My Mount Everest: a radio broadcast on returning to education
A Leitrim student and four others attending Cavan, Longford and Roscommon Adult Learning Centres will describe the impact of their literacy difficulties on work, family and confidence, and how returning to education has transformed their lives during a broadcast on Shannonside/Northern Sound on Tuesday, September 7 at 6pm.
Reading your child a bedtime story; filling in a job application; buying a plane ticket online - are all things most of us do without even thinking.
But what it you find reading and writing difficult? Suddenly, these are all enormous tasks, often made worse by the fact that you are desperate not to let anyone know what is wrong.
In My Mount Everest, Cathy Hannon, Eamon Nolan, John (not his real name),Tereasa Walsh and David Fitzgerald tell their stories.
John is from Leitrim and attends the Adult Learning Centre in Longford. He says, "When I left school, I'd say I was in High Infants. High Infants isn't too high up in the line of reading. That alone makes you feel very vulnerable in the world."
Roscommon woman Cathy Hannon describes how it felt when her daughter wanted help with her homework. "That really got to me when I couldn't help her, and then she'd be giving out to me for not helping her. She didn't understand."
Eamon Nolan, also from Roscommon, remembers the difficulty he had in filling in a job application form: "I always got, say, my mother to fill it or one of my sisters or somebody to explain it to me … I found that very difficult. Embarrassing, really."
Dublin man David Fitzgerald moved to Cavan some years ago. He had been coping with limited reading and writing skills for years, and finally made the decision to go back to education. "There's a lot of mature students out there and they think that returning to education would be the same as when they used to go to school many years ago, and I can assure you it's nothing like that whatsoever. It's fun learning."
Cavan woman Tereasa Walsh is amazed at how returning to education has transformed her life: "The impact on my life is unbelievable. And to think that now when I get all this done I'll be able to go to college, which I thought to myself I would never be able to go to. I was going to maybe do flower-arranging or maybe do hairdressing, and hopefully maybe open a wee business or do something at home. The world is my oyster."
This is an independent production for Shannonside/Northern Sound produced by Claire Cunningham, Rockfinch Ltd.
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Weather for Carrick-on-Shannon, Ireland
Thursday 17 May 2012
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