Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent)

I am delighted to welcome the Minister to the House. His Ministry is the most important, because without education we will make no progress. Last week I had a lengthy meeting with the president of DCU's students union in the course of which we discussed education, research, the way forward, teaching, fees and so on. Although we are talking about reform of the second level junior cycle today, rather then third level, I would contend that there is no difference. Education is right and good where it is about developing understanding. Knowledge and understanding are the same to a nine year old as they are to a 19 year old. The only difference is in the type of knowledge we present to them and where and how we present it. For the nine year old in primary school and the 19 year old in the hallowed halls of university, knowledge remains the same. We merely present it in a different way depending on the student's age.

Definitions of education are difficult, because education is about what happens from birth to death; it is a continuing process. If I were to sum it up in one word, it would be "energy". Most of what we do is about energy, how we harness that energy and what we do with it. Any discussion about education is essentially a discussion about human energy. Education is the unique pursuit of that individual energy in people. The job of education is to counteract inertia, torpor and apathy. The question is how one brings it about, the ways and means which allow, as Whitehead said, young people to learn to look up and look out. How to ignite that energy is the question. In the ever changing world in which we live, the question we face is how does education parallel that world, contend with it, counteract it and make it come alive. We may then ask whether mathematics, Mandarin Chinese or history is the answer. They are all the answer but also not the answer. The true answer is creativity and the real question is how can we define, capture, explore, develop and extract this great creativity and which disciplines of knowledge will allow us to do so.

My first suggestion is that the Minister make the arts - by which I refer to drama, music, poetry and visual arts - compulsory subjects within the new junior certificate cycle. It is the perfect opportunity to make the arts independent, with the same status, discipline, structure and profundity of knowledge that we give to mathematics and literature in the school curriculum. Second, having spent 22 years working in the department of communications in DCU, I am aware that orality, oracy and vocality - the ability to express the human instrument that is voice - are tantamount to education.

I know it is mentioned in the literacy and numeracy report, but orality, oracy and vocality could be the key to the combinations of knowledge. This is not just fresh learning, but fresh combinations of knowledge. It is a unique opportunity to make this an important, independent vocality and an important, independent subject. We are suffering from a glut of information. There is no such thing as information scarcity, yet it is not lack of information that keeps us at war, keeps people starving or keeps crime rates high.

George Bernard Shaw said 50 years ago that:

The average person today is about as credulous as was the average person in the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, people believed in the authority of their religion, no matter what. Today, we believe in the authority of our science, no matter what." We can counteract that in the new junior cycle with the idea of the arts. Seamus Heaney said "Bear with the present; what will be will be. The future is cloth waiting to be cut.

That is a template we might be able to use. I stand for the arts as counteracting torpor, lethargy, apathy and as counteracting the information glut that tends to take over our education system.