Making a mark on the millennium

It was Deirdre Purcell's sense of fair play which brought about the Millennium Book, which will be written by our children and is being heralded as a national treasure. Anxious to make an individual contribution as a member of the National Millennium Committee, the writer says that "one of the things which occurred to me was that, in all the talk about our young people being the hope of the future, nobody had really asked them what thought."

The Millennium Book will even the odds a bit. Aimed at involving every schoolchild in every fifth class and Transition Year in the Republic's 4,000 schools, it will carry their thoughts and dreams as recorded on a designated day in this millennium-ending year.

The words and images of the students will be put down on especially prepared parchments on May 12th, which has been nominated National Millennium Book Day. "It will be a way of leaving their footprints on the millennium," says Purcell, "an image of an age."

Of necessity, not everyone's submission will make it into the multi-volume, bound manuscript. Size dictates that one entry from each school will be chosen at random. Purcell stresses that the project is not a competition, nor an exam, nor an essay: "Whatever the young people put down on that day will be completely unedited and unprepared. It won't be touched or changed in any way afterwards." The selections will be made by a team of volunteers and, once completed, the Millennium Book is to be presented to President McAleese before being placed in the National Library in Dublin.

The prepared parchments will arrive in schools during the first week in May, along with a lively video which has Damien from The Den explaining the idea to participants, posters and a message from President McAleese. Teachers will explain the project to pupils but won't influence their contributions.

"The guidelines we're sending to teachers are to do with stimulating students," says Purcell. "We're avoiding the word, so as not to inhibit anyone." She's thought carefully, too, about which student groups to involve.

"It's not simply to do with the fact that there are no exams in fifth class or Transition Year, though that's a factor. It has to do too with youngsters in those classes belonging to interesting age groups. At 12 they're just about to become teenagers - and 16 is really the end of childhood."

Support for the Millennium Book is enthusiastic with the Department of Education and Science on board along with INTO, ASTI, TUI, RTE and the National Library. A not-incidental aspiration of the Millennium Book is that it will encourage in its authors a feeling of their importance as individuals and Irish citizens, provide them with "a sense of discovery, ownership and pride in their own time and place."

Deirdre Purcell is "full of great hopes but shaking in my shoes. I expect a huge response and, of course, I believe that, if you project belief enough, the thing will happen. And I absolutely believe it will be a leaving of footprints on the millennium."