A tale of two countries, two schools, one great friendship

They went to the Giant's Causeway, to Dublin Castle and to Aras an Uachtarain. They went ceili dancing. They toured Dublin city and they heard about Irish writers and Irish history. They visited the Guinness brewery and Glendalough. Oh, and they attended plenty of classes at Lucan Community College as well.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. It was an action-packed start to their school term for the students from Bavaria.

For the past couple of weeks, the community college in west county Dublin has played host to a class of 23 German students who attend the Gymnasium Munchberg back home. They stayed with Irish students from Lucan Community College, who will in turn travel back to experience life and school in Bavaria next February.

This exchange has been going on for the past eight years at the Lucan college. It's the result of a college friendship between Diane Birnie, who teaches at Lucan, and her German friend, Roswitha Bohne, who teaches at the Gymnasium Munchberg.

"The German system is quite different in an awful lot of ways," says Jack Harte, principal of Lucan Community College, which is twinned with the German school. "Their gymnasiums are similar in ways to a grammar school - they are quite academic. The students notice the different style of teaching. They marvel at how much we put into teaching, trying to stimulate and motivate students. What they marvel at is the quality of the level of teaching here.

"In Germany when teachers go in they deliver their talk, almost like a lecture. At the end of the month the students are set a test. If they don't listen they won't be able to pass their exams."

The German visitors were struck by other aspects of school life in Ireland, he says. "There's a cultural antipathy to uniforms. They accept that they are part of the Irish scene, but they find it strange."

The structure of the German school day is very different, says Harte. They start at 8 a.m. and finish at 1 p.m. "Then they all go home. They don't tend to come back for sport and extra-curricular activities, whereas here there's a far greater involvement in that. There are far more things happening in our school." However, he says, classes are smaller in the German schools.

There are 800 students at Lucan Community College and the to-ing and fro-ing each year between teachers and students from the two schools has, he says, brought "a tremendous dimension to the school. In particular, it has given them a focus for their language skills. They are not just learning it for their Junior Cert."

This year the principal of Gynmasium Munchberg, Siegfried Geisler and his wife, Gerhild, came to Ireland. Their visit was part of the exchange, but it was also as part of a newly-launched fellowship. Each year, from now on, under an international fellowship launched this month and sponsored by Lucan's Finnstown Country House Hotel, an individual who is involved in education, the arts, or other relevant fields, will visit the college to give talks, readings and spend time with the staff and students of Lucan Community College.

"We'll choose somebody that we want to bring over to do something in the school," says Harte. The individual need not necessarily be from Germany. However, the close relationship between the two schools will continue into the future.

Next February, when Jack Harte's young students are leaving their German friends behind, he knows, "they will all be bawling, crying their eyes out" at the thought of not seeing each other, maybe, ever again.