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

The problem with examining English is that it is a core subject. Therefore, one cannot look at something that will have a higher standing in future in the junior certificate to see where the history syllabus or the teaching of history will be. I believe the Department representatives should reconsider that. There are problems with history in the junior cycle. There are problems in many subjects in the junior cycle and they have nothing to do with the teachers or pupils. They are to do with the fact that there is a pupil-teacher ratio which is increasing and there are fewer resources.

Even in this day and age not every school is computerised so cannot fully use the tools that are now available, whether Wikipedia or all of the original documentation that is online and can be interrogated. Major moves and investments have been made in this direction over the years but not on the scale required. If we want to build a society that is well grounded in education that should be done across a range of subjects rather than concentrate on three or four to the detriment of others. People have said of Ireland that it is great to see pupils who do the leaving certificate having a range of subjects and not concentrating on three or four or fewer subjects as happens in other jurisdictions. That stands the test of time. I am an advocate of a greater range and more core subjects. The core subjects in the past were history, geography, Irish, English and maths. Civics as it was in the past has disappeared but has come back in a different form and we ensure that people are healthy and fit. Without a healthy body one will not have a healthy mind. I urge the Department to reconsider this immediately before the damage is done because once we start this we will end up with the situation that exists in Britain and elsewhere that will take generations to undo because there will not be the people to teach the subject.

On another subject, Senator Mac Conghail mentioned schools offering history, and others have mentioned the difference between geography and history but one of the reasons is the alternative to history in the leaving certificate course. That choice is often made by management but if it is tied to French, for example, and French is a requirement for college, people are going to opt for that. In other cases it is not offered at all. My son is doing his junior certificate today and the other son is in fifth year and history is not even offered as a subject to him. I am lucky enough that I have encouraged him to take it and he is willing to do that but he has said that he will drop one of the other subjects that he is doing in school as a compromise. It is crazy in this day and age that in the school in question it is not offered in any of the three final years. It is the school that Senator Mac Conghail mentioned. It is sad and a bad reflection on the school. I am enthusiastic about history and can go on and on about it. I am not going to and I am not even going to tie it to the decade of centenaries. That is not why we need history now. We need it because it defines who we are and in future it will be more important as the world changes that we have our own identity and understand where that came from.