ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE ON HER CONFERMENT OF AN HONORARY DOCTORATE
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE ON HER CONFERMENT OF AN HONORARY DOCTORATE FROM THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND ON 29 JANU
I’d like to thank the National University of Ireland and its recently elected Chancellor, Dr. Garret Fitzgerald for conferring on me this Honorary Doctorate. Dr. Fitzgerald has been one of our great public servants and, as he follows in the footsteps of such distinguished previous Chancellors as Eamon de Valera and Dr. Ken Whitaker, may I take this opportunity to wish him many happy years in his new role.
Ireland is enjoying unprecedented prosperity, and has blossomed into a modern liberal democracy, holding its place amongst the traditional ‘greats’, fully participating in the European Union. But that phenomenal success, particularly over the last decade, has its roots in earlier decades, when far-seeing Governments, and visionaries in the 3rd level education sector, seeing the potential from investment in education, committed the necessary resources to make our education system the great asset that it is today. The tremendous response of the universities, with the other 3rd level institutions, in meeting the rising demand for higher education, has been fundamental to that success.
It is timely, on an occasion such as this, to reflect on just how far we have come, and on the role which the universities have played in bringing about this new, dynamic and progressive Ireland. I am reminded of the words of Seamus Heaney, Ireland’s most recent Nobel laureate, in his poem “From the Canton of Expectation”, where he describes the changes wrought when education became available to those whose destiny had been to be second best, and to make a virtue of stoically, even pathetically, putting up with it.
“... suddenly this change of mood.
Books open in the newly wired kitchens.
Young heads that might have dozed a life away against the flanks of milking cows were busy
paving and pencilling their first causeways
across the prescribed texts. The paving stones
of quadrangles came next and a grammar
of imperatives, the new age of demands.”
They would banish the conditional for ever
this generation born impervious to
the triumph in our cries of de profundis.
Our faith in winning by enduring most,
they made anathema, intelligences
brightened and unmannerly as crowbars.
What looks the strongest has outlived its term.
The future lies with what's affirmed from under."
- Seamus Heaney speaks of the generation that gained access to education; that could, at last, “dig” as he did “with the pen” – or the computer, the mechanical digger”. That ‘revolution’ that he speaks about, was mirrored here, where a whole new world of opportunity was opened up to a generation emerging from the economic and cultural turmoil of the 2nd World War; where it was possible at last to break out of the confinement of economic repression; and where people could be participants, rather than onlookers, in the emerging post-war world. That push for greater access to education and research, represented a significant challenge to Irish Universities, and to the National University of Ireland in particular. But they rose to the task, and have been a major catalyst in the changes brought about in the decades since the War, giving us an Ireland of which we can be proud; a modern liberal democracy, with an educated, adaptable population, with skills and strengths capable of attracting high calibre foreign investors.
- In the metamorphosis from fledgling State, to mature nation, education has been the light of propagation and encouragement. It has equipped recent generations with the means to look closely at their own place, and to look far beyond blinkered boundaries to new opportunities and horizons. They have realised their potential to create a new Ireland by courageous engagement with our own talent and in partnership with the talent of the world around us.
- I’d like to congratulate the NUI on providing that light. As Ireland’s only ‘federal’ university, and, indeed, the largest in Ireland - with over 40,000 students - the NUI has a crucial role in Irish education, and research. It has faced many challenges - providing inspirational leadership; expanding the boundaries of knowledge; promoting equality of opportunity; and partnering industry and commerce, helping to drive forward towards modern Ireland, yet holding on to the legacy of insight from the past. The NUI has risen to the many challenges it faced and, in the process, has given us the tools to look closely at ourselves, and to re-assess where we are going.
- In this modern age of globalisation and interdependency, it has, I think, an over-arching role to promote - through rigorous scholarship, example and adherence to the principles of academic freedom -greater understanding and harmonious co-existence across the many social, racial, cultural and economic divides – not least those on our own doorstep. This is, perhaps, the new challenge that our education system faces. But it has already proven that it is capable of initiating and facilitating change.
- The task facing educators today - and I use a small ‘e’ in ‘educators’, for it includes schools, universities, the parents, and the media - is to hand on the baton of love for ones own history and culture without handing on the baton of contempt for the history and culture of others. We all know, only too well, that we have been told, and have in our turn, retold, versions of ‘history’, and interpretations of the present, which have served to generate mistrust and fear. Universities have a critical place in the shifting of a culture from a narrow to a broad focus.
- Clearly, there remains a great deal of baggage to be sorted out; a considerable amount of resistance to diversity and change. Ignorance and its ugly offspring, intolerance, are the root causes of this terrible stagnation, which is in stark contrast to the other Ireland that gives us such pride - the modern country taking its place in an advancing Europe.
- Meeting this challenge means equipping people with the mindset to deconstruct and reconstruct knowledge in a never-ending pursuit of truth; to develop the analytical and critical skills, to save them from emotional and spiritual fossilisation; to recognise and accommodate the “otherness” of others, so that they can look at that “otherness” in ways that are, perhaps, more generous than in the past. It involves an acceptance, which may at times be difficult, that we are all, to some extent, blinkered by perceptions, prejudices, beliefs, and sometimes plain misinformation - some of which is long past its ‘sell-by’ date.
- It is imperative here, I think, that we affirm and acknowledge the vision, courage and tenacity of those politicians and political advisers who, at this particularly difficult and delicate time, are actively engaged in the political process which is struggling so hard to achieve a noble and workable consensus in Northern Ireland - and on whose efforts the future wellbeing of so many people rests. In tandem with that process, it is incumbent on all of us to shift our perspectives a little; to play our part in making space for the accommodation of others. As Newman said, “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often”.
- The real test of our education system must surely be its ability to respond to changing needs and priorities, as the spiral of civilisation continues. As I have already said, I know that the universities have been central to the great ‘revolution’ that took place in Irish society as it moved from a rural based economy to a modern prosperous State. That transition was monumental; breathtaking in its audacity and its accomplishments. Somehow now, the prospect of prosperity for all seems an attainable goal – not yet here, but achievable – by this successful, sharing generation.
- The task for all of us today, is to condition the minds and hearts of this generation, so that they too can pass on a legacy which sees a generous, sharing Ireland that encompasses many traditions and cultures; that embraces the disadvantaged in our society; that creates a space for all of its people; and where the richness of diversity is itself a virtue of which we can all be proud.
- The universities are, once again, the key to the opening of minds to new perspectives. As Newman put it, “A man may hear a thousand lectures, and read a thousand volumes, and be at the end of the process very much where he was as regards knowledge. Something more than merely admitting it in a negative way into the mind is necessary, if it is to remain there. It must not be passively received, but actually and actively entered into, embraced, mastered. The mind must go half-way to meet what comes to it from without. . . .”.
- Preparing minds to go that “half-way”; to move beyond the cry of “not an inch!”; that is the real mission of our universities.