ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT LOYOLA MARYMOUNT LAW SCHOOL ON FRIDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER, 1999
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT LOYOLA MARYMOUNT LAW SCHOOL ON FRIDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER, 1999
Tá mé iontach sásta go bhfuil an chaoi agam a bheith anseo libh inniu. Is mór liom an cuireadh agus go háirithe an onóir atá sibh i ndiaidh a bhronnadh orm.
President of the University, Dean of the Law School, members of the faculty, students and guests, it is my great pleasure to accept this honorary degree you have conferred on me today. Coming from a legal background and being aware of the high status enjoyed by your Law School further deepens my appreciation of today’s event.
On an international scale, this ceremony is but one further link in the long chain of mutually beneficial interactions between our two countries. This chain spans the passage of time and through time is enhanced and strengthened. As I speak, Senator George Mitchell, your fellow countryman is working diligently to solidify the structure that he helped to create in the Good Friday Agreement. Last July, a group of High School students from Denver, Colorado, visited Omagh in County Tyrone where, just over a year ago, 29 people tragically lost their lives in the horror of the assassin’s bomb. Their mission was one of support and solidarity. And it is those quiet but significant gestures – whether at the highest diplomatic levels or among ordinary men and women – that demonstrate the warmth and endurance of our friendship.
The interchanges between our two countries have, of course, been in two directions. We do not need to look any further than this assembly to find an example of Ireland’s input into your country. Your Dean, Gerald T. McLoughlin, is the son of a Tyrone man. It is a source of great pride to us in Ireland that so many of our compatriots and their descendants have made such an extraordinary impact in every sphere of life in the United States. I would like to express our gratitude for the overwhelming contribution which that great Irish-American family has made to peace and prosperity in Ireland. In coming here today, I accept this honorary degree with great pleasure and pride, and with the wish that this ceremony will further strengthen the bond that exists between our two countries.
Given our location in this great seat of learning, I thought I would use this occasion to share with you some thoughts on education. I will be speaking from an Irish perspective, but I am sure the experiences, aspirations and challenges that face us in Irish education are not very different from those with which you are faced.
Ireland is presently undergoing a phase of unprecedented change. Our economy is booming; our demographic structure is undergoing a significant transformation; traditional values are being questioned in a way that they never were before. We are aware that our renowned economic success owes much to the educational infrastructure that has been built up in the past - its quality, its broad base and, not least, the ethos and value system which has underpinned it.
That past investment gives us a key advantage as we face into the future. We look to that future with confidence but not with presumption. For we know that yesterday’s solutions cannot be used to solve all of tomorrow’s challenges. Faced with change, we are called upon to reassess where we are now, to retain those aspects and values which have served us well in the past, but also to come up with a different response for the new shape of our society.
A key driver of change, is of course, the growing impact of information technology. In this context, the role of education can no longer be that of a conveyor of information. The facts are all out there. What people need is to be able to access, evaluate and use that information. In planning our education programmes, our focus should therefore shift from information to ideas and from knowledge to skills. One of the key skills will be learning how to learn.
This is all the more important because of changing work patterns. The era of a single job for life has gone. Experts tell us, that in the future we will have to train for new occupations up to three times during our lives. Even if we could guarantee that we would remain in the same occupation throughout our working lives, we would not be immune from the challenge to learn new skills. The more we understand about learning, the greater our capacity to continuously relearn throughout our lives in order to meet this challenge.
Our shrinking globe also has a profound impact on our educational planning. Modern communication and the development of global markets have combined to create the need for international awareness on a scale unknown to previous generations. But communication is about more than technology. We need our young people to have the cultural sensitivity, the linguistic skills and, most of all, the sense of adventure and curiosity to cross language and cultural boundaries without fear.
New work practices also impact on education policy making. Teamwork is no longer an optional extra in the business world. Frequently, problem solving requires the collaboration of many experts rather than the expertise of one individual. And teamwork can only function effectively in an atmosphere of mutual trust and transparent communication. It is ironic that in these days of fierce commercial competition, one of the key survival skills will be the capacity to co-operate, to communicate, to put the common goal ahead of individual glory.
There is a certain paradox in all of this. It is that in looking to the future, and in changing our educational system to respond to these emerging trends, what will determine success is the traditional human, rather than the purely technical, dimension. We can – indeed we must – give our young people the technological training and skills which are required in tomorrow’s world. But technologies change. Being a software development expert today doesn’t guarantee being at the cutting edge tomorrow. Knowing how to use the Internet doesn’t in itself make someone a good communicator. Being able to speak a language doesn’t necessarily mean the real message has been understood by either side.
To survive in tomorrow’s world, to cope with and thrive on the constant changes that will bring, our education systems need to look beyond the purely functional dimension. Creating well-rounded individuals who have confidence in their own abilities, who have been instilled with a sense of self-belief, who are capable of looking beyond their immediate environment to the opportunities and needs of the world around them – these are not optional extras but essential requirements of a well grounded education. They will enable people to survive and thrive whatever their circumstances or the career path they follow.
Education must also have a value and an objective beyond preparing people for the world of work. It needs to prepare young people for life, to cope with the vagaries and challenges, joys and disappointments they will meet along the way. It also means that the values which drive our educational system must reflect those broader needs. In those first crucial years, children learn far more than the alphabet or their sums. They quickly absorb the attitudes of the society around them. They learn the extent to which they count or are excluded. They can learn self-belief and confidence, setting them on the path to become secure and happy adults. Or, with equal speed, they can learn that they are considered to be of less value than others, less deserving of opportunities, destined for a life of dysfunction and trapped inside a spiritual and social vacuum. We have a responsibility to ensure that this does not happen, that those precious years of childhood and young adulthood are not wasted.
That is not only important at the individual level, but also at the level of society as a whole. What we, as a society, invest in our young people, will determine what we get back in return. If we want a caring society, to retain the sense of community which has served us so well in the past, to promote an ethos of mutual responsibility – these values need to be at the core of our educational system. They need to be put into practice as well as preached. This is not just a matter of decency, it also makes good sense. The more people that are left on the margins, the weaker the centre. Economically and socially, we need the talents of all our people to be valued and put to work.
It is sometimes suggested that equality of opportunity in education means rounding down to the lowest common factor, inhibiting the achievement of excellence. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not everyone starts out on an even playing pitch - extra support is required for some, and how we define excellence can sometimes be to narrow. In education, as in so many other spheres of life, one size does not fit all. The different social background, family circumstances and individual abilities of pupils often call for a more flexible approach than the traditional academic model allowed. In Ireland, we have sought to accommodate these differing needs through initiatives such as the Early Start Programme for pre-school children and by providing Home Liasion teachers. We have also introduced a transitional year at second level. It is a year in which young people, free from the pressure of exams, can concentrate on personal development, on community activities, on gaining a taste of the adult world of work and their own aptitudes and interests.
Such initiatives help to bring us closer to what education – in its widest sense – should be about. It is about enabling people to mature, to be stretched as individuals – not just academically but also emotionally and spiritually.
Fr. Kolvenbach, the superior general of the Jesuits, summed up the notion of holistic education when he said: “Our ideal is the well-rounded person who is intellectually competent, open to growth, religious, loving and committed to the people of God”. It is important to have institutions such as the Loyola Marymount Law School, places of learning where the world of the intellect and the world of the spirit are not seen as opposing forces, but rather engage in dialogue, each enriching the other and enriching the broader society.
It is heartening to see that you have taken the words of Fr. Kolvenbach to heart in a very practical way. You were one of the first law schools to stipulate as a graduate requirement that every law student must give 40 hours of uncompensated service to the community. Your Law School sponsors the Disability Rights Clinic – a clinic for the promotion of the rights of some the most vulnerable people in our society. By providing your students with these experiences you are helping to foster the seeds of love and commitment of which Fr. Kolvenbach spoke.
I hope that this ethos is one which you will bring with you throughout your professional career, because we need lawyers with that sense of commitment in our often troubled world. Law is a profession which is sometimes caricatured as bringing out the worst in people – both lawyers and their clients. But the rule of law is one of the lynchpins of a decent society, and a humanly decent world. This century has witnessed two World Wars, countless national conflicts, atrocities of a previously unimaginable scale, in which the most basic of human rights have been cruelly violated. But in the face of those terrible atrocities, this century has also witnessed the birth of The European Convention of Human Rights and the United Nations Charter of Human Rights. We have learnt the value of an international legal structure, underpinned by a humanly decent value system. That international rule of law is the means by which Governments which abuse the rights of their people can be admonished. It offers hope of a better future to those who still suffer injustice and oppression.
There are those who might say that the rule of law counts for little unless it can be enforced. But we should never underestimate its power as a framework and a tool for defending and vindicating human rights – providing there are enough men and women with an interest and expertise in the law who are willing to get involved.
At the twilight of this Millennium and the birth of the next, we are offered an opportunity to shape the type of world in which we want to live, and the value system which underpins it. The way in which we educate our young people, in the broadest sense, will determine what that world looks like. We can mould closed minds and closed hearts. Or we can use that time to inspire confidence and a sense of wonder at the world and its infinite possibilities. We can pass on the cynicism and selfishness of the past, disguised as realism, to our young people. Or we can instill a commitment to the welfare of others, an appreciation that learning is a lifelong experience and the capacity to question, to unlearn and relearn throughout life. The choice is ours. Let us use our opportunities well.
Mo bhuíochas libh arís as ucht an onóir seo a bhronnadh orm. Guím rath agus séan ar bhur gcuid oibre san am atá le teacht.