Remarks by President McAleese at a dinner to celebrate the centenary of the founding of the ASTI.
Remarks by President McAleese at a dinner to celebrate the centenary of the founding of the ASTI.
Dia dhíbh go léir a chairde. Is mór an onóir agus pléisiúir dom bheith anseo libh anocht agus ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a chur in iúl díbh as an chaoin-chuireadh agus as fáilte fíorchaoin.
Good evening and thank you for your warm welcome and the invitation to your centenary celebration. It is my great pleasure to be part of what is an historic birthday though I apologise that, unlike other centenarians who get a letter of congratulations from the President accompanied by a substantial cheque, there is no cheque from me to help these celebrations along! But there is surely an entitlement to national recognition and that is why I am here, to say ‘thank you’ to you and to all your members who, for a century, have made formal education their vocation and their life’s work.
This Union works for its members. Its members work for our young people and, while formal schooling is not the only means by which our children are educated, it is an important element in opening up to them their talents and skills, expanding their life’s chances and honing a lifelong intellectual curiosity. From one generation to another the range of educational opportunities over this century has varied hugely, from the early ASTI days when it was the prerogative of the few, to today when it is the right of all. Through often convulsive change, the curious mind, the questioning mind of the learner has been essential to change and to adapting to change. As teachers, you encourage the young to become and to remain for all their lives, avid learners. Eric Hoffer, the famous longshoreman philosopher warned us that “In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”
Many of you have been witnesses to the dam-burst that followed the introduction of free second-level education at the end of the 1960s. Seamus Heaney wrote about the changes wrought by the same phenomenon in Northern Ireland where it occurred two decades earlier. Until then he describes us as living “under high, banked clouds of resignation/…” “…and next thing, suddenly, this change of mood/ Books open in the newly wired kitchens./ Young heads that might have dozed a life away/ against the flanks of milking cows were busy/ paving and pencilling their first causeways/ across the prescribed texts”.
He describes this newly-educated generation as having “intelligences, brightened and unmannerly as crowbars.” It was just what was needed to shift the paralysis of a world of the learned whose learning was, much of it, past its sell-by date. Instead there came the energy of self-esteem which, by some process of osmosis, education seems to be central to developing. If ever there was a generation which has witnessed the sheer transformative power of education both for the individual and for society then ours has to be it. So many of the endemic problems that had defeated past generations for centuries, peace and prosperity among them, were reduced to achievable proportions. In these moments when both peace and prosperity are under attack we do well to remind ourselves that these days are still only the very earliest opening chapters in the new narrative that Ireland is writing, thanks to the infusion of confidence and fresh-thinking that formal education, with its certificates and diplomas and degrees, has wrought throughout civic society.
Yours is a profession that can point to considerable success but that does not make it an easy profession. The dynamics of daily interaction with pupils, of updating pedagogical techniques and subjects, of coping with the human, emotional and psychological demands of growing adolescents as well as investing in their personal, academic and vocational flowering, these things bring daily joys and heartaches. They are the very fuel which renews your vocation day in and day out. And when change comes you are so often the first to have to adapt. For example, rapid inward migration to Ireland in recent years brought migrant families to your doorstep from all over the world with teenage children who had been abruptly dislocated from all that was familiar. They were now in your classrooms, coping with loneliness, language problems and cultural differences, to mention just a few of the inevitable downstream consequences of being strangers in a new land. For them it was never going to be enough that a school offered teaching in a list of subjects. It had to offer a welcome, heartfelt, genuine and sustained, support and a cultural sensitivity that radiated throughout the school community. You did that brilliantly and unassumingly, helping us to become a country into which many emigrants have integrated well.
Education and training have been and will ever be crucial to achieving our ambition of being an inclusive society which cherishes the children of the nation equally, as the Proclamation says. It is still a work in progress but a work that it would be impossible to achieve without your work, yesterday, today and tomorrow. Every generation has faced its own Everest and now we face ours as local and global economics show the extent to which our world has been hollowed out by short-term greed and a culture of expecting rapid reward for very little expended effort. You have always known the futility of short-termism for your work requires the patient building up of skills and honing of talent over years of effort. Abraham Lincoln got it right when he said “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” You have invested those precious hours in sharpening the minds and skills of our people. Today we are the most educated, confident and successful we have ever been and with these tools and our unique social solidarity, we will face down the current economic difficulties making the next chapter in Ireland’s narrative the best yet, with your help.
You are entitled to be proud of your Association this night and to believe in its future for which no script has yet been written. But we know it will be as good as you can make it not just for ASTI but for Ireland.
Comhghairdeas libh arís ar an ócáid stairiúil seo. Gurb fada buan sibh ‘s go raibh maith agaibh go léir.