Living and Learning in the Docklands of Dublin

David Limond

Issue 388, vol.97, Winter 2008

In March 2006, UK social researchers found 665 children below school age in the north docklands, hailing from families long established there. 10% of these children had special educational needs. Up to 20% of the families were living in overcrowded conditions – with 40% of them in poverty or receiving social welfare. The majority of parents had left school before 16 – minimising their employment prospects.

In response to the situation, the Dublin Docklands Development Authority has committed itself to working with the educational system at every level. Further, an Early Learning Initiative scheme (managed by the adjacent National College of Ireland) has been rolled out. And – representing the voluntary sector – students of Trinity College offer a Voluntary Tuition Programme.

Given the prominence of the Irish Financial Services Centre as ‘the jewel in the crown’ of the docklands development, one is tempted to view the whole purpose of this supplementary educational endeavour in terms of eventually equipping the locals to become financial traders themselves (or, failing that, to be first in the queue for employment as window-washers or floor-cleaners).

But here one must examine one’s motives. There is a danger that one may end up instrumentalizing human beings. One may overlook the fact that it is a denial of a human right that is at issue where education is denied (and not just the denial of an opportunity for personal economic advancement) – namely, the right to the fulfilment that comes from an educated knowledge and understanding of the world.

And one might even be over-looking certain compensating personality strengths. Profiling an urban population in many ways comparable to that of Dublin’s docklands (London’s Bethnal Green in the 1950s), social commentators had this to say : “People in Bethnal green are less concerned with ‘getting on’…Their credit with others does not depend so much on their ‘success’ as on the subtleties of behaviour in their face-to-face relationships”. This is “a place where neighbours can rely on each other, where there is a general atmosphere of friendliness, of strength and independence”.

David Limond is Lecturer in History of Education and Registrar for the Postgraduate Diploma in Education at Trinity College, Dublin