REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A CONFERENCE ON ‘CHILDREN, THEIR LIVES AND THEIR LEARNING’
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A CONFERENCE ON ‘CHILDREN, THEIR LIVES AND THEIR LEARNING’ MARINO INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION
Dia dhíbh a chairde, tá an-áthas orm a bheith in bhúr láthair inniu ag an gcomhdháil speisialta seo: ‘Children, their lives, their learning’. Is ábhar fiorthábhachtach é ó thaobh leasa agus todhchaí ár bpáistí agus sochaí na hÉireann de. I’d like to thank Dr. Anne O’Gara, President of Marino Institute of Education and Dr. Anne Looney, Chief Executive of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment for their kind invitation to address you today.
My grandmother who had eleven children and sixty grand children used to remark “what’s learnt in childhood is engraved on stone.” I didn’t get the full import of her words until a tiny misspelling on my grandfather’s granite headstone led to a conversation with the stone mason as to whether it could be easily corrected. He said “no” the only way the problem could be corrected was to take the faulty headstone down and put up a new one. Those of us who are the engravers on the unwitting lives of innocent children do not get that option. We get one go around - one chance to get it right so that we engrave well, scrupulously, carefully and leave an imprint that does not skew a lift or blight a life long after childhood has passed. It is a solemn responsibility, a sacred trust and it is right that at a conference like this we should reflect on those precious, all-important childhood years and ask in particular what primary education must bring to their lives.
It’s an important time in our country’s educational history for debates are afoot which have the capacity to radically change the structure and the experience of primary education.
Those who are the engravers on childrens’ lives need to be deeply implicated in those debates to ensure that primary education which is the very bedrock of our educational system is customized to the needs of our children. Five hundred years ago Erasmus observed that the main hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth. It was true then and it is true now.
A good education is crucial to the life chances of each child. Life circumstances are not scientifically or equitably distributed. Poverty, family dysfunction, disability, ill-health can conspire to make a childhood much tougher than any of us would wish for a child. In an unequal equation it is often education which offers a cantilever and a transcending conduit to fulfilling a child’s potential. Our society needs citizens who are active, engaged, problem solvers, people who are confident, creative, resilient, adaptable. The journey towards that kind of citizenship begins in childhood.
We enter this debate from a position of strength for Ireland has long had a deep commitment to learning. How many of us in this room can tell of fathers and mothers who made huge sacrifices so that we could have educational chances that would have been like lottery wins to our parents. A respect for education is deeply embedded in our psyche and we have witnessed the formidable transformative power of widened access to good education particularly in the final quarter of the twentieth century.
It was Yeats who warned that education is not about filling a pail but about lighting a fire - and in this era of rapid technological and scientific change the world we are preparing our children for is very different from the world we were prepared for, the old Irish proverb tells us: doras feasa fiafraí - an enquiring mind is the door to knowledge. Feeding and encouraging the natural curiosity of the child is one of the most important jobs anyone whether a parent or a teacher can undertake. Yes we need our children to be literate and numerate for these are essential minimum pathways to their own potential but we also need them to believe in their own creativity, to develop their own critical, analytical and forensic skills, to grow emotionally, metaphysically, psychologically and socially.
A good curriculum and good teaching are two prime ingredients of any successful educational experience. Here at Marino Institute of Education the programme of teacher education is continually developing in response to fresh insights and research into the needs and responses of the child learner. The NCCA promotes a culture of scholarly interrogation of pedagogy and curriculum that will ensure that our primary education system is soundly based, is responsive to research, and to best international practice.
I have been very fortunate to visit a large proportion of our primary schools - big ones, small ones, urban, rural, Catholic, Muslim, Protestant, Educate Together, Gaelscoileanna. I have seen the tremendous work that goes on in them every day, been amazed at how seamlessly they absorbed thousands of immigrant children, how they have integrated special needs children and those with disability who in past times had only a limited choice of educational opportunity. I have seen the walls decked with the children’s work, heard their singing and their musicianship, watched their drama, dance and sports, congratulated their trojan efforts to win green flags, strolled around their organic gardens, been amazed at their fundraising efforts for poor children in developing countries, sat in on the classes they share via the internet with students from all over Europe, listened to them explain how they deal with bullying, how they promote a value system of mutual care and respect…….and I have marveled at the busyness of their lives, the embedded multi-faceted opportunities they have for a rich daily lived educational experience thanks to men and women who make primary teaching their vocation and who delight in making school a happy, fun, exciting, participating place to be. Our teachers are strong academically and pedagogically. They are trained and tested, tested and trained so that their ability and empathy for this vocation are sure and well validated, well vindicated by the time they graduate. They know they are partners with parent in each unique child’s education and that the parents are the primary educators of their children. So they know that their focus has to look to the child’s context, to his or her parents and family situation. They know that fairness and even-handedness to all children is essential but that ironically a one size fits all approach is inimical.
Many of us can point to a teacher who made a difference in the very trajectory of our lives - the teacher whose intuitive eye, whose professionalism and humanity, lit in us that
self-possession and intellectual curiosity that opened us up to our own abilities and to the contribution we could make to our families, our communities and our country. What a phenomenal privilege it must be to know you are the one, the person who lit that fire, the teacher who engraved so expertly on the life of a child that you brought out the sparkling diamond in him or her and helped them on their life’s journey to rewarding, fulfilling lives. Every child is entitled to a teacher like that and to an experience of school that is the best we can make it.
Days like this allow us to take the time to think about what has been achieved, to understand the wisdom gleaned from things that work well and things that need to be looked at anew.
This is a good opportunity to share what you have learnt and what you know so that the roadmap to doing things even better still can reveal itself through your deliberations.
I wish you well with your hugely important work. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.