The next business is the motion in the name of Senator Tierney.
Educational Advisory Council—Motion.
Before Senator Tierney moves his motion, I think the House would like to be assured that there is nothing in it which would contravene the Constitution. It all turns on the type of council of education that the Senator has in mind, and the wording of the motion does not make that very clear. The wording of the motion is: —
That Seanad Eireann is of opinion that the Government should establish a council of education to advise the Minister for Education in matters submitted to it by the Minister in relation to the working of his Department.
My difficulty is to know what kind of a council of education the Senator wishes to advise. Most councils advise, so that does not bring us much further. If the council of education that the Senator has in mind is a functional or vocational council, then it can only be established by the Oireachtas. If that be so, I think that the actual terms of this motion, if accepted, could be a contravention of the Constitution, because we would be asking the Government to do a thing that they have not the constitutional power to do. Not only that, but we ourselves, as one House of the Oireachtas, would be divesting ourselves of a very important function. In the mind of those who drew up the Constitution, functional and vocational councils can only be established by the Oireachtas. Article 15 of the Constitution makes that very clear. It says——
I do not like to interrupt the Senator, but I am rather bewildered by this speech.
Hear, hear!
I suggest to the Senator that he should allow Senator Mrs. Concannon to make her point when the Chair will deal with it.
But is it in order to raise a point of this kind on a motion that has not been moved?
The terms of the motion are on the Order Paper.
I have not been asked to move the motion.
Senator Mrs. Concannon is quite in order.
I do not know what the Senator's objection is. I want to know if the motion is in accordance with the Constitution. I think that is a proper question to ask before we discuss it.
May I ask is it for the Cathaoirleach of the Seanad to decide whether a motion does, or does not, contravene the Constitution?
And whether that also applies to Bills.
Senator Mrs. Concannon has been good enough to give me notice of this point, which I have considered. My view is that there is nothing in the motion which appears to affect any provision of the Constitution. The effect of the motion, I take it, would be to express the opinion that the Government should set up a council in the nature of an advisory body. I am aware that such bodies function at the moment in connection with other Government Departments.
There is a very important question involved in this. Is the Cathaoirleach of the Seanad taking it upon himself to decide, should the point be made by any Senator, that a motion and, therefore, by inference a Bill, is or is not in accordance with the Constitution? That is a very big issue.
I am not ruling on that.
I suggest it is a point that should be carefully considered because it might be raised in connection with Bills, the decision on which, in certain circumstances, is left to the Supreme Court.
The House will now consider the motion in the name of Senator Tierney.
I move: —
"That Seanad Eireann is of opinion that the Government should establish a council of education to advise the Minister for Education in matters submitted to it by the Minister in relation to the working of his Department."
This is a motion which I had intended bringing before the House a considerable time ago. I had hopes of having the matter discussed when the Taoiseach himself was acting as Minister for Education. My reason for delaying it so long was that I did not care to put greater burdens than I could help on Ministers during the critical times we have been passing through. At the same time, I felt that this was a subject more suited for discussion in this House than many other subjects that have come before it. It is a subject upon which there is great need, to my mind, for a full public discussion. My object in putting down the motion was not indeed to do anything in contravention of the Constitution — very far from it. It was largely, by means of the motion, to secure the possibility of a public discussion of the whole subject of education and of the work of the Minister's Department in general. I feel that we in this House are, to a considerable extent, prevented from having as full a discussion of the detailed working of Departments as many of us would like to have by the system of procedure which we have adopted, but I think it right that we should take whatever opportunity we can, by means of motions like this, to try to secure information about the working of Departments, and to raise any matters that occur to us whenever we think there is something that needs correction.
It was not my intention, either, to make any attack whatever on the policy of the present Minister, as such; in other words, I had no intention of making anything in the nature of a Party question out of this matter. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons I have for criticising the policy of the present Minister is that it is not his own policy, that the policy of the Department of Education and its method of conducting its business seem to have remained very much the same for the last 16 or 17 years and that there has been extraordinarily little development in organisation or in technique in any of the many branches of public education in this country as compared with almost any other country one can think of. The present Government, when they came into office, took over en bloc practically the exact policy and exact method of procedure followed by the previous Government, and, to my mind, that is rather a ground of criticism than anything else, because, in a matter like education, particularly in a country like this, where we are at the beginning of our career as an independent State, there is every need for frequent reconsideration, for a certain amount of experiment so long as the experiment is properly conducted and, above all, for frequent examination and amendment of the methods being pursued from one year to another.
To my mind, the greatest misfortune that happened this country, from the educational point of view, was the fact that when the Free State Government came into existence in 1922, it took the step of abolishing the old Commissioners of both National and Secondary education, and it is in order partly to undo the harm which I think was done by that rather precipitate and ill-considered step that I now urge the Government to establish some form of advisory council. The old boards were abolished in 1922, largely, I think, for the sake of mere change and not on any rational or considered grounds and not because the question of educational policy had been gone into, or because it had been decided, after full consideration, that the country's educational policy is better carried out by a bureaucracy than the system of boards we had before the setting up of this State. I think it was largely due to a sort of prejudice that existed in the minds of people who were at that time engaged in reorganising the Government, a prejudice in the direction of wishing to change everything that could possibly be changed, whether the change was bad or good. The net effect of the change, in this case, at any rate, has been that we have a more completely bureaucratic system of education, both primary and secondary, than exists in almost any other country in the world. There is scarcely any other country where the general public knows less about what is happening in connection with its educational system, where the parents of the children going to school know less about the curricula or the methods of arranging for hours of work, or about the general system on which their children are being educated.
We have put all power in this respect into the hands of a Department, and a very minor Department, of our Civil Service, and, as has happened in almost every other case in our Civil Service, that, of course, has meant that we have handed over the control of our education, to a very considerable degree, to the Minister for Finance and his Department. There used to be great complaint in the old days of the British Government about the financial treatment of secondary education, but I do not believe there has been any very marked improvement at all in that respect since we took over the government. The result of the new system has been that the Department of Education has become a minor Department, controlled to a very large extent, as I have said, by the Minister for Finance, its work very greatly interfered with and conditioned by what are called financial considerations, while the Parliamentary control, which is supposed to be exercised over the Department of Education by the Dáil and Seanad, has scarcely ever been more than nominal.
I remember how astonished I was when I first became a member of the Dáil with the first education debate to which I listened. I expected to hear a discussion on the spirit of our education, on the subjects we taught and why we taught them, and I expected to hear the emphasis put on the intellectual and spiritual side of the system. My astonishment was very great indeed when I found that the whole discussion on the Education Estimates centred around the provision of national school buildings, or some material improvement or material amenity, and that scarcely any attention at all was paid to what, after all, is the main question in education, that is, what the children are being taught in the schools and why they are being taught it. The reason for that, I think, lies largely in the fact that in a matter like education in particular, it is scarcely possible for politicians to exercise any real control. Control over a Department like the Department of Education is bound to be largely nominal, so long as it is in the hands of men whose main interest in life is not educational at all, but political. So long as that idea of merely political control is brought to its furthest extreme, as we have brought it in this country, without any expert advice or any consultation with experts, without people whose main work in life is education intervening between the political head of the Department and the Department, control by Parliament must be practically non-existent.
Parliamentary control under our Party system has been of a very feeble nature, to my mind, in relation to any Department because it has become largely a matter of theory. It does not work in practice at all and that may be all very well in respect of other Departments, but it is not a good thing in relation to a matter like education, where the interest of the people, the interest of the parents, the interest of the nation as a whole, should surely be the paramount interest and not the often transitory, prejudiced and uninstructed views of politicians. The debates which have taken place on the subject of education have been, to a great extent, merely superficial. We have never had, to my knowledge, anything like a full discussion, for instance, of the outstanding subject in our educational system — the teaching of the Irish language, why we are teaching it, what we mean when we say we are teaching it, and what we think we can do by teaching it. We have never subjected these matters, so far as I know, to an unprejudiced or intelligent examination either in public or in private. We get nothing but outbursts of passion and prejudice when that subject is brought up. We have never submitted the question to educational experts who would look upon it as an intellectual problem and give it impartial and full consideration. How to set about reviving a language which is nearly dead is a question for expert advice and expert examination. It is not a question to be settled by the prejudices of politicians. If it is not possible, as a matter of experience, to restore to life a language which is as far gone as the Irish language, no amount of passion on the part of any politician will be able to surmount that inflexible obstacle of fact. If it is not possible to restore the language, the sooner the politicians realise that fact — if it is a fact — the better.
The point I am trying to make is that this question has never been submitted, so far as I am aware, to any person who could claim to have expert knowledge of the subject, to any person of wide, linguistic knowledge and experience. Although the question is rather unique, questions not unlike it have faced other countries and there is available a great deal of experience and expert knowledge on these subjects which we might use. So far, we have not made the slightest attempt to use that knowledge, and the reason, I suggest, is that we have inadequate machinery for dealing with these very important and very far-reaching questions. The effect of the system we have is that the great principle that runs through our whole educational structure is the principle of anonymity, the principle that dominates the Civil Service from top to bottom, the principle of avoiding responsibility. The Minister is supposed to be responsible, but decisions of every kind affecting items in the programme are taken from day to day by some anonymous member of the Department, somebody whom it would be very hard to trace if one were to search for him. A little instance of that came within my own experience recently — the marking of Latin and Greek verse in the intermediate certificate examination. I discovered that a change had been made in these marks in recent years. The maximum number of marks allowed had been reduced and a regulation had been brought in by which no candidate for the examination who takes Latin and Greek verse is allowed to get more than the full marks — that is to say, 400. In the old days, when I was going through the intermediate, one could get marks, over and above the 400, for Latin and Greek verse. Not only has that been done away with but the number of the extra marks you can get has been reduced. When I made discreet inquiry, I discovered that nobody could tell me when or how or why that change had been made. It seems to be extraordinary that things like that take place. They are done by some official in the Department and nobody knows for what reason. It is quite certain that, after some research, you would discover who the exact author of the change was, but it is certain, too, that you would find that no general consideration had been given to the effect of a change like that on educational policy. Though that question of the marking of Latin and Greek verse may seem trifling, it is important enough. It may have a considerable bearing on the success of the work of teaching Latin and Greek in the secondary schools. That is only one example of a number which I could give.
It may be that the staff of our Department of Education is entirely too small. We have one first-class senior official, about whose qualifications I have never heard any question raised, in charge of the Department. Unfortunately, as in other Departments, that official has to spend a great deal of his time acting as accounting officer for the Department of Finance and the amount of time which he can devote to the important question of educational policy is very small, indeed. He is assisted by two senior officials whose whole attention, so far as I can discover, is devoted to what seems to me to be the rather Herculean task of pushing on the teaching of subjects through the medium of Irish in secondary schools. One of these officials, I understand, spends most of his time inventing a new Irish language — inventing new terms to be used in this heroic labour which the Department has taken upon itself. Neither of them has very much time for dealing with the enormous field of policy which has to be covered by the Department. I believe that one improvement that could well be brought about would be an enlargement of the senior staff in the Department of Education. But so long as we have a system whereby the principal officer has to be as much an official of the Department of Finance as he is of his own Department, and whereby no major decision can be taken without the consent — a consent that often takes a very long time — of the Department of Finance, it seems quite certain that we will make no progress at all, that we will keep going around in circles so far as education is concerned and that, instead of advancing, as we ought to do under a native Government, we shall go back. I am not sure that opinion in the country amongst people like myself, who were supposed to be victims of the old system of intermediate education, is not, as a result of experience in connection with the education of our own children, that the old system was better than the system we have substituted. I do not think that that opinion is due to approaching senility or to prejudice on my part because I should be very glad to be able to say that the position was exactly the opposite. But with all the good will in the world, I confess that I cannot see, in detail, from what I learn from my own children or from young students who come to the university fresh from the secondary schools, that we have made any real progress in secondary education since 1922.
If that is so, there again it is a matter for examination by experts; it is not a matter for declamation or for prejudice or for outbursts of passion by politicians. It is a matter for careful, systematic, scientific examination by people who know what they are talking about. If people of that kind find that that is so — and my experience is that anyone who knows anything about education is inclined to think that that is so—then something must be done to improve the working of the Department, and some machinery must be found to intervene between that, to my mind, very imperfect and very badly functioning bureaucracy and the public.
An example came to my own notice a year or so ago. It was decided, in a very hole and corner fashion, as far as I could make out, that the programme which was drawn up at the secondary education conference in, I think, 1923, had proved in certain respects unsuccessful, particularly in relation to the teaching of subjects such as Greek and Latin. There were other subjects involved as well, but Greek and Latin were the two that came within my notice. It was decided by the Department that a change was necessary, and the method the Department followed in bringing about the change struck me at the time as being extremely curious and extremely cumbrous. Letters were written to a number of people like myself, asking us to make suggestions about substituting set texts on the intermediate programmes for the wide general course of reading that had figured on the programme since 1923. I wrote to the Department giving a series of suggestions. Other people like me were consulted at the same time. As far as I can make out, what happened was that somebody in the Department cut all the letters up and made a sort of jig-saw puzzle of them, and pieced them together again, and the result was the new programme. The people who were written to were never brought together, never given an opportunity of pooling their views or having any sort of clear and definite discussion about the matter. They were consulted piecemeal, each by correspondence, and, as far as I could see, their letters might just as well have been made into a sort of jig-saw puzzle. It is a very strange method, to my mind, of drafting programmes, and, of course, it leaves the field open for all sorts of very undesirable influence.
I do not mean "influence" in any bad sense. I mean that people who have strong views about subjects connected with education, sometimes very cranky views, may be enabled by means of a system like that to get their views heard when much more sensible people whose views perhaps are not so strong or so certain or so definite might not succeed in being heard at all. As a matter of fact, I think that is the case. To my mind, looking at the secondary education programme as a whole, it can be said as a sort of impartial judgment on it that it is to a large extent the result of a certain amount of cranky advice given to the Department by people whose views were more strong in many cases than they were wise.
There again, it is fairly obvious, I think, that if you had a well-chosen body of expert advisers, including people with experience in all branches of education, whom the Minister could consult on matters like that, whenever a question arose of changing programmes, for instance, and who could sit down and study these questions at length and give them the full consideration and full discussion that, of course, they need very badly, it would be an immense improvement on what we have. I have here a report of the Consultative Committee on Secondary Education published by the English Board of Education in 1939, a document known as the Spens Report. It is a magnificent report, a wonderful study, not merely of present-day conditions, but of the whole history of English secondary education. It is a splendid piece of research work as well as being a body of extremely valuable advice. That consultative committee of the English Board of Education is not a body set up ad hoc. It is a body that has been in existence for a very long time with the same chairman and the same composition and it has issued, not merely this report, but several other reports on various aspects of primary and secondary education during the last 20 years. When I read that report I am compelled to ask myself how it is that we, on our own scale, cannot have a body like that. I am not suggesting that we should have such an elaborate body as they have in England but on our scale, considering that our problems here are not as intricate as the problems that face the English Government, why cannot we have a body like that sitting continually and continually engaged in examining questions put before it from time to time by the Minister?
The curricula and the whole system of secondary education in England, by means of that consultative committee, are kept continually under review. Every three or four years some new aspect or other of it is carefully and fully and scientifically discussed by the very best experts that can be produced. They call in witnesses. They go around to the schools. They discuss these matters widely with interested members of the general public, and the results of their inquiries and discussions are put before the public. So that the public itself is taken into the confidence of the Board of Education and everybody can be satisfied that what is being done is being done upon a rational and systematic basis. It is something like that I would hope we might get here if our Government would give its mind to the matter.
There is every need for the maximum amount of public information and public discussion on these subjects. That is another unfortunate characteristic of bureaucracy in relation to a matter like education. It is all very well to have secrecy and to have autocratic, anonymous decisions taken in matters relating to a war, for instance, or military matters, but war is a very different thing from education, and indeed politics is a very different thing from education. I often think that one of the things we suffer from in this country is a terrible tendency to apply ideas that we have gathered from our political experience — or our political inexperience, perhaps — or our political emotions, to questions like the teaching of a language, for instance, which has nothing at all to do, in the ultimate, with political ideas. That is to say, the question whether or not you can successfully teach a language, under what circumstances you can do it and to what extent, has very little, at any rate, to do with the question of politics. We are apt to assume that all we need is some sort of field-marshal or grand commander sitting in an office in Dublin issuing orders to the whole country that such and such a thing must be done. There are things that you can do in a military sense and by political means, and that may work very well in war or politics, but there is one thing quite certain, and that is that you cannot educate a people by political means or by military means. You can do a great many other things to them, but you cannot produce by that system a workable, sound and progressive system of education. There is no other department of public life for which the maximum amount of public discussion and public information is so necessary as education and the system of anonymous bureaucracy that we have adopted for dealing with it is, I think, about as bad a system as we could possibly have adopted.
I would like to deal in a little more detail with some of the questions that have arisen during the last 15 or 20 years on which, I think, the work of a consultative committee or council of education such as I am suggesting could have been of the greatest value. To begin with primary education, the whole question of the supply of teachers has been dealt with in a fashion which is completely bewildering to the man in the street. Nobody can understand why this strange situation which has arisen in the last few years should have arisen in this country; why we should suddenly find ourselves with a superfluity of primary teachers, and why we should find ourselves driven to such a position in a very short time that we should practically have to close down two of the oldest educational establishments in Ireland. Certainly one of them is practically abolished in its own function at the present moment—one of the teachers' training colleges. The whole situation seems to have arisen from an entire want of any kind of foresight or any kind of clear-headed and careful examination of the matter as a whole. We seem to have drifted into a condition in which we were driven to taking the most extraordinary and to my mind rather disastrous measures in order to extricate ourselves. One reason, I believe, for that excess in the supply of teachers was the greatest educational misfortune probably that has befallen this country for many years, the setting up of the preparatory colleges. That was not at all, I think, the responsibility of the present Minister or of the present Government. It was done by the last Government, under whose advice or with what consideration I do not know, and I do not think anybody else knows. It was suddenly decided to spend huge sums of money, £60,000 apiece, on the building of enormous colleges, for the purpose, mind you, of taking boys and girls at the age of 13 and beginning at that early age their training to be future national teachers. You might spend £60,000 on many kinds of building for educational purposes, but I can hardly conceive a more unlucky or ill-designed purpose than this particular one.
I think most people with any experience of education will agree that the last thing we should do is to take boys and girls of that age and cloister them, keep them behind closed doors and high walls for six or seven years, and then let them out to be the educational leaders of the country. I think you could not do anything very much worse. Those preparatory colleges were alleged to be in proximity to Irish-speaking districts.
I believe quite a number of them were set up, at that expense, in districts where not a word of Irish is spoken. In any case, I am told on very reliable authority that even where Irish is spoken in their vicinity they are conducted on such a system that the native speakers in the neighbourhood are never allowed within shouting distance of the children in the colleges. I heard of one case of a preparatory college in an Irish-speaking district where there is not one single piece of work for the college done in the locality. Even the laundry for the college is sent from the Gaeltacht up to Dublin. Where there is a large demesne attached to the preparatory college, there is not a single Irish speaker in the locality employed on that demesne. The children in that college are hermetically sealed not merely from the bad influence that might come to them from the rest of the country but even from the healthy influence that might come to them from the surrounding Gaeltacht. What purpose the setting up of institutions like that could possibly be conceived to fulfil, I must say is beyond me. It was, of course, largely the setting up of those high-powered institutions, their financing regardless of cost, and their working regardless of the general educational situation, that has helped to produce the glut of primary teachers that we have been, so to speak, suffering from for some time back.
In the same way, of course, as a result of that piece of work, the old existing training colleges have been largely destroyed. Not all of them, but certainly some of them, have been callously and calmly almost wiped out of existence. That, to my mind, is a piece of departmental policy which ought not to have been undertaken without further and wider and more careful consideration than seems to have been given to it. Both the De la Salle College in Waterford, and the Vincentian College near Drumcondra have been very seriously injured by the operations of those preparatory colleges. The preparatory colleges may be said to be for the purpose of admitting entrants from the Gaeltacht to training for the primary schools, but again that is a question of very far-reaching policy, and the question has never been carefully or fully considered as to whether it is a wise policy to confine practically all the entrance to the profession of primary teaching to candidates from the Gaeltacht areas. It has been taken for granted by everybody except the unfortunate people whose position in life has been badly injured by it.
Why you should set about destroying the institutions that you have, and that have been doing good work for 50 or 60 years or more, why you should set about undermining them, and ultimately, without actually being sure whether or not you want to do it, be driven to close them or half close them, is a thing I do not understand. I never heard anything like a rational or clear explanation given by the Government of that whole policy.
Another point which I should like to raise, and which I think could well be considered by some sort of educational council, is the standard of teaching in the training colleges. From the experience I have had of it—it is not very much, but it is probably more than most members of the community would have had—I cannot help concluding that the standard of education in those colleges is lamentable; that is the only word for it. A young friend of my own, who was a pupil in one of the training colleges a few years ago, told me—when I asked what books they were doing in the Irish course, for instance—that during all the time which those youngsters spent in training to be national teachers they read only two Irish books. One was a book of literary criticism written by a professor in the college, whose capacities as a literary critic are not absolutely world-shaking or world renowned. The other was a translation into Irish of a wild west novel, of a type I might say which, in the old days when I read wild west novels, I would not have demeaned myself by reading. That was the Irish programme for one year in one of those training colleges. That was the programme for those people who were expected to be the re-makers, mind you, of a Gaelic-speaking Ireland, and not merely a Gaelic-speaking Ireland but a Gaelic-thinking Ireland. That was the amount of pabulum they got for their minds during their time in the training college. As far as I can make out, the standard all round is very little better than that. It has gone down very considerably, as far as I can find out, since the time when the British Government was in control here. There again, I suggest that this is not a matter to be settled on prejudice or on hear-say. I think everyone who has any experience of the subject will agree that there is something to be gone into, that there is something to be examined, that it is a matter to be discussed fully and impartially by expert people who know what they are doing, who will adjust the means that they use to the ends that they have in view, who will be clear as well about what are the ends they have in view, and who will not think you can create a Gaelic Ireland by reading wild west novels in Irish.
Another question that, it seems to me, will assume greater importance in the coming years is the question whether our whole primary system in Ireland is really suited to our needs. We were donated, so to speak, in the past by the British Government—perhaps it may not be quite 100 years ago —with a system of primary education whose purpose was to train up our children as candidates for industrial occupations to a very large extent. There was a time when there was a certain smattering of agriculture given in the primary schools, but it never amounted to much and it has been abandoned for years. Anyone who knows anything about primary schools will agree that their whole tradition and system are such that it is almost impossible to have agriculture taught in them. They are not suited for that purpose at all and it is questionable, as they exist at the present moment, with the terrific centralisation and the type of control that is pressed on them by the inspectors in Dublin, with the time schedules and programmes that are pressed on them by the central department, whether a system like that is doing work of real value for the country and whether it is not, in fact, doing more harm than good.
Anyone who has had experience will agree that the work done by the primary teacher of 50 years ago, when there was very little training at all and when there were sometimes very able men engaged in that work, was in many ways more suitable for its purpose at the time than is the work done now. How far you can have a rural education in Ireland and train farmers' sons and daughters to grow up as part of a rural life, as part of a rural community, able to fit themselves into that community and live in it, is a question that will require far more than mere hasty political examination or a mere wish that something should be done about it. It is a question for slow, careful and intelligent discussion. It is a question that becomes more and more important as time goes on. If we are to preserve not merely a Gaelic Ireland, but any kind of a distinctively national Ireland, we will have to do something to build up a system of healthy rural education which will give a real competence to live a rural life in the best possible way to the people who partake of it.
I come now to secondary education. There, again, I feel that anyone who has had experience will admit that the whole system of secondary examination, in particular, has very largely broken down. I will give one example of that to show what I mean. This year the National University has decided that it will no longer accept the leaving certificate pass standard for its entrance examination. It will require all candidates for matriculation in a whole range of subjects to have taken honours papers in the leaving certificate. All candidates must have passed on an honours paper. This is a breach with a tradition that is as old as the intermediate system. It was always regarded as a normal thing that the senior pass examination in secondary schools was the equivalent of the matriculation for entrance to the universities. So much was that the case that in recent years the habit has grown up in all schools that pupils who have done the intermediate examination at 15 proceed next year to take their matriculation examination, whereas the leaving certificate examination is on a two-year course. In other words, the National University has now decided that a course which takes two years in a secondary school is not as good as a course which should take only one year normally to do, and the reason is that the standards in the leaving certificate examination have been blown to the winds.
That is a thing that every university professor will bear out. It comes constantly to one's notice that a pupil, having done honours in the leaving certificate, having got 90 per cent. and sometimes over 100 per cent., is not fit to be given 60 per cent. in an ordinary university examination. The standards have been inflated to such an extent that they no longer correspond to any examination that existed in the past. I do not know why that has been done, but I know it is the complaint that has been made again and again by my own colleagues in University College, Dublin, that they are astonished that pupils coming into them and having got 80 or 90 per cent. in the leaving certificates, are not able to get 60 per cent. in any university examination. What has gone wrong with the examination system, I do not know. It is a question whether the whole system that we adopted in 1923 of having only two examinations is a bad one or not. I think it probably is and that this custom of entering for the matriculation a year after having done the intermediate examination is a sign that it is. Even parents feel the need of something like the old system of annual secondary school examinations.
The question arises whether a more radical change is not needed, whether we do not need to abandon the centralised system altogether and go back to something that corresponds more to reality; whether the individual pupil should not be examined by individual teachers who know something about his record. There have been systems of that kind in the past, and it is possible to devise a system of local examination in which the teachers and the inspectors can co-operate. They had systems like that for 40 or 50 years in the old German Empire, and there is no reason why we could not have something like it here. The system we have got, whereby all pupils have to sit for one central examination, and the papers written for that examination have to be examined by a whole army of examiners—whether that system is doing any real good at all is a very doubtful question. It is a matter of opinion whether we would not be better off to abandon the whole thing and set up some more practicable and sensible system of dealing with pupils personally; whether we could not have provincial examinations, and give more elbow-room to the schools. Our secondary schools are, if anything, a little more overridden with time-tables and inspectorial visits than the primary schools, and they seem to have lost initiative and capacity for working out anything on their own.
Another point I should like to make about the secondary system seems to me to be very important. I do not think the system of scholarships we have is anything like as good as the old system under the British. Before the last war, for instance, it was possible under the old, bad British Government for the son of a man with no income, the son of a poor small farmer, by means of scholarships, to work his way from the primary school as far as he could get in the university. I doubt very much whether that is possible now with the sort of scholarships we have in our schools and universities. I doubt whether the poor man's son is not almost entirely excluded from higher education. We have a good many pupils drawn from middle-class homes, the children of professional men, teachers and Civic Guards, and because their people are able to pay small fees, a great many more of them in proportion are getting higher education now than in the past.
I doubt very much whether the really poor man's son is getting even as good a chance as he got 35 or 40 years ago in secondary schools. These are all questions that require wide and careful consideration and they can only get such consideration from some sort of a permanent body which will have time to devote to them and which will consist of people capable of giving some advice that is of value.
I do not like to spend too much time discussing the Irish language question. I have often expressed here and elsewhere my views on that subject. I am not to be taken as having any complaint to make against the principle of compulsory Irish in primary or secondary schools. I believe it is perfectly possible, even with compulsion, to have a thoroughly sound and good educational system, but the mistake which is nearly always made by people who enter into controversy on the subject is that they aim their blows, so to speak, in the wrong direction, that they begin to attack the principle of compulsion, which is universal in education, and they leave out of account the thing that is of most importance to this country, namely, the bewildering innovation which has been introduced into our system from 1925. I do not know by whom, it was introduced or what consideration was given to it, but at some stage somebody in the Department of Education decided that the Department should go full steam ahead with a policy under which the schools would be encouraged to teach subjects through the medium of a language that was not really known either by the teachers themselves or by the children. Since that policy was entered upon the whole system of secondary education has been heading towards disaster. If it is persisted in for 15 or 20 years more, we can be confident that we shall have no secondary education system worthy of the name. I think until we get a body of impartial people, who know something about language teaching, who are guided by their experience and intelligence rather than by their emotions, to advise the Minister and to examine fairly the work that is being done under this system in the schools, we shall get nowhere. We shall make no advance—in fact we shall be going backwards or round in circles most of the time.
I believe that the pressure has eased off somewhat lately and, to my mind, every easing of the pressure is of some advantage. Even still, quite considerable pressure, both of a positive and negative character, is being put on schools, where no such pressure should be applied, to induce them to teach subjects through the medium of Irish. I have come across numerous instances of that kind which would be laughed at by educated people in any other State. Foreigners who come to this country, people who are thoroughly sympathetic towards the revival of the Irish language, cannot find words to express their bewilderment at the system we are pursuing in our schools— teachers who can barely speak four or five sentences in Irish trying to teach a subject like history through the medium of Irish to children who do not know the difference between "his" and "her" in Irish. I have myself come across cases of that kind. I have known one case where a girl who had never learned any history in her life was engaged in teaching the history of the French Revolution through the medium of Irish to children who, to my own knowledge, did not know the difference between the Irish word for "her" and the Irish word for "his". That is only one example. On top of that you have an inspector who spends his time in inventing new words. These words are being rapidly and efficiently put into circulation, and the result is that a practice is being pursued of creating an ad hoc language. How a system of that kind is going to advance the cause of Gaelicisation or education, it beats me to find out. I cannot explain it. Unless the whole system is reviewed, unless some enlightened opinion is brought to bear on the subject, not merely is the Irish language going to be ruined by this system but the whole idea of reviving the Irish language is infallibly going to be destroyed. The whole movement is going to be brought down in a chorus of universal approbation if this policy is pursued.
Approbation?
Approbation for bringing it down, I mean. The children in the schools especially will approve, if they see the cause of the Irish language fail and the effort to revive it sink to nothing as a result of this mad scheme and this mad policy that is being still pursued. Why it should be pursued or why it should be defended, except on the principle that you can do some good by making people do useless things that they do not want to do, I cannot understand. It is a regular experience, every time you meet a child out of school—and it is not confined to Anglo-Irish children, Protestant children or Catholic children— that when you ask that child what subject he or she dislikes most, you will be told in 95 cases out of 100 that it is the Irish language. That is all due to this policy of compelling children to learn difficult subjects through the medium of a language they do not understand, from teachers who are not capable of imparting instruction through that language.
Tuige go bhfuil tú ag fáil loicht ar an Riaghaltas?
I know that Senator Cú Uladh is raising a question which is a favourite question with him—that of going still further with this lunatic policy.
That is hardly fair. The Senator is entitled to an answer.
And I am entitled to answer him in my own way without being in any way offensive.
Ar dtús bhí tú ag fáil loicht ar an Riaghaltas mar gheall ar na Colaistí Ullmhucháin agus daoine do thabhairt isteach ón nGaeltacht. Anois, tá tú ag fáil loicht ar na múinteóirí toisc nach bhfuil Gaedhilg aca. Ní féidir leat dhá thaobh an scéil a thabhairt leat.
I am not blaming the teachers who have not got Irish. I am blaming those who compel teachers who do not know Irish to teach Latin and other subjects through the medium of Irish. I am blaming the people who are responsible for this lunatic policy, and I think any person who has any familiarity with education, either here or anywhere else, would join with me in calling it a lunatic policy. I thought the Senator was getting at the question of trying to extend this policy to the Universities.
Labhrochad ar ball.
He most certainly will. He will tell us in his own eloquent fashion that you should go the whole hog and compel university professors to give instruction through the medium of Irish, and that then we will have restored the Gaelic State and everything will be perfect. That can be left to people who know something about it. I find that this is a subject which it is very hard to discuss without going too far. It is not my feelings or my ideas alone that are in question: I have heard similar opinions from scores of people who have the Irish cause at heart quite as much as the enthusiasts for this most insane type of compulsion. It is not the policy of the present Government in particular that I am attacking; it was the policy of the last Government, and I attacked it when it was their policy. If, to begin with, the Government would set out to create a body of Irish teachers who really know the language and use those teachers for the purpose of teaching the language and have the language taught by competent teachers all over the country, there would be no one who would give it more approval than I.
Nach iad sin na Coláistí Ullmhúcháin?
I think I have explained how the preparatory schools work and that it is practically impossible for anybody to come educated out of a preparatory school, as things stand at present—especially educated in any sense in the Irish language — as all those places are hermetically sealed. If interest and attention had been concentrated on the question of making the Irish language itself an educated subject and an educational subject and extracting more of the power and force that is in it for the purpose of education, nobody would have more approval for that than I. I would even rejoice to see many other subjects disappear from the programme of the primary and secondary schools, if I could have any hope that, as a result, the Irish language would be at all well taught in those schools. Everybody knows — it is not an opinion of mine; it is the view of almost everybody, and even members of the Gaelic League have complained—that the work being done in those schools has not produced any widespread knowledge of the Irish language but, instead, has created a strong, deep, and widespread prejudice against the language.
I do not wish to dwell any longer on that subject, neither do I wish to go into many other aspects of the educational policy of this Government and the last one — points which require full and careful consideration. I should like to say just one word about the whole secondary system. In my young days, we heard a lot about the intermediate system being a "murder machine"—those were the words of P.H. Pearse. The more I see of it and of the way it is working, the more I am inclined to think that we should now simply add the word "torture" and call it the "murder and torture machine." I suggest that the Government should condescend to take advice on this matter and set up a body of half-a-dozen experts — men of experience in education and of wide education themselves — who know how things are done in other countries and who would not have any prejudices against the Irish language, for instance. I am not trying to find an indirect means of abolishing the Irish language, or anything of that kind. Let them be experts on Irish, if they can be got, but some of them simply will not agree with the idea of trying to teach geometry through the medium of Irish. Get the good ones who are experts; it is easy to get people with big hearts.
The body which I suggest should be a continuous one, which would spend its time continually reviewing the work of the Department of Education and giving the Government advice on any subject that the Government might submit to it. I am not at all suggesting anything of the nature of a vocational body: I do not think the time has come for that, and I do not wish to anticipate the findings of the Commission on Vocational Organisation. A representative body of that kind, as things are at present, would be apt to do more harm than good. It would direct attention to aspects of education which do not need attention nearly so much as those aspects of which I have spoken to-day.
What is really needed is some small expert council which would continually review the work of the Department. If the Government set up a body like that and did not choose its members with care, it is possible they might fill it with those who believe you can improve the position of the Irish language by teaching geometry in it or by following some other hare-brained policy of that kind. If they do that, the responsibility will be on their own heads. I am suggesting that they should get real experts of recognised standing — even if they are only experts on the Irish language—professors like the men recently appointed on the new school of higher studies. If the Government would condescend to consult half a dozen men of that kind and ask them about the possibilities of reviving the language, and so on, it would be good, but it would be better to have a larger body which would be able to keep all activities of the Department of Education under review.
I beg formally to second the motion.
I am under the obligation — as they say in Irish — of delivering a lecture on the Irish language at half-past five and, therefore, I will be mercifully short. On the motion for setting up an advisory council to the Minister for Education, Senator Tierney, who began as a man with the very best intentions in the world, to deliver himself of a calm, persuasive and well-reasoned speech in favour of his motion, succeeded in delivering a very forceful and, on the whole, very useful speech on education in general. The moment he was challenged by Cú Uladh he fell into using some of his favourite adjectives —"lunatic", "hare-brained" and "cracked". He did not use the word "cracked" on this occasion; I will give him credit for that.
The motion is a valuable one and it is desirable that this House should discuss as calmly as it can the general question of education and the particular question of the Irish language. Senator Tierney has stated that in 1922 the new Government was anxious to change everything. Well, perhaps it was. Personally, I certainly remember that it was a great thrill to take over the Intermediate Education Board which, after a certain time, was abolished. Perhaps, in my development since then, I have had occasion to regret the disappearance of these boards. On the other hand, when we come to the question of whether we ought to set up another board, there are certain points to be borne in mind. Under our system the Minister for Education is responsible, and we should not set up any body which will in any measure remove the Minister's responsibility, when he has to answer in public, as that might enable him to shelter behind a council which it is his duty to consult.
No matter how much one may talk about education being a non-controversial subject, it is something which perpetually involves the expenditure of money, and I do not think anybody but a Minister could deal with the Minister for Finance. On that point, therefore, if you have any board, any council of education, it must be such that its recommendations, if they are going to be of value at all, would occasionally and, in fact, might frequently, involve expenditure. If the Minister for Finance does not approve, the money will not be forthcoming and your board is therefore, to that extent, stopped from doing any really useful work
The council which Senator Tierney envisages, however, is to be advisory. He did not want a vocational council, and in that I think he is quite right. For my own part, if there is to be a council to advise the Minister for Education, I would suggest that it should not be selected on a representative basis. I would prefer, if I were Minister for Education, to be allowed, so to speak, to hand-pick an advisory council, and of course, like everybody else, I think that if I were allowed to hand-pick it I would pick a splendid one.
I am not so sure about the present Minister, but, at any rate, I think he would do better with a hand-picked council, which would have to present itself to the public, than with a council composed of persons elected, or even chosen, to represent various interests. The council would have the advantage of giving a forum to which official proposals could be put. It would give a group of informed, expert persons, as was said, an opportunity of seeing the Department's proposals, and pronouncing on them by way of advice, without, of course, having the power to make a decision. Above all, I think it would bring a very useful breeze from the outside, blowing through the offices of the Department of Education which, like all other offices, tend to get musty.
It is easy to criticise civil servants, but they are like plumbers, doctors, policemen, and university professors; they tend to get into a groove and to see things through their own particular spectacles. That is the truth about all of us, each in his own professional occupation, and it is a bad thing about our education, generally, that it should be entirely in the hands of civil servants, as, up to the present, it has very largely been. Having been given, in the beginning, a certain impetus or a certain impulse from a body which discussed, first, the secondary programme, and then the primary programme, the work has been left largely in the hands of civil servants, and that, necessarily, has its defects.
If you had an advisory council, properly handled, it would ensure continuous attention to the problems involved. I wonder what these problems are? Each of us, of course, when he looks upon any situation, has his own particular difficulty and his own particular remedy. We have to remember that in this country the great majority of the pupils never get beyond the primary school, and we must make an endeavour to see, with regard to the education that these people get, that the primary school age should be as high as we can possibly make it, consistent with our resources, and that what is done in the primary schools should be done well, whatever it is.
One of the remarkable things since 1922 has been the extraordinary lack of interest in education. I presided over Dáil debates for ten years and I think I can lay my hand on my heart and say that the dullest debates and perhaps the least useful debates — even worse than those on the Land Commission, and they were bad enough—were the debates on education. They were rarely illumined by any spark and very rarely got any great Press, and very few people ever write to a public man, whether a Deputy or a Senator, a Minister or a member of the Opposition, in connection with education. You get plenty of letters about old age pensions, lands, and other things, but in spite of all the talk that Senator Tierney gave us this evening of the burning feelings in people's breasts about education, very few people ever write to you about education or seem to take any interest in it.
For my part, I feel that there is one problem to be solved in connection with our education, and if it is not solved a council will be of no use. There are two questions to be discussed here in our peculiar circumstances. One is general educational policy and the other is Irish language policy. Now, our Irish language problem is, I think, unique. We may learn something from other countries, as has been said, but I doubt that there is any complete parallel to our situation. If, however, we can get no assistance anywhere else, we surely could benefit by our own experience, and our own experience has been going on now for close on 20 years. I think we are now entering upon the twentieth year of an Irish educational policy. Now, unless we can decide in some satisfactory way — I do not advocate that we should get unanimity — but unless we can decide in some way and, at any rate, get a clear idea as to what our Irish language policy should be — as to what we have accomplished and what we can accomplish — we cannot get clear on our general educational policy. A council for education will be of little use until we have probed the exact position of the Irish language in our schools and the results we have achieved so far and what our aims and our methods should be for the future. A council for education, no matter how it is appointed now, or no matter of whom it consisted, could not go into that. They might not be equipped to do so, and even if they did proceed to do it they might be met with the statement that this was a matter of Government policy and that they could not go into it. That, I think, is inevitable.
People have a certain nervousness in approaching the problem because many express themselves intemperately about it and it is easy to throw epithets about rather than calmly to argue on what is a very complicated and difficult subject. My own position is that I was Minister for Education when the Government took over in 1922. I presided over the conference, to which Senator Tierney alluded, upon which the present secondary system is, in a very great degree, based. I am anxious that the policy that was then outlined for the Irish language should achieve success, and I am prepared to pay a substantial price for that success and I am prepared to make a substantial sacrifice for it, but my difficulty is that, like any other intelligent person, I am not prepared to pay a price unless I can get the goods for which I am paying. After an experience of 19 years— and I have taught a great deal in different types of schools and taught more than one modern language, apart from English, and have children of my own growing up and can see the children of my friends and relations around me — I am not satisfied, and am very far from being satisfied, that the goods are being delivered for the price that is being paid for them. My great anxiety at the present moment, and my anxiety since 1933 and earlier — I think I expressed it publicly in 1933 — is that we should have an inquiry, and I think the passing of this motion would be of no use, or the setting up of a council for education would be no use, unless we can have that inquiry — an inquiry into what progress we have made since 1922 in this matter of the Irish language.
In 1933 I advocated this matter at a dinner of secondary teachers which the Taoiseach and the present Minister for Education attended. We had had then more than ten years' experience, and now we have had more than 20 years' experience. I am not impartial in this matter. I am not viewing it coldly from the outside, but as one who has a very strong desire to see a policy, with which I myself was once associated and with which I still am associated, come to fruition.
Quite frankly, I want it to be a success, but I refuse to allow my intelligence, my knowledge and my own personal experience to be blinded by any kind of shibboleth or catch-cry, and I refuse to yield to any kind of abuse, whether it be in the Irish language or the English language on this question. I want an inquiry conducted into this matter by people competent in the Irish language. I do not want it to be conducted by people who are enthusiastic about the Irish language, but who do not know how to express themselves in it, or the people who are enthusiastic and who know Irish and understand it, on the condition that you do not say anything to them in Irish. I object to that kind of inquiry.
I want people who are bona fide on the Irish language question, who are sound in Irish and who are educationists as well. These people can be got; people who will not mind saying whether we have or have not achieved results, because we ought to know the truth. I thought Senator Tierney used the wrong word when he said that the failure of the Irish language movement might receive universal approbation. I thought he meant execration, but I was wrong. He meant approbation. I have a very uncomfortable feeling that he may be right. I hope not. I have the very uncomfortable feeling that if we do not now coldly and calmly bear in mind what it is we want done and how best we can do it, in the light of our experience, other people later on are going to do something which we will be very, very sorry to see done. The present state of things is very unsatisfactory. We are aiming at reaching a particular result, and one of our chief aids in reaching that result is to keep on saying: “Boys, we are nearly there. Every day and in every way we are getting more Irish.” To pretend that we are halfway, or that we have made a substantial start is to deceive ourselves. It is urgent that this matter should be decided, I was going to say once and for all, but it cannot be decided once and for all. At any rate, we can use all our intelligence, our experience, our judgment and our enthusiasm to decide it, and when we have come to a conclusion on the subject, then we will be clearing the way for educational reform. I do not think any good purpose is served by abuse of a particular type of school. No one has more regard than I have for the immense labour and devoted energy put into teaching through the medium of Irish. Some of us have had peculiar experiences about that. I went into a house one night by appointment, foolishly arrived an hour before the time. While waiting for the lady of the house her daughter said to me: “Oh, you are the very man whose help I need. I am doing my French exercise.” She was going to an “A” school and the French exercise was to translate a piece of French into Irish. She had translated it into English and was proceeding to translate it into Irish. That is humbug but it is very widely done. As I was very interested, I sat down to do the exercise. It was a rather difficult piece of French but I arrived at what I thought was a satisfactory Irish translation. Of course it was wrong of me to do it. I gave it to the girl and she brought it to school. Her mother, who happens to be a University graduate, rang me up a few days afterwards and said: “Do you know what so-and-so got for her Irish translation? She got ‘fair,’ cuibheasach”
A colleague of mine who has written a considerable amount of Irish and is an authority on modern Irish was pestered by one of his children about Cæsar's Gallic War. He did a piece of Latin into Irish. The teacher gave 60 per cent., which was a bit better than my experience. There is something radically wrong there. When the present Minister for Education and his predecessor say that there was no one teaching through the medium of Irish except people who are competent, that is not true. I told the Minister's predecessor on other occasions that it was not true. I have met university graduates to whom I taught French, who are now teaching French through the medium of Irish, and who did not know Irish enough for that work. It was impossible. There is something radically wrong there, too. Everyone knows that those coming from the secondary schools know when Art McCooey was born and when Owen Roe O'Sullivan died, but there is the greatest difficulty in finding anyone who can stand examination on a given book. They all know dates and details which are not expected in a university course.
It is not the fault of the teachers. It is not entirely the fault of the inspectors caught in the system, but largely the fault of a system which says: "We want to go somewhere and we want to pretend we are there." That is what has happened, to a very large extent. I would like to see that inquired into. Good will, enthusiasm and energy will not supply the place of brains or linguistic ability.
One of the difficulties we know is that we impose an oral test on every kind of person, forgetting that people differ in their abilities. Some people could possibly acquire an oral language in a brief time, while other very intelligent people are simply no good at that. We endeavour to put everyone into the same mould. I have met people from "A" schools who knew Irish well but whose reluctance to speak Irish is quite remarkable. All these things make one wonder what we are doing. I came upon a party of six girls who were playing tennis last summer. They were from an "A" school. I talked in Irish to them and they talked to me in Irish. I have a kind of feeling that they said: "Here is one of those people interested in Irish and we will talk to him in Irish all right." When I was gone they resumed their tennis and their English.
In other words, the very fact of doing a particular language in a school does not accomplish anything outside the school. There is a false analogy. The teaching of English in New York and the teaching of Irish in Dublin are two completely different things, because you have a form of English spoken in New York, but there is no form of Irish spoken commonly in Dublin. I feel that the matter should be investigated. I ask with all the earnestness at my command that it should be investigated, not on a political basis, not on the basis of proving that someone was right and someone else was wrong, but on a basis confined to what our experience of the last 19 years leaves us to conclude now. No matter how unpalatable the decision we have to take, it should be taken.
I speak now entirely from the point of view of a person who wants that step to be taken for the good of the Irish language. I saw a discussion lately on this question: "Should the Irish language be revived?" I am not prepared to argue that now. It would be a foolish argument. Nothing should be argued but the methods to be employed. How are you to set about it? You cannot set about it by a process of Coueism, by pretending that you have done something when you have not travelled any appreciable distance of the road towards your goal. Preparatory colleges, for example, were started very enthusiastically and, apparently, on a very good plan. You took young fellows from the Gaeltacht to make them teachers. It is difficult to find a good teacher. Every young fellow in the Gaeltacht is not a good teacher. Taking a boy of 12 or 14 and keeping him for years at the expense of the State, to turn him out as a teacher, may not be such a good proposition as you think it is on paper. Confining training colleges to teaching entirely in the Irish language may have very serious effects. Therefore, it seems to me that something is wrong with the situation as it stands at the present moment, and that it cannot be made right until we get ourselves into a proper direction, into a proper spirit, and have a proper plan and a proper aim on this Irish language question. If we can get that done, certain other things will be easy to do afterwards. For example, is it not possible to raise the school-leaving age and give a better chance to the ordinary primary school student? Is it not possible to arrange that primary school children shall be able to get into the Civil Service? Some of the best civil servants in this State at the present moment entered from a primary school. I do not think anyone can enter the Civil Service now from a primary school, except as post office messengers or learners, and the Post Office is the worst paid service. Anything higher than that it is impossible to enter from the primary school.
Take the technical school buildings all over the country. The name "technical school" has been substituted by another name, "vocational school". What are the vocational schools? I do not know. Are they schools for teaching shorthand and typewriting, in the main, or schools for teaching crafts of any kind? Do they not rather stand as models and exemplars of town life for the country boys or girls who cycle in to them and who hope, when they have done a course in them, that they will get a job in the town? I think they do. I wonder whether the money spent on them would not be better devoted to an enlargement of primary education itself.
There are a great many matters of that kind that one could go into. I am entirely in agreement that a council of education advising the Minister, composed of persons who have a real knowledge of education and of some particular subject or subjects, would be a great advantage. It would ensure, as I said, continuous examination of the programmes and would perhaps help to keep public interest alive. Until we get this contentious matter — we saw this afternoon how contentious it can be—until we get this Irish language question settled by a calm, impartial inquiry by experts, I think we will not get any further on the road towards better education and towards a subject which is dear to so many people, that is to say, the revival of the Irish language.
I suggest to the Minister that an inquiry of that kind is feasible, that it can be carried out, that it would not take very long to carry out, and that if people were asked to speak exactly what they think the results of that inquiry could not but be good for the Irish language. I, therefore, put it to the Minister that as a preliminary, or as a step taken at the same time as the setting up of a council of education, that matter must be decided. I think that after an experience of nearly 20 years we now have plenty of material to go upon to decide it properly and to our own advantage. I, therefore, suggest that such an inquiry should be carried out before the council of education is set up.
I am very interested in the speeches on this motion, and I have not a closed mind on the question of an advisory council for Irish education. But I do not think that the arguments we have heard so far are sufficiently convincing to persuade me, at any rate, that I should go to the Government and ask them to set up formal machinery for the purpose of establishing an advisory council. I do not think that the proposer of the motion adhered as closely as one might have expected from the amount of attention he has given to this matter, not only on this occasion but over a considerable time, to the terms of the motion. One would have expected him to adhere somewhat more closely to the terms of his motion. However, I understand that before I reached the Chamber he explained that he rather intended to discuss the whole question of education generally.
Now, it would be quite impossible for me to reply in extenso to the various points that were made by Senator Tierney. I came here prepared to hear a reasoned and closely argued statement as to the constitution, purpose and aims of a consultative body which might be set up and to which the Minister from time to time might refer matters within the ambit of his Department. As I say, the arguments that were made certainly have not convinced me that it is necessary to set up such a body. Senator Hayes in his statement, which seemed to me to demand somewhat more consideration because it was put up in a worthier spirit and, I think, would naturally deserve more attention from a Minister for Education, suggested that inquiry was necessary. Of course, inquiry can be of various sorts. It is not necessary to set up a permanent advisory council to make inquiry. Inquiry is being constantly made, day after day, month after month, and year after year, in regard to some of the matters to which great importance has been attached in the course of the speeches to which we have listened. Although we have no formal council of education at present, we have in fact several councils of education in existence which are functioning, I think, fairly satisfactorily. These are bodies consisting of teachers, headmasters, headmistresses, managers and other similar bodies. We have frequent consultation with these bodies. They give us their advice and, if any changes of importance are being considered or proposed, we deem it our duty to get into touch with them, hear what their views are, and consider them and examine them very carefully before we put our proposals into operation.
An instance of that is in connection with the secondary school programme. Senator Tierney seems to have a grievance because university professors like himself who were consulted — perhaps from his point of view the consultation was not sufficient — were not brought in more formally to consider the changes that were in contemplation. But, who is in a better position to judge of these matters or to advise me than the headmasters who are responsible for the schools, the teachers in those schools, and the inspectors who inspect the schools? Am I to assume that university professors are a body endowed with some special wisdom by Providence, that not alone do they know their own jobs thoroughly, but they can also be political leaders; and when it comes down to discussing the teaching of Irish or the best way in which infants should be dealt with in our national schools, no matter what branch or aspect of education you may touch, are they equally experts in that as they are in the subjects in which they hold chairs in the university?
We consulted the professors on certain subjects. We asked them for their views, and we considered their views. Having been in consultation with the various schools' associations and the representatives of the secondary schools for a considerable period of time, and also having had the matter dealt with in conference in the Department of Education over a protracted period, in which the Taoiseach as well as myself took a prominent part, we did not consider it necessary to go further.
Senator Tierney was only able to refer to one particular question—Latin verse. Some official in the Department of Education, he says, made a change. Undoubtedly, a change was made. I do not consider that it was a very important or a very fundamental change. It may be important from Senator Tierney's point of view. It was simply a change to the effect that the marks which formerly had been granted for Latin verse, and which might be added to the total number of marks granted for Latin or Greek — 400 — were now being reduced to the extent that, if on account of the additional marks in Latin or Greek verse, a student's total totted up to more than 400 he was still only given the 400 marks. That is to say that, whatever his marks in Latin or Greek verse might be, he was not allowed to get more than 400. We are still giving more than the 400 marks' total where the student answers through Irish.
The Senator referred at great length, and in rather strong terms, to politicians. I cannot quite understand what the object is in referring so insistently to politicians. I am a politician like my predecessors in the Ministry of Education. I have been elected a member of a Government which is responsible to the Irish people, and, therefore, I deprecate these references, particularly in the present times, to politicians. If we are politicians, at any rate I hope we do not try to intrude Party political considerations, as seems to be suggested, into the work of the Departments for which we are responsible. Certainly, however it may be with regard to other Departments, I have never tried, and never intend, to bring such issues into the Department of Education.
I never meant to suggest any such thing.
In any case, the publication of the Senator's remarks and the statements that he made: that politicians, as he described them, with transitory and uninstructed views, are base persons who certainly should not be entrusted with the education of the country, that it was really a terrible pity that that system should not be scrapped and that we should not go back to the system of the old boards — well, I do not think it is necessary for me to reply to them. Senator Hayes has done so. The old boards were attached to Dublin Castle, and the Irish people had no responsibility in regard to them. It happened that certain Irishmen were selected again, surely for political reasons. Very often, for reasons that Dublin Castle saw best, they were nominated on these boards which had charge of certain branches of education. The position now surely is much better, where we have an Irish Government and an Irish Minister for Education who must answer in the National Assembly for the policy and administration of his Department. These boards had no responsibility to the Irish people. They met at certain intervals, but I question if they could possibly give the attention to the business that a Minister who is in his office every day and who is responsible to the Dáil and must answer to the Dáil and to his colleagues in the Government for the control of his Department does. I question if they could possibly, even if they had much greater ability and were more eminent in the field of education than a Minister democratically elected, give more attention or energy to the work.
We know that, in actual fact, the Office of National Education, under the old board, was controlled by a resident commissioner, and that in the intervals between the sittings of the board the Office was controlled by that salaried public servant. He was responsible to the board it is true, but he was really responsible to the Treasury. He had not the advantages that we have at the present time. We, at any rate, can go to our own Minister for Finance and make our own case. His position with regard to the important question of finance which, as Senator Hayes has pointed out, is of the greatest importance, no matter what Senator Tierney may say, in regard to educational development, was anomalous. You can do very little indeed if you have not finance. The old National Board had to go with their hat in hand to Dublin Castle and see what they could get. I am sure they got very little. In fact, I know they did, and yet it is suggested that that was a better system. It is suggested that it might be better for us to go back to that system than to make the most out of the system that we have.
May I say that I did not suggest anything of the kind?
The Senator suggested that it was a mistake to do away with the old boards without consideration.
But I did not suggest that it was a mistake to do away with Dublin Castle.
No, but I want to point out——
Is not the Minister overlooking the fact that the Irish Members of Parliament at Westminster talked at least as actively and as interestedly about Irish education as the Dáil does to-day?
That may be the Senator's opinion, but the Senator happens to be in a small minority in regard to that as to a good many other matters.
Does the Minister deny that the Irish Members of Parliament took an interest in Irish education?
I have not got the time to read these forgotten debates in the British House of Commons.
The Minister ought not to imply the opposite, at any rate.
I am implying that the old boards were simply the instruments of Dublin Castle in this country, and that they were not responsible to the Irish people. Again, I cannot understand what Senator Tierney means by "experts". Apparently, any person who is enthusiastic about reviving the Irish language, about teaching through Irish, and bringing Irish in as the vehicle of instruction and of intercourse in the schools, is to be questioned because he has prejudices. I think it is fairly clear, from the Senator's own statements, that if anybody in this country has prejudices, he certainly has a sufficient number of them in regard to the matter to which he referred.
I have a very strong prejudice in favour of the Irish language, and I regret to see its cause being destroyed.
I was saying that we have been discussing matters with bodies like the associations representing secondary education. Where, for example, changes were in contemplation in a particular branch of education in which they might be interested we have discussed these with them from time to time. We have consulted with other bodies also and the result of that consultation and of the advice they have been able to give us from time to time, has been most valuable. A point that, I think, should be mentioned is that some of the most important of these associations are not desirous of seeing an advisory council of the kind suggested by the Senator set up here. What their view may be about a strictly limited advisory council I cannot now say, but I know that, when the general idea of a consultative body for education was mooted some years ago, a very important association stated that their view was that the present position was, from their point of view, entirely satisfactory. They had free access to the Minister, they could put their point of view before him at any time, the Minister was good enough to consult them on occasions and they felt that, generally speaking, the development of secondary education had been happy and propitious since an Irish Government took charge of it. They felt also that a council of the type then mooted would perhaps not be to the advantage of education generally in that extraneous issues might be brought in in which educationists, viewing these matters in a broad, general way, might not be interested.
Was that not a question of a representative council? understood that the objection taken by bodies like the Headmasters' Conference, for instance, was to the idea of a representative council of secondary education in present circumstances. I never heard that they had any objection to an advisory council.
I do not know whether they have. I am only pointing out the objection that was made.
But not to the suggestion I am now putting forward.
I have stated that, in the different branches of education, we have been able to consult with representatives from time to time, to have the benefit of their advice and that that has been very valuable. We have also, where it was necessary, been able to make inquiries on the lines suggested by Senator Hayes. For example, a conference examined the question of the primary school programme early in the existence of an Irish Government. Later on, the question of the industrial schools was examined, and, previous to that, the question of technical education in this country was fairly fully investigated, so that from time to time we have been able to make special inquiries. We have also had departmental committees examining special questions and they have been in a position to get in touch, where it was necessary, with outside educational interests and to have the benefit of their views.
What I want to explain to An Seanad is that there are a number of associations in different branches of education and to bring representatives, whether they be selected as representatives by the associations themselves or by the Minister to represent their particular field of education, would mean that if we were to give reasonable representation to all those the benefit of whose advice we have had from time to time up to the present, we would have a very large council and we would have the position that although there would be specialists in secondary, vocational and primary education on that council, in respect of the aspects of education with which they were not specially identified and of which as individuals they had not special knowledge, there was no proof that advantages would be got, such as might be expected if the arguments in favour of such a council are to be believed. There is also the point that there is a difficulty in getting suitable personnel. It is not merely sufficient, in my opinion, that the personnel of such a council should have intimate knowledge and experience of the work of the schools.
I am really amazed when I hear persons like Senator Tierney condemning the policy of the majority of the secondary schools as mad-cap, lunatic and so on, when I know the type of persons who are responsible for secondary education in this country. Senators know that no more devoted body of persons could be found. What was the position in that regard? In 1924 two secondary schools decided to start the experiment of teaching through Irish. The number increased, and when I came in as Minister, there were a substantial number, though not a majority, trying to teach either all the subjects or most of the subjects through Irish. I have no reason to doubt that these headmasters and these teachers were doing this not because they felt they were doing some injury to the education of the children placed in their charge. I believe that they understood, felt and, from year to year, believed that they were getting as good results from the teaching of subjects through Irish as they had been getting from teaching through English. They were able to show, for example — some of the most prominent of them who have been longest carrying out this policy and have been most devoted to it — that they were always at the top of the examination lists since they started teaching through Irish. Before they started teaching through Irish they were at the top of the lists, and if they ceased teaching through Irish they would be at the top of the lists, and I think that if this matter is to be examined from the point of view suggested by Senator Hayes, if we are to have a calm considered examination of the problems and suggestions as to how matters might be improved, we are certainly not going to get very much further if the intemperate language which Senator Tierney used with regard to schools which are doing their work through Irish is to be taken as the basis of any examination.
He has suggested that we are pressing these schools. So far as I am concerned, there is no pressure whatever. When I came in as Minister, there was a substantial increase in the number of these schools. I never asked the schools to do any more than they had been doing. On the contrary, I have told the inspectors, particularly the primary inspectors when I met them at conferences of all the inspectors, and when I met the divisional inspectors, that they were to dissuade teachers who clearly were not in a position to give instruction through Irish effectively, teachers whose efforts could not be applauded from the educational point of view and which were not in the children's interest, from teaching through Irish. In fact, the actual number of primary schools in which teaching through Irish is being done to a great extent is only a very small fraction, if you leave out the Fíor-Ghaeltacht and Breac-Ghaeltacht, where you have native speakers, and all this campaign of propaganda against teaching through Irish is based on an entirely false assumption, and on ignorance of the real situation and of the figures.
Are there not financial inducements offered for teaching through the medium of Irish?
Yes, there are, in the secondary schools and also in the Gaeltacht.
Possibly amounting, in some cases, to as much as 50 per cent. of the capitation grant?
Yes, and why not? If the Senator were to be asked to-morrow to teach Greek through the medium of Irish, I would certainly vote for increasing his salary. If these schools have taken on themselves the herculean task, as he calls it, of trying to make Irish a vehicle of instruction — something which he seems to consider impossible—and have succeeded to the extent to which, in my opinion, they have succeeded, the Government feel they are entitled to all support. I was not, in the first instance, responsible for it, but I applauded it, and so long as I am Minister, I will continue to give these schools all the credit and all the support I can. There will be no going back, so far as I am concerned, and if there is any mistaken impression in the country that the Department of Education has slowed down in any way with regard to Irish, I want to contradict it and to make it quite clear that there has been no such slowing down. But there has been no pressure put upon these schools at any time.
Is the Minister satisfied with the result?
If I were like the Senator, I might not be, but I realise, as has been admitted here by those who are sponsoring the motion, that if you are going to revive Irish and make it the speaking medium in this country, in the age in which we are now living, sacrifices are necessary. I am not one of those people who think you cannot have some educational loss, some educational waste, during the transition period through which we are passing. I believe that, even if the system were perfect, when you are trying to bring in a language which, as has been stated, was almost dead and to make it again a living medium, it is almost impossible to avoid loss during such a transition period.
I should agree with Senator Hayes if we could be sure of the bona fides of these critics, if we could take it for granted that they were in favour of the revival of Irish. Then, we should know where we stood but I have a question-mark in my mind as to whether a great deal of this campaign against teaching through Irish is not directed against the revival of Irish itself. When I see certain organs of the Press, certain associations and parties and some members of this House, who believe that the whole policy of reviving Irish is wrong, giving their opinions on this subject of teaching through Irish, I am afraid I cannot give them the credence they expect. When people like Senator Hayes come along and say that they do not agree with us on this aspect of the matter and that they have good reasons for not agreeing, I think the case they make should be fully and carefully examined. It is being examined and, if there has not been a flourish of trumpets or a list of names in the newspapers of persons representing the universities and other institutions, a responsible man like Senator Tierney should not assume that the Department of Education is failing in its duty to inquire into these matters. It is rather strange that no representative body or association connected with the secondary schools has ever taken up this matter but that they have, on the contrary, expressed their satisfaction with the policy pursued.
They are all afraid to take it up. Perhaps the Minister will allow me to give him an instance?
The Senator will have an opportunity of doing that when replying.
I merely want to deal with one small point. I was asked to read a paper a number of years ago on this subject before the Primary Teachers' Congress. When I asked why I had been chosen, they said they wanted somebody to "bell the cat." Many of these people have not the courage to make a protest.
It is preposterous to pretend that as the State is constituted at present — whatever the position may be in the future — parents, headmasters and teachers are afraid to give their views on this important question. I do not believe that.
They were afraid of the loss of the grants, for the most part.
I was dealing with the difficulty of getting persons for this council who understand the whole field of education, and of having on a single body representatives of the three different branches of education with which I deal. There is also difficulty in seeing how the aims of these bodies— the present aim being consultation and advice — would be kept in mind if such a body were set up. With the expressions of opinion one hears from time to time, I do not understand how the introduction of what I might call service questions — narrow issues dealing with changes in the curricula, or staffing, or remuneration of teachers, or the inspection system — could be avoided. So long as you have bodies representing certain interests in education which are also trade unions — either trade unions wholly or trade unions partly — it is almost impossible to exclude the consideration of the type of question to which I have referred. I fear that the bringing in of these questions would be to the detriment of more important work and might exclude consideration of broad, general questions of educational policy such as the best advocates of such a body might deem proper. If the relations between its employees and the Department were brought in, if there were a spirit of discontent with existing conditions and a desire to have grievances, whether well-founded or ill-founded, redressed — if these matters were brought into the discussions of the council, it would greatly affect its value. I do not see how they could be excluded and I doubt if the conference would have any value once these questions were brought in. You would have bargaining and the splitting up of the conference into different camps, one being opposed to the other.
I had thought that the Senator would explain how some of these difficulties could be overcome. I cannot see how they could be overcome except by frankly facing the situation and saying that we should not give representation to trade union bodies or bodies allied with trade unions. Human nature being what it is, it would be impossible, otherwise, to have matters discussed in a disinterested way. I fear that the approach of the representatives of these bodies to these problems would be to have regard to their own interests and to the effect on their members of particular educational policies or proposals. While saying that, I feel that it is of paramount importance that we should have the co-operation and good-will of all sections of the teaching profession and the other organisations connected with teaching.
There is nothing to show me that the position now is in any way different from what it was some years ago, or that an effort would not be made to use such a council for purposes for which neither the Minister nor the Government would intend it. Having regard to the position that obtains at present, and to the fact that some of the most important educational interests have expressed their satisfaction with that position, and are quite satisfied with the degree of consultation that goes on at present, there is no need to set up this council. The Senator, in proposing his motion, did not refer to one matter which is the kernel of the whole issue. That was touched upon by Senator Hayes, and it is whether the Minister is to be responsible for policy or not. I do not think that any Minister will ever tolerate a position, so long as we are functioning under the present system, in which he would be responsible in the eyes of the public for education when, in fact, some body of individuals would be the real authority. I do not think that we could contemplate such a position. I do not think you could have that position.
The Senator, it is true, has suggested that matters would be referred by the Minister, and in that way he has restricted the scope of the suggested council, but I cannot quite believe that such a council would be taken very seriously by some of those who are most interested, or who expressed themselves some time ago as being most interested, in the establishment of such a body. I am quite sure the Minister would find himself in the position, if any one of these very many questions which Senator Tierney referred to had to be discussed, that questions of policy were being discussed and decisions being reached, presumably to be implemented, for which the Minister himself should be responsible. For example, the Senator referred to the question of examinations. I do not know how on earth he could believe that a council of this kind could deal with that question. The question of examinations is largely an administrative matter, and I do not understand how it could be dealt with by this body.
There is the whole question of Irish and, of course, there would be great difficulties in regard to that matter if it were to be assumed that such a body would have the right to criticise the policy which has been in operation for a long period of time and to recommend something which the Minister might consider to be a fundamental change in that policy. I cannot see how these questions could be discussed nor can I see how the council could go into questions of administration.
Undoubtedly the relations between a department and its employees are very important for the employees and we can understand that they may have grievances but I do not think that anybody but the Minister could be entrusted with the responsibility in these matters. I am quite certain, no matter upon what basis such a council would be formed, you would have these questions coming in.
With regard to the clichés, which are so familiar to the Irish public, to which the Senator treated us this evening, about "autocratic anonymous decisions" and so on, so long as the head of the Government and the Minister for Education are taking responsibility to the Irish public and to the Oireachtas I cannot see any justification whatever for these terms. Even if the position is that a certain number of matters have to be dealt with by civil servants, these civil servants are Irishmen and they have no other interest in general except the welfare of the people. It may be that they are lacking but I should be sorry to see the impression going abroad that there was some secret kind of Tcheka or one of these Continental organisations operating in Marlboro' Street and that the Irish people really had no say in these matters, that decisions were all made in secret, no one knowing anything about them, and so on. These civil servants are Irishmen just like ourselves. They all have their feelings and I do not think it improves matters that they should be attacked in this House. Reference has been made on several occasions to one civil servant as being responsible for a new language. I do not care to be put in the position of defending public servants who have shown for a good many years that they are devoted to their duties and have no interests otherwise but I really think it is high time, if the Senator wishes to put propositions up to the House, that he should avoid that type of criticism. I think it is really unworthy of him.
Has the Minister anything to say with reference to Senator Tierney's animadversions about the classics, that the standard has gone down?
It may be, as he suggested, that the marking has not been satisfactory. We have recently, as I said, revised the programme. The programme has been reduced on account of the complaints that have been made. It has been reduced after careful examination over a long period. We have tried to meet the criticisms that it was, in the first place, too extensive and, secondly, too vague. We have tried to make it more concrete and more simple and we have instructed the inspectors to give straightforward questions in setting the papers. There may be some foundation for the criticism here that the marking was somewhat lenient. I think it is possibly due to the fact that the courses were really rather wide and somewhat vague. We expect that there will be an improvement under the new system.
Will the Minister believe me that I say it with regret that I think there is a good deal of justification for what Senator Tierney said with reference to Latin and Greek? It is the only comment I have to make. I ask the indulgence of the House for making it.
The Senator also referred to the preparatory colleges. I quite fail to see what the question of the preparatory colleges has to do with this matter but it is a point that has been belaboured for years past. It is very useful in calling attention to the deficiencies of the Department of Education and, incidentally, whether it is intended or not, it does a certain amount of damage to the progress of Irish in the schools. Now, as the Senator has admitted, I was not responsible for the setting up of these colleges but I fully understand and appreciate the motives which led to their being set up. If I were in the same position as Senator Hayes or one of the other Ministers who were responsible when an Irish Government first came into existence, I must say I could conceive of no better solution for the problem of getting teachers into the schools who had a thorough knowledge of the Irish language, about whose fluency and whose knowledge of their national language there could not be the slightest doubt.
I cannot conceive of any better way in which such teachers could be provided than through the preparatory college scheme. There are hardly any day secondary schools in the Irish-speaking districts. That has always been a problem. Ever since I came into office, in spite of the fact that we have had the preparatory colleges, I have felt that there has not been enough provision for post-primary education in those areas. There is not the same provision at all that there is in the more urbanised and better-off rural parts of the country. Although there has been talk of establishing day secondary schools from time to time, none of the religious orders, for example, has started a day secondary school, as far as I know, in the Gaeltacht areas. Even if we had them, it is very doubtful, with the intense pressure and extraordinary competition there is at present for places in the Civil Service, whether candidates from the Gaeltacht would get places in the Civil Service to any great extent. With regard to vocational schools, we have a certain number of those, but we have not organised trades in the Gaeltacht, and even if we succeed in getting boys and girls a good foundation in hand-work or craft work of some kind they still have the difficulty of securing recognition, even if they are well qualified, under trade union regulations. There is practically no land in those intensely Irish speaking areas. It was decided — I think the circumstances at the time made it a decision that ought to be well understood, and I believe it was a right and proper decision, and one that has fully justified itself — to earmark a certain proportion of places in the teaching profession, which certainly seemed appropriate, for candidates from the Fior Ghaeltacht areas.
There was also the point that there were then no secondary schools teaching through Irish. Only two schools started that in 1924, and for a considerable period of years there was no indication that eventually the majority of the secondary schools would take up that policy. It went on rather slowly for a period of years, and personally I believe that higher officials in the Education Office who were au fait with the position were probably surprised at the enormous increase that took place in the thirties in the number of secondary schools giving education through Irish.
But even if we had those secondary schools available, boarding schools, doing all their work through Irish at that early period, we would still have the difficulty that they would not be able to give the students a vocational training or a vocational testing. They would not be able to deal with those boys and girls as the persons who were selected to be placed in charge of the preparatory colleges were able to deal with them. Those teachers were selected on the grounds of character, knowledge of Irish and special suitability for putting those boys and girls through their secondary courses, and also giving them a certain amount of vocational training. The idea really was that it would be the equivalent in some way of the old monitorial system, whose demise a great many people still lament, but which was found wanting on the educational side. It was at the time that the monitorial system was finally abolished here that the other step, the putting up the preparatory colleges, was undertaken. In those colleges then — a thing that never had been heard of before in connection with the primary teachers —every candidate was getting a first-class secondary education through the Irish language, which in a good many cases was his native language; secondly, he was getting a certain amount of teaching practice and vocational training; and thirdly, special attention was being paid by those in charge of those colleges to his development from the point of view that he was a candidate for the teaching profession. Only a percentage of the places was given to the native Irish-speaking candidates. I was responsible for increasing that percentage in 1934, but we have been considering reducing it. The argument has frequently been heard—and it seemed to carry some weight — that the general feeling, particularly among members of the teaching profession themselves, was that their children were not getting sufficient opportunities of going on for teaching, and, although I felt that the grievance was not substantial, still, in one of the many efforts I made to get good will in all matters relating to the Irish language, I contemplated a reduction of the percentage, and when the regulations for recruitment to the preparatory colleges are being published again the percentage for the Fior Ghaeltacht students is to be cut down. But if it is being cut down, it means that the Fior Ghaeltacht student is losing to that extent. He is not having the opportunity, which it was originally intended he should have, of getting a large share of places, having regard to his special qualifications, in the teaching profession. We either believe that those who have Irish from the cradle, if they are suitable otherwise, are superior, and must in the nature of things be superior to those who have only learned the language, or we do not.
It is not the position either that those candidates for the preparatory colleges are selected without regard to their personality and physical fitness. The inspector reports on those matters, and he also submits to the Department the result of his interview with the candidates. If it were possible to have entirely oral tests and examinations in connection with those matters, and very searching selections in that way it would no doubt be better, but when you are dealing with the very large number of candidates that we have for the teaching profession it is almost impossible to devise means of dealing with them only orally. It is almost impossible to ensure a standard of uniformity, and in any case you have too many students; you could not bring them to a reasonable number of centres, and you could not get the work done within a reasonable amount of time. When I hear it argued at present, as it frequently is, that the existing secondary schools could supply what is now being done by the preparatory colleges, I want to point out that when the preparatory colleges were established the secondary schools were not doing the work through Irish, and, even if they were, they would not be able to, nor can they now provide the vocational training for which special arrangements are made in the preparatory colleges. The whole question of the preparatory colleges has been under constant examination. It is a matter of the greatest importance to the Fíor-Ghaeltacht areas; it is a matter of the greatest importance with regard to the future of the Irish language, and to getting the fullest cooperation and support from those people, so I believe that, in general, the policy should be continued.
The Senator also referred to the question of falling attendances, among a number of other matters. I do not intend to deal with that now. I will deal with it later, on another occasion. The matriculation question is being gone into. It is in the nature of things that the University professors blame the secondary schools if they are not satisfied with the material they are getting. It is a frequent experience with us that the secondary schools blame the primary schools, and I suppose it always was so. If there are good grounds for dissatisfaction with the existing programme and the system of marking, I hope that they will be met in the new programme which we have published. With regard to scholarships, I am not aware that people are being excluded from higher education.
Having regard to the enormous numbers who are getting university education, and the large numbers of those who are not succeeding in finding suitable employment within a reasonable time, I think a good many people are wondering whether, in fact, it always has advantages in the way that most Irish parents seek advantages, that is, that they want some economic results. If they are going to give their children education, whether it be primary, secondary, vocational or university, they hope that at the end of it the boy or girl will be in a position to find employment. From figures which have been given recently, it seems clear that large numbers, even of those who enter the professions, find the greatest difficulty in securing employment.
With regard to the Civil Service, I have asked the question frequently why, if it was the intention that entrance to the lowest grades in the Civil Service should be based on the national school programme, primary school pupils do not obtain places, because in actual fact these places all go to secondary school pupils. I think I am safe in saying that all, without exception, go to the secondary school pupils. The position is that secondary school pupils, in the first place, have a wider and more extensive knowledge than the primary school candidates, and, secondly, they often get a special grinding. I understand that formerly, when primary school candidates went forward for examination, they received special grinding from the school teacher, or they went to an academy or a teacher for grinds.
Does the Minister not know that many secondary schools have special classes for these boys? I know of three.
I am told that the difficulties from the point of view of the Civil Service Commissioners are insuperable, that they cannot possibly be got over. I wish they were, but that is the position — that the other schools are preparing their candidates so well, they have the advantage of a secondary education and, in addition, these special grinds, that the primary school pupil cannot compete with them.
Sitting suspended at 6.15 p.m. and resumed at 7 p.m.
I should like to assure the House that if I said anything in the course of my remarks that would tend to cast any reflection on the members of the old education boards, no such reflection was intended. I know that the members of these boards did valuable work for Irish education. I was merely pointing out that the boards were not responsible to the Irish people.
I agree with a number of the Minister's remarks. I recognise a certain frankness, and even courage, in some of the things he said but I have to differentiate in a number of cases. For instance, he told us that there is already consultation with such bodies as, I think, the Secondary Headmasters' Association. That is quite true, but Senator Tierney intervened to explain how there was a certain fear amongst those bodies, as was instanced in the case where the national teachers asked him to speak, more or less to bell the cat. I remember some years ago the Department sent round a series of proposals to members of the Secondary Headmasters' Association in regard to certain changes they proposed. I happened to be with quite a number of distinguished people who received them and I have in mind an occasion when I spoke to one person who received them. He pointed out to me and I was satisfied, that the proposals coming from the Department would, from the educational point of view, be thoroughly bad. More than one authority in a responsible position made that remark to me. I remember a couple of them saying: "We are negativing every proposal, each article and clause in this thing, but at the same time, if the Department insists, we shall necessarily accept it." One man said to me: "Now, it may sound rather pusillanimous and most unideal but we have to consider the parents. If the Government is going ahead with these proposals, we have to remember that parents who have clever boys and who send them to school expect that, being clever, every step will be taken to see that they will get any available scholarships and therefore they would fall in with these proposals."
There are three things that have to be pointed out: (1) as far as policy is concerned, the Department consulted with regard to proposals but did not consult with regard to the existing system; (2) the recipients all realised that they were only consulted but that the official decision was going to rest with, if I might use a word that has been frequently used here to-day, the bureaucrats; (3) the Department which is much more the master and the decider in relation to education in this country put up proposals. It is true that, as a result of the whole thing, the proposals were not gone ahead with but they put up proposals which the secondary headmasters throughout the country decided were bad for the country. I think a reasonable conclusion from that is that the Department, who are the ultimate arbiters with regard to education, on that occasion at least proposed certain changes which enlightened judgment regarded as bad. You cannot draw a general conclusion from one instance. As far as the instance goes which is rather prominent in my mind, it indicated that there is no absolute infallibility in the decisions of the Department or in the views of the Department. I agree with the Minister when he said, regarding the setting up of consultative or advisory councils, that it will be rather difficult. There will be vested interests and all sorts of other things of that nature. I am quite certain he is right there.
From the time when I was very small, I saw letters in the papers signed N.T. or O.S. and they all dealt with conditions of teachers' pay and hours of teaching, the difficulties of the programme, which they said was onerous, and with holidays. I quite agree that, if any such body is set up, it may easily go on to deal with all these extraneous matters. That would make a very difficult position for the Government, which would have to stand up against a clamour for certain financial commitments. In considering the setting up of such a body and the drafting of the terms of reference for that body, one must ask the question: "What is the purpose of it?" With regard to this amendment, which speaks about education, the mover and the other speaker to it, and the Minister following, all talked about the Irish side of educational policy as if that were the total.
Incidentally, I may remark that some years ago I was travelling over a fairly large section of the world and I had to arrange that certain bundles of newspapers should reach me each week at certain hotels where I was staying. I remember putting up in a certain town and opening one of the bundles and turning a paper over to see if there was anything urgent and reading a big heading: "Minister for Education and Irish Letters." The words "Minister for Education" coupled with "Irish Letters" brought to my mind the usual connotation of the word "Letters" with “Belles Letters” and I thought the Minister was going to talk about the literary culture which is incorporated in the Irish language. I immediately proceeded to read and found that it dealt with statements or communications from the Minister to the effect that he hoped people writing to the Department would write their letters in Irish and they would receive replies in Irish. Let the Minister not think I am attacking him, for, as he has quite rightly pointed out, with regard to a great number of these things I had a more initial responsibility than he had, as I was a member of the Administration which started so many of the things which are criticised now.
The Minister has stated that the educational policy of this country is to have the next generation with a spoken knowledge of modern Irish. That may be a very desirable aim but it is not the aim of a Department of Education. I think I pointed out here at one time, trying to put this in a most graphic way so as to make it comprehensible for the most simple minds, that in the most backward parts of Albania — I think that was the country I mentioned; it was not so much in the public eye then as it has become since — the most backward people have a spoken knowledge of the Albanian dialect, but one does not say: "What a marvellous achievement the Department of Education has made in Albania because the supreme end of education has been attained absolutely." The people have a spoken knowledge by which they can communicate anything through the vernacular. Therefore, talking about education, this business of trying to restore Irish as the normal mode of communication from one person to another in this country is desirable but, to my mind, it is not an educational aim. However, I myself take responsibility for it and have supported it.
With regard to bureaucracy, if you look at the Constitution in its present form, you will find in Article 42 certain statements which I believe were suggested to the Government or to the drafters with regard to education. I find that these things have been adapted from certain important documents and in the adaptation they have not retained the perfection of the original:
"1. The State acknowledges that the primary and natural educator of the child is the family and guarantees to respect the inalienable right and duty of parents to provide, according to their means, for the religious and moral, intellectual, physical and social education of their children.
"2. Parents shall be free to provide this education in their homes or in private schools or in schools recognised or established by the State.
"3. — 1º. The State shall not oblige parents in violation of their conscience and lawful preference to send their children to schools established by the State, or to any particular type of schools designated by the State.
"3. — 2º. The State shall, however, as guardian of the common good, require in view of actual conditions that the children receive a certain minimum education, moral, intellectual and social.
"4. The State shall provide for free primary education and shall endeavour to supplement and give reasonable aid to private and corporate educational initiative, and, when the public good requires it, provide other educational facilities or institutions with due regard, however, for the rights of parents, especially in the matter of religion and moral formation.
"5. In exceptional cases, where the parents for physical or moral reasons fail in their duty towards their children, the State, as guardian of the common good, by appropriate means shall endeavour to supply the place of the parents, but always with due regard for the natural and imprescriptible rights of the child."
Now, if you take that, and then take the actual fact, what I think is that on this, which is rather a moral question, the Government consulted and were advised that that was an appropriate statement of the position with regard to education in this country. But what is the fact, and how is that applied? You have education in this country centralised—and I am going to use the word — in a bureaucracy. Certain men, sitting in Marlboro' Street or in any other place they like to move to, are absolute arbiters. By the Constitution there, what it assumes is that the education of the children in this country is primarily a matter for the parents and that the parents are afterwards going to decide what exact form that education is to take and where it is to take place. The aim of the State seems to be to see that education is directed towards certain ends — moral, intellectual and social perfection. Therefore, all the State has a right to do here with regard to my children is to assure itself that they are receiving an appropriate minimum of moral, intellectual and social education. That is all the State has a right to do, but actually what it is trying to do is to use the situation which has grown up whereby most of the education is, as you might say, out of a form of charity: the Government takes money out of the people's pockets and decides how the money is to be spent.
When it comes to setting up a commission such as Senator Tierney proposed, I agree with the Minister that it would have to be very carefully done. Senator Tierney talked about its being composed of educationists, and I registered a demur there. The word "educationists" in this country generally means people who are earning their living by teaching, but it does not follow that they are the most enlightened or most interested people in the matter of education. I do not think that such a body should be composed entirely of educationists, but I think it should be composed of people who have some intelligent views with regard to education, and it does not follow, because a man is earning his living as a teacher, that he would be the best man for such a commission. As a matter of fact, it can happen that a man has chosen the profession of teaching because he could not get another job. I, myself, have frequently heard teachers say — and I sympathised with them — that if there were any other job that they could get they would jump at it.
I quite agree with the Minister that there is difficulty, but how do you set about it? You decide, first of all, what the Department of Education exists for. If, as the Minister says, its function is to see that the new generation in this country has a spoken knowledge of the Irish language, then the name of the Department should be changed, because it is not a Department of Education. If, on the other hand, we are interested in education, primarily as such, we should then say that this body is coming together with a view to devising the best means of producing the moral, intellectual and social education of our children. That is what it has got to be, and when anybody comes butting in about the onerous duties of national teachers or about their salaries, I think that they should be ruled out of order. We have got to think of what is the end for which we spend this sum of £5,000,000. During the course of this discussion I notice that one speaker complained that the pupils of the national schools were not getting jobs in the Civil Service. I think that the Minister had a perfect right to say, in reply, that so far as his Department was concerned, it was not interested in the question of jobs that the children would get, but that it was interested to bring out all that was best in the moral, intellectual and social life of the child, and that, as far as jobs were concerned, it was not the business of his Department. I, personally, certainly would not like to think that the Department of Education was to be concerned with the securing of jobs. I know that there are commercial institutions which advertise that they guarantee to produce a job for everyone who has paid the fee and gone through their course, but that is not the duty of the Minister for Education. His job, by definition, is to make available the means of the moral, intellectual and social betterment of the young population in this country.
Now, I admit that it is quite reasonable that the Government is taking steps towards this aim of making a spoken knowledge of the Irish language general throughout the country, but, as Minister for Education, the Minister might decide that education should be given through the medium of Irish. When he does that, however, surely we do want our people to have what I might call the European average of education. Therefore, if education is going to be given through the Irish language, then I would say: "Right! Let us just pre-suppose that, and that a person who is seeking to qualify for a position as teacher has got then to show that he is qualified to teach through the medium of Irish. We are not going to assess any merit for that, but we are just pre-supposing it; nobody suggests that there is any special merit in it from the moral or intellectual standpoint purely, but we are pre-supposing that you must have sufficient knowledge to teach through the medium of Irish and we have got to see that you are eminently suitable for conveying that degree of moral and intellectual education through the medium of Irish."
Now, this is the first time that I am going to say something that may be offensive, but I will give the Minister the credit of facing up to the realities of the situation when he frankly admitted that there may be a sacrifice on the educational side as a result of laying stress on the purely Irish vernacular side of the question. That was very frank of the Minister, and I say that because one is very often irritated hearing people saying that children are better educated through the medium of Irish than through English. That, of course, is a matter that always remains to be proved.
Now, there is a certain difficulty with regard to the Irish language, for which the Minister is not to blame, and that is that when we get up and speak here we use all sorts of words, and use them with a completely exact meaning, knowing that a certain word or phrase that we may use will convey the exact meaning we have in mind to the person who hears it. That is not due to any etymological rule, so to speak, but it follows because, through very long usage, that identical meaning has been given to that identical word or phrase. I think I gave an illustration of that, on a former occasion, in connection with the word "telephone." That word suggests sound at a distance. Now, when telephones began first, when you used the word "telephone," you knew that you meant sound conveyed to a distance by means of electricity passing through a wire, but if you went to somebody who had been landed on a desert island in, say, the year 1600, and who had managed to survive there, and who spoke English and Greek, and if you talked to that person about a telephone, and then showed him a telephone and a wireless machine, his knowledge of Greek and of English would not let him know whether the word "telephone" applied to the wireless or to the telephone. The word "telephone" to us means that particular form of distance communication over wires because that particular word has been used over a long period in that sense. Now, we have to recognise that the Irish language from, roughly, the 17th century, has only had a limited usage and that after that time its usage progressively declined.
Consequently, although a member of the Dáil staff faced with certain phrases in English, to put into Irish, can make a form of words out of his knowledge and use of Irish through the various ages, he is trading upon other languages such as Latin and Greek. It does not necessarily mean what he has in mind, but he does not know that other persons with an equally good knowledge of Irish will form the exact concept he has in mind. When you speak a language which has been used for all sorts of subjects, its words mean what they mean because, for a long period, they meant that.
When you come to the Irish language, which has not been used, except to a limited extent, for centuries, you resurrect words which give a certain meaning, but do not necessarily mean that. Take the Constitution, one side being in Irish and the other side in English. The last Article says that if there is a question of interpretation, the Irish text is to be the legal text. That is rather silly. If anyone asks me what that on the Irish side means — while I do not pretend to be an expert, I can make an attempt to read it — I would say that it means what is written on the other side in English. I would say that is what it means, because it is in fact a translation of words written in English on the other side, and, therefore, that is how the courts would have to decide. I am satisfied if you take such a document as the Constitution to a man who knows Irish, and ask him what words in Irish mean he will say they mean this, that, or the other thing. There is an Article referring to religion. The English version says that the State acknowledges the particular position held by the Catholic Church, but that it also recognises the Protestant Church, the Jewish Church and the Society of Friends. When it comes to the Irish side, it recognises what is in English.
I presume there is some distinction about the verb "admhuighim". I am ready to be jumped on by the Irish experts but the verb "admhuighim" in the Irish form corresponds to "Confiteor" in the Credo. As to the meaning of the word "Confiteor", we have reference in Germany to the Confessional Church and we speak of confessional differences between people but as to my interpretation of "admhuighim" here with regard to the Catholic Church or the Jewish Church, if I did not know what was on the English side, with my knowledge of the form used in Irish, I would say that the State affirms the truth of the Catholic religion, of the Church of Ireland religion, of the Society of Friends and of the Jewish religions.
That is how I would translate it from my limited knowledge of Irish and by analogy with the former use of the word. All I am trying to point out is that from the purely educational point of view, the Minister has a right to say that the medium of instruction is going to be Irish, but then if we are going to stress the educational side, we should say that the teacher giving that education must give an education say for the high European minded or for the low European average. The Minister has frankly agreed that we may have to sacrifice an amount on the educational side for the linguistic side, but at some stage we would have to make up our minds how the balance is to be arrived at.
I congratulate the Minister in coming out with that frank statement. I remember speaking in simple Irish to children coming from school who turned and said: "We do not understand Irish." That was after 15 or 17 years of the programme. I was speaking about that afterwards to a great enthusiast, because I thought in view of his enthusiasm for the language, that it would be of interest to him. I mentioned that in an ordinary country school in the Gaeltacht, the children, although they were being taught Irish largely in the school, found they could not follow simple sayings. If we are trying to achieve anything, it will not be by blinding our eyes to that. When I mentioned that to him, there was talk about someone getting cold feet. I am not getting cold feet about the Irish language. When we started in 1922, we had to recognise that one of our most difficult problems was the resurrection of the Irish language. We recognised that, for a generation, it would be necessary, even to attain that end, to make certain educational sacrifices. To draw an analogy that I often drew for the members of the Government at that time, who were preaching the doctrine of autarchy, who thought in terms of producing things here irrespective of the cost, I pointed out that while it would be possible to grow in this country under glass the tea we consume, everyone knew that if we could grow it, the price per lb. would be something fantastic.
Therefore, absolute autarchy had to be dropped in certain fundamental matters that could not be got over. In regard to the teaching and restoration of the Irish language, we are all prepared to go a long way and to make sacrifices, even in education, which is a more serious matter than mere wealth, but there is a certain limit. We may say that we are prepared to have for this generation, or the one after it, inferior education, which would mean that they would not be able to think and to apprehend reality as well as if a different system had been pursued. We may be prepared to do that for three generations, but not for eight generations.
In a certain way, we must recognise what we are doing as an experiment. We are seeking to attain a certain end and are making certain sacrifices, and, naturally, common sense would teach us that we will not make sacrifices or attain our end over a long period if all the indications are that the end is not attainable. I am not saying that it is not attainable. When you consider the whole matter of education, the first consideration of the Minister should be the intellectual and spiritual betterment of the population. There is no sort of linguistic prerogative with regard to the spiritual intellect.
I am now going to say another unpopular thing. The Gaelic enthusiast harks back to the golden age of Irish history when missionaries went all over North Europe and civilised and converted the people. People often say that it was because the old Gaelic Ireland was so civilised that it did this great work and therefore we should revive the Irish language. We might as well face up to the historical fact that in the 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries, which we look back to as the golden age, spiritually and intellectually, the men who went wandering round Europe went from the Latin schools founded here after the coming in of Christianity. There were Bardic schools with traditional oral teaching, and the Latin schools where the medium of instruction was in Latin and all Christian culture was communicated through Latin, and that was what our people took abroad. Therefore one cannot say that spiritual and intellectual perfection can only be attained through Irish because historically we do know that there was a very high perfection attained otherwise.
What I want to stress is this, and I know it is not a popular thing to say, that all education in this country is not something directed to the getting of jobs. When anybody gets up and says that nobody wants economies with regard to education, everybody agrees that the more money we can spend on it the better. But that does not mean that we should spend a lot of money to enable people to get jobs. In that case you should not spend more than a certain amount, because it would be ridiculous to spend more on preparing men to earn money than they were going to earn. In that case there is a definite limit. With regard to the perfection of their human nature and the relation with the end for which they were created, there I agree you can have no analogy between money and the particular purpose for which it is used. But let us recognise that the Government's policy with regard to education is not to be judged by whether people get jobs or not.
The point I want to make is that the Constitution states the rights of the family with regard to education, and, if you read it, it centres all in that. It merely states that the State has a right, with a view to the common good, to insist upon certain minimum intellectual, moral and social education amongst the people. But in certain extreme cases, when the parents are imbecile or otherwise incompetent, the State will come in and see that it gives it to the children. That is the doctrine of perfection that the Government lays down. Then you have the Department, the various teaching bodies, and the other organisations which the Minister says the Department consults. It does not consult with the people that the Constitution says are primarily and overwhelmingly the responsible parties, that is to say, the parents. It consults with the teachers' bodies and such like bodies, I understood the Minister to say. It does not consult the people that the Constitution says are the responsible bodies—the families. It does consult other bodies. But it only consults them, so far as I know — and here I am subject to correction by the Minister — when a certain change is being proposed. It consults them as to whether that change should or should not be made.
Although the Minister may not realise it, there is a certain coercive element in regard to that. If the Government are very anxious that this course should be pursued, those people who are consulted do not want to come up against the Government. The Minister's own speech rather justifies that. He talked about opposition to the Irish language, and said that when he read what was written in certain organs — I am not giving his exact words — he thought that criticism came from a blind antagonism to the Irish language. He may be justified in saying that. He interpreted certain criticisms of the Department's educational policy as having no foundation other than opposition to the Irish language. He may be quite right in every case. But it is certainly possible that a man who is deeply interested and very much enlightened in regard to educational matters, observing the operation of the policy of the Department, may feel that it is bad. He may even feel that the Irish language policy is bad, or that the method by which the Government seek to implement that policy is bad. But the Minister stated in effect that he is watchful of any such criticism, and that that comes from blind opposition to the Irish language. I am not giving his exact words.
Can you wonder that national teachers and secondary school principals should feel that, as far as possible, they should be in agreement with the Department rather than against it? That is not a completely free form of consultation. I also notice that, on the occasion I speak of, the people consulted, though they gave their views, did think that, if the Government were so particularly set upon having these proposals carried out, they would be carried out irrespective of them.
I quite agree with the Minister when he says that he or his Department cannot have responsibility to Parliament and to the people and then have some other body established to decide what is to be done. Incidentally, I want to make a demurrer when he speaks about some reference to civil servants translating words into Irish. There I think he was quite wrong. I think that the Senator who made that reference had a perfect right to do it. The Minister is the person responsible. It may be a civil servant who does it, but the Minister is the man who has to take the responsibility for it. The same thing happened the last time the Seanad met, when the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defensive Measures spoke about criticism of civil servants and when we had the heroic business as to their not being able to defend themselves. That was just humbug. A civil servant may know all the intricacies and have a profound knowledge of the Local Government Acts in this country and in that way may be splendid, but it does not follow that he would make a perfect censor. It is the Minister who is responsible. I quite agree that, as far as his Department is spending money, he is responsible to the people and therefore the ultimate decision must be with him.
But I think that if he will read the Constitution, the Article that I referred to and the sub-clauses in it, he will see that the fundamental law of the country says that the people possessing the responsibility and the right with regard to the education of children are the families and the State, in effect, completely takes that away from the families, so that you may easily have a very peculiar situation. The Constitution lays it down that provided parents, or any group of parents, make provision for the moral, intellectual, and social education of their children, the State has no right to butt in. It also in a way lays it down that the State should be prepared to assist them in any way.
I have always been strongly in favour of the promotion of the Irish language. But I think you will find a certain difficulty here. A number of parents may come together and say: "We are going to see that the intellect of our children is developed so as to make them apprehensive of real things. We are going to see that their moral being is adequately informed and that they are well instructed in that other form of morality which we will call social morality. What has it to do with the Government?" The policy of the Government so far has been to say: "That has nothing to do with it. We insist that they be taught Irish." But the Constitution denies that the Government have the right to butt in on this point.
Therefore, if you are going to set up such a committee, you can have one section of it that will consider education as education, and another that will then say: "Now how can these aims be most appropriately and aptly achieved, at the same time promoting the use of Irish." But let us, for Heaven's sake, get out of our minds the idea that, because you are able to communicate with others through a vernacular, you are, therefore, perfectly educated, and that the whole aim of education has been achieved. The Irish language has brought in a certain blurring of reality. I am all for promoting the use of the Irish language, but I have objected to quite a number of things with regard to it. For instance, I object to the fact that you can get more than 100 per cent. in a subject by answering examination papers through Irish. The Minister suggested that certain schools, teaching through Irish, were not only holding their own against other schools, but were getting higher results in examinations than other schools doing the same subjects in English. The analogy does not quite apply. What the Minister should have said was that these schools would occupy the same position in the list of successes if, teaching through Irish and their pupils answering through Irish, they were judged exactly as they would be in English, and did not receive extra consideration because the papers were answered in Irish.
Take the teaching of Greek through Irish. The aim of the teacher should be that the pupil would learn Greek instead of this business of making it a side-line: that because a pupil shows that he can translate Greek into Irish instead of into English — higher marks are assessed because of that — and instead of trying to ascertain whether he comprehends what is written in Greek, seems to me to be educationally unsound. Make Irish compulsory and give pupils marks for that, but then, in the case of other subjects, I think the pupils should fight on equal terms. I do not think such a system would, in the slightest, be injurious to the Irish language. If a child is being taught Greek, then the success of the teacher and of the child should be judged with regard to the latter's knowledge of Greek.
The Minister spoke of the high places won in the intermediate examinations by the schools teaching through Irish. I have already pointed out that these schools get extra marks because they teach through Irish. When I hear of schools winning all sorts of scholarships and getting first places, I personally write them down as rather bad schools. I agree, of course, that the examinations do give a certain guide, but I am of the opinion that, if you find a school always right at the top, its teaching is rather bad, because in examinations you can really only get maximum marks if you have a thorough grinding system: if everything has been directed to the passing of examinations rather than to the education of the child. I am quite satisfied that the school in this country which is giving the best education is never likely to hold this distinguished position: of having the highest number of first places and the highest average of marks, because I think such results are predominantly won by bad educational methods — that is to say, directing everything to the passing of examinations rather than to the education of the child. I would like to see a reconsideration of our whole system of education, the advice therewith not to be taken entirely from the products of the educational system that we have. I would not like to see comparisons made between the products of our schools to-day and the products of our schools under the British régime, with a view to arriving at the conclusion that what we are doing is better than what was done here in the past.
We ought to have another norm for our educational standards. In 1922, when we took over, the people that we had to put in charge in all educational matters were themselves the products of a system that had applied for generations before, and there was, necessarily, a certain limited biased view with regard to the Irish language. I should like to see certain foreign educational elements brought in to give their advice. Otherwise, we are living very much on our own fat. I have not been able to speak with that intimacy of the subject possessed by Senator Tierney and Senator Hayes.
In the Senator's judgment is not that a qualification: the less experience the more intelligence?
May I explain? Whereas a thread that is interwoven in a cloth has a most intimate knowledge of itself and of its immediate relationship in that cloth, it is not able to see the fabric in its totality as well as something that is outside the cloth. In the same way, I am afraid that I am not interwoven in educational institutions as much as Senator Hayes or Senator Tierney, but I have another point of view. Let us get back to the idea that the function of the Department of Education is education, and let us get away from the idea that the function of the Department of Education is to make people able to speak their thoughts, such as they are, in one vernacular rather than in another.
Ar shlighe ní maith liom éirighe agus bheith páirteach sa díosbóireacht seo mar cuid mhaith de na rudaí a dúbhradh, ba chóir gan áird a thabhairt ortha. Cuid mhór eile de na poinntí tá siad freagruighthe ag an Aire. Ach tá dhá chúis mhóra agam eirighe. An chéad cheann, ba mhaith liom a rádh comh mí-shásta agus atá mé leis an méid de óráid an tSeanadóra O Tighearnaigh a chuala mé tráthnóna. Ba mhaith liom freisin a rádh comh sásta agus a bhí mé leis an Aire mar gheall air a fhoighidighe a bhí sé agus mar gheall air cho ciallmhar agus a bhí an freagra a thug sé.
I would like to say, at the beginning, that I would much rather discuss this subject in Irish — although Irish is an acquired language with me — and the reason is this: that when I get tired I find I can think and say what is in my mind much better in Irish than I can in English. I must say that the part of the debate that I heard in the early afternoon made me very, very tired. I doubt if I would have got up at all here this evening except for this: that I want, without any ado, to register the most emphatic protest that I can against the intemperate and sometimes vicious attack that was made here this evening on the work of certain teachers who have been rendering what one might describe as heroic service in the cause of the Irish nation.
Go maith.
The next thing that compelled me to get up at all was to say how much I appreciated the patience of the Minister when replying to some remarks here this evening, and to thank him for the assurance that he has given to Irish Ireland that there is no going back as far as he is concerned. He gave us an excellent example himself here this evening of coolness, calmness, good sense, and of sound nationalism and enthusiasm combined. Now a very peculiar thing about most of this discussion of Irish and teaching through Irish is that it was mainly started, and is kept up, by people who practise the use of the Irish language to only a very small extent, and who, generally, have never made an effort to teach through the medium of the Irish language.
These people may ask what my qualifications are. I have told you frankly that I am not a native speaker of Irish, yet, believe it or not, I can go into any Gaeltacht in this country, or into the Gaeltacht of Scotland, and converse with people who hardly know the English language with scarcely ever a difficulty as to the meaning of a word. I do not say that so that you may think I am a very clever person, but as an illustration of the fact that if most of us want to, we can make up Irish, and that if we can make up Irish we can converse freely with practically every native speaker who may come our way. This can be done with scarcely any ambiguity in the conversation arising, and certainly not more than one will find in English. I think it only fair-to say that there is nothing extraordinary in making the claim that people can learn Irish and can become competent to teach through the medium of Irish. I taught Irish as a tramp teacher, as we were sometimes called; I taught under the vocational system; and I happen for the last 12 years to be teaching in Irish, what I am sure Senator Tierney will agree are very difficult subjects—economics, commerce and accounting.
In our college there is no compulsion to do a course in Irish. I wish there were. When I went there, I had one student, a Methodist Minister. At the moment, my colleague, the professor who teaches in English — a great friend, we work in the utmost harmony — will agree that the big majority of the students in our faculty come in to me for their lecture. I have had an extern examiner, a Liverpool Irishman, a fine Irish scholar and one of the most eminent men in his profession in Britain, one who also teaches in a University. This examiner, on occasion has had no difficulty in awarding first-class honours to some of my students. He has examined for years in the National University in English and he knows what standards are. He is a very good examiner, and, time and time again, as I say, students, some from the Gaeltacht and some from the Galltacht, can get first-class honours after having done their courses in Irish. I do not think I am saying anything I should not say when I say it, that, in this year's examination for the Master of Arts Degree, I think the only student, or one of the few at any rate, who got first-class honours in the M.A. (Economics) Examination was a student who took for his thesis "The History and Development of Trade Unions in Ireland", and who did a splendid thesis on that subject in the Irish language.
Some people apparently cannot make up their minds as to what they want to say, or what they want done. Do they wish to say that subjects cannot be taught through the medium of Irish? Do they wish to say that students, primary, secondary or university, cannot learn the Irish language? Let them be quite definite. You will find that they will not be definite on these questions.
What may be troubling these people is that after the amount of work put into the Irish language, results, so far as the speaking of the language throughout the country is concerned, are not as great as we would wish. It is not to-day or yesterday that I tried to find the reason. I know that whenever a teacher is competent to teach Irish or in Irish, a child can learn Irish and can learn to speak it with facility. I know that the reason that some, a limited number, are not speaking it, is a definite hostility to the Irish language, in some instances, in the home. In other cases, they are not speaking Irish because of an indifference which some of us engaged in the Gaelic movement have allowed to develop among many of the parents of the children, but if you ask me what is the greatest factor militating against the progress of the Irish language, I should say that it is the efforts, made perhaps unconsciously, of people like Senator Tierney.
Bhfuil an Seanadóir dáríríbh nuair deireann sé sin?
Taím lom-dáríribh.
I have very great power and influence.
If you do not like something you will certainly go out of your way to find excuses to avoid doing it. If something is difficult, you will seize on anything as an excuse for not doing it. If the work of the revival of the Irish language is difficult, if children find it hard to learn Irish, as they find everything else hard, if you continually harp on the difficulties, you will very soon convince them that it is an impossible task and, in that way, you retard progress.
Has the Senator heard me say one word about the difficulties of Irish?
Anybody who has made any little study of psychology and the principles of teaching will readily realise the force of what I have said. The Minister has answered all the points, I should say, and while I had no discussion with him, if I had not heard him, most of the things he said are the things I should say now.
There are, though, a few questions I should like to ask. Who, for instance, are these people, professors and others, whom Senator Tierney would have us consult as to the feasibility of teaching through Irish? They might please him, but is the fact that they please him any reason why they should please me or other people? Are they people who have made an effort to teach through Irish and, in all seriousness, are they enthusiastic for the revival of the Irish language?
Now I do not despise enthusiasm. I think that it is an important qualification in any national teacher or any other teacher, this nation being circumstanced as it is, that he should be an enthusiast not alone in his profession but in the particular work of the revival of the national language or anything that pertains to the national heritage. One thing that would help considerably in bringing back the national language would be the taking of a leaf from the book of those who almost destroyed it and planted English in its place! I should like to see a much more determined effort to secure places in the public services — State and local — assured to those who have not alone a knowledge of the Irish language and are competent in other respects but who are enthusiastic for the Irish language.
More than once I have said how glad I am, on occasions, to hear Senator Fitzgerald speak. That remark applied this evening, to a great extent too, to Senator Hayes. There was something informative in their speeches. They really had something to say and were, at times, helpful. But in the course of his remarks this evening Senator Fitzgerald said that the teaching of Irish is not an educational aim. I hope I have not taken him up wrongly. Without splitting hairs, is it not fair to reply that the teaching of a second language is an educational aim? Is it not fair to suggest that the teaching of a very beautiful and inflected language, such as the Irish language, is an educational aim? If it is not, perhaps Senator Fitzgerald would define "educational aim" when opportunity offers.
The Senator spoke of the difficulty of terminology and said that certain English words had got their particular meaning because of long usage. I wonder if he realises what that statement implies. If we are not going to use the Irish language save in discussions about the weather and similar matters, how are we ever going to develop the terminology which he considers essential? I can assure Senator Fitzgerald that, in the subjects with which I am concerned, we have built up quite an amount of terminology — terminology which, perhaps, he might not like. The reason we have done that is because the Irish language is in use. In debates and discussions, the students use this terminology quite freely. Everybody understands everybody else. If I were to talk in Irish about economics to Senator Hayes, he would, probably, put up his hands and say "That will do now; I will have no more of that."
I think that that is very unlikely.
If I were to discuss the subject of commerce in English with Senator Tierney, I am afraid he would think it a very dry subject. The jargon I would use would grate on his ears.
"Jargon" is not exactly the word I should use.
Well, terminology. Those people who talk of the difficulties of terminology are not familiar with the subjects they are criticising. They are scarcely familiar with the terminology of these subjects in English. When they find a terminology developing in Irish — a language which many of them scarcely understand — they discover that the language is almost foreign to them. That is not the fault of the language, nor is it the fault of the terminology. I do not mind going so far as to say that the partial lack of terminology in Irish accounts for the excellence of the teaching in that language for the reason that, when you are teaching in Irish, you must explain your subject fully. You cannot throw out a handful of terms in the hope that some of them will stick. You have got to be definite; you must explain. Because of this partial lack of terminology, you can be sure that your work is better done. If some people are puzzled as to why better work is being done in some of our secondary schools, they might inquire and ascertain if that has not a considerable bearing on the matter.
In the debate here this evening, reference was made to the failure of many students of Irish to speak what might be considered really correct Irish. I do not want to say this in any hurtful manner but I noticed that when Senator Tierney — excellent scholar that he is — was speaking, he used the word "meself" instead of "myself." I wonder if that is a greater error than the dropping of an aspiration on the part of a young student of the Irish language.
I wonder if it is an error.
It is not common, at all events, which is what I mean.
Since this is not a question of commerce, perhaps the Senator will take my word that it is not an error.
I do not think it is an error at all. I think it is right "meself."
You may go back and justify it historically, just as the student who leaves off the eclipses in certain cases following prepositions can go back and justify his omission by reference to history. There is too much talk about the poor Irish that is being spoken. We have eminent professors of Irish in our colleges. There is no use in hoping that all the people of Ireland are going to speak Irish of the standard of these professors. It is because of their special ability that these professors are where they are. There is no use in hoping that the people of the country, as a whole, will speak Irish of the standard of Sean-Mhicheál, of Ring — ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam — or Seán Mór, of Lochan Beag—outstanding and magnificent Irish speakers. The mass of the people will never reach that standard; but there are, of course, some people coming on who will reach that standard. You have people in this House, in the other House, and in the country, who are excellent speakers of English, but the mass of the people as a body will never come up to their standard. Yet, we never dream of saying that these people do not know English, or that we cannot teach them through the medium of English.
Who criticised ordinary Irish? I did not hear it done at all, and I did not do it. Neither did Senator Tierney do it. Surely the Minister did not do it.
The question was raised by Senator Fitzgerald with regard to Gaelic enthusiasts always harking back to the Golden Age. I do not think they hark back such a lot. I think it is only on occasions like this, when "non-Gaelic enthusiasts" have something to say, that we have this harking back to such an extent to the Golden Age. The Senator said that it was in Latin schools that our missionaries and teachers of the period in question got their education. Might I ask what was the native language these people spoke, those missionaries who went out all over Europe and did the excellent work they did? What language did they speak before they went into these Latin schools?
English.
The Senator might, when he has time, give us the answer to that!
I did not hear any argument here this evening that would impress me with regard to the need for a consultative council. I came here with a perfectly open mind and I must say that I expected something more reasonable from Senator Tierney than we got. I may say that, to an extent, I was not disappointed. A certain colleague of his said to me some time ago: "What do you think of this motion?""Well," I said, "I do not know but there is a feeling that it is merely to provide an opportunity to get a whack at the teaching of the Irish language.""You are not fair," he said; "you will find that is not true." That gentleman knows now whether I was right or wrong.
Just one word more with regard to the bonus marks. Why should not bonus marks be given? If a boy or a girl does his or her subject in English there is no need for a bonus but if, in our circumstances and in view of the fact that we do want to revive, throughout the country, the national language, and the doing of this work in the Irish language does call for extra effort on the part of both teacher and pupil, why not give a bonus, why not give a reward for that extra effort? It is most commendable; it is most desirable, if the Irish nation is to live. If a boy has the opportunity of choosing between Irish and English and he takes the harder course, is he not entitled to some recompense for it? If anybody will convince me that the extra effort involved does not deserve compensation then I will say: "Give it up," but I have to be convinced that, taking everything into consideration, the awarding of this bonus is not commendable and proper.
Ba mhaith liom níos mó a rá ach tá an sgéal seo ar bun agam in áit eile le tamall. I dtaobh cuid eile de na puintí, d'fhreagair an tAire iad agus freagróidh daoine eile iad. Tá faitchíos orm ón gcainnt atá ar bun ag an Ollamh O Tighearnaigh go bhfuil dochar déanta aige agus go bhfuil sé ag déanamh dochair agus is mór an truagh é. Tá sé dona go leor ag naimhde na náisiúntachta bheith gár n-ionnsuidhe ach is measa arís é buille ón ár muintir féin.
Might I ask Senator O Buachalla one question? He spoke at the beginning of attacks made upon teachers. I wonder if he could particularise in that matter because it is not fair to say that attacks were made upon teachers if that is not so. The Senator will realise that when he said attacks were made upon teachers he is accusing those who spoke of making those attacks. I think he ought to particularise because I heard no attacks made upon teachers while the debate was going on. I wonder will the Senator particularise in that matter.
Níl mé í leith an rúin seo le coiste comhairleach do chur ar bun le cuidiú thabhairt d'Aire an Oideachais ina chuid saothair. Ní shaoilim go mbeadh ann ach bacadh agus constaic dó. Tá dhá thaoibh leis an obair atá le déanamh ag an Aire: an chéad cheann, dearcadh bheith aige cén treo ina stiúrfa sé an obair nó cén chuspóir atá roimhe. Cad atá sé a aimsiú, mar a déarfá, cén dúnghaois nó polasaí atá leagaithe amach aige? Is ceist náisiúnta é an dúnghaois sin agus tá socrú nach mór déanta ag an náisiún. Tá lideadh ins an Bhunreacht fhéin faoi. Tá sé i bhfeidhm cheana féin agus gan locht ag aon dream údarásach ins an tír air agus mara bhfuil muintir na tíre sásta leis an dúnghaois, nó an polaisaí, sin is féidir leo é atharú agus ba cheart an t-atharú sin a theacht ón Dáil agus ón Seanad agus ón Riaghaltas, na daoine a bhfuil údarás aca labhairt ar son mhuintir na tíre.
Mar sin, ní Juigheann ar an Aire ach an dúnghaois náisiúnta sin do chur i bhfeidhm ar an modh is éifeachtaí. An gcuideochadh an coiste comhairleach seo leis ins an obair sin? Ní doigh liomsa féin go gcuideochadh ach a mhalairt. Taoibh amuign dá chéill cheannuithe féin tá comhairle go leor aige le fáil má theastuigheann an chomhairle sin uaidh. Tá oifigigh na Roinne aige agus iad oilte san obair agus ní ghlacaim leis an gcáineadh a tugadh do na stát-sheirbhísigh annseo. Déanann siadsan a n-obair féin. Níl ortha dul taobh amuigh de sin, agus má dhéanann siad an obair sin i gceart níl locht le fáil ortha. Maraon leis sin tá na cigirí ag an Aire le comhairle a thabhairt dó ag stiúradh na hoibre, daoine a bhfuil sár-eolas aca ar obair na scol. Agus tá fear ós a chionn, mar atá an Taoiseach, a bhfuil an oiread eolais aige ar scoluíocht is atá ag aon duine ins an tír seo agus a bhéarfadh lideadh dó in aon deacracht; agus, mara gcoinneochaidh siadsan an tAire ar an slí cheart ag stiuradh na scol, ní dóigh liom go ndéanfadh coiste comhairleach é. Ní dhéanfadh an coiste comhairleach seo ach cur isteach ar obair an Aire, moill a chur ar an obair, agus tuilleadh cúramaí do chur ar an Aire.
Cé bheadh ar an gcoiste? Is dóigh gurb é an rud atá in aigne an tSeanadóra Ó Tighearnaigh daoine foghlumtha as na hOllscoltacha bheith ar an gcoiste. Cha bheadh aon iontaoibh agamsa ná ag mo leitheid asta sin. Ní árd-léigheann theastuíos ó fhurmhór páistí na tíre ach tús leighinn. Agus tá na daoine a bhfuil árd-fhoghluim aca in Éirinn ró-thugtha do nósaí Gallda. Níor Gaedhealuíodh na hOllscoltacha fós agus bheadh baol ann barraíocht cumhachta thabhairt don dream sin in obair choitianta oideachais na hÉireann.
De thairbhe na smaointe seo, tá mé in aghaidh an rúin agus in aghaidh na hintinne atá ar a chúl, agus tá dúil agam nach nglacfar leis an rún. Sin an méid a bhí ar m'intinn a rá indiu. Ach focal nó dhó a rá fá chuid den chaint amaidigh phlámasaigh a chualamar anso le goirid, cuir i gcás, bhí tuairim ag an Seanadóir Ó Tighearnaigh fá intellectual——
Ná labhair i mBéarla.
——agus spiritual education. Béidir go dtiubhradh na hOllscoltacha an intellectual ach b'fhearr liom féin an spiritual a fhágáil ag bainisteóirí na scol. Agus annsin tugadh guth do na politicians annseo. Cé hiad na politicians? Nach politicians sinn go léir?
Seadh, leis, tá sé ráite sa deire.
Nach bhfuil cúram na tíre ina n-intinn? An fiú labhairt ar aon duine in Éirinn nach bhfuil ina pholitician? Duine ag cur leasa na tíre ar aghaidh, sin é an bhrí atá agam-sa le politician; ach béidir nach bhfuil an Béarla maith go leor agam agus nach dtuigim an focal go maith.
Annsin teastuíonn expert knowledge uaidh—beachtuíocht eolais—ach arís cé hiad na daoine a bhfuil an t-eolas beacht seo acu? Ceist atá ann: an tógáil agus an oiliúint is fearr a thabhairt do pháistí na tíre. Anois, an iad na daoine mór-léighinn seo is fearr a bhéarfas breith ar an gceist? Ní dóigh liom féin gurb iad. Is dóigh liom gurb iad na túismitheoirí, an chléir, agus daoine coitianta na tíre a dhéeanfaidh sin agus nar cheart dóibh an cheist seo a fhágáil i lámha daoine atá oilte i nGréigis agus i Laidin agus i gChemistry, agus mar sin. Ní dóigh liom gur ceist í do na daoine fóghlumtha chor ar bith. Bhí an-chuid lochta luaidhte annseo ag an Seanadóir Ó Tighearnaigh i dtaobh gach cuid den scéim oideachais ins an tír seo. Cuir i gcás bhí locht mór aige ar na Coláistí Ullmhúcháin—nach raibh siad ag déanamh na hoibre. Féach an slí a bhí an scéal fiche bliain o shoin. Ní raibh Gaedhilg ag na tuismitheoirí. Ní raibh Gaedhilg ag na páistí. Ní raibh Gaedhilg ag na múinteoirí agus b'éigin don Rialtas sin go léir atharú, agus sin é an áit cheart agus an áit is fusa agus an áit is riachtanaighe sin a dhéanamh — leis na múinteoirí. Ní thuigim féin gur féidir scéim níos fearr a cheapadh leis na múinteoirí a Ghaedhealú ná na Coláistí Ullmhúcháin agus rinne siad an obair go maith. Ghabhfainn níos fuide ná sin agus déarfainn nach ndearna Rialtas na tíre aon ní níos tairbhighe leis an tír a Ghaedhealú ná na Coláistí Ullmhúcháin a chur ar bun ar dtús.
Ach annsin ní raibh an Seanadóir sásta leis na Coláistí seo a dhamnú, ach cuireann sé in úil dúinn nach bhfuil go leor Gaedhilge ag na múinteoirí le teagasc a thabhairt tríd an nGaedhilg. Cén leigheas atá aige ar sin? Mara bhfuil na Coláistí Ullmhúcháin ag déanamh a ndícheall leis na múinteoirí a Ghaedhealú, cad é an dóigh a déanfar é? Tá an dá phuinte sin ag cur in aghaidh a chéile agus teasbáineann sé go bhfuil faoi'n Seanadóir locht fháil ar Ghaedhealú na tíre.
Sílim go bhfuil go leor ráidhte agam. Ní dhéanfa mé tagairt don mhéid adubhairt an Seanadóir Mac Gearailt ach amháin a rá go measaim nach bhfuil mórán brí leis an scéal aige — nach bhfuil aon bhaint aige leis an gceist ach go bhfuil teanga líomhtha aige. Sin a bhfuil ann.
Before the debate began, I sought from the proposer of the motion an assurance that the discussion would not bring us into conflict with Article 15, Section 3, sub-sections (1) and (2) of the Constitution. My fear was that we might be asking the Government to do something which that section of that Article reserved to the Oireachtas. This section of the Article applies to functional and vocational councils, and it was not clear to me from the wording of the motion whether it was anything like that that Senator Tierney had in mind. As the discussion progressed my anxiety was removed, because hardly anybody spoke of a council of education at all, and it was extremely difficult to get from Senator Tierney himself any idea of the sort of council that he envisaged — whether it was functional, vocational or advisory.
I said quite definitely that I did not wish for a vocational or functional council. I said that in as plain words as I could possibly use.
But the Senator did not define what he meant by an advisory council.
I quoted the example of the consultative committee set up under the Board of Education in England. I think that was a plain indication of what I meant.
The nearest the Senator came to defining what he meant was when he spoke of a council continually reviewing the work of the Department. That is a very anomalous sort of thing, and the reason I referred to the mention of councils in the Constitution was to show the safeguards that the Constitution had put around those councils; otherwise there might be a very great danger to democracy. The Government might appoint a council endowed with powers that would interfere with the working of the Department, and my object in raising the question at all was to get an assurance that that was not intended in this case. However, as I said, nobody bothered about a definition of the particular council that we were supposed to be discussing, and the discussion resolved itself into what I considered a useful and interesting debate on education.
Now, to my mind, we cannot debate any more useful matter than education. Ever since I entered public life, two things seemed to me to demand our attention, the question of education and the question of unemployment. They are co-related, because unemployment is sometimes due to faulty education. If we do not prepare our people for the sort of work that life demands of them, there is bound to be unemployment. Therefore, I have always felt that a great deal of public attention should be given to those two questions, the question of education and the question of unemployment. The question of education has been before us here to-night, and I do think that we have made some progress in the discussion of it. I think particularly that Senator Hayes made a most useful and constructive speech. I join with him in the desire to see some sort of examination of the position in regard to education. It is not a very good time for that perhaps; the Government has many other things engaging its attention. We must keep the nation alive; we must keep the nation fed. Those are immediate problems, but at the proper time I do think there should be an examination of the whole educational position, and that we should find out how far the programme that emanated, I believe, from the Commission of 1925 has fulfilled the expectation of those who framed it.
It is true that it is a national task to restore the Irish language, and the question of how we can best accomplish it is one which perhaps we have not yet solved. We have heard a good deal of highfalutin talk about what education means, but in simple terms it means teaching us to live well in our own country if possible and to live well in the other world. To my mind, a great deal more attention should be given to handcrafts. I think it was Senator Tierney who mentioned that in the early stages of our education — and for most people education ends with the primary schools — we should try to help the people to make the most of their lives in the country. Above all — I can never repeat this too often — we must help the girls who are to be farmers' wives to fit themselves for this task. Those are all questions which require a great deal of calm and reasoned consideration. Although there is a little ebullience, perhaps a little froth and foam, I think that when we come to discuss the question of education here in the Seanad — which contains a good many people with practical experience on the subject — we can throw some useful light on it.
Therefore, I hope there will be further debates such as this; I hope that the question will be further pursued. My principal reason for speaking was to say that I agree with Senator Hayes that the time has come — or at least it would have come if other conditions were not as they are — when we might review the work of the last 15 years, and see whether we cannot, from our own experience, make better provision for the future.
I do not intend to take up the time of the House except for a minute or two. In the first place, I am not competent to discuss a great deal of the subject-matter of the debate. I propose to confine myself entirely to the motion as it is on the Order Paper, except that, en passant, I should like to say that I have discovered during the speech of Senator Cú Uladh that there is apparently no Irish word for “Civil Service” or for “politician”.
Gabh mo leith-scéal. Ní raibh mé ach dhá aithris sin. Tá na focla ann.
I appreciate that the Senator was quoting, though, as he knows, I have not sufficient knowledge of the Irish language to follow his speech. I was not in any sense going to make any attack on him, or to discuss what he stated. I only wished to suggest that the particular gentleman with whom Senator Tierney is concerned, who is supposed to do nothing else but invent new Irish words, might not perhaps be as busy as the Senator thought. My main object is to say that it seems to me most unfortunate that we cannot, in this House — and I am speaking after pretty long membership of it—debate the general subject of education without at the same time airing keen differences with regard to the question as to how the Irish language is to be revived and extended.
It is a good many years since this State adopted the principle that a genuine effort would have to be made for the revival of the language, and all, except a very tiny minority, have accepted that principle. Some have adopted it with enthusiasm, and some have done very little about it but, as a State policy, it has been accepted by the main Parties. There are strong differences of opinion, and one of the first steps that ought to be taken is to divorce, in some way or other, the question of opinions in regard to the teaching of Irish from the general question of education, accepting the principle that it is State policy, and, whether the people like it or not, they have voted for politicians in all Parties who are in favour of it. Therefore, it seems to me that we should try in the future to have debates from time to time on the question of the best and the most useful way of extending Irish, and see if the present policy is having that or the opposite effect. We have had assertions on both sides.
We have only to a very small extent discussed the question of education. The motion does not deal with the question of education, certainly not directly. It suggests that the Government should establish a council of education to advise the Minister. I have been for many years strongly of the opinion that if democracy is going to survive in some way or other the advice of persons not actively taking part in politics must be made available. We must have the benefit some way or other of expert opinion. I do not confine the expression "expert" to university professors, because you might have business men who would be experts on certain types of education. The point is that if you fail to make use of whatever expert opinion and knowledge is available, then you may find that people will depart from the principles of democracy and say that the dictators can and will make use of it.
Whether the Department of Education is the proper one to have a council of this sort or not, I am not competent to judge, though it would seem to me that it was. From the very essence of things, if we except the disagreement on the question of Irish, and that is not strictly on Party lines, there would be a general admission that Party politics ought not to enter into the general question of education. If I had my say, I would like to see advisory councils — and I stress "advisory"— attached to the Department of Education, the Department of Industry and Commerce and particularly the Department of Supplies. I am not saying that there are no others, but those are three that I quite definitely believe it would be to the public advantage if they had such councils. That does not mean that I would take from the Minister concerned any responsibility for proposals he might lay before Parliament, and I would not take from the Parliament itself responsibility for the ultimate passage into law of necessary measures.
I believe it would be a very great advantage if, on the more important matters, particularly where there is any question of a change of policy, we in this House could, for the sake of argument on the matter of education, know that a council had recommended certain things, with, perhaps, a minority voting in a different direction, had made certain proposals, that these had been rejected or accepted, and the reasons given. In that way you would get a much less Party, and a far more intelligent discussion than by ordinary means.
That does not mean that the civil servants concerned do not give good advice. I am quite certain they give impartial advice and endeavour to serve the Minister in power to the best of their ability, having regard to the interests of the Department. But their advice is secret. The Minister cannot tell us what the secretary of the Department, who has a longer experience than he, has stated. Obviously he cannot. He cannot tell us the opinions of persons he may have consulted, whereas, if there was an advisory council, its opinions could be made public, if it was thought fit, and the net result would be a better discussion, better public opinion and more progress. That would only work in these Departments in which there is a general acceptance that they should be kept outside Party politics.
I have been very much interested in the last few years reading and making certain inquiries about the methods adopted in the sifting of legislation in Scandinavian countries. It is largely done through a system of committees of an advisory character. In Sweden they have a sort of Parliament of civil servants, who make proposals before a Bill reaches Parliament or is even sanctioned by the Minister. The methods adopted there have tended to create a national opinion in regard to a great many matters. I am interested in questions of commerce and there you have various matters sifted from the point of view of the trade unions and the employers. Parliament is aware of the various opinions pro and con when legislation comes to be discussed. That is of definite advantage.
Taking the motion as it is, I am in favour of it, but it seems most unfortunate that it should have got mixed up somewhat. If you are in favour of the progress of Irish by a particular method, you must, therefore, be against this proposal, or if you hold different views with regard to the teaching of Irish, you are, therefore, for it. Those are the lines along which the debate seems to have gone, and that is, I think, unfortunate; I also think it is quite illogical.
It is with a certain amount of diffidence that I rise; it is not usual for a newcomer to address the House on the occasion of his entering it for the first time. I will confine my remarks to some points that arose during the course of the debate. With regard to the motion itself, I am not very enthusiastic about it. It is a proposal to set up a council that would give advice to the Minister. I should like to have some assurance that the advice when given would be accepted, but of course there is no guarantee of that, and there cannot be under the circumstances. I speak as one who, along with some colleagues, has spent quite a considerable portion of his time giving advice to the Minister and his Department, and if the Department of Education or the Minister and his predecessors have made mistakes — what we regard as mistakes—it was not for want of advice.
One important matter was touched upon by Senator Tierney and other Senators. I refer to the recruitment of teachers. On that point I should like to say that the whole educational system, the administrative system, revolves around the teacher. No matter how good your programme and system may be, no matter how good your buildings and equipment, unless you have good, enthusiastic teachers it will be of no avail. I think it is generally admitted by persons interested in this matter of education that the greatest care ought to be given to the selection of the teaching personnel. I cannot agree, and I think there are few people who will agree, that our present system of selecting teachers is a good one. The matter has been raised in connection with the question of the preparatory colleges. I think we should set ourselves to get the best possible men and women for the teaching profession. You cannot do that if you select them on the basis of locality, as is largely done at the present time.
We know that a preference, a very big preference, is given to candidate teachers because they happen to be born in a particular spot in this country —in the Fior-Ghaeltacht. I have never been satisfied that there are any good grounds for that preference. We have said repeatedly to the Minister and the Department, and to his predecessor who was responsible for introducing this system, that he is free to give any credit, to assign any number of marks he wishes to either oral Irish or written Irish, to give it a preference but, having done that, the field should be open to everybody irrespective of where he or she happened to be born. The most extraordinary cases could be quoted of boy or girl candidates for preparatory colleges who have been turned down while others have been selected just because they were born in a little place separated perhaps by a stream from the native place of those who were turned down. A boy might get much higher marks at a competitive examination than a boy from the next village and yet the boy from the next village, because the boundary of the Gaeltacht happened to be drawn between the two villages, would get into the preparatory college, whereas his companion who scored much higher marks was refused admission. We cannot get the best teachers by that system and the Department of Education have themselves proved that that is the case.
Let me explain. The boys who are given this preference are taken from the Irish-speaking districts and the only argument, if it is an argument, that I have ever heard put up—it was referred to by the Minister in passing this evening — was that if a boy or girl has Irish from the cradle, he or she will naturally be the best teacher of Irish. I do not agree with that at all. Every person who speaks English fairly correctly is not necessarily an English scholar, or not necessarily the best teacher of English.
Here is what happened in regard to the selection of teachers. We know this on the Department's own figures. These boys and girls, coming from Irish-speaking areas, who speak Irish from the cradle, are selected because of that fact to go into the preparatory colleges. They spend four years in a preparatory college. All their work and all their play is carried on through the medium of Irish. They live, move and have their being through the medium of Irish. They pass examinations, pass them brilliantly, and they go then to the training college where they spend two further years. There also they do all their work through the medium of the Irish language. There is a certain certificate that is given to teachers to show that they are qualified to give instruction through the medium of the Irish language. It is called the bi-lingual certificate and it shows that they are qualified to give instruction through the medium of Irish. Can it be believed that almost 50 per cent. of those boys and girls who were born in the Gaeltacht, who spoke Irish from the cradle, who spent four years in a preparatory college and two years in a training college, at the end of that time failed to get this bi-lingual certificate, to show that they were qualified to give instruction in primary schools through the medium of the Irish language? Yet that is a fact and no explanation of that extraordinary fact has been given.
I have asked more than once if these boys and girls are not qualified to give instruction through the medium of the Irish language — their native language, virtually the only language they know — how is it that they are certified as qualified to give instruction in another language or another subject? Yet, they are certified as qualified teachers although they are not certified as qualified to give instruction through the medium of Irish. There must be something wrong there. That is a matter upon which advice has been given, which up to the present, in any case, has not been accepted. There is an indication in the Minister's speech that the degree of preference given to those coming from Gaelic-speaking areas will be reduced, but that is not sufficient.
I hold that, having set up the standard that is required in the Irish language, spoken and written, in this particular examination, there should be then a free field for every boy or girl to compete, irrespective of where he or she happened to be born. That would seem to me to be only fair. I was sorry to hear the Minister suggest that it was as a result of the protest made by the teachers, because of the fact that their own children were not getting these places, that he made the slight concession of reducing the preference given to Gaeltacht candidates. If teachers have protested, it is not entirely, or at all, perhaps, because of their own children. They are interested in the children that are passing through their hands, and the complaints they frequently receive from the parents of these children to the effect that they get no opportunity of competing on equal terms with children from Gaeltacht areas.
There was one other matter mentioned by the Minister in connection with the colleges that rather surprised me. When he was defending the setting up of these colleges, it struck me — at least this is what I understood—that he sought to justify it on grounds of expediency or economic grounds. He suggested that they were set up for the purpose of providing employment or jobs of some kind for these people from the Gaeltacht. I suggest that teaching is such a very important job, and so much of the future welfare of our people depends on the personnel and the quality of the personnel of the teaching profession, that the considerations that I have mentioned—namely, providing opportunities of employment or providing a secondary education for children in the Gaeltacht areas — should not influence the Minister in the selection of candidates for the teaching profession. If he wanted to provide them with these opportunities, he could set up secondary schools in the Gaeltacht.
As I am on that point, I should like to say that in my opinion it is unsound, and not in the best interests of the education of the country that children from the very tender age of 13 or 14 should be segregated and not allowed to mix with other boys and girls who are preparing for other professions. They are turned out as teachers at 19 or 20 years of age, after spending six or eight years of isolation in these colleges. I do not think that that is good for education or for the teachers themselves.
I have very grave doubts that we are getting now as good a quality of teacher in the teaching profession as was got heretofore. People always will say that the young people are not as good as the old but, making due allowance for that — and I have reason for saying this — I think that the teachers now being turned out from the colleges under this system do not give ground for satisfaction. It is a matter into which enquiry might be made.
On the question of the surplus of teachers and what has led up to the closing of training colleges, and the drastic regulations to which Senator Tierney referred, so far back as 1929 or 1930, representations were made — and strong representations, which were repeated since — by the teachers' organisations to the Ministers concerned — the present Minister and his predecessor in the previous Government—pointing out the position and urging that steps be taken to regulate the number of teachers entering the profession. They seemed to take the view that, being what was described here to-day as a trade union, we were more interested in securing the positions of the existing teachers than in looking to the future. We saw what was coming, we saw the steady and rapid decline of the rural population. We knew that the preparatory colleges and the training colleges were training the full quota of teachers and we pointed out to the responsible authorities that in a very short time there would be a huge surplus of teachers and no employment for them. That has turned out to have been sound advice and it was not taken, so I doubt whether, if an advisory council had given similar advice at the same time, it would have been taken either.
As the general question of education was touched on, I should like to mention that, unfortunately, in this country we have no such thing as a public opinion on education. I believe somebody referred to that previously. I went through four general elections in my time, and I was asked questions about all sorts of things — my policy on this and that — but no one ever dreamt of asking me my policy on education. I am sure every other Dáil candidate who ever stood before an electorate has much the same story: they would be heckled about this and that, but nobody ever dreamt of asking them their attitude to education. That shows that there is no public opinion on education. If we were asked who is mainly responsible for endeavouring to create that public opinion, I would say it is the Minister for Education and that that ought to be his particular job. I am not criticising the present Minister particularly. In this case we have had four or five Ministers for Education since the State was established.
If you look over the speeches made by all those Ministers on the various occasions on which they addressed the public — and they were many — you will find that the number of times on which they devoted themselves purely to the question of education was very few. That is, in my opinion, a great mistake. When opening a new school, where they have a number of educational people about them, they may speak about education, but I would prefer to see them speak at the cross roads on these matters. In this way they will make the people realise that it is a matter which affects them very closely indeed. We have to say, on the figures quoted recently — by the Minister himself, I think — that there are 80,000 children absent from schools every day and 11,000 between the ages of six and 14 absent from school every day in this city alone in the year. That is a state of affairs with which nobody could be satisfied. The Minister referred to the monitorial system. I do not think it ever was proved that the monitorial system was a failure, nor the system that followed that—the pupil-teacher system — whereby boys and girls educated in secondary schools were attached to schools in which they served a kind of apprenticeship to teaching. I believe that in that way they got a more intimate knowledge of teaching than they do in the preparatory colleges or the training colleges.
In view of the atmosphere created here by earlier speeches, I do not like to refer to the question that caused a great amount of heat, that is, the question of the Irish language, but I should like to make this point. I believe that Senator Mrs. Concannon touched on this. It must not be taken for granted, as it seems to be here, that every time it is suggested that a possibly better way might be found, that is opposition to the Irish language. That is not so. This question of teaching through the medium of Irish was raised or suggested or brought into operation after the 1925 Programme Conference. I was a member of that conference and believe I am right in saying that it was not looked on as anything more than an experiment. As Senator Douglas has said, there is agreement on the general principle, and people who say that the Irish language should not be revived are a very small minority. But there is no agreement on the methods, and it is a mistake to think that any suggestion that a method should even be examined, never mind changed, is necessarily an attack on the general principle of the revival.
The Minister said with emphasis when speaking, that "We are not going back." He made that remark in connection with the examination of the system of teaching through the medium of Irish. I suggest that there is no convincing evidence that teaching through the medium of Irish, in the way it has been done in the past 18 years, is helpful to the revival of the language. There is no convincing evidence to that effect and no evidence was brought forward at the 1925 Conference, because there could not have been, of where anything like that had been done, to show that the teaching of subjects through the medium of a language was helpful in itself to the acquiring of that language. The only evidence that I remember put up on that occasion was of something that was happening in New York, I think, where people of various nationalities were brought together and taught through the medium of English, and where nothing was said through the whole course of the day but through English. There is no analogy there, because when those children went outside they heard nothing but English.
I agree that the time has arrived when we should take stock, in the interests of the language itself, of what has been done and of our experience during the past 18 years. I know that those who are engaged in the work, who are endeavouring to the best of their ability and with the best of good will to carry out the present policy of the Minister, are not satisfied that they are working in the best interests of the Irish language itself. Now, teaching Irish is one thing, and teaching a subject through the medium of Irish is another thing, and a very different thing. I was interested to hear Senator Ó Buachalla giving, I think, the best argument that could be used to that effect. He was dealing with the speeches of Senators Hayes and Tierney, and the pointed out that if he proposed to speak to them in Irish about a subject like economics they would not know anything about it, because they did not know anything about that subject and would not be able to understand him. It is the same in the case of a child. If you are teaching history, geography or arithmetic to a child it would be just the same if you were to start out with that child and begin to teach him history, or some such subject, through the medium of a language which he is just grasping. He cannot follow it, and, just as Senator Ó Buachalla said, Senator Hayes or Senator Tierney would not be able to follow him if he began to speak in Irish about economics.
We must realise that the teacher who wants to get his stuff across cannot simply say out what he has to say in one straight sentence and be finished with it: he must twist and turn and put it in three or four or even half a dozen different ways, before he can get it across to the mind of the child, and even though it is laid down that the teacher must be well qualified to teach and that the child must be well qualified to follow the teacher in the subject concerned, that is all right in theory, but in the case of any of our children in the English-speaking areas, no matter how well they are taught — in the primary schools, in any case, and that is the only type of school I can speak of — they are not able to follow instruction as well, or anything like as well, when that instruction is given to them in Irish, even when it is given by competent teachers, as they would be if it were given to them in their own vernacular. Now, we may know that we cannot teach history, geography, arithmetic or anything else, as well through the medium of Irish as through the medium of English, but if we were satisfied that by doing so we were advancing the cause of the revival movement and helping on the study of Irish, there might be something to be said for the sacrifice. I am not satisfied, however, that that is so, and people who are far better qualified to speak about it than I am, and who are in a better position to judge, are not satisfied that they are helping the Irish language by doing so. As I have said, therefore, I have not the least doubt that the time has come for stocktaking, examination and inquiry, and when we say that, it must not be taken that it is said in opposition to the Irish language.
There is one other remark I should like to make. I think it was Senator Cú Uladh who objected to this proposition of an advisory council on the ground that he felt almost certain that such a council would be putting difficulties in the Minister's way, especially in regard to the policy which is so near to his own heart. I do not know why he should assume, or why it should be assumed by anybody, that if there were an advisory council selected or chosen by the Minister or the Government, as is suggested in the motion, they would set themselves out to put difficulties in the way of the Minister in carrying out his policy.
Of course, as the Senator said, the Minister does get advice from his civil servants, from his administrative officers and from his inspectors, and I am quite prepared to say that it is sound advice, but they are all part of the machine, if I might use that term, and I do not want to use it in any derogatory way. I believe that people who would come in from outside would bring a different point of view to bear on the matter and I fail to see why the Minister and those who support the view he took should take that line of objecting to a new point of view. I quite believe that a body or a number of people could be and would be found who would bring a new point of view and a new outlook on these matters for the consideration of the Minister, if you like, and of the Department.
After all, there are traditions. A tradition will grow up in a Department, despite themselves, and, possibly, unconsciously and unknown to themselves, they have been travelling along in a certain way for a very long time, and it is very hard to get out of that rut or away from that line. I would go so far as to say that there should be people, as I think Senator Douglas said, on that body who would not have a claim to be educationists at all. I think that businessmen, farmers and other people, as well as educationists, should be given an opportunity of giving their point of view. There are consultations, of course, as the Minister said, with the various associations connected with education. It is only fair to say that so far as the teachers, through their organisation, are concerned, they have never had any difficulty in getting in touch with the Minister, whether this Minister or previous Ministers, and putting their points of view forward. I think other associations find that, too, but perhaps they also have rather singular points of view and it might be well, and I think it would be well, if we did have other bodies represented, bodies who are never consulted except, of course, through the nominal consultation that takes place on the occasion of the one day in the year in which there is a debate on education.
While, as I say, I have no great love for this, I should prefer a body that would not be merely an advisory body but one that would have some power, executive and administrative power, and power to initiate legislation. I quite recognise, however, that, as we are organised at the present time, that is not a practical proposition. If our systems of government were organised in a different way, when you had vocational and functional councils, that would become a practical proposition, but I quite agree that it is not a practical proposition now.
I do think, however, that it is worthy of support and worthy of consideration, and I regret that the Minister took the line he did. I am afraid he was influenced in that by the same considerations that seem to affect Senators Cú Uladh and O Buachalla: that there would be some possibility that the present policy in regard to the Irish language would be interfered with in some way. Well, seeing that the people of this country, with very few exceptions, are in favour of the general idea and the general principle, there can be nothing wrong if the method by which we are hoping to reach that goal is examined and even changed, if necessary. That is not going back. That is progress, if we feel that by making a change, it is a change for the better. Changes are made in every department of public life from time to time, sometimes for the better and sometimes not, but they are made. Although it is not everything that I would like to see, I am prepared to vote for the motion, because it would make for an improvement in our present system of education, and in its administration, by bringing it more into touch with the needs of the nation.
I had not intended to speak at all except for some remarks made by Senator O'Connell, whose maiden speech in this House we all welcome. In spite of what Senator O'Connell said I am inclined to think that Senator MacFhionnlaoich's instinct is sound from his point of view, when he looks with suspicion on the proposal to create a council that the Minister might use for advisory purposes; and probably his instinct would be equally as sound if he opposed, as I imagine he would, the proposal of Senator Hayes to have a searching inquiry into the present state of Irish education. I think it would be dangerous from the point of view of Senator MacFhionnlaoich to have the question of the revival of the native language "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." Senator O'Connell says that there is only a very small minority of Irish people who say that the policy of making Irish the normal spoken and written language of this country is a mistaken one. There may be very few who say that, but there are not very few who think it. Whether those who think it, or in any way have grave doubts about it, are a minority at all is something that I question, and question quite seriously.
I think it is implicit in the proposal of Senator Tierney and in the proposal of Senator Hayes that consideration should sooner or later be given to the question, whether this whole movement to make Irish the normal spoken and written language of the country should be proceeded with at all; whether it is a possibility and whether in pursuit of what is, perhaps, an impossibility, we are going, in the course of a few years more, to ruin Irish education as a whole to such a degree that it cannot recover. I am making no dogmatic statement on the subject. I am not nearly enough of an expert on education to do so, but I notice, whenever we try to have a debate on education, as happened in the Dáil and in this House, that we always slip back into the Irish bog, on a discussion of the Irish language — into a good deal of recrimination.
Remarks have been made about the lack of interest by members of the Dáil in the annual discussion on the Estimate for the Department of Education. I can tell the Seanad one reason for that lack of interest. No doubt there may be others. One reason is that it has become customary for the Minister to make his annual statement in the Irish language, and accordingly, when he rises to make it, the number of members who are not capable of understanding it, and the discussion that follows, is naturally severely limited thereby. The Minister seemed to think that I was saying something highly unpatriotic in suggesting that in the old days, when we were still part of the United Kingdom, the Irish people took an interest in their own education or had an influence over their education, and yet I believe I was stating absolute facts. The Irish members in the British House of Commons were quite capable of discussing education intelligently, and did discuss it intelligently, and, in fact, it would not be too much to say that the discussion of education by Irish members in the British House of Commons in the old days was a good deal more helpful and more interesting to the people than the sort of discussion on education that we have had during the years that I have been in Irish politics, when we always seem to fall back on recrimination about the Irish language question.
I hate to throw cold water on other people's enthusiasm. I am very fully conscious of the amount of work and self-sacrifice that has been put into this subject of reviving Irish. As a person who was a British ex-officer, not connected with Sinn Féin, and in many ways unacceptable from what is called here the national record standpoint, it would have been a very astute move on my part to have thrown myself into Irish politics. I had the time to do it and it would have helped to make up for some of my other deficiencies. I simply could not do so.
Are we going to discuss the motion on the Order Paper or are we to listen to this from Senator MacDermot?
I will relate what I am saying to the motion. I did not do that, because I could not bring myself to believe that this movement was not doing more harm than good. I may be quite wrong in that. All I am asking for is that in consultations that the Minister might have with other people who are educational experts from one point of view or another, it might not always be considered downright unpatriotic to examine with a fresh mind, whether in fact this policy is doing more harm than good. I do not put it higher than that. I am not prepared to make a dogmatic statement on the subject. What upsets me is to find everyone insisting that we must close our eyes altogether to the other possibility. People have been talking in this debate of the mistake of not divorcing a discussion on education from a discussion on Irish. How can we? The thing is utterly impossible. At every turn when we try to deal with education we come up against the problem of the Irish language, and when the Minister makes a speech, as Senator O'Connell said, about education to this or that audience he falls back into the same thing in discussing the progress we are making to popularise the Irish language.
In seconding Senator Tierney's motion I approach this problem not with the claim of being an educationist, and not with any of the experience with which Senator Tierney, Senator O'Connell, Senator Hayes or others have been able to approach the matter. I have had some responsibility for this much abused educational policy and programme, which is the basis of our scheme of education to-day. I was a member of the conference that framed the primary school programme in 1925. I was a member of the Gaeltacht Commission, whose recommendations are, to some extent, responsible for the erection of the huge preparatory colleges, and the bringing there of children from the Gaeltacht, who are getting a preference that is to-day being questioned. I have other experiences also, and I am looking on the question of education now from the point of view of a parent. Personally, I regret the Minister's approach in his reply to the motion. I always feel about education as I feel about agriculture. I do not think there can be two national policies with regard to education, just as I do not believe that there can be two national policies with regard to agriculture. You cannot have one policy to-day and, when you change your Minister to-morrow, have a new policy. That would create a condition of complete chaos. Therefore, I say with sincere regret that I feel that the Minister's approach to the motion was not a proper one. In my view, the Minister requires all the goodwill and co-operation he can get from learned men and even from ordinary men to make his educational policy a success.
It was very strange to hear Senator Tierney abused by other Senators as he has been. When this motion was put on the Order Paper some time ago I happened to mention to a mutual friend of Senator Tierney's and myself that this motion was being put down. The reply of that individual, who has not to-day any more sympathy with the Irish language than he had 20 years ago, was: "Michael Tierney is one of those for whom I have no sympathy whatever. He is one of the people who helped to put this across the country." Of course he is, and a good many others helped him to put this across the country. In fact, all the people who went out and made sacrifices in the effort to restore freedom to this country played their part in putting this across the country.
The Minister, or his predecessors, or his Department, in their policy of education, could not attempt to do what they have been doing for the language but for the freedom won for the people here. What a good many of us regret is that quite a number of those who made no great effort in those days to rid the country of the stranger have been making very valiant efforts to make a corner in the Irish language since. That is not helpful.
As I say, I regret the Minister's approach to this. No matter what some of us may have thought in 1920 or 1924 or 1925 or 1927 or 1928, there are a great many people, who are interested in the language and prepared, like Senators Hayes and Tierney and others, still to make their contribution and sacrifices to restore the language as the spoken tongue of the people, but who have doubts about the measure of success that we are achieving. My view about the capacity of this nation to develop a full life in any sense, in the cultural sense through the Irish language being restored and becoming the spoken language of the people, even in a military sense if we were challenged to-morrow, or in an economic or social sense as the development of a policy of other departments, is that it depends on our courage to face up to the problem, survey it and measure it accurately, and determine whether or not we are advancing or retreating. It is doubtful if the restoration of the language is not going to mean a much greater struggle even than it took to eject the foreigner. In that effort I suggest that neither this Minister nor any successor of his will win that fight by an approach to a motion like this in the tone and temper in which the Minister approached it to-day. Personally I regret it, because I think we cannot afford to divide our forces on this. We ought to be prepared to approach it with open minds. Make no mistake about it, there are individuals in this country who are doing untold damage to the policy for the restoration of the language.
I do not approach this question with information such as university professors have. I am not prepared to say that there is no interest in education in the country to-day. It is true that some people may not speak their minds; but there are a great many people speaking their minds in their neighbours' houses and at the crossroads. What we are all perplexed about is seeing our children going to school day after day with satchels full of books which they are hardly able to carry, coming back in the evening with the same satchels, and, as soon as their meal is finished, working at their exercises until it is time for them to say their prayers and be put to bed. In fact, a great many of us feel that the children no longer belong to us. They seem to have been absolutely and completely captured by the schools or by the system, or by this anxiety to learn something so that they may be equipped to get some post afterwards in life.
If a council such as is proposed were set up, there is one thing that the council would have to face, and I believe the Minister ought to face it. In fact it is obvious that it is present to his mind. He made a reference to the point when referring to scholarships in the university given by county councils and other bodies. It seems to me that the whole purpose of our scheme of education demands examination to-day. We assume that it is primarily utilitarian. Children are being trained so that they may be equipped to earn their living.
What puzzles me and thousands of parents in this country is this. Education is a very expensive matter. It is costing the State and individuals a very considerable amount of money. Year after year in the secondary schools and in the universities we are turning out thousands of young people who, when they come out equipped, find it practically impossible to get employment. That is a problem that the Minister with the council of education would require to examine at once. We are training people for the learned professions. Year after year we are adding to their number by hundreds, year after year we are educating people who are prepared to give service to others; while down the country the population which they are preparing and wanting to serve is declining, not by hundreds, but by thousands.
I suggest that that is one of the immediate problems which educationists, the Minister and his Department, university professors, and all the people who see this much more clearly and before whose eyes it is brought home much more effectively than it is before mine, ought to face. Up and down the country I come across young men and women qualified as doctors, lawyers, and engineers who have no immediate prospects in their professions. I do not know that the country can afford that. There are lengths to which you can go in that respect, but it may become a real danger and menace to the country. Anybody who will trouble to examine what the conditions were in Germany in 1929, 1930 and 1931 will find that the thousands and thousands of young people who were turned out by the universities year after year and who could find nothing to do laid the foundations of the Germany to-day.
Therefore, I urge that the whole purpose of our plan of education demands re-examination at once. It is the biggest thing, in my view, which the country has to tackle, but it is not being faced. Quite a number of us, on both sides of the House, are parents, and it is not right that we should have our children struggling with a programme which, apparently, is beyond their capacity to absorb as fully and completely as the demands of examiners require. In fact, numbers of children in doing so are, possibly, permanently injuring their health, striving for what? For something that may be in the offing, but which they may never be able to attain. I think that a council of education could not but have that problem brought very forcibly before it. At the moment we are spending large sums of money, not only from the Exchequer but from other sources, on education, preparing young people for services in which they cannot get employment. That is unsound nationally, and unwise from the family point of view. It is an excellent, a magnificent, thing to train people's minds. It would be a good thing if our people could have all the information and knowledge which the learned professors in the universities are fortunate enough to possess, but that is not possible. Even if it were, I think we would have a very ill-balanced society. There is the risk and danger that we may go too far along that road. It is questionable whether we have not already gone too far.
I can support what Senator O'Connell has said of the difficulties which a great many teachers are experiencing in the schools. I have discussed this with teachers myself, and I am satisfied that it would be much better for all of us, who really desire the restoration of the Irish language, to face fairly and squarely the difficulties inherent in this whole situation. The longer we delay in plucking up courage to face it the graver then will be the crisis which will confront us. It is true that you have a great many people approaching the situation from the same angle as Senator Tierney. He may have spoken with a vehemence that was not pleasing to the Minister, but while liberty is left to men to use the voices God has given them, then they will say what they think. I believe that most Senators approach all these problems from their own particular angle. They say what they think, and what a great many other people who associate with them think. It is in an Assembly such as this that the messages they have to deliver ought to be conveyed to the Minister.
There is no doubt whatever but that a great many parents throughout the country are perturbed with regard to the present position in our schools. I myself know parents who would prefer that their children, attending secondary schools, should go into the classes where the teaching is done through English rather than through Irish. I have heard educated parents say that where the teaching is done through the medium of English their children will get a better training in other subjects than if it were through the medium of Irish. There is all the encouragement possible, and it is right that there should be, to do everything possible through the medium of Irish. Those of us, however, who had not the opportunity that the youth of to-day have to learn the national language realise how very little enthusiasm there is among those young people to use the language, and of how difficult it is to encourage them to use it. That is true of the children of the most patriotic fathers and mothers in the country. Certain individuals in this country who believe that they are doing a patriotic service by urging a more extensive use of the Irish language are held up by the children as the people who are responsible for making their schoolwork ten times as difficult as it ought to be.
Has not the time come when we should open our minds to the position with regard to our whole scheme of education? I think it has. When people like Senators Tierney, Hayes, O'Connell and others urge on the Minister that things are not as they ought to be on this question, he should I think, be prepared to examine them. Some of us, if we wanted to make an indictment of the schools and their methods, could get ample evidence to prove to the satisfaction of a great many that the critics of our educational policy, and of the language policy particularly, are right. This, I suggest, is not the time when the attitude of the Minister or of the Ministry should be such as to result in dividing forces that, for years, have worked to make it possible to restore the Irish language as the spoken tongue of the people. The Minister may not accept that point of view, but I suggest to him that we have now reached the stage when it would not be at all too difficult to make a great many people throw discretion, and even patriotism, to the winds, and if such should happen the consequences would be very bad not only for the country, but for our whole policy of education, and disastrous in my opinion for the language itself.
Recently, the Minister for Agriculture apparently found it necessary and beneficial to bring together a group of people in a body styled a Council for Agriculture. He did that because there are urgent and pressing problems relating to agriculture that intimately concern not only the Minister and the Government but the people through the country. So, too, in regard to this question of education. Problems are arising every other day that concern parents and their children and the children's future, and, mind you, parents have some rights still left. They have been rather silent about this and inclined to exercise restraint, but they feel now that education and the plan of education has been brought to such a point that those who declare that the Irish language ought to be cut out of the curriculum, should get the opportunity of coming together to examine whether or not progress is being made. In the opinion of a number of teachers, and of a great many educated parents, the progress that is being made is not as great as it would be desirable to have it.
In subjects other than Irish many parents are convinced that the standard attained by their children is lower than they would like it to be. I believe, in view of all that, that the Minister ought to have the courage to face up to this problem. While we have these doubts and hesitations in the minds of a great many connected with education and interested in it, we cannot, I suggest, make real progress because many will be putting interrogation remarks after the decisions of the Minister and the policy of his officers in attempting to carry out those decisions. So I urge the Minister to reconsider his attitude, because I do not think he can afford to go on with his present plan, and, if he persists in believing that he is right, I think that he, or someone else later on, will find that he has done education an injustice. I do not think that is fair to education, fair to the country, or fair, above all, to the children of the future, and, if it be not fair to the children of the future, we are doing the future Irish nation the greatest possible disservice.
I understand that it is proposed to adjourn the debate and, if the House is agreeable, I shall now move the adjournment.
Surely we do not want to hear any more about education on another day. Let us finish this debate now.
I think there are two sides to this matter. For our own convenience, most of us would prefer to get it finished, but there is a staff working here, and I do not think it would be wise, fair, or necessary to carry on the debate until 11 or 11.15 p.m., and then to take the question on the adjournment.
Senators understand that the House will meet on Wednesday next, so I suggest that the motion to adjourn the debate should be accepted. Senator Tierney will then conclude on that day.
I should like some information as to what place on the agenda this matter will get.
Acting-Chairman
First place.
I should object to that. There are other very important matters on the agenda which ought to be dealt with instead of having to wait for this motion, which is becoming like Tennyson's brook.
Will the debate not have to conclude on Wednesday next with Senator Tierney's speech? He has moved the adjournment, and he will be the only speaker.
I promise the Senator not to take too long.
Debate adjourned until Wednesday, 29th January.