Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

No. I will start at primary level but I thank the Senator for that prompt. With the best wishes for the Irish language at heart, I wonder if the amount of time spent at primary level and the first part of secondary level on the language is part of what drives boys from a working class background from education? They spend ten years learning the language out of a book and never speak it. I was trying to make those points during the debate on the Údaras na Gaeltachta legislation because I feared the provision to remove the democratically elected people might damage the Gaeltacht but we lost that argument. However, we need the Gaeltacht in order that people will go there to speak the language.

Repeatedly learning a language from a book and never speaking it seems bizarre. Does that do the Irish language much good? Does it alienate young boys in urban areas from the education system? We have to address that, as the Minister has addressed many of the traditional problems in Irish education in what he is doing today.

Roddy Doyle could not write in Irish and, if he had, the Irish language perfectionist would have corrected virtually every second sentence. I do not know what such a book would have looked like - a bowdlerised version of Roddy Doyle's book. We need Wayne Rooney Irish and Roddy Doyle Irish, by which I mean that it would be spoken. The space we blocked out of Irish education to make a failed attempt to revive the Irish language did not help the language much. In the 1920s there was a science subject, rural science and nature study, and some languages. Research tells us that a good time to start to learn languages is when young people are at primary school. We should include that in our remit.

I have heard the Minister speak in public and I agree there is a lot that is very good about Irish primary education but it does not mean that one would not examine the issue of the overwhelming amount of time spent teaching the Irish language and that being at the cost of what happened in 1920s, namely, the removal of a science subject of a kind for that era and removing a language subject.

We face a number of problems, which we have all discussed. There is the mathematics problem, to which the Minister repeatedly alluded in his speech. Some figures from the Royal Irish Academy indicate that up to 80% of mathematics teachers feel they lack the necessary qualifications and, at primary level, they are lacking in confidence. This is a case of úll agus úll eile, but if people feel they are lacking in confidence and they have not been prepared properly to teach that subject, that is a problem.

Another problem is that of foreign languages. The Minister's proposals to integrate teacher training into the full university experience would be very good for teachers. They would take the full subjects and meet the range of people from all the other disciplines, their fellow students. Teaching is the most important thing we can do for the next generation and one might ask why we would educate teachers away from the context they need with all the other students. The Minister's move to put that training on campus is extremely worthwhile.

The Finland experience is that a master's degree is the normal qualification for a subject one teaches in school. I fully agree with the Minister that children in school are that important - much more important than some of the business careers which brought the country into the current state of disarray it is in.

I express the hope that a distance does not develop between the authors of the report and the people they are sincerely trying to help. For instance, in the first three pages of the report, there is a reference to the acronyms NCCA, SEC, DES, PLU, CPD and NFQ. Could English be introduced in this context? I have a concern that people in education are losing the emphasis on the classroom and the best relationship of all, namely, that between the teacher and the student.

There is an outburst of such use of acronyms in the first three pages. Moreover, on page 13, the acronyms CSPE, SPHE and NCCA appear, while there is another a lot of them on page 14, including L2LP. If one is trying to interest the people the Minister mentioned in all of this, namely, 14 year old males, one should not drive them out unintentionally by speaking a language that no one except the specialists could understand.

In the time allocated to me, I wish to raise one further concern raised by those who will be directly affected, namely, some of the students. They have approached me to indicate their preference to be assessed independently, rather than by teacher X, who may have had it in for the students ever since they came into the school. While I obviously cannot comment, if one speaks to 14 year olds, as the Minister does, this sentiment exists. They may believe it preferable not to have school assessment because, for whatever reason, the students have never managed to get on with teacher X and are afraid the teacher in question will bring this into the students' assessment. Consequently, the students would prefer to have it done by the Department of Education and Skills in Athlone on an impersonal basis. Perhaps this is part of that tradition about which several Senators have spoken, that is, clientelism in Irish life. Perhaps this is reverse clientelism, whereby one believes there are some human relationships in education that have failed and which will rebound to one's disadvantage, were this proposed system to bring about change.

We must address the issue concerning working-class boys in the city areas and I would put Irish down as one of the problems. As to how to get them to remain, the model I have in my mind is they might stay for the football and learn something, that is, if one has a broader curriculum. The Minister's continuous assessment proposal is worth doing for them. I understand the model is that such students might anticipate a dreadful exam in third year, which they had no chance of passing. However, one would be able to tell them they already have accumulated many credits during their first three years and, consequently, it will not be that bad. One could persuade them to remain on for the year to see how things go because they already had the points in the bag. I note this also is a concern for the ESRI and if such an approach worked for them, it would be terrific, providing there are not the others, who fear handing over that power to teachers with whom they have an unsatisfactory relationship. The Minister always is welcome in this Chamber with all his ideas on education and so on, of which there are many in this report. Molaim an obair and I wish the Minister luck.