This week we read the very welcome news that the Cork Education and Training Board has declared that they will charge no fees for the coming academic year, with the CEO making the very obvious but important observation that education is a fundamental right.
The abolishment of these fees, no matter what they were or how low they may have been, does genuinely give a parity of opportunity to citizens which is fundamental.
The reality is that a lot of jobs still hinge on having the right accent, or parentage; attending the ‘right’ school or college, or getting an internship at a ‘good’ company.
There’s no point in pretending there’s equity of opportunity.
There’s a tendency to equate education with employment opportunities, but they are not the same at all and at least the first can be pursued, thankfully, fairly easily in Ireland.
In line with that, we are also reminded this week of the best public service we have in this country, the library.
While the HSE dominates the headlines as the most notorious public service, the humble leabharlann is tipping away at the back of the class, doing a fantastic job.
The library is a welcome classroom for everyone who simply could not focus for 40 minutes at a time in school and prefer to gaze out the window with an open and unread book, letting their imagination run riot.
It’s the most wonderful lecture hall for those who find adrenaline to be the best teacher, and leave their ‘homework’ to quite late on a Wednesday, deadline looming.
Malcolm X spoke vividly in his autobiography (available, of course, from the library) about the life changing impacts the library prison had on his mind: ‘I knew right there, in prison, that reading had changed forever the course of my life’.
He read the dictionary, expanding and honing that vocabulary that would allow him to be such an eloquent and powerful speaker, social thinker, and rights activist.
Unlike a formal education setting, night classes and PLC courses allow one to study what they’re interested with joy and willingness, surrounded by others who are not there by force or the law but by desire.
For people of all ages and backgrounds who didn’t get a chance in school, the opportunities are there to go some way to redressing the imbalance.
The state’s primary system of education dates to 1831 in Ireland, with free post-primary education introduced in 1967.
However, many graduates of the Irish education system, far too many to count, know that the price of education was high enough in other ways with its abject, random cruelty.
The library and Cork Education and Training Board are thankfully a long way from that horror, and on our doorstep.
Clonakilty collaboration
The future is bright in Clonakilty as groups are banding together to take a targeted approach towards Kent Street, and the most welcome news is the sheer number of people who went out of their way to go to a public meeting on the scheme earlier in March.
With projects like this, a united front is the way to go, leaving wiggle room to negotiate space and resources for different interests, but overall working collaboratively to get that all-important funding.
It isn’t lost on successful business groups either, as the same outlook is identified by the Skibbereen Chamber of Commerce: if grant funding pops up, a community needs to be ready to grab it and go head-to-head with every other town in the country that’s looking for a piece of the pie.
The redevelopment of buildings like those in Kent Street is a boon, not only in terms of resources but also to the soul.
Everyone has favourite routes through town and bits they avoid, because it’s grey or dark or unpleasant; anything that invigorates a street is welcome.
It may only amount to a few metres but those metres add up and, inch by inch, vacancy and dereliction might finally be something we look back on as an unfortunate blip in the growth of our society.
