He has a most difficult task in a sense and I hope he will forgive those of us who shower questions at him which are outside his own particular bailiwick. It is obvious that we cannot in this House repeat the Dáil debate or have separate debates on each Estimate and consequently we must, as it were, compress the various points we want to make into a single speech. I propose to confine myself this evening to talking about one Department, the Department of Education. I have had, as the House may remember, differences of opinion on other matters, on particular matters, with the Minister for Education, and to these I shall refer in some detail later, but I should like to start by saying that this Department, this Ministry, as I think most of us will agree, is a fundamental Ministry. It is one of the most important in the country. It is the one which most justifies expenditure upon it, and the one which has least need to apologise when it goes to the Minister for Finance and asks for money, because every penny well spent on education produces in the future a dividend in skill, knowledge and human well-being.
I do not want it to be thought that because I differ from the Minister on certain matters—this question of punishment and so on—I am simply taking this opportunity to criticise the Department in general. I should have made this kind of speech, apart from the reference to punishment, entirely apart from that question. I feel bound to say that I am disturbed that this important Department has only recently produced its report for the year 1951-52. We have in hands this morning the report of the E.S.B. for the year ending 31st March this year. The same sort of thing is the practice with many Departments, with not quite that alacrity, but to have placed in our hands now a report about what happened three years ago, I think is profoundly unsatisfactory. I should like to ask the Minister if he can offer an explanation of what seems to me an unwarranted delay in laying the facts about education before the country. I do not think there should be a time lag of three years.
In regard to secondary education, the Department is not directly responsible for it, but it enables capitation grants and incremental grants to be paid. The capitation grants to secondary schools have been increased recently. While that increase is very welcome, I think the amount of the increase is insufficient because it was so long overdue. The Minister should consider whether these capitation grants are really enabling secondary education, based as it is, to do the very important task which it has to do.
It is quite obvious that to-day the increments of secondary teachers must be increased if we are to keep these teachers in the country at all. These increments are given only if the teacher has a diploma in education. After getting that full qualification, apart from the Irish qualification, he or she has to teach for a further full year, with all those qualifications, before getting any increment at all. Is it any wonder that many of them are tempted to go to England or the North of Ireland, where they will be paid the increments straight away upon qualification?
Then there is a system of a certain quota of recognised registered teachers per school, which must not be exceeded. I wonder if that might not be revised. There are many fully qualified teachers, with the qualifications necessary for registration, who are prevented by that contingency from becoming incrementally paid teachers.
Again, it is time that the Department consider paying to secondary schools some sort of building grant for extensions or even for the building of new schools. In the North, two-thirds of the cost is paid by the Government to any secondary school that cares to apply for it, whether it be a Catholic school or a Protestant school. We do not find that possible here. I would ask the Minister for Finance to pass on to the Minister for Education my suggestion that the Minister for Education should ask the Minister for Finance for more money—and I trust that he will pass on the message in strong terms.
I now turn to primary education. A basis for a discussion on that is a document which has not been discussed very much either in this House or in the other House. I refer to the very long report of the Council of Education. It is a document prepared with a good deal of care. Obviously a lot of thought went into it. One might criticise certain portions, one might wonder whether the long introductory historical part was really necessary, but one cannot say that it was not prepared with care. I wonder if the Minister has really paid very much attention to any of its recommendations.
On page 208 they recommend that the size of the classes, the ideal number, should be about 30 and certainly should not exceed 40. Could the Minister tell us what precise steps he is taking about that? He has told the Dáil already, unfortunately, that he is not going to alter his policy of dismissing well qualified women teachers when they marry. I feel that it is a tragic loss to the educational system of our country, when we are short— visibly, perceptibly and demonstrably short—of trained teachers, to get rid of the women teachers who get married.
On page 184 there is a reference to the teaching of music:—
"The co-operation of the Department and the teachers in this field is deserving of the highest praise."
What are the results? In an editorial in the Irish Independent on the 27th June last, entitled “Music in the Schools” the writer says:—
"Everything is always going well in the eyes of the Department of Education. Take the case of music. ...The latest report of the Department touches on this subject... and the burden of the reference is that the officials of the Department are delighted with the number of students who now take music as a subject.... This is most encouraging. But unfortunately those who are curious enough to inquire into the facts may find that the evidence does not quite bear out this statement of the case. In 1952—the Department's statistics are not more up-to-date than this—2,366 girls presented themselves for the Leaving Certificate. Of this number only 57 took music as a subject. In the Intermediate Certificate out of 5,753 girls only 146 took music. In the case of boys the story is even more unsatisfactory. In the Intermediate Certificate 5,293 boys went forward —eight of them took music, less than a fraction of 1 per cent. In the Leaving Certificate, of 2,962 boys only nine took music. And the Department is quite satisfied."
The leader writer of the Irish Independent is not notoriously influenced by alien ideas, or a foreign atmosphere, and is not led to criticise the Department of Education from any feeling of bitterness. It is done simply on the facts, which do not appear to be satisfactory, but about which the Department, as the leader writer says, is very easily satisfied.
I should like to turn to what the Council of Education says on page 150 about the teaching of oral Irish:—
"Oral expression should take precedence over all other sections of the Irish programme. The first and paramount care of the primary school in relation to Irish should be to secure that the child can speak it."
I will not read the rest of the paragraph—it simply demonstrates how strongly that view is held. Surely that is a logical point of view. If we are to teach Irish at all, it must surely be taught as a living tongue. In fact, as an educational subject one of the obvious incontrovertible advantages it has in schools, particularly for Irish children but even for any children, is that it is a living tongue. It is not a dead language. It is not a language that has passed completely from the lips of people. It is not like Latin and Greek, which can teach a certain discipline and attitude of mind, but which cannot teach the facility of framing one's thoughts in a second language—which is the necessary basis for the learning of any third or fourth language by any learner.
I do not think it is any exaggeration to say that the children and the teachers in our schools are extremely examination-conscious. They have to be. They will know what will be asked in the examination if they can possibly guess, they will aim to satisfy the examiners. That is perfectly natural, it is quite right that they should. What does the State say, in the two major State examinations, the Intermediate and the Leaving Certificate, in relation to this vitally necessary subject of oral Irish? The State says: "You need not bother: as far as the examination is concerned, you will not be examined in spoken Irish." What is the lesson for the children and for the teachers who are preparing for these examinations? The lesson is, I am afraid, that the speaking of Irish, the learning of the spoken tongue, the practice of getting up on one's feet and putting one's thoughts into a second language, will be neglected, because it will not score marks in the examination.
I would ask the Minister for Finance or his representative to try to ascertain from the Minister for Education just why he thinks it impossible to hold oral examinations in Irish, and, indeed, in the other spoken languages in the Intermediate and Leaving Certificate. I am not prepared to accept, I am afraid, the answer that the arrangements would be too difficult for the thousands of children involved. I am familiar with similar examinations in France: the Baccalauréat, which is in two parts like the Intermediate and Leaving Certificate, and where the numbers of children involved are hundreds of thousands. There they have a system admittedly of eliminating perhaps 30 or 35 per cent. on the results of the written examination, but all the other thousands of them go up regularly for an oral examination not only in French but in any spoken living tongue. I do not think it is very surprising that examination authorities in France should treat a living tongue as if it were a living tongue, but I think it is surprising, with all we say about Irish, and all that is said by a responsible Council of Education about the value of oral Irish, that the message, as far as the Minister's examinations go, is: "You need not bother."
I notice also on page 242 of this Council of Education Report it is stated that primary education in Ireland "is, in effect, an insufficient minimum education under modern conditions." That is a solemn document. It is not a wild, revolutionary pamphlet. They decide that the present educational system in primary education in this country is "an insufficient minimum". What is the Minister doing about it, apart from publishing the report of what took place three years ago?
I should like to quote also the fact mentioned on page 254 of this report, that, of our secondary school children, only 5 per cent. are aided by scholarships from public funds. I wonder are we satisfied with that "5 per cent."? I wonder is the Minister satisfied? If he is not satisfied, I should like to know what future plans he has in that respect. The last quotation from this document is quoted in one of the minority reports, and is taken, in fact, from the Notes for Teachers issued by the Department. It relates to infant teaching. It says, on page 305 of the report:—
"Infant teaching to be successful must be based on the young child's instinctive urge to play, to talk, to imitate. The children should be made to feel happy in school. Brightness and joy are their right".
These are very fine words. I should like to feel that they were related in some way to the conditions not only in the infant schools, but in the primary schools in general. That brings me to the question, which I said I would mention, of punishment in the primary schools, and, indeed, also in some of the infant schools.
I brought this subject up before in the Seanad, as you will remember, and I said I was concerned at the amount of corporal punishment, beating and slapping for minor offences that is going on in our national schools. I asked the Minister, who was present and listening, if he was aware that his departmental regulations, which I quoted with full approval, were, in fact, all too frequently being flouted. I asked him whether he proposed to make some change in them, was he going to come forward and say: "My rules cannot be worked; I am going to suggest changes and modifications". I asked him whether, if he was proud of them—as it turned out later he was, since he quoted them back to me— he would take steps to see to it that they were generally applied. I asked him did he know what was going on in this regard, what were the sources of his information, how did he know and how did he set about finding out?
I mentioned the booklet that was published, the main content of which was letters from 70 parents headed: "As the Parents See It". I asked him what was his reaction to the booklet and to these 70 parents writing in as they did. I mentioned that I was informed by the organisation which published the booklet that 33 out of these 70 cases had, in fact, already been reported to his Department over the past year and I inquired, quite simply, what had he found when he investigated these cases, and had he found that any action was necessary, and, if so, what action?
I got, I am afraid, to these various questions, no satisfactory reply. The Minister confessed complete ignorance of any but the rarest breaches of his regulations, which specifically condemn the use of corporal punishment in schools for anything but grave transgressions. He told us that he could not identify the 33 cases, and appealed to me, quite seriously, to help him to identify the cases on his files.
Furthermore, in the Dáil, he was questioned about the matter and he answered—I am quoting from Volume 152, No. 4, column 469 of the Official Report:—
"I am surprised at Irish journalism opening its pages so freely to the verbal expectorations in relation to certain subjects. All this agitation is deliberately and maliciously stirred up."
On that point, I would just like to say that that reference to a very prominent Dublin newspaper which specialises in a kind of open forum for the free expression of opinion in the form of "Letters to the Editor", was uncalled for and unmerited. I believe that the paper does a public service by permitting people to debate matters freely, and, I think, without scurrility in its columns. The Minister in the same column, but a little later, said:—
"When I consider ... the way in which it has been treated by the only individual who raised this matter in any kind of formal way, namely, one of our Senators, my only feeling is that it is a disgusting proceeding, deliberately and maliciously entered into by people who are not of this country or of its traditions."
And he added again in the same line that it was an attack "made by people reared in an alien and completely un-Irish atmosphere".
I am inclined to speculate, in parenthesis, if the ancestors of General Mulcahy had been on the shores of Ireland when St. Patrick endeavoured to make his landing, what kind of a reception he would have got from the Mulcahys of that day, on the grounds that St. Patrick was reared in "an alien and completely un-Irish atmosphere."
There is a second point I should like to make and to make more seriously. The suggestion was, in this accusation, that these people who had published the pamphlet, the School Children's Protection Organisation, were in some way foreigners. It has not yet become, as far as I know, an indictable offence in this country to be a foreigner or even, very occasionally, to read foreign books, or to be influenced by foreign ideas. I think it is in fact in the best tradition of this country to be prepared to take what is good from outside. But I noticed that the people in question issued a challenge to the Minister to name a single member of their organisation who did not possess all three of the following qualifications: (1) that they were Irish nationals living in this country; (2) that they were born and educated in this country, and (3) that they were sincere, practising Catholics. They challenged the Minister to substantiate his accusation against them, made in their absence under the privilege of the Dáil, or to withdraw it. I regret that the Minister has not seen fit to advert to that challenge.
The Minister referred to the way in which I brought up the matter. I was under the impression—one's impressions about oneself are, perhaps, apt to be faulty—that I raised the matter in an orderly manner within the terms of the procedure of this House which does not permit of putting down questions to Ministers, and that I presented my case without notable loss of temper. I endeavoured to use my perfectly legitimate right as a member of this House to put questions to a Minister about the actions in the past of himself and his Department, questions, I think, which the Minister should have been in a position to answer.
In that regard I would like to defend myself by quoting from an essay on representative government, the very essence of what I think modern Parliaments, if they are democratic, stand for, by John Stuart Mill. He said, in speaking about the office of a representative Assembly—and I quote: "Is to watch and control the Government, throw the light of publicity on its actions, to compel a full exposition and justification of all them which anybody considers questionable; to censure them if found condemnable."
I am afraid I make no apology for quoting John Stuart Mill although I can see the impact on Senator Hayes was somewhat severe——