Seanad Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 29 May 1974

Vol. 78 No. 5

Report on Adult Education in Ireland: Motion (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:

That Seanad Éireann notes the Murphy Report on Adult Education in Ireland.—(Senator Horgan.)

Minister for Education (Mr. R. Burke)

I am very pleased at the opportunity afforded by this debate to put on the records of the House my appreciation of the work of the members of the Committee on Adult Education who gave so generously of their time and experience in making an analysis of the present situation and seeking to set guidelines for future development.

The committee were faced with a very difficult task as they were dealing with a subject undergoing a great deal of change—change as to its nature, its scope, its role, its purpose and the contribution it is called on to make towards a better society in each individual country and a greater understanding and co-operation between nations. The report shows ample evidence of the competence and understanding of the committee and the comprehensive nature of the work they have undertaken.

In accordance with normal practice the views of various interested groups and organisations were requested in relation to the observations and recommendations made in the report. May I say that I attach more than usual importance to securing the views such as have been given in this instance and I consider the present debate in Seanad Éireann to be particularly opportune as it enables me to have the views of Senators in advance of final decisions being made in relation to the drawing up of a future comprehensive programme in this area.

At this point, a Leas-Chathaoirleach, I should like your direction as to whether, in fact, I am concluding the debate because——

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

No, you are not.

Mr. R. Burke

It might be helpful, if it is not against the Rules of Order, if those who wish to make contributions, would do so before I speak on this.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Unfortunately no Member was offering when the Minister came into the House, but I understand Senator Martin would like to speak. Perhaps, therefore, I can call the Minister later.

Mr. O'Toole

I intend to make a contribution.

Mr. R. Burke

If it is agreeable to the Leas-Chathaoirleach and to the Seanad I will desist from any further remarks to allow the Senators to continue.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

The House will appreciate that course of action. The Minister will reserve the remainder of his speech until he hears contributions from the Senators.

Mr. Dolan

Ba mhaith liomsa cúpla focal a rá. Ní raibh mé i láthair nuair a thosnaigh an díospóireacht seo agus b'fhéidir nach bhfuil an dothain eolais agam. Tá géar gá ag na daoine, go mór mhór na daoine faoin dtuaith, seans a bheith acu chun chur leis an méid oideachais atá acu. Ní raibh an seans acu nuair a bhíodar óg. B'éigean dóibh dul ag obair. Ar an ábhar sin tá an-spéis agam sa tairiscint seo. Fáiltím roimh aon rud a chuidíonn leis an Aire cúnamh a thabhairt dosna daoine sin.

This is a very important motion because it refers to the fundamental right of the citizen to receive an adequate education. In many areas in this country in days gone by and, indeed, not so long ago, facilities for a reasonable standard of education were denied to our people. I am not trying to cast any reflection on the fundamental base of education which is first, the home and secondly the national schools of this country. It is true that in the past and right down the line, the teachers, under deplorable conditions in these schools, gave tremendous service and this reflects eternal credit on those dedicated men and women and, indeed, on the pupils who went there. The vast majority of our people when they went abroad to seek employment, whether in England, Scotland or America, had nothing better than an ordinary national school education. That standard was very high. Many of them were questioned as to whether they had post-primary education of any kind? Had they attended secondary schools or high schools, as they term them in America? These people were reluctant to admit that during their youth they had not secured post-primary education. If they had the courage to speak up for themselves and if they did not have an inferiority complex, which was due to lack of education, they could have asserted themselves on a par with many of the people who had post-primary education in the countries in which they were seeking employment. In many areas in this country very little attempt was made to provide any type of post-primary school to ensure that the people there would have a chance to secure a post-primary education. When the Vocational Education Act, 1930, was introduced, for some unknown reason the people attending these schools were not allowed to take part in the intermediate and leaving certificate examinations, which in those days were the criteria for entry into the Civil Service and other higher paid positions. Success in those examinations would have given them some social status when they travelled abroad.

It should be pointed out that many secondary teachers and people who had a vested interest in the secondary schools ensured that other schools would not be allowed to present students for these examinations. I am glad that these obstacles have been removed and that the vocational schools have been put on a par with the secondary schools. It was high time that happened. Not alone were students prevented from undergoing these examinations but they seemed to have been put into a kind of ghetto and the vocational schools were looked upon as inferior institutions in comparison with the secondary schools where they wore uniforms and where most of the rich people sent their children.

Any country should lean over backwards to ensure that people, irrespective of their means, get a good fundamental education and have equal facilities to reach the top. Brains and ability to learn are not all born into the rich families. Many of the poor and destitute, through no fault of their own, were denied the worthwhile facilities that would have enabled them to live full lives and be of better service to the nation. In the case of those who were lucky enough to secure secondary education, I think too much stress was laid on academic subjects and not enough on subjects pertaining to technology and subjects which would be of interest to developing countries such as ours where industries needing skilled workers, were beginning to spring up.

That too is changing. There should be some way whereby people who left the national school and were unable to go to post-primary school could improve their education so that they would not feel inferior to their neighbours. Irish people in the past, whether rich or poor, but particularly the poor, placed tremendous value on education. I know many who would forego their dinner provided they were able to discuss or quote at length from various published books and be on a par with others. They derive tremendous personal satisfaction from this. There is great satisfaction in being able to read and write. It would be wrong if we did not ensure that all our citizens would have equal opportunities and a fair chance of availing and acquainting themselves with these areas of knowledge.

I should now like to refer to third level education. It is something that I, as a national school teacher, have never had the opportunity of experiencing although, I think I got eight or ten honours which enabled me to get into the training college. Because of some type of an archaic system in this country it was considered that I was not fit to take my place in the university. I have disputed that all my life. I felt that, as one who was born on the mountainside, as one who had eked out for himself, through his own initiative to the best of his ability, a place in the educational world, it was very wrong, real discrimination, that I, as a national teacher who had secured honours in every subject to get into the training college, would not be allowed to come out of that college with a university degree. Down the years, when comparisons were made it was found that when people who had the MA, BA, or other degrees from the universities did this competitive examination for entrance to a training college, the highest place any of them reached was 35th.

There is a tremendous change now when people with four honours can go to university. In those days, everyone of us would have been at university, we would have been the first batch of students there; but because of some archaic British system under which the university was run, this state of affairs obtained all down the line. Even yet, as far as I know, national teachers cannot receive a university degree when leaving the training colleges. I am glad to note that the Minister has been moving on that line recently and I compliment him on it.

Mr. R. Burke

Would the Senator allow me to tell him that the matter has now progressed to a point which is very satisfactory? We would hope that those going into the training colleges next September will emerge with university degrees.

Mr. Dolan

I certainly welcome that. I have been campaigning for it all my life. I should like to dwell on this point a little and say that, if that had not happened, we would eventually end up in a few years having as teachers in our national schools, those who, because they did not get four honours, did not go to university. I think that would be very wrong. We must ensure that we have the best teachers in our national schools, those with the highest possible qualifications, because they are the foundation stone of the whole educational system. The discrimination that existed between national teachers and other students in the third level sphere of education was deplorable. I am glad to see that it has been rectified.

I should like to refer to universities in general. I admit that I have not very much knowledge of them. They seem to be remote so far as we in the north-west of the country are concerned. One does not have to be too observant to notice that there is no branch of the National University, to which we contribute as taxpayers in Counties Cavan, Fermanagh and Leitrim, operating there. The same applies to the Six Counties. Such places as Tyrone or Derry have not university education either. It seems we are classified as the underdogs in education and that we are only in the Stone Age so far as advancement is concerned. We in Cavan County Council and Cavan Vocational Education Committee on a few occasions made representations to universities to come down to the town of Cavan. It is not a very big place, but it is a very important place to us because it is the capital of the county. We would like to have seen the university authorities, to whom we contribute, recognising us in some way. I admit that all the paraphernalia of degree conferring might not be available. There may not be sufficient transport to take the lot down to County Cavan. However, I feel that parts of degree courses, such as the H.Dip in Ed. course and others, could have been brought within the reach of the people of Counties Cavan, Donegal, Sligo, Fermanagh, Leitrim or any other county in that area. We wrote to the heads of all the universities. The only people who had the decency to reply were those in Trinity College. I thank them very sincerely for doing so. We felt we had a case to make and we made a fair case. We would have liked to have received some recognition. We do not want to be overcritical about this. I should like the Minister for Education to tell us who is responsible for ensuring that there is no university in the north-western part of the country and yet the people of Limerick could clamour and——

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

I have to interrupt the Senator. This report deals with adult education in Ireland. It does not refer to the universities.

Mr. Dolan

I may not be well up on the universities——

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

We are discussing the report.

Mr. Dolan

——but there are adults who go to universities. I was not considered adult enough to be allowed enter a university although I got eight or ten honours. Perhaps this segregation still exists. I am not taking issue with the Chair but, with respect, I feel that the facilities provided for university education here should extend to adult education. However if the Chair insists that I cannot refer to universities I will abide by her ruling. Would the Minister tell me who is responsible for this state of affairs? Why has it been allowed to exist for so long? Is there any way it can be remedied? Why were the people in Limerick, who are only 50 miles from the city of Cork and have one of the best roads in Ireland, allowed to make a case for a university while we in the whole north-western end of the country have no universities facilities nearer than Coleraine or Belfast? That point should be made. We are not denying Limerick or any other large town the right to seek such education, but we feel we have a legitimate right to know why it is that those of us who are not financially able to travel long journeys to universities are not facilitated?

The same case is pertinent so far as the Colleges of Technology in Sligo and Dundalk are concerned. There is no provision for such a college in County Cavan. They are important institutions. They provide the technicians needed in our industries. It was shown that 127 people from Louth attended the Dundalk college last year but there were only five from County Cavan. There were similar figures in Sligo—about seven people from County Cavan and approximately 150 from Sligo attended the Sligo college of technology. This resulted from the fact that the building is situated within easy reach of those people. These anomalies in our adult education scheme should be remedied.

Much greater use could be made of Radio Telefís Éireann for adult education. Many of the old canned programmes imported in great quantities from America and England could be dropped. Surely it would be within the competence of those in charge of education and those who teach, from those in the national schools right up to the universities, to devise interesting educational radio and television programmes on our history, geography and way of life? Booklets could be published to help people to follow these courses.

Now that we have entered the EEC there is a crying need for a greater awareness of the fact that we are within a couple of hours flying time of France, Belgium, Germany and other European countries. This was not the case in days gone by when our adult population went to England, Scotland or America in search of employment. The situation today is vastly different. Many people now travel to the Continent. We must wake up and make a greater effort to ensure that our people will become more conscious of the necessity to know continental languages. To be proficient in any language one must have the ability to convey one's thoughts to another person. It is fundamental that we have a good basis in the English and Irish languages. Those two languages are taught very well indeed in our national schools, as the Minister is well aware. The standard is very high and our children compare very well with children in England or France.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

The Senator has only one minute left to conclude.

Mr. Dolan

Was there a time limit?

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Yes, 20 minutes on the motion. The Senator has another minute to conclude.

Mr. Dolan

I would not like to overstay my time knowing that the Minister would like to get in. I will conclude by asking him to bear in mind the few points I made, I could have elaborated on other facets of adult education, which I feel are very important, but in view of what the Chair has said I will not delay the House any longer.

Mr. O'Toole

Ba mhaith liomsa fáilte a chur roimh an tuarascál seo chomh maith. This report on adult education will prove invaluable as a basis for discussion of the needs and structures of adult education in the future. There is one criticism I should like to make about the format of the document. I hate criticising a document of such importance but it is very repetitive in its outline and, as is inevitable in all types of educational documents, there is a great deal of jargon.

Notwithstanding all this, the document should play a big part in the future development of adult education. Up to now we have been wallowing in uncertainty, not knowing where we were going. We treated adult education in a very piecemeal fashion. Any success that has been achieved was achieved through ignorance. The normal process is that there is experimentation first and from experimentation there is progress. One must realise that in matters of education one is dealing with human beings. Experimentation cannot be carried on indefinitely. A halt must be called at some stage. We are not dealing with inanimate objects. We should decide on a definite policy.

A report by the NIEC says that the educational system is a mechanism by which one generation transmits to the next the basic elements of the ever-increasing fund of human knowledge. When one considers that, one must realise that the system must embrace all aspects of education, and all people engaged in education. No report on education can be final or definitive. By its very nature education is an on-going thing and for that reason there must be a certain amount of experimentation. However, as I said, experimentation must not go on indefinitely.

Adult education is defined in the first chapter of the report as follows:

The provision and utilisation of facilities whereby those who are no longer participants in the full-time school system may learn whatever they need to learn at any period of their lives.

That definition could hardly be wider. The report then goes on to examine the concept of adult education from a wide variety of standpoints. The key word in the definition, to my mind, is the word "need". There are individuals who feel the need for further education. There are also the so-called enlightened individuals who feel that there is a need for mass adult education. The irony here is that the people who need it most think they do not need it at all. There is then a rather strange situation: those who need adult education are indifferent to education in general.

The role, as set out by the report, for a system of adult education is very ambitious. Because of being so ambitious, it proposes a radical change in many aspects of education. If it is to be successful it also presupposes a certain radical change in public attitudes to adult education.

Business suspended at 5.15 p.m. and resumed at 7 p.m.

Mr. O'Toole

Prior to the suspension of Business I was about to refer to a very important feature of the analysis of the Report on Adult Education. It is the idea of life-long education as opposed to packing education into a comparatively short period of one's life, specifically the formal schooling years. We have accepted for generations this idea of formal schooling and then terminating education. It has never been seriously questioned. It is time to question the wisdom of such a policy now. This was referred to as far back as 1918 in the Fisher Act in England and in 1947 in the INTO plan for education. I quote:

For there are some subjects which cannot be studied properly or with full profit until the student has had some experience of life and until the mental powers are fully developed. This is true, for instance, of the finer and nobler aspects of history, literature, art, economics and politics which are beyond the grasp of young people in their teens and which appeal to the adult in a way in which they can never appeal to the adolescent.

The adult, unlike the adolescent, has had experience of life and knows something of its problems and complexities.

This is not a new idea but it is an idea to which we should give some serious consideration. Indeed the most radical feature of the report would be the social consequences of the acceptance of the idea of permanent education.

The section of the report dealing with resources points out, and I think rightly so, that the physical resources at our disposal have not been used to the fullest extent that they might have been in the past, but the main resource to anybody interested in this subject is the person himself or herself. The involvement of a person in adult education is two-fold. The person is there as a learner and as an educator in his own right. He encourages and entices people to participate in the system if he himself takes the trouble to participate in it. The other main aspect of this idea would be the lack of trained personnel in this field from which we suffer at the moment.

There is a great need for guidance. There is a need for an overall structure which would take in the existing structure. Up to now we have, I would say, three main agencies concerned with adult education—the universities, in the form of university education and in the form of extra-mural courses; the vocational education committees all over the country; and, in particular, the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries through their agricultural committees. I should here like to voice a certain criticism of the involvement of the universities in the past. They have not played their part to the full in providing for the hinterland in which they are situated the service which they could give the people. As Senator Dolan has already said, the university up to now has been the realm of the rich and the poorer man's child did not enter its doors. This has been regrettable. Senator Dolan mentioned national teachers. They in the past because of some archaic law failed to gain the status of a graduate on the termination of their national teacher training course. This now has been rectified—not, I am sad to say, by a national teacher, who when he was Minister felt that this was not possible, but by a secondary teacher.

The community schools' idea would be a great help in the structure of adult education. However, I feel that the difficulty of having them established and the fact that there would be too few when they are established would mean that they would not cater for the full needs in this area. The recommendation concerned with the feasibility of the "Open University" is a good one and it should be given some serious thought.

Chapter 3 is the main part of the report and sets out the terms of reference, namely, to report on the needs of the community in the matter of adult education. There is an admission that there is a need but there is also an admission that there is a reluctance on the part of many people to express that need. This brings us to one major difficulty. This is the idea of motivation. What motivates a person to seek further education in adult life? What motivates a tired housewife to go to a night school or a tired husband, having spent his day on the farm, or in the office, to take up a book or to go to a class in furtherance of his education?

A more serious problem would be the problem created by those people who are termed functional illiterates. These are people who have failed to make the grade in the formal system. Consequently they have now reached the stage where no inducement in the world will entice them into a system where they have already failed. This is something which must be faced squarely. Some way to get around it must be found. I am afraid that the Report on Adult Education is of very little assistance to us here. It has pinpointed the problem but it has failed to give any solution.

The problem will become more serious with the advance of technology. Affluence, a higher standard of living and shorter working periods will all tend to give the individual greater leisure time. The idea of leisure time brings with it the problem of how that leisure time is to be spent. Unless this country, and indeed, western Europe, faces the fact that we must structure a system of education whereby people in the future—and not in the too distant future either—can spend their leisure time in a worthwhile way, society will suffer as a result of our indifference to this problem.

The mental process is an evolving thing. It must keep pace with our own standards of living, and with developments in the environment and technology. In-service training—which is an in-thing at the moment, if Senators will excuse the pun—goes some way towards solving the problem. We all know that the professions in general are now demanding that in-service training should be done in their working time. That still leaves the problem of leisure time and how to spend it. I am all in favour of professions demanding that in-service training should be taken up during their working hours. This to me is part of their work. It makes them more efficient. Any money spent on in-service training is money well spent. To expect any person to take his work home with him is to expect a certain amount of idealism and enthusiasm. Some people have it, others have not. In general the demand exists for in-service training during working hours.

The most important aspect of this report is the fact that it aims at an integrated system of education. Indeed the committee have gone outside their terms of reference in this because they found themselves in a position where they had to recommend a system that included pre-primary, primary, post-primary and third-level education. This brought them outside their terms of reference but they could not have suggested an integrated system without doing that. The recommendation that a separate section within the Department should be set up to cater for adult education is a very worthwhile idea. In addition the idea that a co-ordinating committee should be established to bring together all the agencies involved in this field is also a very worthwhile one.

The report also recommends a radical structural change in our existing set-up. It mentions county educational committees, regional committees and so on. We are aware of the difficulties involved. Changes in the managerial system and in the vocational education system are being proposed. There is a reluctance on the part of some people to accept these changes, so there may be difficulty in having those recommendations brought to fruition.

An Cathaoirleach

I should like to intervene to tell the Senator there are three minutes remaining in which he may speak.

Mr. O'Toole

The recommendations are worthwhile. There is a price tag on all this. On page 135 of the report it states that the gross cost of the recommendations is £6,635,000 while the net cost of the recommendations for 1972-73 in actual expenditure was £4,179,000.

The recommendations as a whole cannot be implemented. It would be foolish for any Minister, even if he could obtain the money, to try to implement those recommendations in toto. Education is an evolving matter. We must proceed slowly. The only recommendation I wish to make is that any steps which might be taken as a result of this report should be in the right direction.

Dr. Martin

I would agree with everything stated by Senator O'Toole with the exception of his last remarks when he said that the expenditure of approximately £5 million in this direction would be inordinate. Much more should be expended. The first point I wish to make is that if a programme of adult education is undertaken it should be a genuine programme in response to a genuinely perceived need. It should be radical, honest and effective. It should be wide-ranging and have long-term vision behind it. One of the worthwhile things which has come to me out of the EEC is a report they have published called Permanent Education in its English translation, subtitled “Fundamentals of an Integrated Educational Policy”. It was published by the Council of Europe at Strasbourg in October, 1971. This is not only one of the best things they have produced, but it is in its condensed form one of the finest documents on education I have come across. It contains a philosophy of permanent education which at times seems to surface in this Report on Adult Education, but which, by and large, does not seem to have been properly grasped by those who framed the report.

It is easy to criticise those who have worked hard on this report. That is not my purpose. I do not wish to engage in a critique of that report as such, though I intend everything I say as relevant to it. I might take as my point of departure the remarks made by Senators O'Toole and Dolan in the animadversions they have cast on the university role in this matter.

I am competent to speak on this in the sense I have for the past eight years organised extra-mural courses in University College, Dublin, which has the most extensive extra-mural programme of any university in these islands. I know its limitations and its achievements. The limitation relevant to this is the fact that anybody who comes to that course is not, strictly speaking, a subject for adult education or for what the Council of Europe calls "permanent education". The people who attend these courses already can assess their needs. They know what they want, whether it be a course in literature, old silver, antiques, or animal psychology. They recognise the need and can follow it through.

That is not what adult education is about or what permanent education is about. I should like to suggest that the universities, as they are at present, are no more geared to deal with this radical concept of adult education than any other educational agency in this country. Adult education involves a kind of teaching which few people here can give at present. There are some establishments, such as the Mater Dei Institute, which has a good deal of experience. There is the Institute of Adult Education in Dublin. It must be recognised that the education of an adult is a radically different affair from the education of a child. The basic principle which separates the two methods of education is that when educating a young person he is already accepting a structure of authority and a structure of information and knowledge handed down. It is easy enough to get him to assent to and acquiesce in that process.

The education of an adult is totally different. It has to be a shared experience. To this end the co-operation of the person being educated must be secured at every stage. One of the worst aspects of the few probes we have made into this field has been the giving of diplomas or the setting of examinations at the end. It is recognised in this document that that is the wrong approach to adult education. What has to be achieved in terms of adult education is a coming together of the teacher and the student so that assessment, ultimately, becomes a joint consideration, where the two views gradually coalesce and where the person being educated can perceive his lacks, can assess himself, see the teacher's assessment, see the gap between them and then work towards the closing of that gap. This is a radically different concept from the kind of piecemeal adult education sorties we have been making in recent years. I have been disappointed during this debate by the fact that so few people have grappled with this primary concern.

There is no hope of doing more than touching the tip of the iceberg in the few minutes at my disposal. There are two aspects to it. There is the aspect of functional illiteracy, which was referred to by Senator Horgan. He spoke about the confusion and humiliation of an itinerant woman in a shopping centre who cannot distinguish between baby foods because she cannot read. There is the humiliation of a working-class mother who cannot fill out a form. That is a remedial situation. That points to a defect in the existing system, not a defect on the part of the teachers. One is not reflecting on them. It is a reflection on the system. That calls for one kind of adult education, that is, a distress situation or a remedial situation—a situation where one has to teach people the basic tools of living, like literacy on the one hand, and numeracy on the other.

This should not be underrated. It is of extreme importance. It will involve an extraordinary amount of tact in finding out the people who can benefit and, having discovered them, getting them to come forward. There is also the problem of finding remedial teachers adequate to teach them. This is a distress area. It is an area which has to be adverted to, but it is not adult education. That is stopping the gaps where education has to that extent failed.

I am not a great fan of the EEC but I have to recognise that this report is one of the most humane and profound documents I know of. The European concept of adult education would be that the person, not just from his school age but from his preschool age, should be given a notion of education as a permanent on-going activity. It would mean, if children have a working mother, that somebody would come in and look after them so that they would not be deprived, even at that early stage, in their education. It would mean that when the child went to school he would get that kind of education; and even if he leaves school after his primary certificate, that he would already be prepared to come back into the system from his trade constantly to be re-educated.

It recognises that within our society, which is highly technological and which involves the alienation of the individual from society, a boy can be apprenticed at the age of 12— a monstrous thing, far too early specialisation—and that at the age of 12 he might become highly skilled as a joiner or some kind of craftsman. It would be possible for him, side by side with that task, to constantly come back into the educational system to be educated in areas like drama, painting, poetry, all the inspirational activities to which this report pays very scant attention, in other words, the enrichment of his mind and of his imagination.

The notion of permanent education here involves from the very moment that a child goes to school that his whole life has open to it an access to education, a constant sortie and return. That is a radical concept, and if we are to talk about adult education we will have to think in these terms. We have to think in terms of large price tags. In other words, there seem to be two things involved in this report. The distinction I subscribe to is that, on the one hand, there is training and that is what teaches a man his trade, his vocation, and teaches him to earn his living. There is the other thing which is called education, which has very little to do with that. This report, strangely enough, goes back to Newman's old idea of a liberal education and makes the point that, if you can educate a man widely at the beginning, you can train him to do anything afterwards, and that you have the wrong end of the stick if you decide to put him in for specialisation at a very early stage.

In our context a number of distinctions, recommendations and recognitions might be made. Within the whole area of our lives, we have at the moment an enormous pool of expertise already there which is not properly channelled. For instance, we have—I give this only as an instance—probably the most thriving amateur dramatic movement in Western Europe. Every town in Ireland have got this. What is happening there is that people are doing a job, and the job itself is not primarily fulfilling, so they go out and produce a play. They get together, they work, they achieve all this kind of companionship which is so hard to achieve in the modern world. One of the points this report makes is that we are people who are put coldly at the centre of things. We watch television. We imagine we know everything. People talk to us; but nobody listens to us. That is the condition of western man in our time. This report is profoundly relevant in a humanistic way to that. Where do we find people to listen to us?

We heard a lot of talk about the fact that people go to public houses now and that too many people are drinking. I suspect that one of the motivations behind that is that they go out from the television sets and they want to meet somebody. They want to involve themselves in the community. Adult education is concerned with that and, to return to this question of the amateur dramatic movement, I would see as one function of this—and I propose it very strongly to the Minister and I am sure will at least be sympathetic towards it and he may even be convinced—that it would be a marvellous thing if our National Theatre, for instance, made it possible for all these enthusiastic men around the country engaged in drama to come to the Abbey Theatre, an expanded area, and go back with increased skills, not just in how to produce a play, but in the whole theory of drama and dramaturgy and the whole history of drama. That is just one area. I give it as an example. The National Museum, the National Gallery, the National Library—all of these could also function within that kind of area.

In other words what is needed is a large over-arching system which will ensure for the individual the minute he goes to school that, even when he leaves school, the possibilities of assessing his own needs are there; that guidance with regard to his own needs is there; that a means by which he can lay a hold on his own destiny, becomes a master of himself as an individual, are there. That is, in fact, what adult education is about. I would argue further that that brilliant report, the Lynch Report some years ago, about investment in education is an extremely impressive report but it suffers from one serious flaw in the sense that the very phrase itself "investment in education" suggests that education is concerned with the marshalling of the individual towards the needs of society. I would argue that adult education is not concerned with that. It is concerned with the individual himself. I am not even sure that the needs of the individual, and the present needs of society, are always reconcilable; but I am convinced that if you have richly cultured and alert individuals within society, society itself may become more turbulent but it will become infinitely enriched.

Therefore I should like to say one or two things of a practical nature. First of all there is a great deal of research available on this, and this research does not appear in the report. There is no bibliography in this report. About ten pages are devoted to various county councils that were consulted but there is no bibliography, and that is a very big defect in the report. In fact, this one document on permanent education, and the whole body of research that has gone into that in Europe, I suggest to the Minister, should be canvassed, sifted and brought into collaboration with the report before him, a report which has many virtues but which also has many lacks.

As a practical consideration, I would put forward, too, that at this moment there is redundancy in the secondary school area with regard to the employment of teachers. Our higher diploma in education is totally geared towards the production of people who can teach students in the secondary schools. Would it not be an idea if we could get the right kind of personnel who would offer instead of that, as an option or as an extra, a diploma in adult education, so that the kind of person who goes to teach adults knows what the job is about.

Even in Dublin as it stands at the moment and, I am sure, in the Senator Higgins's city and Senator Quinlan's city most of this work is being done by tired secondary or vocational teachers. Having done their job they go to teach adults in the evening, a job for which they have no training. I should like the Minister to put his hand on his heart and say how many trained teachers of adults have we in this country at the moment. If we have not got them, we have to find them quickly. There is no use in producing a kind of window-dressing response to this report or to the unexpressed demand underneath this report. One has to go radically about this matter and see that this is a need within our society that has to be met and, if we are not going to meet it now, let us not pretend that we are meeting it by any kind of window-dressing exercise.

That is one suggestion: the suggestion of the higher diploma level and the whole question of teachers for adult education. Added to that, I would suggest that it would be marvellously effective to look around in society for people who, in their particular jobs at the moment, have an overwhelming desire to come and engage themselves in adult education. These may not be people with even university entrance requirements but I think some means should be open to them if they feel that as a vocation. Many of the people who produce plays and who run dramatic societies all over the country are responding to a charismatic urge to do this sort of thing, and the universities should be asked to respond to this. Mechanisms should be devised by which they would get through qualifying examinations in order to enter into this. This is another aspect of it. The notion of adult education being carried out by sort of moonlighting university teachers, or secondary teachers, or vocational teachers, is totally alien to the whole concept behind this report to which I refer in such flattering and at this stage, rather monotonously regular terms.

The final point I want to make is that, if you want to find a place where there is a fund of goodwill in this area, I would think of the secondary religious schools. I do not want to knock any other institutions but secondary religious teachers and various orders deserve far better from us than we have ever acknowledged. Many of us would not be here if it were not for their sacrifices. Why I mention them is because those schools are there and functioning 24 hours a day for the students. They are inhabited all day. Unlike other schools, you can see the headmaster or headmistress there in the middle of summer, late at night, any time you wish, the kind of thing you very rarely get in lay schools where the lock is turned on the door at a certain stage and understandably so. I would suggest that there is an area of goodwill there and also an area where there is a certain ongoing involvement in this kind of adult education. The Minister has asked these schools to come forward and to make propositions, and he has suggested that funds will be available. That is an offer that has yet to be tested. I am sure it is offered in the very best of faith and that it will be honoured. It seems to me that, if we have to make small beginnings, there would be one of the areas where we might undertake experimentation.

This report is, within its limitations, a good report. I find it rather repetitative. I regret the lack of a bibliography. I regret the lack of a proper and firm definition of what adult education is. I regret the fact that it does not echo the findings of the European equivalence, particularly in this document on permanent education. It certainly is a good starting point. I would urge the Minister very strongly to look deeply into this and because he is a humane, cultured and sincere man, I would like him to call upon more research and ensure that, when he undertakes a programme of adult education, it will involve what adult education really is, a means of constantly rehumanising man, constantly making education relevant to a situation, constantly developing a situation where the educational process continues from the moment of birth until the moment of death. That is what permanent education is.

If we are embarking on that, let us embark on it honestly and strenuously. If we are talking about expenditure and price tags, this has to do with people. It has to do with humanity. It has to do with an era in our civilisation when people are subject to extraordinary alienation and loneliness and humiliation because of the rigidity of social structures and, indeed, educational structures. It seems to me to be one of the most profound needs in modern society and it seems to be a need which Ireland, alone probably among the countries of Europe, is in a position to meet, because we are small, we have not an enormous population, nobody is too remote, the structures are already there in voluntary organisations and we still have a good, strong residual Christian humanism upon which we can build a programme of this kind.

Mr. M.D. Higgins

I am grateful that the Minister will comment on this motion after I have spoken. I am also very grateful to Senators who have spoken on this motion which appeared in my name and that of Senator Horgan. I should like to assure the House, in view of a point raised when this motion was first taken, that Senator Horgan had my permission to move the motion. Indeed, more than that, I very strongly urged that the motion be taken as early as possible. I am very glad that the motion has been debated for a number of reasons. We have six very fine contributions from Senators Horgan, Robinson, Brosnahan, Dolan, O'Toole and Martin. The Minister, even though he has a busy schedule, has decided to be present. He is extremely welcome.

The Murphy Report on Adult Education in Ireland is extremely important for a number of reasons. Not alone does it relate to adult education but some of the issues it raises are general to education. For example, at the outset the report runs into difficulty in defining adult education itself. It devotes one chapter to the question: What is adult education? Here the issue is extremely clear. Should education be defined in a utilitarian sense, or should it be defined in a critical sense? To put it more bluntly, should the purpose of education be a utilitarian one to make individuals useful in society, or should the whole educational endeavour be geared towards developing within the individual sufficient ability critically to relate himself to the forces and constraints on his living and his development in society? That is the first reason why the report is important. It raises these issues, which as I say, are not specific to adult education but need to be faced in any evaluation of our educational policy at present.

The report is important in another respect, a rather minor one. In adult education we have had a number of different agencies operating on several different assumptions and premises. It is necessary to evaluate what they were all at, and to find out if we want to have a policy on adult education. There are other reasons why I put down this motion, and why I am glad it is being debated. There is the issue, for example, of the extent of poverty in our society and the role which adult education may play in breaking the extension of the vicious recycling of poverty attitudes in our society. This is adverted to in the report on pages 123 and 124.

I should like to make a point so that the House will know why I put down this motion. I participated in adult education endeavours as a teacher in six counties. In Sligo, Kilrush, Ennis, Shannon, Claremorris, Ballina, Ballinamore, Carrick-on-Shannon, Roscommon, Strokestown, Galway and Carraroe, they had two-year courses run by University College, Galway, and in which the university participated and in which I myself participated. I am also a member of the board of extra-mural studies of University College, Galway, and an examiner for these courses.

To come back to my first point about the necessity of defining what we are at in adult education, my own reaction when participating in adult education is that any paternalistic approach to education is absolutely hopeless. Where we have succeeded best, that is where people have come back to us and said that the courses have meant something to them in their lives, has been where we have structured the courses according to the second criterion I suggested, that is, of having a critical approach to education, so that a man may be freed from the constraints of his environment, may be able to debunk the dominant mythologies which surround him, may be able to defeat the bureaucracy which gets more complex every day. Therefore, when I am speaking about adult education, and the motivation which urged me to put forward this motion, I am speaking about education in this critical sense. I am not speaking, with respect to one of the speakers, about courses which are simply taken out of the universities in minute areas and brought travelling around the country.

As I said, six Senators have spoken on this report. I should like to refer to their speeches and it is my pleasure to do so. The report has been commented on three times at least, to my knowledge, in The Education Times. The first was on 14th February in an article by Nigel Melville. Here, in fact, the report was praised. In that article it was compared with the equivalent report in Britain, the report by Sir Lionel Russell. Here again, while the report was welcomed as being idealistic and ambitious, it was said that it was not as dull as the Russell Report in the brevity of its recommendations but Melville, in commenting on the report, adverted to the point I made earlier about the paternalism of the report. For example he says here:

More than that one wonders who will decide what sort of service will be provided. There are notes of paternalism here and there. Only once, and in a passing comment at that, is it suggested that the adult student has the insight or the right to shape his own education.

Yet the same section of the report talks of local community leaders being identified, trained and supported without saying who is going to do this for the local community and, at a later passage, it criticises an older generation of educational planners for not consulting students. Yet it goes on to limit the students' role today to realising that a gap exists between their present standard of knowledge and skills and what is possible to them.

What I am worried about in regard to the report is something similar to that. I do not like the idea of adult education being conceived of, first of all, as a panacea which will rescue us in any sense from the modern industrial age. It is not. The Industrial Age requires its own solution. The problem of the kind of society we have at present needs to be changed at a level quite different and separate from that of education. It is true that the kind of society in any one time is sustained by the values which are prevalent in society and that these are communicated through the education system. Therefore, if we are to begin, let us realise first of all that anything we do will be limited in its effect, but if it is to have the maximum effect it will be to ensure that the greatest possible number of adults in our society will develop within themselves a critical reaction to what surrounds them. This is important at present if people are to see the barbaric impact of terror and violence in their society, be it in violence of any kind. I refer equally and even with greater emphasis to the violence of capital as to the violence of the gun. We have a disgraceful society because we have ethics which sustain disgrace.

Senator Horgan listed particular questions on which he thought the Minister might like to comment. He mentioned—I do not want to be repetitive as people can read the record—that the report was particularly valuable in highlighting the low rate of participation in education in Ireland. Here Senator Horgan was quoting liberally from Investment in Education and the Scully Report. He instanced functional illiteracy and gave the poignant case of a young itinerant woman who could not even read what the packaging said on tins of baby food. He mentioned also the weakness of the report and I agree with him on this. He said that there was no scientific charting of the extent of functional illiteracy. Once again to be consistent with my previous comment, I question this whole usage of the term functional illiteracy. If we mean by functional illiteracy making working-class people useful by middle-class norms, I say you can have as much of your adult education as you like, but I do not want it.

Functional illiteracy is a most dangerous and very badly specified and dangerously used piece of sociological jargon. While I am at it, I might say that this is one of the most serious criticisms of the report. It is a valuable report and makes many recommendations. Many Senators have referred to its valuable points, but they have also referred to its defects. One of these is the tortuous language of the report. The fact that the language is like that is not an accident. The people who served on the committee did their job very well but they were, to some extent, unwilling to face up to certain basic facts in our society. There is, for example, a reference in the report to Alvin Toffler and his very popular work Future Shock. Indeed, it is suggested in the report that what we are suffering from is a state of shock. Individuals nowadays are no longer able to face the future. Instead of capability being a criteria as in the past, now “copability” is the challenge.

With respect, I want to suggest that Alvin Toffler's analysis of society was a very dangerous and tricky attempt to avoid facing up to the basic savage structural features of our society. What he is trying to do in his work, and what the report unfortunately follows, is an attempt to reduce sociological facts to psychological factors. In other words, if you bewilder people by systematically depriving them through structures which create inequality, you suddenly explain the inequality on the basis of their bewilderment. Toffler's work is psychological reductionism at its worst, and it is unfortunate that so much language in the report should be derived from such dubious sociological sources.

Senator Robinson rightly made reference in her speech to the fact that we needed to expand the range of adult education services so that more women would participate in society. Here I found a dangerous utilitarianism even in Senator Robinson's speech. She wants women to be useful, to be continually useful all their lives. Senator Brosnahan rightly pointed out some developments which were taking place of which he was aware at the level of the media, and Senator Dolan in a human fashion made a case for those who had been kept out of the mainstream of third level education.

Senator O'Toole made a very interesting remark when he pointed out that the most radical aspect of the report is, in fact, in the consequences of it. Let us be perfectly clear. Let us suppose you did what I have suggested as the aim of adult education. Let us suppose that you, for example, created a situation in which thousands of adults who had not participated in the formal levels of education up to now, suddenly became critical in society. What would happen? Here again I am indebted to points in The Educational Times to which some of us contributed. There it was pointed out that if you take on the role of community development, as the report suggests, and you have educated all these people, you cannot imagine that the community consists of one homogenous lump of people.

There are conservative people in the community. There are progressive people in the community. There are people who question it. You have thousands of critically aware people who may, in fact, question the society. I think it is right that they should do this to this society which has provided them with their courses. This is why I feel adult education, to some extent, is an extremely important exercise. It may be at this level of education, where adults have participated in this critical atmosphere, that it may fold back upon the other formal levels of education. We may see, for example, primary, secondary and third level education as coercive endeavours which tend to coerce expression and channel it rather than to stimulate its free expression. It may be that, when we speak about radical change and education being used as an agent towards radical change, when we speak about the establishment of egalitarian ethics in our society, of creating a just society, that we really begin at two ends. We begin by pointing out the barbarity of exploited ethics to the very young and we also expend our resources on adults so as critically to examine their particular situation and, by an interaction of the two, the education creates the basis for the new critical society which comes in the next generation.

We have to be perfectly clear about this. First you have to make up your mind, following what I have said, and following what has been said in the debate, and decide whether you want the pussyfooting kind of schemes which pushes towards the people any kind of entertainment masquerading as education, or whether you want to give them the genuine kind of education that I speak of. If you do, you must be prepared to accept its consequences. Senator O'Toole rightly adverts to this. We should do the latter and we should not spare the cost, or be afraid to face the consequences.

There is a singular little omission in the report to which I particularly want to refer, the deprivation of people in the Gaeltacht areas. For example, it has been pointed out that huge categories of the population have been deprived of education of any kind but the Gaeltacht areas have been particularly badly served.

People have been very critical of universities. I now wish to place on record my gratitude to Radio na Gaeltachta for providing a series of lectures two years ago. These were provided by University College, Galway; people listened to them and heard a full and adequate series of lectures. It was a good development but generally the Gaeltacht areas are badly served.

Finally, I should like to refer to these moonlighting lecturers which were mentioned by Senator Martin. I agree with him that when you have finished your day's work you are hardly in your best fettle for another day's work. Here the Minister will be able to help and this is one of the advantages of my speaking immediately before him. Earlier, I said that full adult education courses lasting two years—social action diploma courses—had been held in Sligo, Clare, Mayo, Leitrim, Roscommon and Galway, on average, in two or three centres. Every year that exercise took place because people came from the Social Science Research Centre and offered their services to go out at night after they had done their own research. People within University College, Galway, offered their services. In no year since we began this work four or five years ago did we know what budget we had. We established the courses with the assistance of the vocational education committees, the CDC committee, and the committee of development officers within the Department of Finance. We had minor contributions from our own university because it receives the lowest grants in terms of its needs. We, therefore, could not strain our internal resources, but in no year could we look forward and say: "We can offer courses here, there and everywhere", because we never knew where the money was coming from. This nightmare of uncertainty as regards the funding of adult education courses needs to be cleared up.

I want to thank the Members of the Seanad and the Minister for the opportunity of debating this important subject. I hope, now that we have made a beginning in debating the structures of adult education, we will go on to discuss our other educational motions. It is a great tribute to the industry of Senators that they have waited so late in the evening to discuss this important and sensitive subject.

I have welcomed the Minister here but I wish to congratulate the former Minister for Education, Senator Brian Lenihan, for actually establishing the committee. As Senator Robinson has already said, we would have benefited from hearing a speech by him on his reactions to the report now.

Minister for Education (Mr. R. Burke)

At the conclusion of my brief intervention earlier today, I said that I considered the present debate in Seanad Éireann to be particularly opportune because it enabled me, as Minister for Education, to have the views of Senators, particularly as they would have been given in advance of final decisions being made in relation to the drawing up of a future comprehensive programme in this area.

Adult education obviously is not new in this country. Many voluntary bodies and agencies have been engaged in it. Appendix B to the interim report contains a directory of such organisations. One of the recommendations of the final report is that Aontas should be given the task of publishing an annual directory of adult education services.

There are however additional considerations associated with the promotion of a greatly expanded programme of adult education in the context of changing circumstances and concepts, and a revised understanding of the place of education in community development. Attention is drawn to these new features in many parts of the report and in the documents and studies being made available from various educational and cultural bodies and from the international governmental organisations. It is in the circumstances to which I have referred that the views of groups and associations with practical experience in the field or those who may have made a particular study of the requirements related to their own needs that these are of vital importance. There is no question of a Minister sitting at a desk and drawing up a blue-print for an adult education programme. Formulation of such a programme would involve discussions with various interests: vocational education committees, school authorities, teachers, RTE, voluntary and statutory organisations, universities, et cetera. It would also have to be worked out within the resources which can be provided on a graduated scale in accordance with the provisions of a scheme of programme budgets, and in the context of the facilities which are, or may be made, available, and of the demand for services.

While I agree with the points made by many Senators, who mentioned large sums, we must be realistic in this matter, realising that the demand for expansion of the social services will, of necessity, given the limitation of the taxpayer's patience, mean that all we would wish in our wildest dreams to have for these purposes will not, unfortunately, be available.

The Committee on Adult Education took as a launching pad in its investigation a definition of adult education as follows:

The provision and utilisation of facilities, whereby those who are no longer participants in the fulltime school system, may learn whatever they need to learn at any period of their lives.

In this definition no distinction is drawn between formal and informal education, and the emphasis is placed on the process of adult education as serving the needs of people in every sphere of human development. It is also stated in the report that its primary concern was with education as it relates to those who had broken, for one reason or another with fulltime education. Adult education should clearly be considered within the context of the aim of the policy of educational opportunity for all. It may be conceded now, I think, that an undue optimism which prevailed during the 1960s as to the extent to which this could be achieved within the span of formal education has given way to a more sober estimate of the difficulties to be overcome. Sober estimates are always better, in my judgment.

This further reflection on the inherent difficulties of the situation inevitably brings into focus the part which adult education must and should play in the process. Fundamental considerations in this regard are mentioned in chapters 2 and 3 of the report: Resources and Needs, and the recommendations made merit very careful consideration.

I feel very strongly with Senator Higgins, who concluded, that reference was made to many bright people, like Toffler and others, who have given us their view of society. I am particularly taken by the pyramid structure here on page 60, based on A. H. Maslow's Motivation and Personality, New York, 1954, page 69, where the needs of society are based on a pyramid rising from physiological or survival needs, through safety needs, care and affection and belongingness needs to esteem needs and then the need for self-fulfilment. Then there is the statement that adult education, both formal and non-formal, can service each level in this hierarchy of needs. I must confess that I am not too clear where this gets us.

I would echo the opinion of Senator Higgins, that we should treat many of these outside observers and experts with a sober degree of the critical faculty with which we are advising our adult education dissidents to practice.

The committee have rightly laid great stress on adult education as an integral part of the general education system within the concept of permanent or recurrent education. In this regard, the recent Ministers for Education meeting under the auspices of the Council of Europe held in Berne last year, was interesting in that it chose as its subject for the next meeting in 1975 in Sweden the theme of permanent education. I hope to return to this matter later. It is stated that a system of permanent or life-long education enables the individual to avail himself of resources for learning and personal development recurrently, though not necessarily at consecutive periods throughout his lifetime.

The report considers that the launching of the community schools concept offered additional possibilities for the full implementation of all that is meant by permanent education. I welcome this commendation of the role of community school in this regard but I would not wish anyone to read into it the implication that only community schools should be considered as offering the necessary possibilities in this respect. In this regard I take Senator Martin's point about the secondary schools run by religious orders as offering possibilities. I, too, consider that the traditional secondary schools should be brought more into the picture in this regard than in the past and that the part traditionally played by the secondary schools run by vocational authorities should be further encouraged and expanded.

If in the past the voluntary secondary schools did not play the part in the general life of the whole community by way of provision of adult education classes and other activities which we may now sometimes feel they should have done, we might ask ourselves why this was so and whether the responsibility for any deficiency in this regard should be placed only at the door of the school authorities in question. What financial aid was available to them to enable them to undertake such additional functions? Were they approached officially and suggestions made to them as to how they might place their premises at the disposal of community groups for the purpose of community development programmes? If local groups sometimes approach the authorities of the schools for facilities of any kind, were any offers made in relation to meeting the additional costs which would arise in respect of heating, maintenance, insurance and so on?

These are aspects of any future development programme which need to be borne in mind in connection with the use of school premises for purposes not falling within the usual formal education programme. In mentioning these schools I am not forgetting, too, the primary schools run by our parochial communities in every part of the country. Already there is evidence in connection with applications being received for school building grants that the authorities of our voluntary secondary schools are planning for adult education programmes as a feature of their future service to the community.

Adult education can play a major role in bridging what is sometimes referred to as the generation gap between parents and children. Example is always a potent influence. The example of parents still participating in educational activities may exercise a great influence for good in young people. Senator Martin made the point that the frequency with which people go to our public houses may be simply an expression of their desire to get in touch with other people and to act as a community. I think he was right. On the other hand if the parents were to go to education classes rather than going to the other establishments, would there be an influence on the children of that particular family? If so, would it be different in kind and in result?

I would emphasise however that courses for adults should be suitably structured for their circumstances and needs. I agree with the point made in the course of the debate concerning the creative role which the student can play in adult education that he does not want a cultural handout and that he brings his own sensibilities, his own passions and his own politics to any system of adult education.

This reference to the particular characteristic of the adult student brings me to another point. In some instances parents may desire to have refresher courses of the formal education programme being pursued in school in order to enable them to understand and be of assistance to children with their homework. I do not, however, agree with statistical calculations sometimes presented that a certain percentage of the population are in need of further courses in education, on the simplistic basis that they left school some 20 or so years ago without a particular parchment to indicate a certain level of academic attainment. A great many of these people will subsequently, by way of their experience and development within the context of their work and opportunities, have passed and progressed intellectually far beyond others with supposedly higher certified attainment standards. The adult education courses to be provided should be suitable, flexible and acceptable. The success of any programme will be the measure of voluntary support for it.

I am not enamoured of the term "education for leisure". Education and work properly understood are leisure. Education is for life. We take advantage of any opportunity available to us to find enjoyment and satisfaction through educational pursuits. Education in this connection should cater for a wide range of diverse attitudes and future educational planning must take cognisance of such diversity. I have in mind in this respect such basic structures as library and museum facilities, sport, community centres, village halls, local arts and crafts, music and drama, in the same way adult education provision must form part of all our plans for community development, youth and recreational programmes.

This is not equivalent to saying that any activity which deserves public financial aid must somehow be brought within a definition of being educational or cultural. To act in this fashion is merely to create confusion in relation to the use of the words and already the word "cultural", in particular, has suffered too much in this respect. There will however almost always be a place for and the requirement of a suitable programme of adult education in connection with any worthwhile programme of community development. In general adult education should contribute to a useful employment of their time for both young and old.

It may be that the emphasis which it was necessary in the past to place on basic education and fundamental economic needs may give way to a concern to help our young people in particular to find their place in a changing society. We should seek to have our youth maturing into adulthood in an Ireland which will be technologically advanced while at the same time retaining a high sense of social values.

I anticipate a growing need and demand for adult education in the years ahead. Apart from the requirements deriving from changing circumstances generally, and in particular the complexities resulting from technological advance, the demand will grow with the increasing percentage staying on to complete secondary education. The following extract from the report of the committee is relevant in this connection:

The findings of the committee on the characteristics of those who participate in adult education activities in Ireland generally correspond with the results of research in other countries i.e. that the general characteristics of those who participate are:

21-45 year age group;

have at least two years of post-primary education;

are members of upper socioeconomic groups.

The following quotation from a report published by the Council of Europe Today and Tomorrow in European Adult Education makes the same point:

Investigations into the slow growth of popular response to adult education have, over the past 15 years, brought out the fact that this response diminishes sharply among those who have had only the minimum of initial education prescribed by law and who are usually to be found among unskilled and semi-skilled workers in later life.

It is further stated:

Generally speaking the recent and continuing trends in adult education are largely concerned with increasing its outreach to a much wider and more responsive proportion of the people, with altering the financial basis and legal framework so that adult education is more centrally situated in national educational systems and has a prestige consistent with the important tasks that lie before it, with making a response to the multiplicity of emerging social and cultural needs, with alterations in the curriculum, particularly to include work which corresponds with the economic needs of students, employers and governments.

It is in the context of the growing need for an expansion of the programme for adult education that I should desire to refer to the suggestion made during this debate by Senator Horgan originally that adult education should be made totally free for whomsoever it is provided. The recommendation is in such uncompromising terms that I feel that I should refer specifically to it even at this stage before final decisions have been made in relation to the lines on which the future programmes of adult education will be developed.

The first observation which I should like to make is that a programme of adult education costs money and that the money has to come from somewhere. There are expenses in connection with the provision of buildings, equipment, heat, light, maintenance, and so on and teachers have to be paid salaries in respect of their services. The education is being provided for adults and it is the adult population which in one way or another must provide the financial resources. I do not see anything wrong in principle in adults paying directly for a service provided for them whether that service is educational, cultural, commercial or something else, provided the charge is reasonable and the person is in a position to meet the charge.

There are also reasons of a more immediate and practical nature why payment of fees as appropriate in the case of adult education courses may not be dispensed with and that to do so would inevitably result in a contraction and not an expansion of the programme.

The sources of financial support for the existing programme of adult education—a reference was made to this by Senator O'Toole and others—are given at pages 57 to 59 and page 135 of the report of the committee. They include students, participants and community members' fees. The committee have also stated that the perception and value of adult education as outlined in chapter 1 of the report necessitates financial resources far beyond the present provision. In other words, we need to expand and not to contract the possible sources of revenue for future development. I am of course in full agreement with any proposal that the fees charged should be such as will not hamper the development of suitable courses in adult education for all sections of the community. In this regard however I include also those groups who can afford to pay the economic cost and for whom courses could not be provided on any other basis because of the limitation of total revenue available.

What we need to do is to exercise our intelligence and ingenuity in finding additional sources of revenue from all sources to enable us to mount a programme of expansion characterised by its flexibility and adaptable to the varying circumstances and not to interfere with the process of growth by restricting the range of sources of financial support. The local community should be very fully involved in the provision of the adult education service for the area. It is the people themselves who know best the type of programme they need and who are in the best position to evaluate the service provided. The flexibility required in the matter of the provision of services will be facilitated by an appropriate delegation of responsibility and by the promotion of co-operation between voluntary and statutory organisations. The programme brings together parents, teachers, school authorities and administrators in a spirit of enthusiasm and participation in a common endeavour.

The committee's terms of reference included a request to indicate the type of permanent organisation to be set up in order to serve the needs of the community in the matter of adult education. It sets out its conclusions at chapter 4 of the report. The committee however recommend inter alia regionalisation of the education system as a means of promoting a programme of adult education.

Senators are aware that prior to the presentation of the report to me in November, 1973, I had already initiated discussions in October, 1973, with representatives of the recognised educational associations on the proposal for regionalisation. I am at present giving consideration to the views put before me by the representatives of the associations during the discussions which took place and I am also having the matter examined in the light of the observations made at the annual general meetings of the teachers and managerial associations. I am hopeful that following further discussions it may be found feasible to arrive at agreement on new structures which would be the most appropriate to the needs of future expansion of the educational system and which would enable the best provisions to be made for both formal and informal courses of education. In this regard I note that Senator Horgan, in opening the debate, came down very strongly on the side of regions, rather than counties. I quote from him as he is reported in the Official Report at column 114 of volume 78 of the 10th May. 1974, when he said:

I know that county feeling is a very strong thing in this country and a very valuable thing in many respects but in terms of real decentralisation, in terms of creating regions which are big enough and important enough to stand up against central authority when necessary and to have the financial fire power to enable them to support creative and innovative experiments within their own areas we have to look beyond the county. We should really be thinking more in terms of regions or the counties tied in with them as much as possible. I feel that this heavy insistence on the county committees as the fundamental unit for educational administration is based on a misunderstanding of the whole principle of devolution and the whole principle of regionalisation.

I appreciate that the matter of the size of the unit to which devolution of authority can be made from the Department of Education might engage the attention of Senators at some point in the near future so that I might have opinions from them following on that given by Senator Horgan regarding the size of the unit which they might think would be the most suitable in the circumstances.

I am very grateful, indeed, to the Senators who have spoken here today and on the previous day for raising again for public discussion this matter of the adult education report. It would be difficult to do justice to the input of each Senator who has spoken and if I refer to some points it is not by way of showing any less regard for the contributions of other Senators. However I would like to say that, when Senators Dolan and O'Toole referred to the desirability of having a university degree for our primary teachers, I was glad to be able to intervene to say that this has now been brought to the point where, all going well, the products of our three-year course starting in September will emerge with a university degree. This is a matter which gives me personal satisfaction. I am grateful to all those in various positions of authority who responded so readily to my suggestion made in Wexford in April, 1973, that this was the direction in which our policy should develop.

I am particularly interested in Senator Martin's definition of adult education. He drew a distinction between the formal education of the young, the acceptance of the structure of authority, and what he suggested was the different approach to adult education where the individual would be more appreciative of his own needs and would make with his own teachers a common assessment of his needs and of their fulfilment. I agree in general terms with this, but I would see a gradual phasing of one into the other.

One of the points made very strongly at the Conference of European Ministers last June was that the senior cycle from, say, 16 years to 19—16 to 18 in this country up to now—would be regarded as the first stage in recurrent or permanent education. This is the trend of the future. It was in this context that I recently suggested a year which might be regarded as the initiation of this first stage of adult education in my suggestion of a certificate of general education.

I should like to refer to this briefly. I suggested that students at age, say, 15½ or 16½ years might be given a year between the completion of the intermediate certificate and the commencement of the senior cycle in which they might undertake personal development in the context of community service. The subjects which might be included in this year would be religious knowledge—theoretically studied but also in the context of service to the community—and an introduction to logic and philosophy. In this connection I should like to suggest to Senators that one should not draw back in fear and dread at the terms "logic" and "philosophy". Suitably structured programmes can be devised to be of benefit to pupils at that age. There is one quality more than any other which I should like our students to develop and that is the development of the critical faculty, already referred to by Senator Higgins, as an antidote or corrective to the outpouring of propaganda which they will have to face in the future, not only from politicians but from commercial advertisers and all kinds of people. I think it was Hemmingway who referred to an "in-built crap detector". If we can develop this critical faculty in our pupils, it will save them from many difficulties in future life and might even be a small measure of amelioration of the violent tendencies in our society.

In this connection I have also suggested that we might have a subject called "media criticism". I was pleased to see yesterday at Westport that the Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise agreed that this was a desirable subject. I have in mind here that pupils should be formally taught the problems, objectives and difficulties that beset those whose profession is the media, whether it be radio, television, or newspapers. I have seen in the Communications Centre classes brought out there and subjected to the task of making a news programme. It was enlightening to find that they had realised much more clearly after that exercise the difficulties involved in the work of the media.

I have also suggested that a subject called "Appreciation of Art and Music" might be included. I suggest that those who have characterised these proposals as educationally unsound are themselves admitting in public that they do not understand what education is about. I say this to all those who either rushed in at the beginning to make criticisms before they had seen the full text of my proposals, or those who still continue to suggest that our year for the certificate of general education is not educationally well-founded. If we want to orient our pupils towards participation and continued education for the rest of their lives, what better way to do it than to start at this age with a flexible programme of personal development and community service which will orient them towards the community on the one hand, and enable them to discover their own persons, feel more clearly their needs and initiate them into adulthood in a year which will be, as I put it when speaking to the TUI, free from the academic and technical treadmill? I intend to see, with the help of educational advisers, that in those schools —and some have already opted for this—who are willing to make what one headmaster called "a move towards the most fundamental idea that has yet surfaced in this country in regard to education" it will be introduced this year in selected schools on a pilot scheme basis so that perhaps its very success may entice others to follow.

I agree with Senator Higgins's statement on adult education. This particular input will also have a beneficial effect on the intermediate programme and the leaving certificate programme.

A section of the report deals with needs. I have already referred to the pyramid here. Although reference is made to the place of Christianity in this country in regard to education, I should like to put it more strongly than that. One of the greatest needs in modern society for our people is the Augustinian realisation that there is a need for deep religious conviction and practice. I see a place for that in any structure of adult education which we may evolve.

I wish to thank the various Senators who have spoken and to express the hope that in the not too distant future we may have the opportunity on a motion of a more general kind to pursue some of the thoughts I have expressed in response to this debate and that we will not regard my contribution here as the final word or as exhausting all the answers which might be given on this important question. I am glad to have had the opportunity of speaking to the Seanad and would be delighted to come back at any time to pursue this matter further.

May I again appeal that Senators might either make known to me, through debate or otherwise, what particular type of structure they suggest is most useful when we come to set up a formal structure for adult education? First of all, is it to be devolved from the Department? Is it to be a county or a region? What number of schools? What number of teachers? What percentage of population should be involved in this? I should like to consult with the Seanad on these matters and to receive either private or public recommendations in this important field.

Finally, may I say to those Senators whose particular points I have not answered that if they wish to raise them privately with me I will be delighted to express my views on any matter I have overlooked.

Question put and agreed to.

Mr. M.J. O'Higgins

In case we should appear to be establishing a precedent, we should regard the situation where the Minister concluded after the penultimate speaker as a tribute to the Minister and as evidence of the desire of the Seanad to hear him fully on this motion. I think we will agree that it was well worth hearing him and I merely mention this because I would not like from the point of view of the House, that we should be regarded as creating a precedent which should necessarily be followed in the future.

The Seanad adjourned at 8.45 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 5th June, 1974.