all stages of the plan.
Adult education must also examine the system which produces, facilitates or sustains such poverty and social problems. It must question certain types of social and political administration such as the growth of bureaucracy. To accomplish renewal, adult education needs to understand and try to activate what prevents and changes such a style of living.
In essence to justify the commissioning of a report of this nature—and we have had an interim report and a final report—which provides evidence of a considerable social problem together with concrete suggestions for change, is that there must be, in my submission, a formal Government response. We have too many examples of reports commissioned by Governments from time to time without the necessary Governmental follow-up of the recommendations in such reports. We should introduce a practice that, within a time scale of six months after the publishing of a report, there ought to be a formal Government response. Where appropriate this formal response should be in the form of a White Paper listing the recommendations which are acceptable and setting out the time scales in which these recommendations will be implemented.
At present there is a danger of public cynicism and disillusionment when the Government announce that they are going to set up another commission or committee to report on a matter of urgent public concern. There is a tendency to say: "What use is that because we have had so many previous examples of reports which have not been implemented?" Precisely because the very real human needs are set out so thoroughly in this report, and because the recommendations are practical and can be implemented, there is a moral obligation on the Government to respond in full measure to the suggestions made. On another occasion in this House we had a good deal of discussion about the concept of quality of life and yet there is nothing more fundamental to the quality of life than the quality of education and the opportunities for education open to all citizens, young or old.
Focus on this question of adult education is an excellent opportunity of reaffirming the principle that our education must be an education for social living, not something that is almost cut off from life and takes place during certain hours when a child is growing up, and which ceases at a certain point. It must rather be a continuing process, a process of equipping people more fully to lead a full life, to participate in the community in which they find themselves, and to be better equipped to avail of the Governmental processes which realise themselves in the bureaucratic forms, so as to cope with the various ways in which Government activity affects the lives of private individuals in the country. I am happy to be in a position to second this motion and to support very strongly the suggestions made by Senator Horgan. I join with him in calling for a formal Government response to this report in the very near future.
I should like to support the motion proposed by Senator Horgan and Senator Robinson. The question of adult education is a very important one. In my opinion, the night of ignorance is the night without moon or stars. Education is a basic human right and, without that basic human right, a person cannot appreciate the other human rights. All persons have the right to full development to the maximum of their potential. Education can no longer be considered a luxury as it was in the past, when the few were able to avail themselves of education facilities because their parents could afford to place those facilities at their disposal.
We cannot tolerate a situation in society where we would have an educated élite and others just getting by with minimal education. Sir Richard Livingstone, in a book called Education for a World at Risk, states that we cannot tolerate a society or a democracy where the few are educated and the majority are employed, fed and amused. All are entitled to the best possible education and full development in accordance with their aptitudes and abilities.
With regard to the report itself, I should like to say that the Irish National Teachers' Organisation welcome the report as an extension of their work. Adult education is really an extension of primary and post primary education. The situation with regard to illiteracy is not as gloomy as one might imagine from the way in which the reporters treat it in the media. When the words "functional illiteracy" were mentioned—and it was pointed out that functional illiteracy did exist—some of the media seized on this as something that was basically faulty in our whole educational system. The fact that functional illiteracy should exist was a source of criticism of the educational system. I should like to point out that functional illiteracy derives from many factors: social background, environment, mental and physical disorders in the person or persons.
A short time ago a statement was made by an educationalist pointing out that many thousands of children entering post-primary schools are semi-illiterate. However that week a statement was also made by a member of the British House of Commons, and not contradicted by anybody, that there were one million illiterates in Britain. Illiteracy is not an Irish phenomenon. Statistics show that on a percentage basis the Irish people are one of the most literate people in Europe. When one compares the situation as it exists in Spain, Portugal, Italy and even in the United States, where millions of people are illiterate. I do not mean to imply however that we should not make facilities available for persons who have left school or whose schooling has been inadequate. As Senator Horgan has said, there should be a massive investment in education generally and there should be an investment in adult education also.
I should like to avail of this opportunity to make this statement: in the allocation of finance to the various phases of education we should keep our priorities correct. Early this morning I visited a school and on Wednesday I visited the school across the road from it. In both of these schools there are more pupils than there are pupils in the whole of County Leitrim. I was appalled at what I saw. One school was built six years ago and it will now take an expenditure of £140,000 to bring it up to standard again. This school, and its sister school across the road, were allowed to deteriorate because of lack of maintenance. When we are examining the whole question of the allocation of finance to education or to various phases of education, we should keep our priorities right. There should be an overall plan from preschool education right up to university education: there should be a coherent plan right across the board in dealing with educational expenditure.
I am all in favour of developing facilities for adult education and I hope that when this debate resumes we will have an opportunity of going into this whole problem in more detail.
I agree with Senator Horgan when he said that we should look to the teacher situation when we are dealing with a plan for adult education. Too often schemes are launched without personnel adequately trained to service those schemes. For example, in regard to the scheme at the moment of remedial teaching, infant teachers who have finished their day's work are sent into classes to do remedial work. These are teachers who have done a tremendously important job of laying the foundation for all further education. When they teach infants, they engage in the teaching of persons who are incapable of self help. There is no remission of work as far as an infant teacher is concerned. He has to teach the whole day because the infant is incapable of selfhelp. There is no letup in teaching in infant classes, yet these teachers are asked to do remedial work. In other words, remedial classes have been set up without our having produced remedial teachers. It is a case of putting the cart before the horse. I agree with Senator Horgan when he said that if we are going to have adult education, we should recruit personnel and give them first-class training in the techniques of adult education.
Senator Horgan also referred to the use of radio. A short time ago a colleague and I went to Maeve Conway and Mr. Hardiman in RTE and discussed the launching of school broadcasts at primary school level. There is a pilot scheme planned at present and this will be sent out on a limited basis so that by trial and error, a more comprehensive scheme can be sensibly planned.
Senator Horgan also referred to the Open University. I agree with him here in that we should endeavour to plan for some form of adult education on an open university basis. We understand from Britain that it is a very costly experiment, but it has created tremendous satisfaction in so far as persons have at their disposal the opportunity to avail themselves of university courses, if they so wish. It gives a great opportunity to all classes of people who never had the opportunity of developing their full potential.
This whole question of adult education is one which is exercising the minds of educationalists all over Europe. At practically every international conference now, judging from the reports from the Council of Ministers in the European context, the emphasis is on what is called "Education Permanent"—permanent education. In other words, education does not stop the moment a person steps outside the door of a school. It is a permanent ongoing process. Schemes are being developed all over Europe to make facilities available for the further development of a person's education.
Unless there are other speakers, I should like to move the adjournment of the debate to the next sitting.
I should like also to move that this debate should be adjourned, and I do so not merely for the obvious reason which has already been dealt with by Senator Lenihan and myself that in our view, during a motion of this kind, a Minister should be present. There is also the more fundamental reason that it is entirely wrong that a debate of this kind should take place without notice. So far the only people who have spoken have been three independent Senators who are all professionally involved in education and therefore are able to speak on such subjects at the drop of a hat.
A great many other Senators in my own party, in Fine Gael and Labour are deeply interested in this topic. Many of them are not here today, not knowing that this was coming up. Others who were here were not prepared to speak. It is wrong that a debate of this kind should take place without notice. The experience of today has shown the danger of suddenly changing the Order of Business in order to take a matter of this kind because it leads to an entirely unsatisfactory debate and it is quite unfair to Senators who have the right to know what is about to be debated. They have the right to receive adequate notice, so that they can prepare speeches. We must accept that the normal provisions with regard to notice of any matter that is to be discussed is not simply a technicality. It is an important safeguard of the rights of Senators that they should be given adequate notice so that they would know what was about to be discussed, so that they can prepare speeches if they so wish.
The Senator will be aware that the independent Senators received no notice of any Order of Business.
I already mentioned that the three Senators who have spoken are those who are professionally involved in education who, presumably, can speak on this matter at the drop of a hat. In any event, who has or has not spoken does not alter the point that there are many Senators who would like to speak on this matter, including the Senator who tabled the motion, and who are not here because they did not know the motion would be raised. I accept that the proposer of the motion is delighted that the matter has been debated but equally I am reasonably certain he did not know the motion would be taken this morning. I am sure he would have liked to be present. When we adjourn the motion he will, of course, be able to speak.
Apart from the proposer of the motion, there are many other Senators who would like to speak and I therefore support the proposition that this debate should be adjourned in order that, not merely the Minister should be given an opportunity of being present but also that Senators who are interested would be given an opportunity of making speeches.
Debate adjourned.
The Seanad adjourned at 12.10 p.m.,sine die.