This article is from page 27 of the 2011-04-19 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 27 JPG
“WE live in a beautiful part of the world with a huge range of natural heritage,” says Anne Rasehorn of what she labels the sleepy surroundings of Mountshannon.
On this day, she’s having an open house, with her fellow students sitting around a table and talking about the benefits of going back to education.
There’s camera flash around them as they go into the minutae of being of East Clare and using their surrounds in an educational context.
At the start of their 30-week course they might have been put off but not now, as they talk freely and under the spotlight of what it means to be back in education.
Tutor Shelagh Honan says, “One day, I came into class and brought a video camera with me. I asked them to make a presentation, talk to camera about a subject of their choice. Yes, some of them might have been intimidated by the prospect of doing it, but they did it and they all had something to say.”
With fellow tutors Catherine Bracken and Stephen McKeogh, Honan has overseen the course and is well placed to put its importance in context.
“Having courses like this for people out of work is very important and with increasing numbers of people out of work, the need for training and education becomes more important” she says,
“In times of economic recession, education and training is key. This is because giving people who are out of work the chance to re-train, up-skill and do a course that can cultivate a range of skills like starting your own business, embracing information technology and learning more about the heritage and history of your own area brings a lot of strands together.
“One student was blown away by what computer technology can do,” says Honan, before Eamon Nugent admits, “It amazed me that I could do it. Maybe I thought there was a barrier there and it was an impossibility, but I see now that there’s no barrier.
“It surprised me that you could see what you had written on a computer up in Flagmount on my own computer at home. Emails, I’m talking about. I thought that each thing was locked into its own computer,” Nugent adds.
“What Eamon says is important,” says Honan, “There’s no barrier. They’ve all proved that with their ability to do a range of subjects and bringing their knowledge of their own surroundings – Marie O’Leary talking in detail about Edna O’Brien; Kathleen Dowdall doing the same when talking about the stained glass windows of Harry Clarke and AE Child in St Cronan’s Church.
“The oral tradition on a tap was there and for them to be bouncing that knowledge off each other while learning at the same time was of great benefit,” she adds.