Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 10 Jun 1953

Vol. 139 No. 7

Committee on Finance. - Vote 39—Office of the Minister for Education (Resumed).

Brendán Mac Fheórais

It seems to me that the method by which the Irish language was taught in the good days of the Gaelic League was, relatively speaking, much more satisfactory than the method which is being generally used in the schools to-day, and I have often made the plea here that the teaching of Irish or the imparting of Irish to non-Irish speakers ought to be made much more attractive. The Gaelic League made it attractive inasmuch as the learning of the language was combined and associated with social activities, usually in the form of singing and the form of dancing especially. I venture to remark that many of the older people in this country and even in this House who have a speaking knowledge of the language got their fluency from Gaelic League activities in their Gaelic League days.

My personal belief is that there is too much inferiority complex, so far as the speaking of the language is concerned, and too much reprimand from people who have the language fluently, which deters young people, and especially adolescents, from using even the small amount they have. I have met people who, if I said "An tAire Oideachas" would come right back at me with "An tAire Oideachais". I do not think that in the speaking of the language, we ought to pay severe attention—I stress the word "severe"—to grammar and the finer technical points, because any of us who have met a Dutchman or a German during his initial period in this country knows that he makes outlandish mistakes. Tenses, moods and everything else are wrong, but he has words and conveys an idea. He knows how to ask for a meal, how to ask what town he is in and which is the road to such-and-such a place. He has not got the righttense or the right case, but one finds after months of practice that he has the English language, as we know it, pretty fluently. That is the view taken by many of the older Irish scholars and in this connection I might be permitted to quote An Fear Mór who is of the opinion that, if we laid much more stress on conveying an idea than on being absolutely correct grammatically, the Irish language would progress much better than it is progressing at present.

I said when speaking here last Wednesday that so long as we regarded Irish as a strict subject, as a subject to be taught strictly in the schools, we could not have progress, because it turns many of the students against the language. It is my opinion, too, that the teaching of ordinary subjects in schools through the medium of the Irish language is not good either for the Irish language or for the general education of the children. One of my constituents remarked over the week-end, speaking of the teaching of subjects through the medium of the Irish language, that his children—I will not say that they are stupid children—would probably grow up to be illiterate in two languages.

For that reason, I want to make one suggestion in answer to the Minister's invitation with regard to giving a half-day per week to a teacher to do what he liked with for the general well-being of the students. I suggest that on some of those half-days throughout the year, plays in Irish be produced. That would serve a very useful purpose so far as the language is concerned. At present there is terrific competition with the language from the cinema and the radio and every song or play or film, apart from some portions of the Radio Éireann programmes, is in English. That is something the Minister cannot compete against in his effort to revive the language and it is something the students cannot compete against.

It does not seem as if we can produce films in this country through the medium of the Irish language so we must of necessity look at and listen to British and American films, and the new words and phrases being picked up by the children of to-day are solelyin the English language. I do not know how it can be done, but I wonder— I think it is possible—if, through the Department, through the school managers, certainly through the teaching orders and, above all, through the vocational education schools, there could be established holiday camps for the holiday period where nothing but the Irish language would be spoken. That would serve two useful purposes— the purpose of giving a good holiday, a cheap holiday and a beneficial holiday to students from the cities and large towns and also the purpose of providing practice for students in the Irish language without the fear of failing in an examination or a reprimand from a teacher. I have often quoted here the success that has attended the efforts of the County Wexford Vocational Education Committee in relation to Coláiste Carman. Nobody can call it a school; neither could one call it a Butlin's Holiday Camp, but in my opinion, and I might say in my experience, anybody who has attended there for two weeks or a month, whether boy or girl, has found that he or she will learn much more about the Irish language than they ever did for a period of, say, two or three years in either a secondary or a primary school.

I do not believe that the Irish language should be a subject in the first year of any child's education. I do not believe it should be a subject even in the second, third, or fourth year. I believe ordinary children, unless the parents have Irish or unless they are in Gaeltacht districts, should not be introduced to Irish as a subject in the schools until they are at least nine or ten years of age. It gives these young children enough to do to add two and two, to multiply three by four or to spell without the confusion of two languages, when the first words they ever learned were in the English language and when the first directions they were ever given were in the English language. Therefore it is, in my view, confusing to those children to have to try to think out and express their first thoughts with half Irish and half English. I know one young boy at least in my home town who, at seven years of age, even though he speaksEnglish quite well for his years, can only write his name in Irish. That may be desirable; but he is able to write his name only in Irish because he has been taught most or all of the subjects in the school through the medium of Irish. When he is outside he knows no other language but English.

These, as far as the Irish language is concerned, are my comments. I am afraid I have not been very helpful to the Minister. The only reason I make these observations is in an effort to tease out the big problem which the Minister has, which Ministers for Education have had in the past and will have for many, many years to come. I would merely close my remarks on the Irish language by repeating what I said in the first instance: as long as we regard Irish as a subject which must be passed in examinations, as long as there is reprimand, as long as there is punishment —I will not say physical punishment— for not having the Irish language, we can never expect the young children and the boys and girls up to 18 years to have any love for the language. The only way we can have Irish revived is by trying to get the students and the young boys and girls of this country to attain a love for it.

I would like to support the appeal that has been made here by Alderman Byrne and, I think, Alderman Butler and Deputy Palmer for increases in the capitation grants to secondary schools. It is a big reflection on past Governments to say that there has been no appreciable change as far as I know since 1921. The burden has been greater on some schools than on others. I do not think anybody would take exception if I mentioned in particular the Christian Brothers who do not cater for a particular section but whose classes are composed in the main of boys who could not be regarded as being really wealthy and who could not be regarded as students who could afford to pay large fees. As a matter of fact, many of us know that a big number of students—to mention one type of school—in the Christian Brothers' secondary schools receivetheir entire secondary education from about the age of 13 or 14 up to the age of 18 years completely free. I think some assistance should be afforded to those secondary schools and if the Minister will bear in mind the type of school of which I have given an example, I feel he will be inclined to consider favourably an increase in the capitation grants.

There is another suggestion I would like to give to the Minister for what it is worth. There is talk of economy now in the general administration of the Civil Service and I would suggest that the intermediate and leaving certificate examinations could be used as means of entry into the Civil Service. In the first place, it is most annoying for students, whether boys or girls, at the age of 14 or 15 in the case of the intermediate certificate and at the age of 18 years or so in the case of the leaving certificate to say that in one year they must do the intermediate or leaving certificate examination and if they want to enter the Civil Service they have to do a similar examination a month, two or three months later.

This situation is peculiar inasmuch as the examination for a clerical officer and writing assistant in the Civil Service is of the same standard as the intermediate certificate. Therefore, I would suggest that if the Minister wants to achieve economy for the Minister for Finance in that respect, he could use the intermediate certificate as a means of entry into the Civil Service for, say, writers, and for clerical officers; similarly the leaving certificate could be utilised in the same fashion for entry into the Civil Service for a post such as junior executive officer.

I do not know whether it is a long tradition or recent practice, that is the custom in examinations of coupling history and geography together. I cannot imagine how these two subjects got together. If a young student is reasonably good in history, it is possible for him—and it has often happened—to fail in that subject that is described as history and geography. In the intermediate certificate examination I think that the maximum marksfor geography are 150 and those for history 250—it may be vice versa—but if a student secures good marks in history and passes on the basis of the maximum being 250, it is quite possible for him, if he does not do well or does badly in geography, to fail both in history and geography. I can see some connection between history and geography but I would submit that a big portion of geography could very well be associated with mathematics rather than history. History is a subject which depends more on memory than anything else, the retention of dates, different occurrences and that sort of thing. The Minister may disagree but that is the way I learned history. In any case, I think the Minister will agree with me that there is not a great connection between history and geography. Why one should hang on the other for the purpose of passing the collective subject I cannot imagine.

Mr. Cogan

There has been a big connection between history and geography in this country.

Brendán Mac Fheórais

There is, but there is a big proportion that could very well be associated with mathematics rather than history. My main point is: why should one depend on the other for the purpose of passing the collective subjects when, for the purposes of the examination, they are regarded as one subject?

There is one observation I should like to make in regard to vocational education. I think sight should not be lost of the fact that it should be genuinely vocational. I know cases where carpenters' apprentices could not be admitted to woodwork classes by reason of the fact that the maximum number of vacancies in the class had already been filled and filled by people who had taken up woodwork merely as a hobby. I think that tendency should be guarded against. These classes are filled with professional people and semi-professional people—people who do not depend on woodwork for a living. I think the original intention and the desire of people who are on these vocational education committees—I am sure itwould be the desire of the Minister also—is that a preference should be given in these classes to people like carpenters' apprentices or apprentices to metalwork, as against people who merely use the classes as a hobby and for the purpose of acquiring knowledge to enable them to beautify their homes. I have some knowledge of what is happening in that regard and it is something that the Minister should look into immediately. I think that concludes the few remarks I have to make on this Vote but I should like to ask the Minister to expand slightly the observations he has already made with regard to the progress of the Irish language, not alone in schools but in the country generally, because progress inside the schools and progress outside the schools are two quite different matters.

Seán Ó Ruaidh

Is main liomsa beagáinín a rá ar cheist na Gaeilge. Cé go bhfuil an Rialtas ag déanamh a chion féin ar son na Gaeilge agus gur cúis dóchais dúinn ná ligfí chun báis í, nílimid sásta go bhfuil labhairt na Gaeilge ag dul ar aghaidh mar ba cheart. Le blianta anuas tá obair mhaith fhónta á dhéanamh sna scoileanna ar son na Gaeilge. Bíonn na daoine óga i ndon Gaeilge a labhairt nuair fhágann siad an scoil. Mar sin féin, ní féidir a rá go labhartar níos mó Gaeilge anois ná mar a labhairtí siar 20 bliain ó shoin, ná go gcuireann na gnáth-dhaoine níos mó suime sa Ghaeilge ná in aithbheochaint na Gaeilge ná mar chuireadh. Mura gcuireann, cé'n fá? Sé mo thuairimse gur orainn féin agus ar an Rialtas atá an locht. Dá dtugtaí aire chóir do na daoine óga nuair fhágann siad an scoil, le 30 bliana anuas bheadh a mhalairt de scéal maidir le labhairt na Gaeilge anois.

Is mithid dúinn féachaint chuige nach gcaillfear an mhaitheas atá á déanamh sa scoil le faillí agus neamhshuim. Más é tuairim an Rialtais gur fiú iarracht a dhéanamh chun an teanga a shábháil ní mór airgead a chaitheamh chun í shábháil, go mór mór sa Ghaeltacht agus sa Bhreach-Ghaeltacht, chun na daoine óga, na daoine a bhfuil an Ghaeilge acu, a choimeád sa bhaile.

Ní mór rudaí a chur ar fáil sa Ghaeltacht chun saol na ndaoine ann d'éadromú; ní mór cláir oiriúnacha radio i nGaeilge a chradadh agus pictiúirí reatha Gaeilge a thaispeáint ar fud na tíre. Mura déanaimid é sin is eagal liom go mbeidh ár n-iarrachtaí go léir ar son na Gaeilge gan toradh.

Tá tús maith déanta ar an obair atá fé chúram an Teachta Ó Loingsigh, an Rúnaí Parlaiminte, maidir leis an nGaeltacht. Tá súil againn go dtiocfaidh an obair sin chun blátha agus go raghaidh chun leasa na Gaeilge.

It is my belief that, if the Irish language is to become again the language of the majority, and if our bright hopes for the future of the language are not to meet with frustration, we must have a complete change in our approach to the problem. We must drop the classical-cum-cultural approach, regarding Irish as a language of the past. We must treat it as a language of the present and the future, using it as a vehicle of thought in the language of everyday life in dealing with current events and not as a language of sean-aimsearachta and folklore. We must, in effect, give our young people a thoroughly good dose of cheap and efficient modernism in Irish and a worthwhile attempt must be made to convince them of the desirability and the necessity of preserving the language. It must be made as attractive as possible to them. Up to now, no serious step has been taken in this direction.

Undoubtedly various Governments have done a reasonably good job in regard to the teaching of the language in the schools but unfortunately about 80 per cent. of this good work is lost through our failure to foster and promote that knowledge of the language after school life, through the medium of the radio, films, our newspapers and light literature generally. Radio Éireann gives altogether too much time to English in its school programmes and children's hours. If the comparatively small audience that is catered for by Radio Éireann's Irish programme is to be extended, they must be given a radio fare which isbright, pleasantly varied and of a rich entertainment value.

As regards films through the Irish medium, a minimum requirement is to provide a sufficient supply of short Gaelic "talkies" which would permit of Irish being heard for at least nine or ten minutes in every picture show throughout the country. If the comic strips in our newspapers, which are now without exception given in English, were given in Irish I feel they would prove very effective in popularising Irish. We are all well aware of how avidly "Little Panda" in the Irish Press,“Curly Wee” in theIndependentand “Mutt and Jeff” in theEvening Heraldare read by young people and even by some grownup people as well.

The publication in the daily newspapers of news items and concise accounts of current events in simple Irish would attract a very wide reading public. The Government, for their part, must give attention to the issue of various papers, pamphlets, leaflets and advertisements in Irish and must give serious consideration to the curtailment of the ever-increasing flood of imported foreign publications, in order to give Irish publications a chance. I think if these methods were adopted, and put into operation, they would prove very effective in popularising the use and achieving the continuity of the language revival movement after school life.

There is little need for me to emphasise the importance of the Gaeltacht in relation to the language revival movement. I feel sure that the efforts of the Government in establishing a permanent organisation under a Parliamentary Secretary for the economic and social development of the Gaeltacht will be welcomed enthusiastically. The setting up of that organisation to make life more attractive and provide work in the Gaeltacht will serve a twofold purpose: in addition to helping to stem the tide of emigration from the areas where it is greatest, it will go far on the road towards saving the language. I think it was Dr. Douglas Hyde who said that there is little hope for thelanguage if the Gaeltacht goes. Year after year it is growing smaller as its population, through emigration, grows less. Every person who leaves the Gaeltacht is not only a loss to the Gaeltacht but a loss to the nation as a whole and, in particular, a loss to the language revival cause. For that reason I feel certain that the Government will have the co-operation and the good-will of everybody in its efforts to foster the cradle of the language, in its simplicity, its culture and everything else so dear to the hearts of our Irish people.

I come now to a matter which has been a serious source of friction between the Department and the teachers for some considerable time. Recently it has caused much resentment and dissatisfaction amongst the teaching profession. I refer to the salary question and to the impasse that has arisen in relation to the re-establishment of conciliation and arbitration machinery. While I do not intend to criticise the Government for the delay in this matter or to question the justice, or otherwise, of the plea on which action has been deferred, I feel that something might have been done by way of an interim salary increase pending the establishment of arbitration machinery in order to secure the good-will of the teachers and restore that harmony which is so essential to the success of our educational efforts. At the moment the State is spending a pretty substantial sum on the education of children. If it is to get a proper return for this expenditure it is absolutely essential that we should have a contented teaching body. I know there are many factors influencing the position but one of the principal factors for the purpose of achieving success in our schools is that we should have happy and contented teachers, free from financial cares and worries.

The recent budgetary statement announcing increases in teachers' salaries as from the 1st of April of this year will, to some extent, restore some degree of contentment. It will be appreciated even though such an increase is only in common with otherincreases which have been granted with the Government's approval to group after group of organised workers during the past year to meet the increased cost of living.

I would also urge the Minister to go a step further in the recent measures he has taken for the equation of the salaries of vocational and secondary teachers and I would appeal to him to include primary teachers in that levelling up. It is difficult to understand why primary teachers were omitted in the first instance in view of the urgent necessity for immediate adjustment in their salaries, and in view of the fact that such a step would make for ease of administration and for a unified teaching body.

I do not think I should depart from this salary question without expressing some disappointment at the insufficiency of the award made to those teachers who retired prior to January, 1950, an award which was equivalent on an average to about only one-third of the original demand. It cannot be denied that the original demand was a just and fair one. Consequently one cannot but expect expressions of acute disappointment at the insufficiency of the award and, in particular, at the decision to spread the payment of the award over a three-year period, a decision for which there is no justification in my opinion.

I notice that in the Estimates this year there is an increase of £7,700 in the allowance for training colleges. If this increase indicates an increase in the number of teachers undergoing training it is something to be welcomed. The acute shortage of trained teachers at the moment is causing very grave concern. That is a matter demanding serious consideration and an immediate extension of training facilities to enable more trained teachers to be turned out annually. This shortage of teachers has resulted in the present unsatisfactory practice of recruiting to the service ever-increasing numbers of untrained teachers. I understand some 270 untrained teachers have been appointed to the primary schools during the past three years despite the issue of a circular by the Department—I thinkit was in 1946—that after a prescribed date only trained teachers would be appointed to the position of junior assistant mistress. I think it is about time these regulations were implemented and only trained teachers appointed to vacancies in our schools. All existing junior assistant mistresses with over ten years' teaching experience should be given the status of trained qualified teachers and placed on the appropriate salary scale.

There is another matter which calls for reform. It is a matter arising principally out of lack of accommodation and insufficiency of teachers. I refer to the size of some of the classes in the schools in the bigger towns and in the cities. Some of the classes are so large as to negative the efforts of the teachers. All experts agree that the ideal class is the small class. When a class goes above 20 it becomes less efficient. The bigger the class becomes the less efficient it is. We may reach the stage wherein, instead of having the child sitting bored and unnoticed— one in a herd of 50 or 60 children— it may be better for the child to be out in the open air exercising its limbs or using its eyes and ears. I understand that in Dublin and in other cities in the State there are classes with as many as 70 and 80 pupils in them. Not for one moment could anybody imagine that the pupils in such classes are receiving the education to which they are entitled. The most that any teacher can do is to control such a large class and keep the children quiet, if he can even do that. I think that there should be an end put to this system by the provision of accommodation and a sufficiency of teachers as quickly as possible.

You have another side to this. You have the one-teacher school which is all too prevalent throughout the country and which is equally to be condemned on the ground that no worthwhile or efficient teaching can be done. There should be no school in the country to-day with a teaching staff of less than two, and thus put an end to the inefficiency and the slavery, as one may describe it, of any single individual being asked to cater for the educational needs ofchildren ranging from infants to those in the seventh standard. That cannot be done, and the result is that both teachers and children are suffering. One of the consequences is that the children are not getting the education they are entitled to.

I would like to bring to the Minister's attention the question of the employment of substitutes in our schools. The periods of employment for substitutes in our schools are not reckoned for incremental and pension purposes, with the result that substitutes for any long period are very difficult to secure. This affects principally young teachers who have finished their training who could be very usefully employed as substitutes during their probationary period. If the Minister were to have the services of these substitutes admitted for incremental and pension purposes he would be doing a very great service to the teaching profession and also to the children, because their education must suffer through the all too frequent change of teachers.

While the Minister is to be heartily congratulated on the progress made during the past year in the provision of schools suitable for the decent accommodation of our children, and on the plans which he has formed for the future, which I hope is an indication for both teachers and parents that there are good prospects of this problem being solved within a measurable space of time, I cannot help, however, expressing some disappointment at the reduction in the grant this year for the heating and cleaning of our schools by £1,000. Probably the Minister will justify this reduction by stating that the allocation for this purpose last year of a sum of £66,000 was not all expended. I admit that schools which have been recently built do not require as much in the way of a grant for this purpose as the schools which they have replaced, but we have schools throughout the country which are in a very bad state of repair. Some of them are in a derelict condition and these require considerably more by way of grant to keep them in a decent state of cleanliness, to heatthem properly and to maintain them properly.

The amount of the grant to any school is limited by the average daily attendance and by the local contribution. Now, with the increased cost of materials and services, this grant, and a local contribution, are not sufficient to provide the heating and cleaning which are so essential for the health of the children, not to mention such requirements as the repair of broken windows, doors, desks and floors. I would urge the Minister to increase the grant to the schools which are in a bad state of repair so as to help to dispel the physical discomforts and so provide an atmosphere for the normal healthy development of our children pending the provision of accommodation suitable for our children during their school hours.

I do not think there is anything more I have to say, except to mention that I have noticed, since the return of Fianna Fáil as a Government, that there has been a recurrence in certain newspapers, aye and even in this House, by certain Deputies of the campaign against what is mistakenly termed compulsory Irish in the schools, with the suggestion that there should be a reversion to Irish as a voluntary subject. We are all well aware of what little heed certain sections gave to Irish when it was a voluntary subject. We can only assume that those people would again show their contempt for Irish if it became a compulsory subject. There should be no question of creating a position in which those people, who wish to reject and despise the language, would be free to do so.

Mr. Browne

There are one or two matters in connection with our schools that I want to raise on the Estimate. During the period of office of the Minister and of his predecessor, the schools in my area have been brought up to a good standard. Yet, we have a big number of schools which are in urgent need of repair. I shall mention two in particular—Callagh and Straide. Both schools have been inspected by the Department, and I am sure the inspector has reported on them. I understand that they havebeen more or less condemned, and are to be replaced by new schools. Work, I understand, will be carried on in them for some time as a result of a reconstruction grant which has been made available for both schools. I hope that the Minister will do what he can in regard to the provision of new schools in both places.

There is a new school to be provided at Crossmolina. The number of children on rolls seems to be increasing. The area in which the school is situate is a small one, but there is a very big attendance of children at the school. The present one is of the old standard size. A small addition was built to it some time ago. A new boys' school is to be provided on a separate site. I would ask the Minister to hurry up a decision in regard to the erection of this new school. The site for it has been purchased. I understand that the manager has made arrangements in regard to a local contribution. Water and sewerage are to be provided by the local authority. All the formalities have been completed, I understand, and all that is being awaited now is the decision to start work on the new school.

In regard to schools which are situate, say, 200 or 300 yards from the local town arrangements should I suggest be made for the provision of water and sewerage. In fact, I think that should be made compulsory in areas where schools are not too far distant from a town which has these facilities. We can all realise what a great advantage it would be to the children attending those schools to have a supply of pure water available for drinking purposes. The children are in school for long hours and so a supply of pure water is really essential for them for health purposes.

On the question of cleaning of the schools, in some cases there is someone employed to do the sweeping and cleaning. In the case of all schools, I think it would be of advantage to have a compulsory arrangement, that someone would be employed to clean up the schools after schools hours. It is not fair to ask the young boys or girls to remain over after school tosweep up after a dusty day. As the previous speaker said, you have old schools with old fireplaces, where they are sometimes waiting for the erection of a new school and there especially the dust is more general than in new schools. A cleaning arrangement of some sort should be compulsory and someone should be employed specially to do it.

Vocational education is of great benefit in rural areas to the boys and girls. The regulation for the erection of vocational schools at present, regarding the number leaving school at a certain age and inside a certain radius, means I am afraid—unless some provisions are made by the Department to ease the regulation—that the rural areas will have very little hope of reaching the day when a vocational school will be erected in the area, where there may be a very big number of the young population attending schools. The regulations provide that there must be a certain number of boys or girls leaving the national school around the age of 16 and that is confined to a radius of three miles. The Department may extend it and go a little further. If more of such schools were made available in rural areas or a smaller type, say, a one-teacher school, it might meet the ordinary demand for the local boys and girls. It might ease the demand on the bigger schools, on the three-teacher and four-teacher schools in towns with a big population. In those towns the town population can more than supply the limited number of places, while the boy in the rural area who is one, three or in some cases ten miles away, has not a hope of getting a place.

Vocational education is one of the greatest things that can be operated for the young people. In my area I know young boys who attended a vocational school and after their term there they went out working on their own and turned out to be first-class tradesmen, housebuilders or carpenters. You could not improve on the standard they reached after they left the vocational schools. The same thing applies to young girls. They get a standard of education in these vocational schools which is of immensevalue to them. If the scheme were extended more into the rural areas it would give an opening to such boys and girls. Those who have got the standard of vocational education leaving those schools can get employment now wherever they go and they can carry their qualifications from those schools with them and look back on the education and training they got which has made them able to compete in the same job with people in this country or outside it anywhere in the world.

In the rural areas now there are many big garages, sometimes near small towns, and there seems to be some regulation that apprentices must have a certain standard of vocational education before they can be taken into those garages. If that is compulsory and if the boys in the area convenient to the garage have not the possibility of attending a vocational school fairly near their homes, they will not get employment in the local garage—where they would have to work for a very small weekly wage while serving their time.

In regard to the school medical examination, provision should be made in all schools for up-to-date accommodation for that inspection. The Minister and his officials will agree that sometimes when the medical inspector, the doctor, calls to a school in a very backward place, perhaps on a mountainside, he has neither the accommodation, the light nor water that he needs. Many of those schools are of an old type with poor fireplaces, they may have been condemned and the people may be waiting for a new school. Special provision or special regulations should be made to provide proper accommodation for that medical examination, so that the full benefit of the scheme may be given to the youngsters concerned.

In regard to the local contributions for reconstruction or the building of new schools, I admit that the Department has been very fair and that the grants they give are very generous, but even with a generous grant the local contribution is a heavy strain on themanager. He has to find a lot of it himself, rather than see the school left in the same condition. If it is going to cost £800 or £1,000, he may be asked to put up £100 or £200—it may be more or less—and it is hard for him to get that money. The Minister will agree it is no easy job. He has to collect it from the area where the children are leaving the school. If he tries to collect it from those who are attending the school for the time being, those people may not have children attending in five years' time and may not wish to contribute for the time being, as they would not be making use of the school after it was put in repair. I know the Minister has been reasonable and fair and that the local contribution is only a small portion of the cost, but even so I can assure the Minister—I feel sure he is aware of it himself—that it is no easy job for the manager to collect the sum necessary to have the work done.

The question of maintenance arises. When a school is being reconstructed or repaired the manager is required to make a local contribution which may be anything from £50 to £200. It is not easy to get that. There is a second charge for maintenance. Maintenance costs may run to £200 or £300. That is the main difficulty. The present Minister and the previous Minister and every Minister for Education in my time and everyone connected with education were generous. During the last 30 years a big change has been effected in regard to national schools. Schools are now coming up to a good standard. There are some beautiful new schools. Old schools have been repaired. There remain a big number of schools in backward areas which are in urgent need of repair. I trust that the work will be continued so that within the next five to ten years there will not be any school that is not of the highest standard, providing good accommodation and comfort for the young children.

Mr. Cogan

Every Deputy will congratulate the Minister on the fact that additional work and additional money is being provided for the reconstruction of schools and the building ofnew schools. That is a matter for satisfaction. It is impossible to fail to observe the new school buildings that are springing up throughout the country. They are extremely well designed and, to the layman's eye, very suitable for the purpose for which they are intended. Satisfaction should be expressed because of the fact that money is being provided for the reconstruction and improvement of school buildings.

I do not hold the view that the people of the parish or district or the parents should depend entirely on the central Government for all the money needed for this purpose. Nothing is more important than that there should be a sense of local self-reliance and local patriotism which will inspire the local people to put up portion of the cost. That principle should be enunciated by all Deputies and brought home to the people generally. If this country is to depend entirely on the State for everything the people need from the cradle to the grave we will cease to be a free nation. The principle of a local contribution is sound. Deputy Browne referred to the amounts required for the reconstruction or improvement of a school as being in the neighbourhood of £200 or £300. These may seem considerable sums but it is possible to raise these sums by active local endeavour without the necessity for a collection, merely through the provision of entertainments in the parochial hall. That has been done in many cases.

In regard to primary education it is more important—I think the Minister has expressed the view—to make our children good, independent, self-reliant citizens capable of making their way through life than to stuff them with a lot of figures and facts derived from books which will be completely forgotten after leaving school. It is more important that children should be able to read and write well and to have a taste for reading and writing than that they should be crammed with subjects which are perhaps distasteful to them and which are acquired mainly for the purposeof an examination and are forgotten almost immediately. I hope that theory will be kept in mind by teachers

Last year I suggested that there should be an organised move on the part of teachers to find ways and means, by co-operation amongst themselves, to improve the standard and methods of education. We have now, thank God, an organisation of farmers for the purpose of acquiring better methods of farming. It would be a good thing if teachers, particularly young teachers, came together to find ways and means of overcoming the difficulties they encounter, to find better methods of teaching, to learn all that there is to be learned about teaching and to develop a spirit of enthusiasm to make their schools better and to turn out better citizens. Such a move was long advocated in regard to agriculture. It was a long time coming but it has come and, if fostered, will do an enormous amount of good. It should come also in education. For many years teachers organised but it was mainly a trade union movement for the purpose of improving their position. It is essential that they should come together and consult with a view to making education more effective.

Every teacher will admit that a great deal of the work he does goes down the drain, so to speak. A teacher meets past pupils who have left school only a short time and finds that they have forgotten a very great deal that they have learned. He encounters many ex-pupils who were fairly bright at school but who make complete failures of their lives and he wonders was it, perhaps, due to some fault on his part.

These are questions that teachers should be discussing between themselves and these are problems which they should be trying to solve.

I do not agree with those Deputies who regularly every year in this debate demand that children in the primary schools should be completely exempt from doing any form of manual work. The whole basis of education is to teach people at an early age to use both their minds and their bodies to the best advantage in going throughlife. Complete concentration on brain-work alone for young people is neither right nor desirable. It might be said by some that children go to school to acquire a formal education in literary subjects. It might be said that as far as manual instruction or physical instruction is concerned they can get that in their homes. We must remember, however, that every home is not a model home, and I think that every school should try to be a model school inasmuch as it would give a certain amount, not only of mental training, but of manual or physical training. Children generally have a certain amount of distaste for too much brain-work. They are inclined to tire after a certain amount of it. They like a little relaxation. No normal child objects to being asked to do a little work in the matter of brightening his or her immediate surroundings or the school itself. The old ideal in regard to that was that children should be taught to make their school better, brighter and more attractive, taught to help in the cleaning of the school, cleaning the windows if you like, in making the school bright and cheerful and perhaps in planting flowers or shrubs about the school so that it would look more like a home or farmhouse. That should be the ideal in regard to education.

If there is a plot of ground adjoining the school, a real effort should be made to employ the children for a short time each week in planting it and so brighten the minds of the children. The natural instinct of a child is to look at everything that is growing. Children have a love for growing plants and vegetables and everything of that kind and the training that they would receive in attractive work of that kind would be beneficial to them all their lives. It is not right for children to do hard or unpleasant or distasteful work, but it is right to encourage them to do work which is attractive to them and which they will enjoy doing with their hands. It ought to be the fundamental basis of education to teach children to write well and to read, to give them a taste for reading what is good and desirable. In that way you are layingthe foundations for an education that is suitable for children whether they are to spend their lives on the land or doing manual work or eventually to graduate to higher vocations.

I am particularly interested in what I might describe as primary education for our agricultural and rural community and our working population generally. It is in this field that there is great need for development. I mentioned this matter last year in a general way, and I am glad to notice that during the past year in the County Wicklow concrete proposals were put forward for improving vocational education. These proposals in regard to West Wicklow have come from the local branches of Macra na Feirme, or the young farmers' clubs. They have put up to the local vocational committee proposals for extending and improving vocational education.

The broad outline of their plan is that Baltinglass, where there is a well-equipped vocational school, should become the principal centre for the whole of West Wicklow area and that affiliated, if you like, with that principal centre there should be a number of sub-centres, in Dunlavin, Hollywood, Blessington, Kiltegan, Rathangan, Grangecon, etc. Those sub-centres would each possess a small hall or building or a large room in some place in which evening classes would be held. In the principal centre there would be day classes of course and evening classes as well. In the sub-centres there could not be day classes, but there would be evening classes in woodwork, domestic economy for girls, rural science, which is most important for farmers and farm workers, adult education, and Irish. There would also be public lectures, educational films and discussion groups. In addition, in each of them you would have a branch of the county library.

In the main, these are the proposals put up by Macra na Feirme so far as West Wicklow is concerned. They are constructive proposals and they should be examined and implemented if possible. It would mean, of course, some small addition to the staff of the central vocational school. There wouldneed to be a rural science teacher, and, of course, he would be largely engaged in conducting the evening classes in the different sub-centres. If these proposals are implemented, it is hoped to bring about a position which is altogether desirable, that no boy or girl leaving the national school and intending to take up manual work or intending to go for a higher education would be left without an opportunity of obtaining additional education. As far as young farmers and young farm workers are concerned, it is very often difficult for small farmers and even more difficult for farm labourers to send their sons to a day school and take them away from their work. When they reach the school-leaving age, their services are very often required on the farm.

They can all attend the evening classes and I think evening classes are all-important. In that way they can acquire the theoretical knowledge which is essential to the agricultural labourer and the farmer who would benefit immensely by learning all there is to be known about the various aspects of the industry, the value of fertilisers, the constituents of the soil, the values of feeding stuffs and the qualities of the different breeds of live stock. In addition, perhaps, they would get a little smattering of veterinary knowledge which is also very important. Furthermore, girls would receive extra knowledge in addition to their ordinary education. They would also receive domestic economy instruction which would fit them to take up positions available at the present time and would ensure that they would become good housewives later in life.

I think the plan submitted by Macra na Feirme in regard to West Wicklow is a good one. It is a good thing that the young farmers have come together and put up proposals of this kind to the Minister for Education. It is a good thing that we have that spirit of progress and that desire to improve the most important thing in regard to life generally which is the improvement of the general knowledge of our people so that they will become better citizens, better farmers, better workers and be better qualified to fight theirway through life. This proposal of the young farmers' clubs in West Wicklow raises another question and I wonder whether the Minister has given any attention to it. It is the proposal on the relationship between the Department of Education and the Department of Agriculture.

In regard to education, the primary function of the Department of Education is to educate but the Department of Agriculture also shares a little responsibility in this connection inasmuch as its function is also to provide agricultural education. Some line of demarcation should be drawn between the functions of the Department of Education and those of the Department of Agriculture. As far as the organising of day or evening classes is concerned that should be the function of the Department of Education. They should be finally concerned with the provision of vocational education in every form for the younger people, particularly vocational education.

The Department of Agriculture have enough to do. Their agricultural instructors visit the farms operating the various schemes and the Department provides an advisory service. That is their function and it is one which gives them plenty of work to do. I know that at the present time instructors of the Department of Agriculture are finding it difficult to cope with the amount of work they have to do with regard to soil testing and matters of that kind. The organising and holding of classes should be left to the Department of Education through the vocational education committees.

If we had a scheme such as is outlined by Macra na Feirme for West Wicklow I think you would fill a very great need and provide a very sound general vocational education for all our young people. I should mention that the Macra na Feirme organisation in regard to West Wicklow touched upon another aspect of this problem. There is, as I have said, one principal centre —I think that is what it is called—the vocational school in Baltinglass which is a day school. It is not physically possible for any youngster residing outside a four or five mile radius of Baltinglass to attend those classes.

The question arises whether it would be desirable to provide some form of transport or whether the Department of Education would assist in some way in providing that transport so as to cater for those living outside a five or six mile radius of Baltinglass. A five or six mile radius is a rather wide radius. In fact, you could hardly expect a youngster of 15 or 16 to cycle more than that distance anyway. In West Wicklow you have, perhaps, children living 15, 20 or 25 miles distant from the vocational schools. If it were possible to assist in some way in regard to transport it would help greatly.

A certain percentage of the children would need to travel. Others who would not require the full programme of education provided in the day schools would attend the night schools in their own district but there will be a certain number who would need or desire to benefit from the full programme of education in the day school at Baltinglass. The number might not be very great but it would be desirable to provide some form of transport. I mention this not because it is a local problem but because there is probably a similar position in other areas. It is just a question of whether it would be cheaper to help in regard to transport rather than multiply the number of day vocational schools throughout the country. I feel that some assistance in regard to transport would be the better of the two propositions because you would have larger classes and it would be possible to have a more efficient school. The cost of building at the present time is enormous. I know the cost of transport is also heavy. Nevertheless, I think the provision of transport would be the cheaper of the two propositions.

With regard to the heating of schools, it is time that more schools, whether they be new or old, adopted more modern methods of heating. An open fireplace in a school-room is hardly the best way to heat a school. Most of the heat travels up the chimney along with the smoke and I suppose the draught of the chimney adds to the draughtiness of the school. Science has made some progress in regard to heating andit is desirable to see if it would not be possible, by installing a modern heating system, to provide (1) a more efficient heating system and (2) perhaps an even cheaper heating system. I am not in a position to suggest what particular type of heating system should be adopted—whether it should be a storage system of electric heating or fuel utilised in a more beneficial way with the aid of modern heating appliances.

I know that it is usual to ask the State to do everything for everybody and at the same time to reduce taxation but you cannot have it both ways. Even if it were possible for the State to provide money for everything for everybody, without increasing taxation, that might not be the best thing for us. I consider that it is a good education for our people to learn to be a little more self-sufficient not only nationally but parochially and even individually. An organised effort on the part of the community in every parish and district could work wonders in regard to improving the appearance of a school and its surroundings and in regard to maintaining and heating it and making it comfortable for the children. I suppose that if the Minister asked local people to do certain things they would say that he was going to take a burden of his own shoulders and put it on those of somebody else. I consider that an organised effort should be made by the people themselves in every district to get the utmost value they can out of the amenities provided by the State at present rather than to seek to make bigger demands upon the State.

The Minister has provided an account in regard to progress in education during the past year, and I hope that next year he will be able to give us an account of still further progress. I understand from the Minister's statement that the report of the Council of Education will be published in the near future. I sincerely trust that it will provide scope for further improvements in regard to education. I hope that it will provide some concrete ideas of a constructive nature and that it will help us to improve our educational standards. The whole progressof the nation depends upon the type and standard of education which is provided. I am sure that no Minister has ever taken office as Minister for Education who was more conscious of that fact than the present Minister. I think everybody will wish him success in the efforts which he is genuinely making to improve education both in the higher spheres, about which I know but little, and in the lower spheres of primary and vocational education, about which I know something and in which I take a very considerable interest. I believe that it is in that particular field that there is the most room for development. We are, perhaps, giving higher education to too great a number of our people. We are, perhaps, educating too many people for the learned professions and not enough for the ordinary productive avocations of life. Every acre of waste land in this country is a reflection upon our educational system. Every inefficiently worked farm is a reflection upon our educational system. Every up-to-date homestead and farm and every up-to-date workshop and factory is a tribute to our system of education.

I think there is a very wide scope in this country for development not only in relation to agriculture but also in relation to the skilled trades. We are only just at the beginning of the mechanisation of agriculture and with its development comes the need for skilled mechanics of every kind who will help the farmer to get the most out of his machinery by keeping it in repair. The blacksmith, the shoemaker and craftsmen of that kind are being pushed aside and craftsmen of a new type are taking their place. The vocational schools are helping to train our people in these new crafts. On every farm there is a need for constructional work—for the building of concrete walls, of modern outhouses, and so forth. Such work can be carried out by farmers' sons provided they get training in it at the vocational school. An immense and extending field of work lies before the vocational schools. I hope that the Minister, in co-operation with the Council of Education in the first place, with theparochial authorities in the second place and last, but not least, with the young farmers' clubs in the various districts, will help to make agriculture more attractive from the point of view of our young people generally and particularly in rural communities.

Mr. Rooney

The trend of this debate has been towards the policy in relation to the Irish language. Many speakers here have taken the line that the approach to this problem does not appear to be the proper one. We heard a very good contribution from Deputy Ormonde on this problem, but he spoiled a very good speech by his final reference to compulsory Irish. It is very well known that the question of compulsory Irish for this country was decided upon by Sinn Féin and Deputy Ormonde's Party has no monopoly, so far as the Sinn Féin policy is concerned.

Unfortunately, the present system of teaching Irish here does not create the type of enthusiasm which will establish the language in the minds of the people. It was mentioned earlier in the debate that a teacher who meets one of his former pupils in the primary schools a couple of years after that pupil has left the school and who addresses him in Irish, finds that he is unable to reply to him, notwithstanding the fact that that pupil during his school years had Irish drummed into him. That clearly demonstrates that the policy in relation to the restoration of the language is the wrong one. The learning of Irish for examinations is apparently a mechanical matter. So long as a pupil can pass examinations by learning Irish in a mechanical way, the object is achieved and, rightly enough, a Deputy who spoke earlier said that, instead of having these examinations which brought the test of the language down to a fine art, it might be better to encourage the language in a general way instead of providing the type of knowledge required for these highly competitive examinations on which in many cases the career of a child depends.

If we could devise a system which would create in the children a natural appreciation of the language, it wouldbe more successful. When one sees the wonderful change which is brought about in the knowledge of the language secured by the lucky child who can go to the Gaeltacht for a month in the summer, once or twice during his school years, we should examine what has brought about the grip of the language which that child gets in such a short time, compared with the other child who has the language drummed into him one day after another. The reason, of course, is that the acquisition and adoption of the language is associated with the child's recreation, with the fun and games and the eventful life of the child during that month or two in the Gaeltacht, apart from the fact that the language he uses there is exclusively Irish, or at least is expected to be and in most cases is. They get a grip of the language because it is associated with their natural inclinations, with their recreation and all that happens during their holiday. I think we should take a lesson from the results that can be achieved by these brief holidays in the Gaeltacht by the lucky few of the thousands of children who are being taught Irish at present.

I should like to say at this stage that we should examine the possibility of having something like an Irish week. That would create a spirit of co-operation amongst the community in general in the effort to restore the language as a spoken language. It can be done but we do not seem to have advanced very far on the road towards it. I say that it can be done because one has only to cross the Irish Sea to hear the Welsh people speaking their own language, and similarly Scottish people speaking their language. We should be able to restore the language if we adopt the proper approach and go about it in the proper way. Apparently the system adopted up to this has not brought the success which was expected and desired, and for that reason we must change our approach.

I have mentioned the possibility of holding an Irish-speaking week because it might instil in our people a community spirit that would be associatedwith the language. For one reason or another our own people are sometimes inclined to ridicule the language and people who try to use it in public, and I feel that if this idea of an Irish week were adopted the person who would despise the language would be the person who would be ridiculed and not the person trying to use the language. We had this year an effort to revive Irish culture and it is intended to have similar occasions in future years. That is a good thing and I feel that the revival of the language might be approached in the same way seeing that the policy which has been in operation now for 30 years has not achieved all that was expected, as we must admit.

In the primary schools, the present approach is more classical and cultural than practical, and, when it is a matter of giving children a start in life in the years during which they attend the primary school, from the ages of eight years up to 14 years, I think we should have a more practical approach and seek to equip the children as best we can for the years ahead. For instance, the children are taught geometry, mathematics and other subjects all of which are intended to help the child to think for himself and to reason for himself, but there are other aspects of normal life which will present themselves to the children in later years which are not dealt with in the primary schools. I feel that they should be.

In the case of girls at these schools, from the ages of 11 or 12 to 14 years, they should get some practical demonstrations in relation to normal house duties. These children leave the schools without being told how to sew a button, except where there are special needlework classes in the schools, how to boil an egg properly or how to make a cup of tea. These are the things they will be doing in future years as part of their ordinary household duties and I feel that the elementary aspect of household duties should be taught to children in these schools.

I am very glad to say I know of one national school in County Dublin where the teachers voluntarily give that instructionduring their spare time; after the school has closed they give instruction of that nature to the more senior of the pupils if you can call them senior when they are 13 or 14 years of age. It is a very desirable thing to equip them in that way with those practical lectures and demonstrations because what they thus learn at the primary school they will remember afterwards due to the fact that it is absolutely elementary.

Similarly young boys of 13 or 14 years of age, should be given demonstrations and lectures in relation to ordinary handiwork in the home in connection with the various problems that arise there, the maintenance of the home and the other small matters that need to be attended to. I feel young boys ought to get some education of that kind. Of course, all the pupils should be given lectures in relation to the civic spirit, particularly in regard to their fellowmen and to their country.

It was said that teaching girls and boys the elementary matters I mentioned apart from a proper civic spirit is a matter for the parents to attend to at home. Unfortunately the circumstances in all homes are not the same and the chance of every pupil getting the advantage of demonstrations and lectures of this nature is not there. Therefore, when you get the group of pupils together, it would be an advantage to let them have this instruction in the primary schools.

A problem facing many poor parents all over the country at the present time is the cost of school books. It is a problem that faces parents every year according as the children advance from one class to another. I wonder whether the Minister would consider the adoption of a standard set of school books which could be used from one year to another. If we take, for instance, the 4th standard in a primary school and a certain set of books for that particular standard—English literature, Irish literature, mathemathics, history and geography and any other subjects that might be taught in 4th class—would it not bepossible to have a standard type of books which would enable a child having reached the 4th standard to go through the year with those books and the following year to give the children who advance from 3rd into 4th class the same books and the same education from those books.

There is an inclination, I know, to change from one year to another the type of books used for teaching the same subjects. The result is that the parents whose child has gone on one year and whose next child comes into that standard are faced with the necessity of buying a new set of books. That is why I would like the Minister to examine the possibility of having some kind of standard books which might result in that economy which is very important where the children of very poor parents are concerned.

Unfortunately, in my experience I have found in connection with school repairs, that the allocation of finance and the preparation of plans for such work seem to take a very long time, in fact, an unreasonable time. Would it be possible for the Minister to examine this question? We all know these arrangements are made between the school manager on the one side, the Minister on the other side, with the Board of Works taking an active part in it, too, in relation to the plans. Of course, the parish priest or the school manager, whoever he may be, finds it necessary to get some of the finance for the cost of those repairs.

Could anything be done to improve the machinery which results in the long run in having a school repaired? I have in mind a school at Corduff, near Lusk. It is about five years now since the parents of the children going to that school first began to agitate for having certain repairs carried out. Unfortunately the work has not yet been done. I do not know whether the Department, the Board of Works or the manager is to blame, but in any case the children and the parents are suffering at the moment. The school yard is in a very bad state of repair and the children in the normal way playing about in what is only a mud bank naturally fall and their clothingis destroyed. It is a hardship on the parents to find their children coming home with mud from head to foot in consequence of the fact that this school yard has not been properly repaired. I understand one reason for the delay is that the Board of Works requires the yard to be done according to specification, which might be a very costly matter, whereas if they were prepared to give a smaller amount in order to have a fairly good job done the problem would be met but the requirements of the Department would not.

There is also a crowded school at St. Margarets, which is outside Finglas. I was very glad to see during the year that the new school at Kinsealy was opened. I think there were 180 pupils there and the school originally was built for 40. Some of the children used to bring their chairs with them and others used to have to take turns sitting on the existing seating accommodation. We have a good school there now but the conditions I have mentioned are now in the school at St. Margarets. I know efforts are being made to arrange with the Department for the provision of a new school there and I am mentioning it in this debate because I would like to bring the urgency of the matter to the notice of the Minister. St. Margarets, of course, is linked up with the schooling arrangements in Finglas because it is the same school manager who is concerned. The problem of Finglas has become very great owing to the large number of corporation houses that has been built. At the moment it is necessary for the children to go in busloads into the city national schools wherever they can get accommodation because there is not sufficient accommodation in the old national school; it is not really an old school which is in Finglas but it was not built to accommodate a rapidly growing city population which we have in the Finglas area.

I would like to have a statement from the Minister regarding the school building programme. I suppose the school at St. Margarets which I havementioned is only one of hundreds of national schools that are required throughout the country. I would like a statement from him regarding the progress which is expected to be achieved during the coming year. The building programme in the matter of private housing has been considerably curtailed but of course the provision of national schools does not come into the same category. For that reason, I should like to have an assurance from the Minister that the building programme in regard to schools will be pursued with all speed. A very elaborate plan for the provision of school buildings all over the country was decided upon some years ago and that policy has been pursued vigorously. I should like, as I have said, an assurance from the Minister that it will be continued.

There has been a very remarkable development in regard to vocational education which compensates in some measure for the fact that many children are obliged to leave school at 14 years of age. At that age they are neither children nor adults. They are physically unfitted for the manual work that might be demanded from them and they are not mentally equipped for other work for at least two or three years more—until they reach the age of 17 or 18. In the meantime the vocational schools come to the rescue. If it is not the policy of the Department to increase the school-leaving age from 14 to 15 or even 16 years, I think the need for vocational education will become even greater. We have seen the advantages which vocational education brings not alone to city areas but also to remote rural areas.

I am aware that every effort is being made by various local authorities in co-operation with the Department of Education to provide this vocational education. Vocational classes are being very well attended and they are a very valuable asset for children when they leave the primary school. There is an inclination I know on the part of some people who have hobbies to take advantage of the classes provided for adults. I am very glad to reiterate the view expressed by other Deputies, that we shouldmake sure that vocational education will, first of all, be made available for persons to whom it will be of practical advantage by way of enabling them to earn a livelihood and to contribute something to the community. When these services are availed of by persons who desire to pursue carpentry, for example, as a hobby, for the purpose of making dressers or wardrobes that can be used in their own homes, I think the advantage of vocational education is nullified to some extent. I feel that the real advantage of such education is that it enables young people to become craftsmen and to enter the various trades.

I should like to find out from the Minister, if he himself is not responsible for controlling the circulation of some of the vulgar comics that are circulating through the country, whether anybody else can be held responsible. I know that the circulation of these undesirable comics amongst young people is not a matter that comes within the functions of the Minister for Education but, at least, it can be said that comics do make an impression on the minds of children and for that reason they can be associated with education in a general way. The education to be derived from them is not unfortunately of a good type and for that reason I should like to hear some comment from the Minister in relation to the vulgar comics I have mentioned. Sometimes these comics are a great attraction to certain types of children but even in the case of harmless comics, the print is so small that it might be injurious to the children's eyesight. I think a standard size print should be laid down in relation to these comics. Children read them, study them and enjoy them, but in most cases a very cheap type of small print is used. In the long run it might prove harmful to the children's eyesight although the comics may be quite innocent in another way.

A problem that arises in national schools all over the country is the cost of heating such schools. The question of securing the necessary finances to purchase turf or coal for these schools is an annual problem. I am awarethat in many private concerns cheap heating arrangements which are not of an elaborate type are now being used. In fact, it seems that the more elaborate the heating arrangement, the less effective and the more costly it is. I should like to know from the Minister whether the question of providing simple cheap heating plants in schools has been considered. Possibly oil heaters or turf burners would be far more effective than a fire of coal or turf in an open grate where most of the heat goes up the chimney. The ideal arrangement would be to have a uniform heat all over the room. It might be argued that an oil heater or a turf burner would not have a very attractive appearance but I think that the desirability of having a proper uniform temperature in the school room should overcome that objection. It would be helpful if the Department would indicate to school managers all over the country the type of heating plant they consider most useful in these days because, I think, most of us must admit that the open grate is out of date, especially so far as school rooms are concerned.

I should like to congratulate the Minister on the progress made by the Department during the past year. I think it is the only Department of Government at the present time that has shown anxiety to get ahead and to make progress. Finally, I want to say that the difficulty existing between the teachers on the one hand and the Department on the other, should be remedied. It does not make for harmoney in the work of education and, having given some study to the matter, I think the problem could be solved. There should be a little give and take on both sides and the Department should not, I think adopt an unreasonable attitude towards the teachers in relation to the matter at issue.

Mr. Gallagher

I was glad to learn from the Minister's speech that he has endeavoured to initiate a survey of the Dublin City schools in an effort to further the education of backward or mentally retarded children. I think it will be generally agreed that such education is a very urgent matter andI sincerely hope that the Minister will deal expeditiously with the problem. These unfortunate children need all the help we can give them in order to imbue them with hope and confidence. It is difficult for the normal child to make his way in the world to-day. What is it for the child who is backward? He has a very poor chance in this competitive age. Anything the Minister can do to remedy the present situation will meet with the approval of every Deputy and with the approval of the parents of these children. The teachers who are working at the moment with these children deserve our thanks. They will get every blessing for their work. It is a noble work and it deserves the highest praise. I appeal to the Minister to deal expeditiously with the matter.

Like the Minister, I do not slavishly want to adopt the educational methods of other countries but it must be agreed that we lag far behind many countries in relation to the provision of school libraries and physical education. I can speak with more authority on physical education than I can on school libraries. I think the provision of such libraries is an excellent idea because it gives the children an opportunity of widening the scope of their knowledge with the aid of books, other than text books. I think every effort should be made to have a good supply of such books in the schools. The local authorities could help and I, as a member of the Dublin Corporation, will do everything in my power to see that any improvement that can be made in school libraries will be made. It is a good thing to see the children reading good books instead of the comics about which we heard so much.

We are very far behind other countries in relation to physical education. I think that is a great pity. I have personal knowledge of the physical education that takes place in countries like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Poland. Possibly there may be other ideas behind the physical education programme in such countries. All I am concerned with is the general physique of our children. Proper recreational facilities improvephysique and make the children mentally alert.

We should pay tribute to the teachers who, far from regarding themselves as having fulfilled their obligation when they have finished teaching, devote a great deal of their spare time in the evenings and over the week-ends in the interests of their pupils in relation to physical training and recreational facilities.

I am associated with swimming here in Dublin. We have a Schools Swimming Association and it would do the Minister good to see the teachers spending their Saturday mornings teaching the children how to swim down in the baths in Tara Street. We are all concerned with reducing drowning statistics. Whilst that matter does not come under the jurisdiction of the Minister, I think it is germane to point out that if children are taught how to swim, not alone will they be able to possibly save their own lives but they may at some future date be able to save the lives of others.

Last year in Dublin a young boy, Charles Beare, age 13, a pupil of the Christian Brothers School in North Brunswick Street, who learned to swim in the primary schools instruction class, saved a school pal, aged 12, from drowning in the canal. In Cork a young boy, Dominick Kelly, dived into the River Lee and rescued a four-year-old child. Not alone did he rescue the child but he also rescued a man who had gone to the child's assistance. Two people are alive to-day as a result of that lad's pluck. That is one reason why I am keen on this type of education. It is certainly worth while. The Minister in his speech said that he would like to see one day, or a half-day, set aside upon which teachers could indulge their liking for a particular subject. He felt that would help to broaden the outlook of the child. I would appeal to teachers to adopt that suggestion. The Minister asked for comment or criticism. I think that is an excellent idea and one that should be adopted.

In Dublin we have the Primary Schools League, the Pembroke Schools Sports Committee and similar bodies doing excellent work. I think we should put it on record that we arevery grateful to the teachers for the work they are doing because, by voluntary effort, they are trying to fill the gap in the ordinary school curriculum. Their voluntary effort is something of which we should be proud. Unfortunately we have only two swimming baths in Dublin. I know this is really a matter for the Minister for Local Government but, if any proposition is put forward relative to the provision of swimming baths, I appeal to the Minister to bear in mind what I have said in relation to swimming instruction in the schools. The existing baths are a disgrace and steps should be taken to remedy the position. The Minister should support any proposition put forward in that respect.

I know one school in Dublin where the staff arrange an annual visit for the children to places of scenic and historical interest, such as Glendalough and the Boyne Valley. That gives the children an opportunity of visiting these places and opens for them a window, as it were, to the cultural and historic past. I know the young people enjoy these trips. Other associations, such as the Junior Red Cross, are doing excellent work.

I would like to pay a special tribute to the Dublin Municipal School of Music. I have attended all the concerts this year. The standard has improved considerably and I was very much impressed at a recent concert in the Gresham Hotel. On a visit to Warsaw recently I went to a schools concert and the music was first class. I would like the pupils in Dublin to get every opportunity of continuing their studies. If that is given we may possibly have less complaints in future in connection with the staffing of the Radio Éireann Orchestra.

I think that we have very good talent in the Municipal School of Music which should be watched and developed so that those who possess it may in time be in a position to man our orchestras. I have always held the opinion that they should be manned by our own people. That is not possible at present because the standard required is very high, and those who get positions on them must as a rule spend some time studying under famous musicians from other countries. As I say, the talentthat is available in the Municipal School of Music should be carefully watched and every effort made to develop it.

There is in Dublin—the matter has already been mentioned in this debate —great concern regarding the question of untrained teachers. I am personally aware that this is a matter that is causing a great deal of concern to the parents of children attending our city schools. I should like to see the Minister tackling it as early as possible. I know it is a big task, but I am sure that if he gets down to the work he will do what he can about it. One of my own children is attending a school in the locality where I live. He was transferred from one class to another. There is an untrained teacher in the second class, and we can see the difference. I think that is a matter that requires urgent attention.

Deputy A. Byrne referred to the Dublin Corporation and the Department of Education regarding the question of school sites in our housing schemes. I think he should know that the housing committee of the Dublin Corporation make every effort to help the Archbishop and the priests who have to deal with the schools. There was no need to mention the matter here so far as getting co-operation from the housing committee of the Corporation is concerned. I believe that we are barred in some way from selling sites for schools. We have carried out some very good schemes with the approval of the Archbishop who has paid tribute to us time and again. I do not think the Minister has anything to worry about so far as the Dublin Corporation is concerned. It will do everything possible to provide sites for schools, if it is within its power to do so.

Finally, I should like to join with other Deputies in paying tribute to the Minister and his staff for the courtesy they have shown at all times to members of this House. On the few occasions that I had to trouble the Department I received nothing but courtesy from the Minister and his staff. It is one Department where you are received with open arms and given every possible help. I have had little to do with other Departments of State. Ishould like on this occasion to thank the Minister and his staff for their courtesy to me. The Minister's report on a good year's work can, I think, be summed up by saying, go h-an-mhaith ar fad.

Mr. Crowe

I should like to direct the Minister's attention to the dilapidated condition of some of our country schools, not only to their dilapidated condition but to the paths leading to some of them in mountainy areas. In one such area, I know that some 20 children, in order to reach the school, have to wade through a river, morning and afternoon. There is no bridge to enable them to cross the river. Deputy Gallagher was speaking a little time ago about a young hero. It struck me very forcibly at the time that many of these children would have been drowned but for the fact that a young hero came to their rescue. I would, therefore, appeal to the Minister to do what he can to get a bridge provided for that area.

Many children attending country schools have to travel morning and evening along what we call Mass paths. I mention that as one of the difficulties which these children have to contend with. We have many areas of that sort in the country. I would be prepared at any time to show the Minister over the difficult country which the children have to travel in order to reach school. When they do reach the school, one must confess that the school buildings are in an appalling condition. We know, of course, that some of the fine men who helped to make this country got their education in schools of that kind. In conclusion, I would earnestly appeal to the Minister to do the best he can for some of our national schools which are situated in backward country areas.

Major de Valera

I should like to come back to one point that has been made on previous occasions on this Estimate. It is the question of whether it is necessary or not to review our basic approach to education in this country. A great deal of useful work has been done. There are, however, certain traits developing in our national character. Some have developed,and some are, undoubtedly, a legacy from a bad time, but they have left us in ways, compared with other peoples, a little bit indolent, a little bit distrustful of the future and a little bit reluctant to put in effort to-day with the faith that we will reap to-morrow, and with too great a desire to look at, or to judge, the worth-whileness of anything by whether it gives an immediate return or not.

That, of course, is very understandable in our history. There was a time when, if the proprietor of a holding were to improve his land—even if he was to sow more than he did the previous year—he immediately ran the risk of an increase in his rent or of some other penalty attaching to his own energy and improvement. That is the historical factor in the case. In the same way, in the case of those working under conditions where there was no security, there was no incentive to build for the future. It is noticeable, however, in other countries that have prospered and have built themselves up, that their efforts have been characterised by a willingness on the part of the population to knuckle down to work in the faith that, in due course, they would reap the reward of their labours.

I am wondering how far our educational system has a bearing on that problem and, of course, it is only in so far as it has that the subject is relevant to this Estimate at all. How far can we throw our educational system, so as to build up national morale? The question could be put that way and the answer will have to be sought in two ways. One is from the point of view of establishing the ideal and establishing the will to achieve; that you might call the spiritual or psychological side of the problem. The other side is the giving to the child and the citizen of to-morrow the physical and mental equipment that would enable him to be efficient in achieving the development that we all say we want to see in this country. In regard to the first, basically in our outlook—in recent years, anyway—our people are getting a fairly sound introduction to principle in regard to both national and spiritual concepts and even to broad social concepts I think thatsome attention is being given; but enough has not been done to relate those principles to action.

For instance, we are shy about trying to develop in the child a pride in ourselves and in our own traditions and a pride in our history, tragic as it has been in parts. We give lip service to it and we insist on some aspects of it, but perhaps our very insistence on some of those aspects, without going further to give a complete picture, may have been more harmful in the long run. We do not seem to appreciate as a people that it is worth while to try and we will not appreciate it, unless what we are trying for is shown to us to be worth while; and that seems to me to be something tied up very closely with the education of the child in the home and the school. Without going into any further detail on that particular aspect of it—and it is fundamental—one has to consider the practical aspect of giving to the child the equipment necessary. Perhaps when one considers that side of it one seems some of the reasons why we have failed on the first leg.

In modern life there is an awful lot a child has to be fitted for. There has been a great deal of development. On the other hand, the potential of the human being has not increased markedly in that period. We find ourselves now in a set-up where the individual requires a certain knowledge over and above that which the average citizen required, say, 50 years ago. Nowadays, for instance, it is desirable to know something about mechanical transport, no matter what you are at, whether you are a labourer or whether you own a car. Driving a motor vehicle has really become a normal incident in the life of any modern person. In agriculture, there is a considerable amount of machinery involved nowadays. In any industry there is machinery involved. Even though at first sight it may not seem to require anything more than was required in days when tools and mechanisms were simpler, on an analysis it will be found that it does require some further knowledge. The result of all this is that that type of learning is an addition to the child at the present day.Couple that with the fact that in practically any branch of knowledge you care to take there have been very rapid developments nowadays and that these tend to be passed on through teachers to students, and the more teachers specialise in a particular subject the greater that danger is. The almost inevitable result of that is to try to do too much in schools in regard to imparting knowledge, to try to cover too wide a field. The result of covering too wide a field is that you do not do certain things with sufficient thoroughness and if certain basic things are not done with sufficient thoroughness, character suffers.

On a previous occasion, when pursuing that point perhaps a little bit more concretely than I have done to-day, I tried to point out that there are people who feel that a weakness in our national character to-day is a lack of sustained application, coupled with a lack of attention to detail and a lack of thoroughness which may conceivably I think largely be attributed to a certain failing in the type of education that we have been giving our children for the past 25 or 30 years. It is attributable to that, which in turn is probably attributable to the broader factors I have mentioned.

I can only talk with a certain amount of experience from my own experience and those of my contemporaries under the intermediate system. We happened to be the victims, my generation happened to be the victims, of a rapid swing-over from the old intermediate system with much learned punditry about education, without any realisation that education primarily has to fit a child for life and that a lot of the theories propounded about it are rather airy when they become unrelated to life. Be that as it may, I was the victim, in company with others of my generation, of what I may call the sudden swing-over from that intermediate system to the new. It would be most unfair to blame the present Department or the Minister or his predecessor for the experiment. The experiment may have been justified and I know there has been considerable correction back, I am not at all unaware of that and I know that the lesson was learned; but in its firstswing it was damaging and I often wonder whether the damage done to that particular generation is not one of the things we are paying for now. The inevitable result of it was to turn out, not the complete man that was talked about so much as the gentleman dabbler in everything.

The old intermediate system may have had its faults. We heard a lot about cramming, but at least the people trained under that system knew what they knew. Again I am mainly relating myself to the secondary system, the secondary teaching of that time. There was a restricted course in geometry, say, but it was Euclid, it was one system, one logical system, and even though the Fifth Proposition of the First Book was the final Waterloo of many of us, by pursuing that system there was a very sound elementary practical knowledge of geometry given and a certain training in logic as well.

In regard to arithmetic, two and two made four and the ordinary manipulations of multiplication, division tables and so forth were considered as a sine qua nonto efficiency and, if you did not know them, you did not know them and you paid the penalty. Later on I have heard the thing dismissed as merely a numerical mistake, that the principle of approach was all right, that it was merely a numerical mistake. If the boy who made that mere numerical mistake was an accountant afterwards it might be a rather serious matter.

Under the old system they knew what they knew. They could rattle off tables, reckon a simple sum, do a simple sum in algebra and apply it. They knew something in English. They knew a little bit about grammar. What they knew they knew. They could frame a sentence properly and could write it properly and, if they fell down on either the basic spelling or the framing of a sentence or even the legible writing of it, they had to account therefor to the teacher of those days. When all is said and done, it was a good system, whatever its defects. It was a particularly good system for the Irish character. It was, perhaps,capable of adjustment, of improvement, but it did mean that the child knew something definitely, was made to attend to detail, was trained in sustained application at a particular point and in detail of execution.

Under the new system that came along—I have already touched on an example—you could do some kind of mathematical operation and you nearly got full marks if the approach in principle was right. The little numerical error of making two and two five did not matter an awful lot. You were brought into an English class. There was no set text. The idea of learning a bit of set stuff properly was cramming. You were let wander all round the place. I know of a case and I will substantiate it to the Minister if he desires, where it got to the stage—there was no text there to be quoted—that when they put a bit of poetry on the English paper all they could say was: "Quote lines embodying similar sentiment." That was the nearest the examiner could get to see had the child learned anything by rote at all. In the old days he would get a particular passage of a particular text to quote. I know a case where a question like that was framed and two boys in the one class scratched their heads; they had never heard of anything similar; they proceeded—the Minister will appreciate this—to write their own version and put a bogus name underneath. The examiner could not detect it and, judging by results, they got away with it. I was told that that justified the system, that it brought out the best in them, but it is not chancers that we want to train and that is what that would tend to do.

Coupled with that, a certain amount of intellectual snobbery tended to come in, quite unconsciously. It arose from the rather natural desire of the specialist. Unfortunately, secondary education and education in particular subjects tended to get a little bit into the hands of the specialist. The specialist is a first-class man in his own way, but the specialist in any particular subject has to be guarded against when it comes to the general education of the child. Put it this way: You have amathematical specialist looking after mathematics. He sees nothing else. Therefore, he crams the curriculum with the calculus. He is not satisfied with an elementary knowledge of graphs. He has to put in the whole analytical geometry of plane conic sections. He sees a number of other little enticing spots and they become more enticing because of the way physics has developed and particular abstract notions have become important and, forthwith, in 1925, we blossomed out with a curriculum that was certainly very broad.

While that was happening we had the Latin scholars prescribing, and very rightly so from the specialist point of view, some of the highlights of the literature of ancient Rome, including Horace and other gentlemen who were not so straightforward and easy to understand. Although there was not a prescribed text there was a wide range there.

You could take any other subject almost and find the same. The result was the child simply could not attend to detail. Take the unfortunate child in the secondary school and consider all the subjects he had to do. He had to roam over a whole wide field of mathematics and could only do it at the expense of his basic technique. He did get a chance to acquire a knowledge of a lot of abstract notions at the expense of facility in reckoning, facility in fundamental operations, the operations which he would be most likely to need outside, unless he became a specialist in mathematics or physics. The child, while he was in that particular dilemma, on the one hand, had a field in Latin open to him which would tax him if he were going to specialise in classics on top of that. We had a certain tendency in the same direction in Irish where we should have been concentrating on the vernacular, the spoken language. On top of that you had the broad airy fields of English literature as then completely undefined.

The result was, of course, that the child was not a competent mathematician. He learned enough to make a lot of simple things complex for himself.Many of us who went through that have suffered, even though some of us did later specialised in the physical science and the mathematical end of things. We suffered till the end from a weakness in basic techniques and some of us who have had associations with others who were trained under the old system have often been envious of the ready facility of people trained under the old intermediate system.

In regard to Latin I would not feel so entitled to speak but I could say that many of us who went through at that time were as ignorant of Latin at the end as we were the day we were introduced to mensa. Why? —I think it was a bit of a tragedy— because you were pitchforked straight into this advanced stuff without being given a basic simple training, with this insistence on perfect classical form, affected snobbery, if you like to call it that. We lost what could have been a living thing for us through our liturgy. There was a whole ocean of poetry opened up to us in the liturgy alone, in simple intelligible language, if we were brought to it. We all missed that because we got tied up in all kinds of technical niceties and were hammered on the knuckles because we could not write or translate some complex bit of Horace, or something like that.

I understand it is practically time to report progress but I want to say before I finish to-night that I am talking, of course, specifically with relation to the late 'twenties because the situation was, to some extent, corrected. I think there is room again for another look at the problem, and the point I want to make now—and I will come back to it the next day—is, cannot we bring the teachers and the parents into this, cannot we look at it soberly and overall; get away from the specialist approach and try to see if we can build up the morale and efficiency of our people with a sound faith in the future because this country is one of the countries that has a future, if we grasp it.

I move to report progress.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.