Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will be very brief. I have argued that history should be a core subject and the retort was that one must make a decision as there are 21 subjects. I do not think anybody in this committee or in the real world would suggest that Chinese would be a core subject in Ireland. There is a range of subjects that one could whittle down into core subjects and secondary subjects for the junior certificate and then society would have to take a decision on which should be core subjects. The decision should be taken by society rather than the Department on where we want to go as a country in the future. The argument was whether one wants citizens or consumers. We have not had the debate, yet we are being forced by changes within the curriculum to accept that is what will happen anyway. The Minister must be asked to reflect again on the issue and to consider having a bigger range of core subjects for the junior certificate. My view is that the same should be true of the leaving certificate as well but that discussion is for another day. At the very least there should be a grounding across as broad a range of core subjects as possible and then one could dip in and out to give a flavour of different subjects so that one could encourage children to expand on their interests because they will have different options once they go to university.