Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Is the Minister of State sure he is in the right Department? It is probably the best answer to any amendment from a Minister. I thank him, because I am on the edge of a precipice of conviction. I would like to point out a few things to Senators. People tell me they know something is an emotive argument.It is like another downgrading. Senator Catherine Noone is gone, but I note that my argument was a cognitive one even though there is nothing wrong with an emotive argument. If something is based on a profound feeling, it is, therefore, a profound thought process. I sometimes feel there is a disingenuous way of getting back at somebody.

As a life-long educator, I sometimes go to the philosophers who are great thinkers on how we should educate and the kinds of knowledge we should impart to young people. I have a great fear about a capitulation to a banking system of education and to economics. I watched my last university, DCU, roll over to the bankers and economists and come to believe that mathematics was the only way forward and that the only way to really educate our young people was to give maths extra points and to make it relevant. It was completely incorrect because it creates a hierarchical structure of subjects, which I am completely against. It creates an apartheid of subjects in which one subject is considered better or worse than another. That is not the case and all subjects are of equal weight. While it is not to say they are more important than others, there are subjects such as language and those relating to who and what we are in which one needs a core facility. I was disingenuous in drafting the motion when I wrote "core/compulsory". My aim was to get the argument going because what we have done is take to take history from core to discrete with "discretus" meaning "to separate". My argument is that if we do that, we will lose the core value. I was interested in the Minister of State's use of the core value and that it does not become a discrete subject out there, like a kind of pick and mix of nuts on the way into the cinema. The world's history is the world's judgment and without it, young people will have none.

History and the arts, which are so below par in the curriculum that they are hardly spoken about, constitute a counteraction against the saturation of the information highway. We are told technology will save us, but it will not. Plugging something in will not save us. There is a view that history has moment as a counterweight to the fact that is immediate. As my colleagues said, it is about fact because so much of our psyche, social responsibility, habits and processes have been undermined and dwindled away by a way of thinking that is coming at people every time they turn around, from advertising to marketing, from media to tablets, in the way we live our lives. We rely on great history teachers, schools and education to be the counter-terrorist to that terrorism. It is a kind of terrorism of young minds and that is why I put it in there as a core subject.

We are very bad in Ireland at having major discussions about knowledge whereas we discuss constantly whether young people are bored. Sometimes they are and sometimes I am. Learning is difficult and we need memory, reading, rereading and counter-reading. We also must acknowledge that the kinds of knowledge we impart cannot be a parallel of the great, saturated information highway. We will end up teaching "The X Factor". We must counteract what goes on out in the saturated world. History is one of the subjects that does so brilliantly. Hopefully, as the Minister of State suggests in words that are not used a great deal, that can be done imaginatively and creatively. I have argued here at all times that it is not bankers and economists we should be trying to educate; it is creative thinkers. I acknowledge the Minister of State's belief that will happen. As a non-digital native and an auld doll, I thank the Minister of State, who is such a native.

I also thank Senator Jim D'Arcy, who is a great colleague and a most well-read historian. We have wonderful conversations. I take on board much of what he said, including what he said about The Beano. He was right. It is about Whitehead's choices and why we teach literature. Funnily enough, if one looks at literature, law, music, poetry and drama, one sees that they get their spine from history. They integrate it and take their spine and trajectory from it. I take the Senator's point about The Beanoand its capacity to encapsulate its times, social history and the way people live. It is a great point.