A very European education [IrishTimes]
- Published: 18 January 2011
PROFILE: ST KILIAN'S GERMAN SCHOOL, CLONSKEAGH, DUBLIN : Though tucked away beside the UCD campus, the windows of St Kilian’s in south Dublin look out onto Europe – and you don’t have to be German or speak the language to go there, writes JOANNE HUNT
DECIPHERING German newspaper headlines was recently the sport of choice for many Irish economists – but instead of thumbing dictionaries, they could have had a masterclass from children at one Dublin school.Students of St Kilian’s Deutsche Schule, a kindergarten, primary and secondary school in Clonskeagh, learn German from the age of four. While we relied on pundits to translate the headlines about us in Die Welt, this school’s transition year class did if for themselves.
“We did interactive classes with the children during the IMF and ECB debate where we went online and read and discussed the headlines in German newspapers,” says deputy principal of the secondary school, Alice Lynch. Though tucked away beside the UCD campus, the windows of this south Dublin school very much look out onto Europe.
The school traces its origins to the Save the German Children Society, founded in Dublin in 1945 to give homes to orphaned and homeless German children after the second World War. But to refer to St Kilians as “the German school” is a label they are keen to shake off.
“There’s a perception that everything is taught through German, but it’s not,” says Sarah Finnegan, head of the primary school. “Or that you have to speak German or that one of your parents has to be German, but that’s just not true,” she says.
Full Story: www.irishtimes.com
