Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We want to change the current education standards. That is what this is all about. Senator Marie-Louise O'Donnell mentioned rote learning. Some things must be learned by heart but students do not have to memorise a prepared answer to an anticipated question. We have to learn multiplication tables, history dates and the significance of 1914 etc., and that is carried in a person's memory for ordinary discourse. I saw my now 19 year old child writing at speed so as to achieve a particular time for a prepared answer to an anticipated question for an exam. That is the kind of rote learning we are talking about that.