I join with other Members of the House in recommending this motion and I should like to pay a very special tribute to Senator Michael D. Higgins for his very fine opening address on the motion and the very fine evaluation he gave of the merits and qualities of the arts and the absolute obligation, necessity and compulsion on us to do more for the whole area of artistic endeavour, particularly at school level. I concur entirely with him that there is a need to formulate and firm up our art policy at school level. I go right down the road with the Senator in his evaluation of the various scales and sensitivities, of the humanising factors that have become very much part of the human being who has been exposed at school level to art in its many forms.
I also agree with Senator Mullooly in placing some of the blame on the current system for entry into third level education, that is, the points system, which demotes arts and artistic endeavour in the schools to a secondary role. When the pressure comes on, areas of academic achievement which are the ones rewarded by virtue of entry into third level education have to take precedence and will take precedence until such time as we elevate and raise the whole status of art in all its various forms. I compliment Senator Howlin on his very fine speech when seconding the motion.
The House owes a debt of gratitude to the people who have re-focused our attention on this very fine report which had largely lain dormant since its production and publication. Though it was published in 1979, the report is very current, topical and contemporary. The points contained therein are ones to which we have an obligation to address ourselves today, just as much as we needed to address ourselves to them back in 1979, because unfortunately the situation has not improved.
The opening chapter of the report gets the tone and the context of the debate very much in focus. The opening sentence says — and I think we would agree unanimously that it is an understatement — that art has been neglected in Irish education. We have, unfortunately, in Ireland an historical apathy towards the arts. When one looks at the areas of high achievement of the general public at amateur and professional levels outside the schools, one marvels at the high degree of skill and professionalism, the standards that have been achieved in drama, dance and music and in all the other areas of art. One wonders how this has happened without the necessary seed being sown at primary school level.
I said at the outset that there is an historical apathy among the Irish people. That is very unfortunate. If we go back to 1949, Professor Bodkin, in his report in Irish schools on the subject of art in Irish schools stated that in Irish schools the subject of art in either the historical or practical sense is neglected. In 1961 the story had not improved. In a report called: Design in Ireland by a group of Swedes, the indictment was that the Irish school child is visually and artistically among the under educated in Europe. In 1965 we find the report of the Council of Design giving the judgment that art as a whole had been gravely undervalued.
In 1976, Professor Jane Richards stated that the provision of arts for boys and the neglect of music for boys is an affront to educational standards.
Those are four very salutary statements. They are very valid in their general indictment of all of us collectively for the state of the arts in this country. There has been an abject neglect of art for its own sake and from a utilitarian point of view, instead of developing an economy of art, developing the talents, aptitudes, skills and creative ability that lie dormant in many of our young people, they do not get the chance to unearth those talents or to give them the necessary exposure.
The report is a very fine one. It is the first report of its kind that has set out to provide a comprehensive evaluation and analysis of the state of art at school level. It is the first report to gather together all the various pieces of evidence on the many facets of art and to form this evaluation. It goes through the various sectors, with particular emphasis on the primary school sector. I should like to focus attention on the situation in the primary schools because it is here that the seed is sown which germinates into the love or otherwise of art and where it is nurtured and cultivated. It is here that the child spends the longest sustained period of his educational career, a total of eight years.
If we are honest, we who came through the system pre-1971 all know that the only exposure we got to any type of artistic endeavour or achievement was in singing. It is only recently that art has been given any serious curricular place. There are, of course, difficulties. There are financial and physical difficulties. There are difficulties as regards rooms, resources, teachers with specialised training, who have the necessary skill, love and aptitude for the teaching of arts. It is something which cannot be switched on overnight. It is something we have got to apply and address ourselves to with greater vigour, commitment and determination.
We note with considerable satisfaction that in 1971 the new curriculum introduced for the first time arts, crafts, music, pottery, etc. in the primary schools. There has been a regular monitoring and analysis of the relative success or otherwise of this introduction to the curriculum. It is fairly and honestly acknowledged by the teachers themselves, and by the INTO who had been part and parcel of this evaluation, that many teachers openly admit they feel they lack the skills, knowledge and the resources to teach in this area. Many of them are untrained and do not have the aptitudes because such aptitudes were not called for, were not expected and were not in the system when these people were called to training.
The Association of Primary Teaching Sisters give a very honest assessment of the situation. I quote:
Teachers in general recognise the value of such crafts as cookery, needlework, knitting, crochet, embroidery, and these are usually well taught, but the less useful and more unuseful crafts, such as pottery, clay modelling, basketry, puppetry, weaving, textile decoration, block and screen printing etc., do not recommend themselves to the general run of teachers other than a few enthusiasts.
That is a very honest assessment of the situation. It is an acknowledgment that most people do not feel they have the necessary competence, training or skill to deal with the area.
If we are to address the problem in a forthright, successful fashion we are talking about the need to train people coming out at present in this area, to be conscious in recruiting people to the teaching profession that their aptitudes and skills in this area will have to be evaluated and taken into consideration and will have to be a considerable component in deeming a person suitable for the teaching profession. Above all, we will have to address the problem that there are many people, such as the sisters referred to, in this appraisal of their efforts and many people who feel that they need in-service training on a fairly sustained and concentrated basis. Painting, picture making, etc., are more in evidence but are not given the priority they deserve.
What happens is that when the pressure comes on timetabling in terms of resources, the "three Rs" always get and always have to precedence. The same thing happens with music, creative dance, movement and drama, etc. There is a need to build up an infrastructure of well trained teachers who will be able to apply themselves to these areas. There is also a need on the part of the authorities to give sympathetic timetabling to a place for art. The report states that:
Looking at the general time table structure in the average school one sees in fact that art when timetabled is usually timetabled on a Friday afternoon which is not the time when a student has the necessary enthusiasm or the ability or the likelihood of applying himself with full vigour to the subject.
The sad fact is highlighted in the report that we do not have the inspectorate structure. Inspectors are people to whom teachers look for guidance and advice. If there is not an inspectorate specifically trained for the area of art, it is not going to succeed. We have a very fine post-primary and third level inspectorate, but one cannot expect an inspector going around to the primary schools to be a jack-of-all trades in terms of confidence, particularly to advise people in relation to art and how art should be taught.
I would ask the Minister to try to recruit additional inspectors in this area and to give the teachers who have this inferiority complex in relation to their ability to teach art the necessary advice, encouragement and assistance in relation to their endeavours.
At post-primary level the story is no better. This is an area where many exciting things have happened over the past number of years. Post-primary education is an area that has shown itself to have a unique capacity to adapt. We have seen vocational schools take on academic subjects; we have seen secondary schools take on technical subjects; we have seen the intermediate and leaving certificates move into the area of vocational education; we have seen the development of the comprehensive school idea and the emergence of community schools with all their education philosophies which are designed to achieve the maximum level of interplay and interaction between the community and the school. Yet, for all these developments, which are considerable, page seven of the supplementary document attached to the report gives frightening statistics which I must admit I was not aware of. They are statistics which, in themselves, are an indictment of our level of commitment.
In 1983, 0.73 per cent of boys sat leaving certificate music; 3.68 per cent of girls sat leaving certificate music. In 1985, rather than improving, the situation had deteriorated: 2.9 per cent of students out of the total number who sat the leaving certificate took music as a subject therein.
I have to go along with Senator Cassidy on the point that if we are to nurture and cultivate a love of music in the schools, one way of doing this is by giving people the necessary instrumentation with which they can achieve musical skills and practice. In this day and age we are talking about the sum of £75 as a Government subsidy towards the setting up of a band, which is generally acknowledged to be in the region of £1,795 by way of total investment. The total amount of the grant given is little more than derisory.
In third level education much has been achieved and a lot of modification has taken place. I welcome in particular the restructuring of the National College of Art and Design. I know that one cannot switch overnight from a position of apathy to a position of achievement. I am aware that the Minister has the necessary interest in the arts to undertake the necesary input in this area to ensure that many of the prejudices will be broken down, that much of the apathy will be dissipated, and to ensure that the people will get the necessary encouragement. This is very easy to do nowadays as the technology is available, simple technology, videos, projects, slides. Even a newspaper is a work of art and it has many artistic evaluations.
In conclusion, I welcome the points raised by Senator Michael D. Higgins in relation to art, such as the development of communicative skills, interpretative skills and so on, the fact that every attempt to deal with the history of man reverts back to art, the fact that art can enrich and individualise and that, while a person might be alone, he need never be lonely as long as he can have recourse to the Arts; the fact that the artist in a community can be a reflective mirror and can enhance the image and self-esteem of it. It is time we moved art to the centre of the stage rather than having it peripheral, as it has been thus far.