I must confess that I feel a little timid in butting in on a debate on education, but last night all the professors spoke in such a simple manner—they did not speak in Greek or Latin, but used simple language to express their ideas, and did not try to impress us with the breadth of their learning—that I was encouraged to move to report Progress. Now, my line of approach to this Vote is from the point of view of the farmer. In reading over the report issued by the Department of Education I find that there is no agricultural bias given to primary and secondary education in the country, although roughly 75 per cent. of the population get their livelihood out of agriculture. On page 109 of the report it is stated: "The census returns reveal the striking fact that the number of persons engaged in personal service is practically as great as the number employed in commerce." A good deal of space is devoted to reporting on what has been done to encourage education in regard to commerce. Turning to the different reports of the inspectors, we find that practically nothing is being done for rural science in any of the divisions. One or two are doing a little, but the inspectors report that the art of science is not being pushed as it should be. In the First Division the inspectors say:
"From one-fourth to one-half of the schools, varying from district to district, have this subject on the curriculum. As there may be numbers of young teachers in small schools qualified, but not obliged to teach it, it is difficult to estimate the total number or the proportion competent to teach the subject."
In Division 2 the inspector stated that the teachers as a body do not appear to have learned several things. Many of the pupils "feel ill at ease in an atmosphere of books and lessons, and are eager to turn to some form of practical and constructive work, in which they will not merely be learners but doers, and in a small way creators." I think the whole system of education should be to turn out pupils who will be not merely learners but doers and, in a small way, creators. I suggest that if there was proper concentration on the teaching of agricultural science, beginning in the primary schools, that the best possible form of education would be given to the youngsters. After all, if they are taught to observe things around them, if they are taught to make things grow, they are likely to have brighter lives, and to take a greater interest in themselves and what is going on around them. Very few of the pupils turned out in the primary schools will, under the present system, at any rate, be in a position to procure a large number of books. If they are taught to take an interest in plant life, and to make things grow, they will do something in life, and it will bring them joy.
In the Second Division the inspector states: "The character of the education imparted is for the greater part too bookish and divorced from the facts and problems of ordinary life." Youngsters are made to learn a lot of subjects by rote. The whole education system does not come down to mother earth at all. They are made to learn thoroughly the year in which the Battle of Benburb or the Battle of Clontarf was fought, but they are not really educated to think. I was reading the work of an old philosopher, and he stated that we were too prone in matters of education to treat it as something by which children should get up a large number of accumulated facts, rather than to teach them how to think. In the Third Division, covering most of the Gaeltacht, the same story is told in regard to rural science. The inspector says:
Níl an eóluíocht tuaithe ag dul ar aghaidh go mear. Níl talamh ag gabháil leis na scoileanna, agus táthar ag brath ar an leabhar in áit na súl agus na lámh agus na meabhrach a chur ag obair.
I think that teachers should be taught to make the youngsters use their eyes and their hands from an early age. In this matter I agree thoroughly with what Deputy de Valera said yesterday, that youngsters, in the country at least, would be much better running around at home until they were seven years of age, rather than be sent to school, where facts which they do not understand or appreciate are driven into their heads. They would be getting a real education at home in the use of their hands and eyes around the farms, with the parents, as they nearly always do, teaching them to observe.
As to the Fourth Division the report does not seem to be as detailed as the reports on the other Divisions. It says:
"Nature study and rural science appear to be well taught and although cookery and needlework are not now taught in many schools, the teaching of the former is, in general, satisfactory in the schools in which it is taught."
Deputies will notice that the Inspectors say "satisfactory in the schools in which it is taught." They do not set out the number of schools in which it is taught. As to the Fifth Division the inspectors say:
"Rural science is not a common subject, owing to the want of demonstration plots, but Nature Study is taught in many schools. Too often, however, the aim seems to be to convey information, to be accepted on the teacher's authority, rather than to stimulate curiosity and to put the children in the way of satisfying it by personal experiments."
Then as to the Sixth Division the inspectors say:
"Rural Science is not extending, and no effort is being made to provide school plots for practical gardening. Nature Study has been generally reintroduced in schools where there is a teacher qualified to teach the subject."
In the Seventh Division the inspectors say, as to Nature Study:—
"This is a subject which children find interesting. Where compulsory it is now generally taught, but some teachers, owing to want of careful preparation, fail to secure satisfactory progress in it. The inspectors of the Division are almost unanimous in stating that there is no general effort to link up school work with the life of the school district."
I do not want to blame the teachers. You have to begin at the top in matters like this. If the teachers have not been taught how to link-up education with the life of the districts to which they go one cannot blame them. As Deputy de Valera said yesterday, we are paying the teachers really better than we can afford. We are not treating them in any way niggardly, and I think from this on we can insist that teachers shall continue to study after they leave their colleges. If the teachers are given a course in nature study there is no reason why they should not get a sufficient grasp of it to teach it to the children. It is not like Irish or any other language which people have to take up very young, unless they have a special aptitude for languages. There are books written in the English language on rural science, and the teachers could, if they were put to work on it, get a grasp of the subject sufficient to teach it to the children. I think the Minister should establish such a course for teachers and insist on their attending it.
Last evening Deputy Tierney made the criticism of the teachers that when they came together they generally discussed the pensions scheme. That is a fact, but it is a fact for which the Department of Education is more to blame than the teachers. From the discussion last night it was quite apparent that there are a number of people in this country interested in education, and that even in the Dáil there are a number of Deputies who have something to contribute to the whole question of education. I think the Minister would be very wise in adopting Deputy de Valera's suggestion and establishing an educational council. If such an educational council were linked up with some system by which the teachers could meet and express themselves on the different phases and difficulties of education, then I think that it would stimulate a real interest in education amongst teachers, so that when they meet on these occasions instead of discussing the question of pensions or salaries they would get an interest in discussing educational matters generally, and that a lot of good work could be done in that respect.
I think it was on the question of striking a rate for vocational training that I raised the matter of agricultural education before. We were not then allowed to discuss it at length. As the vast majority of the people of the country will be forced for a good number of years to come to earn their living out of agriculture, there should be an agricultural bias in the educational system from the ground up. A lot of money is being spent on education. Four and a half million pounds alone are being spent on education under this Vote, and we have the county councils striking rates for the payment of itinerant instructors and the Department of Agriculture also contributing, so that in one way or another we must be spending up to five million pounds on education. From my own experience, I know that in the past a lot of that money has been wasted when the matter is viewed from the point of view of the farmers. The majority of the children will have to live on the farms, and right from the beginning they should be taught how to make the best out of the new systems of agriculture that come along. If they are to do that they would want to be trained from their early years to take an interest in agriculture, to be proud of the fact that they are farmers and making things grow. They would want to learn the language that is used in agricultural science books. If teaching in that regard is delayed until the child becomes an adult, it is much more difficult for him then to take an interest in such matters.
The majority of the itinerary instructors in agricultural science are energetic men and enthusiastic about their work. They spend a lot of time organising winter classes. Very few of them succeed in getting more than a couple of classes going in the year. They attend these classes under great difficulties, and they find from the very first week that the classes begin to diminish. The real fact of the matter is, there has been no preliminary work done in the national schools or in the secondary schools. Even the sons of practical farmers know nothing of the reasons why plants grow or anything about agricultural science whatever. They know nothing about the reasons why they put on different manures; they only know that somebody else does it, and they do it also.
I think the work of those itinerant instructors could be cut out altogether if agricultural science were started in the national schools and were carried on through the secondary schools. The money we spend on these instructors alone amounts to a large sum if we take the whole of the Twenty-Six Counties into account. For my part I think the time of the instructors would be much better spent if they were engaged in running schools of 50 or 60 students for one year. Even in the agricultural schools very little is being done to turn out farmers. The schools in Glasnevin and other parts of the country for giving training in agricultural science are mostly devoted to turning out teachers who have to work in very difficult and adverse circumstances when they start to teach and to impart their knowledge to the community generally. I believe it would be far better if we had a system of agricultural colleges to which farmers' sons could be sent at 17 or 18 years of age and kept there for a year, and if the training in that year was concentrated on stimulating their interest in agriculture. Rather than merely turning them out as teachers it would be far better to turn them out as farmers to go back home and work their farms. I hope the Minister will make some arrangement in the coming year to set up an educational council and to link the teachers up with it in some way. I think if the teachers are urged in a proper fashion they would devote a large portion of their surplus energies to thinking out improved methods of education. They have short hours in the schools and although they have to work hard they have a lot of energy left in the evenings, and if the Minister does not provide some good way to enable them to employ it they will employ it in ways that are not so very good.
Teachers of ten or twenty years' experience must know a lot of the snags in education and it would be a very good thing for the country as a whole if the Minister had some systematic way of tapping the knowledge and experience they have gained. If the Minister adopts our suggestions, and establishes an educational council, and links it up with the teachers, I think there will be less complaints in the country generally, that when the teachers meet they only meet to discuss pension schemes and such things.