The Estimate for Education is, of course, one of our most important Estimates in that the future of the country as a whole depends upon the moulding of the individual. The greater part of the Estimate is taken up with primary education. That is as it should be because the majority of our people get their early education in our primary schools. I have not had the opportunity of studying the Minister's speech closely. He made it in a language with which I am not fully conversant.
The education of 30, 40 or 50 years ago in the primary schools was largely concerned with matters that affected us only in this country. Today in the national set-up generally, where no country exists by itself but more for the community of nations and the European outlook, our education should be directed towards forming the minds of the rising generation looking beyond the confines of their own country.
Accordingly, it is necessary that our education should, if possible, be somewhat more extensive than before. Not being an educational expert, it is very hard for me to indicate to the Department what form that could really take. I feel that in every walk of life people have a particular speciality. It should be possible for teachers in the primary school to be more lenient.
As I understand, the position is that they have to teach certain subjects at certain times; that they are limited to those times and that they are forced to carry out that system by reason of the fact that an inspector may suddenly walk into a school and ask a teacher why he is not teaching arithmetic or something else. Therefore, I think that our teachers are narrowed in their opportunities for dealing with their pupils.
If they find that they have a pupil who has a bent for a particular subject they should surely be allowed to develop the bent that pupil has more than they are now able to do. In other words, they should not be restricted in their teaching. I think no one can study the mind of boys or girls as well as the teacher himself. Therefore, I think that the Department of Education or those who are in control, through the Minister, should be more liberal in their outlook. I cannot help feeling that in the world of the present day we are no longer a separate entity, a nation living to itself alone. Therefore, in the educational sphere we should extend considerably beyond our own country.
Perhaps I am wrong in my surmise but I imagine that the teaching of history, for instance, in our primary schools is confined to Irish history alone. I may be wrong in that; I speak subject to correction. I think it would be a good thing if pupils were taught a little of the history of other countries. I do not suggest that they should have British history shoved down their throats but I think they should have some knowledge of the history of some European countries and the countries which have a cultural outlook similar to that of our own. It would be good for them; it would broaden their minds.
It may not be possible—and that brings me back to what I said at the beginning—for all pupils to be instructed on these lines. There may be some pupils who can only get through the ordinary curriculum embracing such subjects as reading, writing and mathematics. There must be the more brilliant type of pupil who is extremely adaptable. That is evidenced by the fact that there are Irishmen who have played a vital part in other countries in many parts of the world.
They are the products of the national schools. They have gone out and achieved much, building up other countries. If they were directed along those lines and educated in the broader sense much of their efforts could be utilised and devoted to the building up of their own country.
It is an unfortunate thing that so many of our people have to emigrate. Perhaps I should put it this way. It is unfortunate that so many do emigrate. I understand that the enormous number of 46,000 emigrated during nine months in 1958. That is a matter which should give serious thought to the Department of Education that they are not educating pupils only for the purpose of staying in the village in which they are reared but that they are educating them for something wider. Irish people do play a very prominent part in affairs because, wherever they go, they set a standard which is fundamentally sound from the Christian outlook. The higher the education they have for this purpose and the greater opportunity they have of absorbing a wider outlook in their youth, the better is will be for them.
That brings me to the Irish language. Anything one says about the Irish language is misconstrued. It seems to me that valuable time is being wasted in that it is being accepted by everybody among all shades of opinion in this House that the attempt to develop the Irish language or teach it by compulsory methods is a failure. I understand that we are waiting for a commission to reach a decision as to whether or not the teaching of the Irish language, as taught at present, is a success. I do not think it is really necessary to wait for the commission to issue its report. I do not know when this commission is going to favour us with their report. I do not know how big the report will be or whether it is something that will possibly take an extensive period of Ministerial and Executive study after it comes out but I feel that we ought not to drift on as we are.
May I say that I do not want to see the Irish language disappear? I belong to a generation that did not learn as much Irish as the present day pupils. Perhaps, I should put that another way. The way I was taught was not the way present day pupils are taught. I think that the bilingual attempt which exists at the moment is a total failure and not only is it a total failure but it is to the general detriment of the education of the people.
In other countries there are people who are bilingual. For instance, the Swiss speak French and German; in Alsace it is one or other language, either French or German—but there is this difference between that and our case, in that those languages are spoken in the shops and schools and in the home. One actually finds cases where the different members of the family speak to one another in different languages. We have to face the fact that, outside the Gaeltacht areas, one practically never hears Irish spoken at all or if one does, it is generally a couple of teachers speaking to each other, as they are practically the only people who know it to-day. I may be maligning my colleagues, but I would say that many, the majority, of my colleagues here do not know how to speak it.
The plea I put to the Minister is that if he has any ideas on this subject at all he should move, without waiting for the commission to report. If the commission issues its report and if there are good things in it, let the Minister use it; but in the meantime let him use his own initiative. I think he has some initiative. He has shown that since he went into the Department.
With regard to university education. I am very glad to see, in the brief glance I had at the Minister's speech, that the grants for university education are to be increased. There is always a feeling in this country that universities are very wealthy institutions which are very well able to look after themselves. Such, of course, is not the case at all. University institutions in every country in the world are run at a heavy loss. All universities in all countries are extensively developed in every sphere possible. We cannot get away from the obvious fact that we live in a scientific age and that university education is becoming of paramount importance. That is so not only in relation to our major industry, agriculture; we have to develop and go ahead in our scientific experiments regarding agriculture, but we must also develop industry, medical science, and so on, so that we can compete very favourably with other people. One thing we must bear in mind. Originally, when our National University was established, it was established under the existing grants and funds available to cover a student population in the neighbourhood of 1,200 to 1,400. Now there are 4,000 students in the National University and they are still in the same congregation that they had practically without change, in the original part of the university, as established in the early part of this century. Any funds which are being made available —and I gather they are more than they were before—are not sufficient to deal with this important matter.
Another point to which I would like to refer, and which is, I think, the concern of our vocational schools, is the subject of cooking. Cooking is very much tied up with several other sections of our educational system. The consideration of cooking, is I am sure, the responsibility of the Department of Education. I want to congratulate the Department on the training of staffs. We have had schools in Wexford where they have trained waitresses and cooks. It is essential that we should have people who really know how to do these things, since it means so much both to ourselves who live here and to our visitors. Apart from anything else, I think the preparation of the dishes themselves needs to be good. I have always been greatly impressed by the cooking of the French. Their raw material is not as good as ours, but they manage to cook anything and make it tasty. It is a well-known fact that in France they have not got the luscious meat which we have here; yet they are able, by some method to turn out very palatable meals from the meats they have.
In this country there is a great lack of understanding of the cooking of fish. One of the reasons we do not eat fish—and, as a people, we eat far less fish than any other country in the world—is that our people do not really know how to cook it. That is a rather sweeping statement to make about Irish housewives as a whole, but it happens to be true. I think that is why we import so much preserved and tinned fish, as it is very easy to handle. The cooking of fish is a difficult thing and it is a scientific matter. For that reason, the Minister might consider, as an experiment, getting someone from the Continental arena who is an adept at dealing with fish cooking. Perhaps he might be employed as an instructor in one of our vocational schools, or in one of those establishments which would be servicing our hotels later on. Perhaps that state of affairs already exists— I do not know—but judging from the way fish is cooked here in relation to the way it is cooked on the Continent of Europe, there is still a lot of leeway to be made up.
The decision the Minister took last year to restore the married female teacher was a wise one, although it may not have entirely met all the requirements necessary. One of our great difficulties in rural Ireland has been the changing of teachers. To a certain extent the re-employment, or the continuation in employment, of married teachers has prevented that. I always felt that those married teachers who ceased to be employable under the Department of Education were very often married to teachers. When they went out of employment, they were inclined to move from the country school—and, naturally, where the woman moves the man follows— into the bigger centres where it would be possible for them to get temporary employment at holiday times or during epidemics. The re-establishment of married female teachers has stopped the migration of teachers to a large extent.
I have always felt that another difficulty in anchoring them—the married or unmarried teachers, young or old teachers—in certain areas has been due to the lack of housing accommodation. If we are to create an atmosphere of stability in the rising generation, it is most essential that we avoid frequent changes of teacher. For that reason, I have always felt that there ought to be, sponsored by the Department, some form of very easy housing terms for rural teachers, to enable them to settle down in an area.
I have found it the experience in my own constituency that if a teacher is to get married the sequence of events is often that he moves because he cannot get a house. He may move into the nearest town in order to get a house, but that means he has to travel out to his school every day. He is not in the school district and he is not part and parcel of the community there. If a teacher does not live in his own immediate school district, in the area in which he is teaching, he does not carry the same weight. It is only natural, with pupils who have left secondary or primary schools, that they tend to go back to those who have taught them. They respect them and look up to them and I believe that this migration out of Ireland, this race to get out of the country by people who have got fairly good employment here, is due to the fact that they have really no one to advise them. The natural influence would be to go back to a teacher for advice, a teacher or a master who has been living in their own area for 30 or 40 years but, if the teacher is changed, that influence is gone.
Therefore, I think the Minister might see fit to arrange with his colleague in charge of the Department of Local Government to have some particularly easy terms made available to enable teachers to build houses and to settle in their own teaching districts. That is really the best hope. There is no greater anchorage anywhere than to own your own house because, in doing so, you become part and parcel of the district. I do not think I have anything further to say and I apologise for taking up the time of the House so long on a subject with which I am not particularly conversant.
