Tanya has the write stuff for learning
REPORTER DAVID MEDCALF TALKED TO EARLY SCHOOL LEAVER TANYA BYRNE ABOUT HOW SHE MISSED OUT ON EDUCATION IN HER EARLY YEARS BEFORE RETURNING TO CLASS IN BRAY AS AN ADULT IN HER LATE FORTIES
TANY A Byrne recalls being enthralled reading ‘ Heidi’ – the much loved story of an Austrian orphan – when she was a child. It should have been the start of a love affair with literature. Instead, almost four decades passed before she opened another book in earnest, Harper Lee’s famous novel ‘ To Kill a Mocking Bird’.
In the long period between the two, she dropped out of education and raised four children before her love of learning was finally kindled. Now closing fast on her fiftieth birthday, Tanya is the poster girl for the Bray Adult Learning Centre in Albert Avenue. A lifetime after skipping formal lessons, she is living proof that it is never too late to enrol.
Someone who has never shied away from the tag ‘early school leaver’, Tanya is now eyeing up a degree course. By 2023, she hopes to have a BA in Psychotherapy. So how did someone who clearly now relishes the discipline of courses, classes and even homework drop out of the loop for so long?
She reckons that her disconnect from schooling had its origins in family circumstances. Though there was a national school on the doorstep, her mother preferred to have her brood attend in Dun Laoghaire. This meant that she had a good reason to visit her sister while the kids were in class.
The problem was that her husband, Tanya’s father, was an alcoholic. As a result the family was frequently skint, with no money to hand for the bus fare. The absences began to mount up
‘I loved school when I was there,’ she recalls, ‘ but hated going in when I had missed a few days.’
One particular incident lingers in her memory. A Miss King took third class and she called young Tanya up to review something she had written. The young pupil was told she had a great imagination but that her spelling was atrocious.
‘I remember worrying how you spell atrocious,’ she laughs now at the good of it.
WhWhenever, sheh did tturn up, sheh hhadd tto hhave excuses prepared: a mythical granny died at least half a dozen times – half a dozen times a year. The days spent ‘on the hop’ were notified to the authorities, so that school attendance officer Mister Kinane became a regular caller.
Though she picked up the basics of reading and writing, she was left miles behind in most aspects of the curriculum. Catching up was never possible. The larger classes of the seventies opened up cracks in the system and she seemed to fall through all of them.
It was not as though life at home was in any way anti-school or anti-learning. Her father worked for Irish Lights, alternating each month spent on some remote island or headland with a month back in Ballybrack.
Aside from his drinking, he was a regular at the t public library and enjoyed reading Ladybird books b to his five children. Those Ladybird sessions make for fond memories but the middle of the five children never developed the habit of picking up a book for herself.
She overcame a wall of dread to attend the entrance examination for the Dominican School in Dun Laoghaire. Assigned to Year 1C, she did not make it to Christmas, though she sometimes set off from the house with her schoolbag in the mornings.
It was only a pretence. The bag contained a pair of jeans rather than textbooks so that she could ditch the school uniform. Two nuns from the Dominican arrived at the door one day to report their pupil missing. The reality was that Tanya’s mother already knew she was on the hop. It suited everyone that minding younger siblings substituted for secondary education.
‘ Three wasted years of doing nothing,’ is how she now looks back on her time from 12 to 15 years of age. ‘I never picked up a book. I would be waiting for others to come home from school so I could go out and play.’
The tedium was broken when she found work as a waitress at the Graham O’Sullivan delicatessen. She was happy to be earning money and did not feel at all disadvantaged by the fact that she had no certificates.
One day in the deli she was called aside by her supervisor who wished to check her age. Apparently school attendance officer Mister Kinane had called in for lunch one day and noticed her serving customers, prompting the query. But she was 15 by then and, back in those days, she was old enough to be legally in paid employment.
Working full time lasted only until she was 17, her career in catering cut short by pregnancy. The first born arrived shortly after her 18th birthday and she was married to husband Mark before the first of their four started school.
‘I started taking a good look at myself,’ she remembers. ‘I wanted to give my children everything I did not have.’
Though she was prepared to take some part time cleaning work, the priority was providing encouragement and support in the education of her brood. The eldest is now aged 31, while the youngest is 21.
Their mother can state with truth and pride that all four completed schooling to reach third level education. As the last of them entered transition year, Tanya took notice of an An Post sponsored campaign which was running on television.
The ads were targeted at adults who might consider returning to education, broadcasting
a phone number for anyone interested to call. So she made the call.
She remembers sitting in the car parked outside the house in Loughlinstown to dial the number: home was always full of life and noise. The initial call led to a second call and then a third as she was given a choice between Bray and Sallynoggin.
She tried Sallynoggin first but, as chance would have it, she could not get through. Bray answered straight away. She was soon on her way to Albert Avenue.
‘ They told me to come up for a chat,’ she reminisces. ‘ That morning, I left an hour early. I paced up and down the sea front, I was so nervous. I was sweating – the clothes were stuck to me.’
Six years later, she still remembers all the what-ifs which were swirling around her head: What if she was not able for it? What if she did not like it? What if they did not like her? What if she was asked to read out loud?
The fears proved groundless as she was gently channelled into English (also known as communications), computer and maths night classes at Bray Adult Learning Centre.
‘It was daunting. The first evening I found myself panicking at the door – but it turned out okay. Adult education is different, not like being at school.’
One of the biggest differences was the size of classes, with maybe nine eager learners in the room, rather than the 30-plus, maybe 40-plus, of her primary schooling.
Before very long, she found herself lapping up ‘ To Kill a Mocking Bird’ and doing homework on the kitchen table, with everyone else in the family barred from the room.
The bit was now very much between her teeth as she moved on to take certificates in counselling and psychotherapy, lining herself up to start her degree course next September.
Tanya still speaks of ‘ the fear of taking the first step’ but nevertheless gives the impression that she is now truly well up and running.
‘It’s a long journey,’ she muses. ‘I love learning and I don’t think that I will ever stop.’
Bray Adult Learning Centre manager Niamh Maguire reckons that Tanya is typical of many students who find their way to her door in at least one respect – they found school challenging.
Otherwise, however, every story is very different and deeply personal, against the backdrop of a reality where one in six adults struggles with reading and writing.
When it comes to grappling with figures, one in four is reckoned to have problems.
The centre in Bray is part of a network across County Wicklow which also has outposts in Wicklow town, Arklow, Carnew, Baltinglass and Blessington.
The six centres have a combined total of more than 1,000 part-time learners, all playing catch-up with basic reading, writing, maths and computer skills.
Small classes, for which no fee is demanded, are the norm with a choice of morning, evening and sometimes afternoon sessions.
The key is respect: ‘You may be a beginner reader but you are not a beginner thinker,’ is one of Niamh Maguire’s mantras as she salutes the concept of life-long learning.
‘ Though it is still a huge step for people to come to a centre like this, the idea of adults going back to education is more accepted now than it was years ago.’
The adult learning centres are an arm of the Kildare and Wicklow Education and Training Board, funded by the Department of Education through Solas.
THE FIRST EVENING I FOUND MYSELF PANICKING AT THE DOOR – BUT IT TURNED OUT OKAY. ADULT EDUCATION IS DIFFERENT, NOT LIKE BEING AT SCHOOL