Remarks by President McAleese at the General Assembly of the European Assn of Education for Adults
Remarks by President McAleese at the General Assembly of the European Association of Education for Adults (EAEA)
Good morning everybody and thank you for your warm welcome. It is my great pleasure, in turn, to welcome all of you, and in particular those of you who have travelled great distances to be here today. I have every confidence that you will find that it was worth the effort. Let me wish you then the traditional Irish greeting, céad míle fáilte, one hundred thousand welcomes.
I want to begin by thanking Berni Brady for her kind invitation to open this General Assembly of the European Association of Education for Adults and by paying tribute to AONTAS for hosting this Assembly. A little later, I will be presenting the Grundtvig Award for Excellence to the winners and I am looking forward to that.
The theme for this Assembly is very appropriately ‘intercultural dialogue’ for this has been a European Union-wide theme during 2008. It is a far from cheesy or cosy theme, for as John Hume observed when he received his Nobel Award for peace in Oslo back in 1998 “all conflict is about difference, whether the difference is race, religion or nationality”. It is a chilling and a challenging reminder that we ignore intercultural dialogue at our peril. Where that dialogue is absent, fear and mistrust along with skewed stereotypes and mutual misconceptions can fester into intolerance and bigotry, which are the root of so many conflicts around the world and considerably closer to home. That mutual ignorance and distrust can exist between next-door neighbours as much as it can exist between geographically and culturally different societies. Increasingly many societies including our own are homelands to a hugely diverse population differentiated by country of origin, faith, culture, language, skin colour, history and perspective. Only in this century are we in Ireland beginning to shake off the huge problems generated by the migrant Planters of many centuries ago and the longstanding failure to engage in meaningful, intercultural dialogue. So as our now wealthy nation changes quite radically once again and we become home to economic migrants from both within the European Union and from many other parts of the world we need to ensure that from the “get go” we acknowledge the newcomers as neighbours whom we urgently need to get to know and who need to get to know us, so that we can grow in comfortable mutual understanding of one another.
We all live within a common legal framework that sets out norms and regulations governing our values and our conduct but we will not all live the same lives, the same way and we each have the right to be different. So this Ireland of ours and this European Union of ours have to be places which accommodate difference not just in theory but in lived reality. For many people that means making ourselves think and act differently for we no longer have the complacency that comes from living in a homogeneous environment but the challenge of living in a heterogeneous environment where our rights are equal to the rights of all others. There is a process of both learning and unlearning to be undergone for all of us.
Cardinal Newman once remarked that “to be human is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often”. It is a good description of lifelong learning and could be the motto of all lifelong learners. If we saw education as something that ended with official school days then many of us would be in deep trouble by now in this fast paced and rapidly changing world where the shelf-life of information and knowledge is short, where the skills needed for the workplace, the home and for even leisure have dramatically changed and keep on changing exponentially. Parents who missed out on early schooling now see clearly how literacy problems or lack of qualifications have held them back from truly fulfilling lives. They see the jobs they could not apply for, the forms they couldn’t fill, the stories they could not read to their children, the homework they couldn’t help with, the lack of confidence they lived with in a very literate and technologically sophisticated world. They want better for themselves and for their children and one of the greatest joys in my life is to be in the company of those men and women who courageously rejoin the world of education and learning. Every one of them speaks of their experience, as adult learners, as life-changing and life-enhancing, a journey of curiosity into the self, the best self as much as a journey of curiosity out into the world. Those men and women turn themselves from people with problems into problems solvers and as soon as they do, not only are they and their families stronger and more resilient so are their communities and our societies.
Ireland has come through a remarkable period of growth and now faces, along with our European neighbours a very difficult and much less encouraging global economic environment. The months and years ahead will be a test of us all individually and collectively. How we adapt and how we take responsibility for our individual adaptation will be crucial. Education and training will be important elements in our capacity to ride out these stormy times and not just in terms of enhancing our ability to face increased economic competition and equip ourselves to be part of the world-class knowledge based economy that we and the EU aspire to be. At the human level, in terms of personal fulfilment, there is much to be said for seeking personal satisfaction in acquiring knowledge and skills rather than acquiring things.
Thankfully in Ireland there has been an increased focus on the development of adult education services in recent years and a huge growth in opportunities for second chance and lifelong learning. For the many adults who take these opportunities they are the pathway to considerably improved quality of life. They are a pathway to social inclusion for those with literacy or language difficulties. They open up career options. They inspire new talents, new pastimes. They confer confidence and credibility. One woman who had literacy problems but had gone back to education when she was over forty told me that she felt that she did not come to know her true self until education helped reveal it. Her pride was palpable and it was righteous for at fourteen she was an illiterate school-leaver and at forty-four she was a recent university graduate. The transformation was achieved by her own efforts but in those efforts she was supported and encouraged by the tutors, teachers and institutes whose vocation is adult education.
Today there are men and women from around the world living among us whose full potential is dependent upon access to good adult education to help them with languages, to help them retrain, to help them upskill, to help them attain the qualifications they need for the jobs they want, to help them live happy and contented lives not among strangers but among good neighbours and friends with whom they can communicate easily in a tolerant and egalitarian society.
In the final analysis our strength is in our people, all our people, from young right through to old and the basic building block of that strength lies in the individual human person. There is nothing positive for that individual or for society in a life half lived or in the waste of their potential at any age, for there is no age when potential ceases. There is everything to be gained from having the strong desire to achieve your full potential and having the opportunity to do so. Our adult learners infuse our society with their intellectual curiosity and their restless intelligence and they inspire us with their determination and their capacity for inviting change into their lives.
Not so long ago if we wanted to know about the music, poetry, dance, history, geography, food or customs of most of the world far from our shores we went to the library and reached for a book. Today we have direct access to those once unknown worlds through our brother and sister citizens who have put their faith in Ireland and in us and are making their futures among us. The more intercultural dialogue both casual and structured that we generate and sustain as a society the greater will be our communal strength.
In the Irish language, we have a saying - Ní neart go chur le cheile - we are strong when we work together. We could go further and say we work best together when we know one another, respect one another and are open to one another in the way that intercultural dialogue promotes.
I would like to thank you for your dedicated commitment to the cause of adult education and lifelong learning and to intercultural dialogue and I wish you well in your deliberations here today.
Finally, I am delighted to formally open the General Assembly for the European Association of Education for Adults.
Go raith míle maith agaibh go léir.