Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House to discuss this very important topic. I will begin with a quote from a man who would know much about education and failure within the system, the former governor of Mountjoy, Mr. John Lonergan. He stated that we teach our children how to make a living but we do not teach them how to live. In reforming the junior certificate cycle I fear we are continuing that process. We are sending our children to school for 14 or 15 years, teaching them subjects like French, Irish, English and history, and we expect that at the end, they will be able to speak French, Irish and English. Nevertheless, we do not teach them how to be active citizens. Having sent them through the education system for 14 or 15 years, we wonder why children are not active citizens, why they do not vote or wish to participate in politics and public life, or why they are not involved in their local communities.

As other Senators have pointed out, why are children not healthy? This country has a significant rate of suicide. There will be short courses on civics, social and personal education, CSPE, as well as health education. Mr. Lonergan has seen all the failures in our education and society coming through his doors because people probably did not have the benefit of great parents like me and others in this House, who taught us at home how to be active citizens and have good mental health. He has seen those failures and education must take up that role. Short courses are a step in the right direction but they are peripheral. We are continuing the mistake of teaching children how to be economic units of production and make a living while failing to teach them how to live. As we have seen with the surging rate of suicide in the country, education can play a pivotal role in teaching children how to deal with depression or spot early warning signs of suicide in friends.

Harvard has a saying that if something is not being measured, it is not being done. Short courses will not be measured by examination. The Minister inherited a system driven by exams and points and it cannot be changed overnight. We must start measuring CSPE all the way up, making sure children know there will be an exam on the topic. There should be a similar process with health education, because if there is not, teachers will not be very engaged. They will go through the system but the benefits can be hit or miss, depending on the school.

I go back to using the points system against itself. When I did the leaving certificate, it was all about points, which led to people getting into university. The points system dictated the course a person would get. The Minister in looking to reform the leaving certificate and the junior certificate could look to active citizenship, which is the most important element of a society. It should not just be about economic units of production. Pádraig Pearse described the education system 100 years ago as the "murder machine" and although it is much improved since, we are still teaching children just to be economic units of production.

The Minister might consider an active citizenship subject that could be an optional extra for the leaving certificate. If a student took the subject, the marks would extend to seven subjects and there would be additional points for the total. Perhaps it could be an additional 50 points, with most of the subject covered in the first year of the programme, with a practical element in the final year. We should focus the minds of students on being active citizens. Short courses are valuable but Mr. Lonergan would point out that his experience in Mountjoy Prison indicates a failure of our education system, and we must put active citizenship at the core rather than the periphery of our education system. In that way our children and future generations would become the citizens they should be rather than economic units of production.