REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE AONTAS CITIZEN LEARNER CONFERENCE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE AONTAS CITIZEN LEARNER CONFERENCE MARKING EUROPEAN YEAR OF CITIZENSHIP THROUGH EDUCATION
Dia dhíbh a chairde. Tá gliondar croí orm bheith anseo libh um tráthnóna agus be mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil libh as bhur gcaoin-chuireadh.
It’s good to be part of this Aontas celebration of the European Year of Citizenship through Education. My thanks for your warm welcome and to Berni Brady in particular for inviting me to speak on what is a very important subject and at a very important conference.
If you are ever feeling cynical about the world there is no greater psychological lift than to meet a bunch of people involved in second chance or adult education. I visited the adult education college - Colaiste Dhulaigh in Raheny this week on its graduation day. The walls were buckling under the weight of displays of artwork and photographs of educational trips. Men and women of all ages and backgrounds had certificates in their hands, smiles on their faces and a pride in their hearts that was tangible. I met one woman who went back to do her Leaving Cert six years ago and now she is back on the College staff as a tutor. Talking to this year’s graduates, the same themes recurred - how little confidence they had in their own talents and abilities until adult education introduced them to the selves they had never dared to believe in, how worthwhile all the sacrifices had been, how many opportunities had opened to them that were life-changing and life-enhancing, how much happier they were, how much more fulfilled, how many more friends, how simply in love with life …..
Each saw an opportunity offered by adult education and they took it. Their certificates will tell employers of the subjects they studied, were examined in and passed but we know that those hard-earned pieces of paper tell infinitely more than that. They tell of men and women living complex lives who found the nerve and the courage to go back to school, who faced housework and homework, who turned off television sets and turned on computers, who got out the books instead of putting on the glad-rags. We know a lot about these men and women as a result of the choice they made for adult education. We know these are the strong, dependable, resourceful, intellectually curious, open-minded self-starters that every family, every community and every country longs for because these are as good as it gets when you are looking for exemplary citizens, for community builders. The investment they made in themselves - making themselves strong, arming themselves with new skills, testing themselves against national standards, working to get the very best from themselves and from the opportunities on offer - that is an investment not just in the self but in the family and in all of us collectively as a society.
It is no coincidence that Ireland’s economic fortunes began to change dramatically as the effects of widespread access to free second-level education began to kick in. All that vast reservoir of talent which had gone to waste in previous generations suddenly began to spill into every area of life, changing the landscape of personal and national ambition, changing the story of Ireland. Seamus Heaney describes the surging power of that change in his great poem “From the Canton of Expectation”. The decades and generation of waste, of emigration and oppression had created a world in which
“We lived……… under high, banked clouds of resignation.
……And next thing, suddenly this change of mood
Young heads that might have dozed a life away
Against the flanks of milking cows were busy
Pencilling and paving their first causeways
Across the prescribed texts.”
He memorably describes this educated generation in the phrase
“…… intelligences brightened and unmannerly as crowbars”
The crowbar metaphor is well chosen, for the test of any education system is the kind of society that it gives shape and voice to and history had ensured that ours was an island of elites who had created obstacle courses to the achievement of a just, fair and equal society. Education and power have always been closely aligned for as the proverb says - knowledge is power - and one glance around our world shows clearly that where access to education is absent, widespread poverty and powerlessness are always close at hand.
In our country with its democratic values, its Constitution which enshrines the equal right to dignity and respect of each human being, we have an, as yet, unfulfilled ambition to be a society of complete social inclusion, to be a place where all have a seat at life’s banquet, a place where there are no mere spectators. How quickly we arrive at that destination lies in the hands and hearts of our citizens, it lies in their commitment to the welfare of their neighbours, it depends on how passionate they are about their personal responsibility for Ireland’s future.
We have a successful economy which gives us tremendous reassurance and confidence but of itself it is no guarantee that in this highly globalised and competitive world we can take tomorrow’s success for granted. It has to be planned for and worked for today. The skills and knowledge we need to hold on to jobs as individuals and to competitiveness as a country demand constant and willing updating. Our increased wealth brings increased choices but they are not always made wisely and an intelligent, educated citizenry must sooner or later face in to the serious problems that are of its own making and within its own gift to solve. We have been presented with the empirical evidence of the links between alcohol and drug abuse and family breakdown, street violence, road accidents, suicide and, even more tragically as pointed out at a conference in Dublin only a few weeks ago, the increasing number of children born with not just foetal alcohol syndrome but many behavioural impairments which blight their entire lives.
Education has a critical role to play in revealing the full extent of the misery we gratuitously inflict on ourselves and others and in challenging the behavioural changes which alone are capable of resolving the sources of that misery. It has a critical role to play in equipping us with the confident cohort of leaders who can help us navigate our way through the intricacies and complexities of modern life, bringing new creative answers to everything from supporting carers or encouraging respectful multiculturalism, to keeping Ireland in the top league of knowledge-based economies.
The idea that our education ends when we throw off the school uniform for the last time is now rightly regarded as Luddite. As that great intellectual giant of modern Irish education, Cardinal John Newman said “to be human is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often”. We are very fortunate to have a hunger and thirst for education which organisations like Aontas respond to. Through your work, thousands of men and women have found in adult education a place of respect and welcome: where all are welcome whether they come through the door carrying the lonely burden of literacy problems; or the determination to finish a Junior or Leaving Cert they turned their back on years ago; or the courage to plunge into the world of computers for the first time; or the ambition to find out simply what talent or skill lies dormant within themselves that a good teacher can help to blossom.
Ireland is changing. Europe is changing. To be a citizen of Ireland is also to be a European citizen. The Union that we are part of is remarkably young and nothing short of a miracle. The preamble to its creation is a dreadful story of an uneducated Europe, a pre-democratic Europe, of empires and vanities, of war and death, and unspeakable cruelties. It was a world where massive, bullying egos crushed the dignity and equality of the human person in the stampede for power. Out of that shambles a few decent and hope-filled people dared to believe that Europe’s citizens were capable of better. The Union is their gift to us and its peaceful, prosperous partnership is our gift to the children of the future.
Today we live in Europe of the democracies with a shared belief in human rights, in the equality of all humanity, in the right of every citizen to dignity, respect and the chance to realise their fullest potential. Through Aontas and similar organisations, the right of our citizens to access to education is honoured and so too is the responsibility we each have to ourselves to get the very best we can from ourselves. Our adult learners are people who take their responsibilities as citizens very seriously and they give us great cause for hope. It is these educated citizens, confident, animated, engaged in the big and small issues of their communities and countries and their Union who will shape the course our future takes. The European Year of Citizenship through Education provides an opportunity and a forum in which to explore and promote the active citizenship which underpins the practical patriotism which our adult learners exemplify. I wish you every success in this important endeavour.
Is iontach an obair atá ar siúl agaibh anseo. Go n-éirí go geal libh!