REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT ST CECILIA’S COLLEGE, DERRY THURSDAY, 8TH JUNE 2000
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT ST CECILIA’S COLLEGE, DERRY THURSDAY, 8TH JUNE 2000
Tá lucháir mhór orm bheith anseo libh inniu, agus ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a chur in iúl díbh don fáilte a bhí fíor, fairsing agus flaithiúil.
It is a great pleasure to visit St. Cecilia’s College and to get this chance to meet the staff and pupils. My thanks to your Principal, Mrs Gráinne McCafferty for inviting me here, for her words of welcome and to all of you for the fáilte extended to this visitor.
If you have ever wondered why you bother to go to school and we all have at some time or another - teachers and pupils alike - it is worth dwelling for a moment on the words of Derry’s great poet Seamus Heaney. In his poem ‘From the Canton of Expectation’ he describes the world he grew up in where his people had so deeply internalised a view of themselves as second-class citizens that they lived under what he calls - “high-banked clouds of resignation.”
Under those clouds too many lives were wasted, too many people never knew what it was like to enjoy their talents, to watch them blossom, to see their children grow in confidence, to see them soar as God intended, their gifts used and used well. Into that world suddenly dropped the gift of free education and Heaney describes how the world around him shifted kilter dramatically as –
‘Young heads that might have dozed a life away against the flanks of milking cowswere busy, paving and pencilling their first causeways across the prescribed texts’
A new generation flooded into schools and colleges their appetites for self-discovery through widened opportunity whetted and fed by good schools, great teachers and an emerging new energy among their people, a new determination to use the gifts of its children to the full. Seamus Heaney describes this new generation as having ‘intelligences brightened and unmannerly as crowbars’.
And they needed to be like crowbars, for the road ahead was littered with many obstacles from self-doubt to the contempt of those who looked down on them and their culture. Out of that generation came writers who told their own stories, poets who drew from the deepest of literary wells, politicians who believed in the sacred equality of each human being and who dedicated their lives to creating a world where each would have her space, her place. Many of these people are now household names, now internationally recognised, of global stature, people who made a difference in their own lives and reshaped the destiny of their people.
That is the long answer to why do we bother with school. We need all the help we can get to unpack ourselves, to discover what is inside us, to develop skills and talents we never knew we had until someone introduced us to them and through them to ourselves.
That capacity of a good education to unlock the inherent potential of every individual, is no less important, no less needed, for this generation. For each generation faces its own challenges and each needs to draw deeply from the full pool of talent God has given it. If you use these days well you open up your own talents, maximize the opportunities available to you and put them first of all at your own service - to give you the life you want on the terms you want. Then in this school underpinned by a Christian ethos we hope you will take those gifts and put them at the service of your families, friends, community, country. We believe you are capable of making a real difference to how the future is shaped and we have great hopes that you will make that difference.
One of the most wonderful things I have been privileged to witness as President is the transformation education has made in lives which had once given up on it and on themselves. Many people in our country still suffer, often through no fault of their own from illiteracy or very patchy literacy. I have met them - they can’t read their children bedtime stories, they bring home yellow pack catfood instead of beans, they avoid going into cafes because they can’t read menus, they live lives of quiet desolation because they cannot read in a literate world. But some get the courage to go back and start again and when you meet them they radiate a huge new-found self-confidence, they read little poems they have written, they tell you of the incredible joy they felt when they were able to write their children’s names on a blank sheet of paper for the first time. They tell me - when you talk to young men and women in schools, tell them how precious these days are, tell them to use them well, tell them to value their own gifts and take pride in the gifts of others, to understand that every human being is different and that the world needs the mix of all those differences, it needs the curiosity difference provokes, the imagination it fires.
The remarkable achievement of this school, is in the way you have given the gift of self-belief to so many young women. Your successes speak for themselves, not just in relation to academic excellence – and I know you have achieved exceptional results in that area - but also in the opportunities which you provide to every pupil, to discover the particular field in which she can excel – be it sport, art, drama, dance or music. I know I am so grateful that there are people who can write better poems than me, do more complex equations than me, speak foreign languages more fluently than me - Thank God for all the people who have talents I do not have - put them all together and you have a kaleidoscope of God’s ingenuity and creativity - an enormous gift at the heart of the universe and at the heart of our own lives.
Where that is understood you have healthy societies and schools like St Cecilia’s have a central part to play in the development of healthy communities, populated by individuals who are comfortable with diversity, who respect it, are curious about it, approach it not as a threat, but as a source of enrichment – and who, by their example, teach others to do the same.
Each one of you has the potential to build not just a better life for ourselves, but a better society for all. Each of you has it within your capacity to forge bridges of hope, of tolerance, of respect, of reconciliation across the chasm of mistrust which still exists in Northern Ireland. Fostering that self-confidence, that courage, is an essential part of a good education – the sort of education that St. Cecilia’s provides – and I warmly commend the Principal, teachers and staff for the tremendous dedication and energy with which they are putting the ethos of this school into practice, year in, year out.
One of the secrets of this school’s success is the way that education is seen as a partnership between teachers, parents and pupils. This school recognises that the rounded development of a young person is not something which just occurs during school-hours – it is a continuous process which can be greatly enhanced by involving parents in the progress of their child and in the activities of the school.
I would like to warmly congratulate the Board of Governors, parents, teachers – and most of all the pupils - of St Cecilia’s on all you have achieved to date. I wish each of you success and happiness in your future lives.
Go n-éirí go geal libh. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.