REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE DURING HER VISIT TO BILINGUAL SCHOOL COLEGIO RAMIRO DE MAEZTU
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE DURING HER VISIT TO BILINGUAL SCHOOL COLEGIO RAMIRO DE MAEZTU, MADRID TUESDAY, 22ND MARCH, 2011
Good morning to you all. Thank you for such a warm welcome to your school. In Ireland, we have a saying “one hundred thousand welcomes” but I think the boys and girls of Colegio Ramiro de Maeztu may have even beaten that standard! It’s been wonderful to have a tour of your classrooms and to see all the hard work you and your teachers do in English and in Spanish each day.
Speaking another language is a unique way of learning about other cultures and of opening up to the wider world. My visit here is all the more enjoyable and fruitful because I fell in love with Spanish language and culture when I was at school and where I had the chance to learn not just the language but the history, the poetry, the music and the dance. You are even luckier for you live comfortably with two languages from such a young age and I thank your teachers and parents for the opportunities they give you.
I know that I’m not the first Irish person that you’ve met and I’m delighted that you have a special connection with Ireland through one of the teachers here at the moment – Carl Brennan. Carl is carrying on a long tradition of links between Spain and Ireland in the field of learning. Hundreds of years ago, in the 17th and 18th centuries, young people travelled from Ireland to Spain to be educated, in colegios irlandeses, because at that time, it was not possible for them to be educated in Ireland. Nowadays, of course, one of the most vibrant links between Ireland and Spain is the large number of young Spanish boys and girls, who travel to Ireland to learn English and who bring a bit of sunshine to our Irish summer with their enthusiasm and exuberance every year. Of course it is also well known, given Ireland’s renowned literary tradition, that we speak the best English in the world!
As a special thank you for welcoming me into your school today, I brought a little bit of Ireland for you to enjoy. The shamrock is one of the many symbols of Ireland and we wear it with pride on our National Day – Saint Patrick’s Day – which was on 17 March. I hope you will enjoy watering the shamrock plants and watching them grow.
It was fascinating to see at first hand bilingual learning in action and I am so impressed by the ability of the students. I would like to commend Presidenta Esperanza Aguirre and her team led by Xavier Gisbert at the
Comunidad de Madrid for their imagination and foresight in putting this creative bilingual programme in place. The Comunidad de Madrid is at the cutting edge of education policy. Ireland also plays host every year to teachers from the Madrid Region who spend time working and training in Irish schools. I know that many young teachers from Ireland like Carl have likewise benefited from working and training here in the Madrid region. This is an important exchange of experience which builds unique and lasting personal connections between our two countries and greatly enhances the quality of our language teachers.
Let me finish by encouraging all of the pupils here to continue their work to develop a love of learning and a love of language. Spanish and English are two of the most important languages in the world and since you can speak both you will be at home in many parts of the world. From what I have seen today, I know that you are already doing brilliantly and I have absolutely no doubt that you will all go on to do great things! And just to add a third language into the mix, I’ll thank you in Irish go raibh míle míle maith agaibh go léir.