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ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE ON THE OCCASION OF HER VISIT TO JAMES’S STREET CHRISTIAN BROTHERS

ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE ON THE OCCASION OF HER VISIT TO JAMES’S STREET CHRISTIAN BROTHERS SCHOOL ON THURSDAY 30 APRIL

Thank you for your very warm welcome and I’d particularly like to thank the pupils of Mater Dei Primary School who joined with the pupils of James’s Street for the Guard of Honour as I arrived. It is a great pleasure for me to renew my acquaintance with James’s Street – to pay a return visit after your visit to the Áras.

James’s Street Christian Brothers School is one of the great old Dublin ‘institutions’ that has seen many a generation of young Dubliner come and go through its corridors of learning. Like all Christian Brothers schools – since those early days when Edmund Rice realised that education would afford young people a framework which would give meaning to their lives - James’s Street has been the stepping stone for so many people into the world – a place where they have been armed with the knowledge and interest in education to let them go on to great things – to play their full part in society – and to make successful careers wherever they went in the world.

Even today, the Brothers continue to turn their attention to the poorest and most deprived areas on the globe. Brothers are living with the poor in the shanty towns of Peru and Paraguay. Indian Christian Brothers originating from Edmund's time are addressing the problems in their own country and in The Gambia and Sudan. Though the numbers brothers may be smaller than in the past, their influence continues. And I want to pay tribute to their work in the world of 1998. I speak on behalf of thousands of people, both in Ireland and abroad, to whom your lives and work are dedicated.

I would like also to take this opportunity to commend all the teachers at St. James’s on their work with the pupils. Theirs is an onerous task – a ‘mission’ to form the minds of people at their most impressionable age – to unlock the hidden talents that each and every one of you has – to give you the choices you will need as you progress through school and in later life.

The importance of these early years cannot be over-stressed – the years when first impressions are indelibly etched onto your consciousness – when “what is learned in childhood is engraved on stone” – the years when your direction in later life is largely determined by the seeds that are sown in childhood.

I’m sure many of you have heard about the writer Frank McCourt’s who wrote the best seller - ‘Angela’s Ashes’ - about how as a child in a deprived family - the window of learning was opened for him when by chance he discovered books and libraries. That happy chance opened the gates of appreciation for literature and learning – it started a process that was to see him leave his native Limerick partly educated - and eventually, carve out a successful career in the United States through adult education. It’s worth remembering that in Frank McCourt’s case – where his father wasn’t the best provider – where his family suffered because of his father’s alcoholism and desertion – that it was that same father who introduced him to poetry and songs – that even the worst parent is capable of giving a good legacy to a child. The point of course is that books in the home – that parents talking to children – telling them stories – teaching them songs – that all these thing matter.

As you continue with your education, you will eventually think of what you will be doing later. Some of you will be entering the labour market for the first time. Others will go on to further education. Whichever path you choose, you are starting on a journey which has the capacity to take you to unforeseen destinations. Your school and working life is part of a wider, life-long learning experience where change is really the only constant.

Advances in modern communications and the advent of the information superhighway have added to the pace of change - and are profoundly impacting on all our lives. Today we are opening your new computer room – where the latest technology is available to you - to allow you to be a part of that great change that is taking place. The great advances in computers - and in communications – are opening up whole new opportunities and new horizons – they will enable you to explore new areas of interest and skill – to discover new talents – and to enrich your lives.

I wish you well with your work in the classroom – and in the computer room – and I hope that you continue to live up to the great name that James’s Street has for turning out students of the highest calibre.