REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE 8TH CORK LIFELONG LEARNING FESTIVAL
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE 8TH CORK LIFELONG LEARNING FESTIVAL MONDAY, 11TH APRIL 2011
Dia dhíbh a chairde. Tá an-áthas orm bheith anseo libh inniu. Thank you for the invitation and the welcome to this official opening of the 8th annual Cork Lifelong Learning Festival. Ringmahon House has a fascinating set of stories to tell since it was first built at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It has been home to the famous Murphy brewing family and to the Dunne retailing family and now it is home to a very different family – a family of friends and colleagues who believe in education, invest in education, people who create educational opportunities and people who take those opportunities. Here the young and the young at heart relish what education can do for them and what they can bring to education. And this Festival tells us loud and clear that lifelong learning is fun, is fulfilling and worth celebrating.
Although I am from North Belfast I went to school in West Belfast and lived there for two years so I am delighted that this festival is twinned with the legendary West Belfast Festival, Féile an Phobail. Here are two communities separated by many miles and different preoccupations building a bridge of friendship and solidarity to one another, opening up the richness of each other’s experience and genius and showcasing how much we have to offer one another and how much intellectual curiosity, hunger for learning, have to offer each one of us.
It was Yeats who told us that education is not about the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire. And Einstein who told us ‘The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once’. There was a time when education and learning were what happened when you went to school as a youngster. Now we talk of second-chance education, lifelong learning, mature students, upskilling, retraining and we have this festival to tell us just what a remarkable difference these opportunities and options are making in the lives of individuals, their families, our communities and our country.
I am often asked who is the most impressive person I met during my time as President and the answer has been the same for almost fourteen years – two people I met through the National Adult Literacy Agency. Both of them had left school early with serious literacy problems. One told of how she raised her family without ever being able to read them a bedside story, or help with homework or reply to her son’s letters from abroad when he complained that she didn’t care enough to write back. She joined NALA, started to learn the alphabet with the help of one of NALA’s brilliant volunteers and by the time I met her had completed her undergraduate and Masters degrees in Trinity College. Another read a poignant poem about the sheer joy he experienced when he could write the names of his wife and children on a blank sheet of paper. Both had turned their lives around, turned them from dark to the light and warmth of the sun, thanks to their courage in going back to education. I think of the many men and women with disability whose abilities were so neglected and overlooked in past generations and who now have the chance to keep on training, learning and fully living thanks to increased lifelong learning opportunities. I think of the men and women who look forward to their evening classes, their morning classes, the friendships, the challenges, the books, the libraries, the computers, the massive open landscape opened up to them the day they walked through the door of adult education or lifelong learning.
It can take courage to return to a learning environment, whether it is formal or informal. But ask anyone who has done it and you will get a smile and a positivity that is phenomenal. I have met them over and over again, the traveller women who obtained their qualifications in community health, the immigrant mother who got her FETAC qualification in childcare, the eighty year old with his European Computer Driving Licence, the senior citizen who discovered a talent for art, or languages, or history, or flower-arranging, or patchwork, or a million other things at a local class, the young adult having a go at cooking and baking much to his or her mother’s wonderment, the family learning to swim together, the local writers group publishing their own personal stories, the intellectually disabled citizens acquiring advocacy skills or taking on the Gaisce Gold challenge…
In the midst of all our economic concerns there is a massive individual and collective investment in lifelong learning that is making individuals stronger, families stronger and our society stronger. They are not waiting for better times to happen by some kind of cosmic coincidence, they are out there making changes in their own lives, positive changes that keep them mentally and physically in good shape and that gives their lives fresh focus, energy and hope.
I want to thank all those who create the opportunities for lifelong learning whether as volunteers or professionals, all those who created this festival showcase of the power and sheer diversity and variety of lifelong learning choices and especially I thank those who take the opportunities offered by lifelong learning to explore their own talents and explore the world of the known and the unknown. I have never met a bunch of miserable lifelong learners yet. Wherever they are gathered they bring enthusiasm, dynamism, imagination and evidence of the phenomenal capabilities of the motivated, engaged human being – the active citizen. I know I am personally very grateful to all the opportunities I have had over my lifetime for ongoing lifelong learning, from the bodhran, to set-dancing, from upholstery to computer programming, from Irish to Spanish, from German to Italian, from yoga to circuit training and from Canon Law to cookery – there has been no greater or more fascinating companion through life than the chance for lifelong learning.
I congratulate the members of the Cork City Learning Forum, and its Chair and Cork City VEC CEO, Ted Owens, as well as all the other participants for providing this opportunity for the people of Cork and surrounding areas to learn and obtain information on the courses and classes that are available to them here in Cork. I wish you every success with this festival which I know will open doors of opportunity and self-renewal for so many people.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.