Ba mhaith liom a rá i dtosach go bhfuil áthas ar gach duine agus go bhfuil gach duine sásta leis an méid oibre atá déanta ag an Aire fhaid is atá sé i gceannas Roinne an Oideachais sa tír seo. Do chaith sé a shaol féin i sráidbhaile i nDeisceart na hÉireann agus tá fhios aige go maith an saghas scoileanna a bhí ann le linn a shaoil féin agus atá ann fé láthair, agus ina theannta sin téann sé timpeall i gcónaí go dtí na bun-scoileanna agus na meán-scoileanna agus chíonn sé na scoláirí ag obair. Chíonn sé na droch-thithe atá ann agus scoil mar ainm orthu agus na scoileanna nua atá á dtógaint ag an Roinn agus ag na sagairt paróiste fé láthair.
Ins an Samhradh, téann sé timpeall arís go dtí na coláistí agus chíonn sé iontu na scoláirí a fuair scoláireachtaí as na bun-scoileanna agus na scoileanna eile, agus dá bhrí sin níl aon bhrainse den oideachas nach bhfuil eolas maith ag an Aire air. Tá sé ag déanamh a dhíchill chun gach rud a chur i dtreo agus a chur chun cinn chomh mear agus is féidir leis agus sin rud maith, nach bhfuil aon mhoill ann nuair is féidir leis an Aire feabhas a chur ar an obair agus é a chur chun cinn.
Is maith an rud é go bhfuil na múinteoirí sásta leis agus go bhfuilid sásta go gcuireann sé suim ina gcuid oibre agus go bhfuil ar aigne aige an caighdeán oideachais atá sa tír seo bheith chomh ard agus atá sé in aon tír eile ar fud an domhain. Dá bhrí sin, níl puinn le rá agam ach amháin é seo: pé athrú is ceart dúinn a chur ann fé láthair, go scrúdaíonn an tAire é go maith agus le cúnamh Dé agus le cabhair ó gach duine, beidh toradh maith ar a chuid oibre.
I should like to preface my remarks by saying that, since the present Minister took charge of the direction of education in this country, he has given encouragement and confidence to those who are engaged in that high and holy work. That, in the first instance, is a great encouragement to those who are engaged in what is indeed a hard and difficult work. Growing up as he did, knowing the villages, the rural areas and the schools that were there in his early years—which we all remember—he has as a fundamental background for his examination of the problems of education in his own experience, the faults and merits of the various aspects of the educational system. He has seen the bad schools and he is doing his best to remedy them as speedily as possible, to give them the amenities that should be theirs, to see that the school building should be an outstanding building in each parish, that it should be a centre of education and culture for which both the parents and the students would have a high regard, of which they would be proud as the place where the pupils are fitted out with a certain competence in life.
As far as primary education is concerned, we have had the experience of teachers who have been abroad. Some of us from time to time who have travelled and have taken an interest in similar schools in other lands are convinced that our standards here are as good as they are in any comparable country in the world, even in countries far bigger than ours and with greater financial resources. Perhaps sometimes those who have recourse to cities may be a bit brighter than those who have been educated in some country schools. They may make a better show at examinations and may have the advantage of experience in some respects, but it is certain that the rural children are as fundamentally sound and as well able to face life in the educational sphere as those in most other countries.
A council of education has been sitting for some time and has been considering the programme for the national schools. I do not think there is very much wrong with the programmes. Perhaps, as Deputy Desmond has said, most people will agree that in the rural schools there should be some education in rural science which applies to the life in the country around them, in local history, the national monuments in the area and so on. That is a thing that Padraig Pearse when he wrote "The Murder Machine" had in mind, when he spoke of freedom for the teacher and freedom for the scholars. If the teacher wishes on a very warm day to take the children for a little walk to a nearby castle or abbey, to make the history of the locality more vivid, and if an inspector comes along and finds the teacher should have been doing arithmetic or something else, then, if he is doing useful work and can stand over what he is doing, it should be all right. That is a case where too much rigidity should not be insisted upon. It is not education to be all the time with your nose to the grindstone, that you must be doing arithmetic from 10.30 till 11 a.m. and if you are stuck in the middle of a problem or if the children are specially interested and you carry on until 11.15 and the inspector walks in when you should have been at geography or something else, that there is an adverse paragraph written in the report about it. There should be more freedom for the teacher.
The primary certificate entails an examination now in the primary schools and it is looked upon as the aim of primary education to get pupils to obtain this particular certificate. I was speaking to some parents recently, very intelligent people, and they said that their children were better educated before the primary certificate was introduced and that they are quite convinced of that. They said that when it came along first they were quite satisfied that, as somebody said, it would set a standard and would show the pupil had qualified in a certain course. Perhaps the primary certificate should not be entirely condemned or at least an examination at the end of the primary course. What I say about it is that it is quite unreasonable to expect that every child in the school on reaching that standard should be compelled to undergo an examination in every subject, even a subject for which he has no taste and in which he is not competent.
In the secondary schools there are more or less selected pupils. At any rate, there is a selection in other schools and from different walks of life, where they are going forward through education to get a position that education will help them to secure. In the national schools, however, you have everybody who is striving to get a fundamental grasp of the basis of education which will enable them to go about their ordinary working business. Some pupils are not good at arithmetic and as everyone knows we very often find that those who are good at arithmetic are not so good at literature and those who are good at literature are not good at mathematics, though you might find an exception. It certainly discourages a pupil who may be good at some subjects to be put in for an examination in all the branches. Why not let him do, for the primary certificate, apart from the fundamentals just the particular subjects for which he is fitted? In the secondary schools and other schools you have a pass paper and an honours paper. If the primary certificate is to continue, why not have a pass paper and an honours paper in the same way, so that those who are not as good as the others may have an opportunity of taking a pass paper in one subject and an honours paper in another according to their ability? That will give them encouragement that they are not working as cogs in a machine but that their capabilities and capacity are being taken into account and that they are being catered for in their own particular sphere.
Deputy Desmond has spoken about the books and their cost and the reason for the change in books. We all know that in our own days the books passed down as a kind of heirloom through all the members of the family and the same books did for any school. The reason was perfectly obvious. The system of education then was designed to do one thing: it was designed to teach us English and to get away from Irish. They kept a standard set of books and when a boy went to school he learned off by heart: "Jack has got a cart and can draw sand and clay in it," or something like that, but ask him to pick out the particular words and he would not be able to do it. They learned these lessons by rote and their parents before them had the same lessons and so had even the senior members of the family and all were able to recite them. That is how they got the English into the schools in our father's time and even in our own early days, even to the exclusion of the Irish language.
I often advocate that we should have a standard set of books in Irish for a number of years until the pupils get a grip of the language. In the Gaeltacht they could depart from that but in other areas they should stick to those standard books at least for a few years. It was most discouraging in years gone by, and even up to the present to some extent, when a pupil learning Irish came across words spelled in a particular way on one page and on the next page, where the lesson was by a different writer, the same words were spelled differently.
Deputy O'Donnell said that there are three Irish dialects and that the Minister did not speak in any of them —that he spoke more or less what was known as official Irish, whatever that may be. Some of us have travelled all over Ireland. We have been in Irish colleges and have met people from all parts of the country. The differences between the dialects in Irish are no more acute than they are between the dialects of the spoken language anywhere in any country—England, France, even America, where there may be a different type of slang in the North and in the South—but the fundamentals of the spoken language are similar. The Irish language is rich in dialect and vocabulary. Anybody who criticises the use of a dialect or the blending of dialects is doing no service to the language, because the language is intrinsically the same in the north, south, east or west. Whatever little peculiarities we may have we have them in our nature as well as in our dialects. Anybody can appreciate that fact.
With regard to books, the standardisation of spelling is a great advance. The spelling has been standardised up to the third or fourth class but has not yet, I think, been standardised in the higher standards. It is not so important there because the reading is more varied.
I have referred already to the changing of books. That is due to the grouping of classes In our young days classes were not grouped except for singing and one or two other subjects. There was no grouping, say, of the first and second class, the third and fourth, and fifth and sixth, for reading. If the same book were kept on for a second year one group of children would be repeating for a second year the book they had learned in the previous year, which would not be to their advantage and which would be monotonous. There is this further difficulty, that some pupils are kept for a second year in a class. They would be studying the same book again. Education must be made varied and attractive for those who are not very smart, just as for those who are bright.
Deputy Desmond mentioned arithmetic. Inspectors and teachers will tell you that a completely satisfactory arithmetic for the primary school has never yet been published. Arithmetics used contain such problems as: "Find the cost of 27 horses at £84 17s. 6½d. each." Who ever bought a horse and paid prices like that? These problems have no relation to life. I would suggest that an arithmetic should be compiled having a certain number of mental exercises at the beginning in Irish and in English, followed by a certain number of written exercises, and then followed by a number of problems in the particular process in Irish and in English. At this stage all the arithmetics should be bilingual, with Irish and English on every successive page. The time has come for it. I would not have long obscure questions of three or four lines. The questions should be simply put so that the children will understand the Irish word for "multiply", "divide", "add", "subtract", "buy", "sell", and these other everyday terms. It should not be complicated. The exercises should be set in a simple way that the children understand from their knowledge of the language.
A very good feature of education is the granting of scholarships to summer colleges. The Gaelic Athletic Association must get its meed of credit in that respect. Colleagues of mine, Séamus Long and Seán Óg Ó Murchadha and others, were interested in that matter and promoted scholarships which were confined to children who played in the school shield teams or in minor competitions, and so on. They are continuing to fill some of the summer Irish colleges in that way. Games and education are combined and the children get a knowledge of the country and associate with pupils from various parts of the country. It is admirable work. I was very glad to see that after his appointment as Minister one of the first things the Minister did was to pay an official visit to some of these colleges where pupils of that kind were fruitfully spending their holidays.
The next matter with which I would like to deal is vocational education. Wonderful strides are being made in vocational education. Everybody is delighted with the progress that is being made. Apart from the work of the schools, which is excellent, there is a link-up now between the vocational schools and industries. That link is becoming more extended year by year. There is a link between the schools and the Motor Traders' Association. On the domestic side, the gas companies give prizes for cooking. The millers also give prizes. This co-operation between the vocational schools and industry is one of the most encouraging developments in education in recent years. There had been a tendency to stress unduly the purely academic side of education, to prepare pupils for the leaving certificate examination. Having passed that examination, the pupils tried to get into the Civil Service or into local government positions, the Electricity Supply Board and other Government or semi-Government organisations. They would continue at school up to the age of 17 or 18 years and, if they failed to obtain appointments in such concerns, they were not qualified for commercial offices because they had not shorthand and typewriting, or book-keeping. They were unfit for legal offices or positions of that kind and at that stage they had to learn shorthand, typewriting or book-keeping or just emigrate, because they were untrained to work with their hands. We were training too many pupils on these lines for the opportunities subsequently offering. One can imagine the disappointment to their parents afterwards.
I remember the case of one boy who obtained honours at his leaving certificate examination and at 24 years of age he never had got a day's work. He subsequently got along all right but one can imagine the early disappointment which his parents must have experienced after having had such high hopes of him in his schooldays. We hear a good deal about juvenile delinquency and of young lads roaming about the roads at a critical period in their lives. I do not know what suggestion we could make to deal with that problem but, at any rate, the development of vocational training is bound to give us a better balance at that age. The teachers in schools, such as for instance the North Monastery school in Cork, will be able to advise certain of their pupils: "You would be better off in the technical school; I do not think you would make the grade in the leaving certificate". That is a system of advice and training that we ought to encourage.
So far as higher education is concerned, I think the standard is really very good but the question arises as to whether or not in the promotion of the Irish language we should have oral examinations for secondary schools. It would be rather difficult to examine all the pupils orally in Irish. At the same time, it used to be done at one time in the colleges. There was an oral examination in those subjects and a reversion to that system might be worth considering. We hear some people saying the Irish language is not making good progress. I can never agree with such people. I think it is making wonderful progress. No doubt the number of people in the Gaeltacht is declining, but if the people who leave the Gaeltacht go to some other part of the country, they are not a loss to the nation and they know quite well that their children will be encouraged to speak the language in the schools. If they go abroad, of course, they are a very serious loss to the country.
In that regard, I think the extension of the amenities of life, such as the Electricity Supply Board services, available in the more populous districts, to Gaeltacht areas would do much to induce people to remain there. I have advocated before that instead of erecting large vocational schools, which may be all right for big towns we might adopt a scheme in rural parishes whereby one additional room would be added to the national school in each parish. This room could be utilised for instruction in woodwork, rural science and domestic science and music on alternate nights. It is far easier to arrange to have teachers travel around to these schools than to have the pupils travelling long distances. It would not, of course, be advisable to have the instruction given at night in rooms that had been occupied by children during the day. In the first place, it would not be so hygienic as if extra rooms were available for this instruction. If such rooms are available, they can be thoroughly ventilated during the day and I believe you would get better results. Irish classes could also be held in these schools at night. There would be a kind of continuation school, so to speak, in each district so that the language learned in the primary schools would not be lost. At intervals there would be an Irish dance or song—a blend of cultural and social life as the evening went by. The Minister was in Cork recenly at a Cór-Fhéile in which all the pupils of the city schools participated. It was conducted on a non-competitive basis and no prizes were awarded. The entertainment lasted for a week and consisted of songs in our own language as well as an occasional song in other tongues. Four thousand children from the national schools participated in that Cór-Fhéile which was a magnificent success. The city hall was filled night after night for the whole week. The Minister was present at the opening entertainment which was held on the Sunday evening in the Savoy cinema. It was a most exhilarating experience for all who had the good fortune to be present at these entertainments and the teachers and pupils of the schools which participated are deserving of the highest approbation.
There is one other matter to which I should like to refer although I do not think that, strictly speaking, it comes under the Minister's Estimate. Even though we have a certain number of agricultural schools in the country such as Darraragh, Glasnevin and Athenry, and a dairy science school in Cork which caters just for the dairying industry—creameries, milk and butter production, etc.—we have no faculty of agriculture in this agricultural country. There is no faculty of agriculture in any of our universities where a person could take out a comprehensive degree in agriculture. We have, of course, faculties covering medicine and various other professions although many of the graduates with such degrees subsequently go abroad. I think that agriculture should be put on a pedestal at least as high as that of the other faculties in our universities. At least in Cork and Galway, there should be a special faculty of agriculture so that those who are trained in the various agricultural colleges throughout the country would have an opportunity by means of scholarships or otherwise, of high qualifications and knowledge of our basic industry.
I must congratulate the Minister on his efforts in getting the electrical engineering faculty established in Cork University College. We hear a lot of talk about centralisation nowadays but heretofore it was necessary for students from Cork to come for their third and fourth year courses to an already overcrowded city here in Dublin. Apart from that, only a certain number, not more than perhaps five or six, would be accepted in Dublin in that particular branch. The building to be erected in the near future will be of permanent local value and will remain there to the Minister's credit in years to come. Work like that is of genuine permanent national benefit.
With co-operation and goodwill, this country, which had such a name in the past for learning and culture and the love of education which its people had down through the ages, will again in the general standards which are set before the people in the educational sphere keep those higher ideals of faith and nationality which a nation should cherish, with love for its history and for its patriots. I think the present system of education, the present system of managership of schools, where proper co-operation is shown, will tend to bring out in the people of our nation the high ideals which are the rich heritage of the nation, so that the minds, bodies and souls of the people will be adapted to the tradition that years of struggle have brought down to them for their edification. The present Minister is working on right lines, and with these remarks I close by saying: Beannacht Dé ar an obair.