Interview • January 04 2004

Warning against the breakdown of social protection

Peter Mayo has a passion for education and social issues in general and holds strong opinions concerning migration and multi-ethnicity and has a very critical take on the whole issue of ‘lifelong learning’ - the current buzzword in discussions concerning education and training. Julian Manduca paid him a visit last week

Professor Peter Mayo is an unpretentious man, and seemed somewhat confused as to why a weekly newspaper like MaltaToday would want to interview him. Mayo may not be well known outside academic circles, but he assures me that together with others, he has been involved in work with communities.
Intellectuals have been notoriously absent in their participation in public life and Mayo recognises this fact, his own failings in this regard and the need for university lecturers to be socially engaged.
Mayo did not start out to be an academic, and admits to having been an underachiever at school, especially at secondary level, but somehow, after a short stint as a part-time journalist, he took up studies at tertiary level, became a teacher, an organiser of adult education projects and subsequently, following graduate studies in Canada, took up the academic life.
Mayo views education in its broadest sense– to be interpreted as all learning processes, involving institutions of formal learning - schools, educational institutes - as well as informal sources of learning - the media and participation in union activities and NGOs among others. "People are being educated all the time, there is much more to education than formal education. There is no point of arrival as far as a person’s education is concerned; it is an ongoing process. We might not recognise the importance of non-formal and informal education, but that is changing slowly."
He strives for an education that is more and more inclusive, that does not leave anyone out. While he welcomes greater access to the University, Mayo sounds a cautionary note concerning its rapid expansion, calling for important qualitative adjustments to be made. "The lecturer student ratio is not good enough. Colleagues and I have faced classes of 250 students. As a result of having to teach huge classes, one often does not get to know one’s own students. It is also difficult to provide an interactive approach to learning in these circumstances. One is also hard-pressed, at University, to find rooms that are conducive to an interactive approach to teaching and learning, even when the student number is reasonable and would permit such an approach to be adopted. The physical layout of the room one is assigned to teach a University course unit often conditions the type of pedagogy in which lecturers and students engage. Sometimes one can remedy the situation by rearranging chairs in the form of a semi circle but this is not always possible. Because of the large number of students being taught, many lecturers are swamped by huge piles of scripts to mark and this leaves little time for research. There seems to be no adequate funding for the university library."
According to Mayo more resources need to be channelled into in the state primary and secondary sectors. "This is not to detract in any way from the sterling work performed by a number of dedicated Heads and schoolteachers. Nevertheless there is a need for more resources to be provided if we are to go some way towards realising many of the goals set by the new National Minimum Curriculum (NMC) document. We need effective programmes of continuing professional development for teachers and greater investment in state schools."
The NMC document represents an important step forward in the effort to provide a genuine quality and meaningful education for one and all. It is also, in many respects, a ‘compromise document’ according to Mayo, who says that while the first draft was more radical, and coherent, the final one was marked by too many compromises with the result that one finds a few contradictory discourses. But then this is to be expected when so many different interests need to be accommodated within a process of consensus politics.
He recognises the broad degree of participation involved in the development of the document and its follow up work. He sees this as a positive feature that bodes well for the future of policy making in the Maltese educational field. He reiterates the note of caution he and his colleague, new Faculty of Education Dean, Dr. Carmel Borg, expressed in a co-authored piece on the NMC, namely that most of the organisations represented in the process of development of this document were ‘constituted bodies’ that operate within the State’s corporatist’s framework. It would be interesting to see whether other organisations, representing the voices of traditionally marginalised groups, which do not operate within this framework, are allowed to formally participate in the process of national curriculum reform. "Would organisations such as, say, The Malta Gay Rights Movement be formally invited to participate in this process?"
"We still have a selective system and there exists a body of research that indicates the discrimination occurring within our system on the basis of social class and gender. It was originally suggested, in the draft NMC document, that Malta should go for a more comprehensive education; this has now been shelved. Politicians were against removing selectivity. Some of the more progressive ones advocated caution in this regard. They might have felt that such a sudden move would have undermined popular support for the document and therefore the much augured reforms to which the document can give rise."
One of Mayo’s single-authored books is Gramsci, Freire and Adult Education: Possibilities for Transformative Action, and mention of adult education brought the concept of lifelong education to mind. It is when I ask him about this specific concept that his face lights up. He pauses for a while before recounting how he was introduced to the subject as an undergraduate over twenty years ago in a unit taught by Professor Kenneth Wain. He must have been impressed then. ‘Lifelong Education’ had an underlying humanist philosophy. He is now worried about what he sees as a change in the official discourse: rather than lifelong education, there has been a shift to what is now being called ‘lifelong learning.’ This shift in terminology is noticeable in the OECD and EU discourses.
"That shift is not innocent. It reduces the emphasis on structures and institutions, which one found in writings concerning the older concept of ‘lifelong education’, and lays stress on the individual as a person who lies at the centre of the educational process with the potential to take charge of his/her own learning."
"There is a positive side to this," says Mayo. "The emphasis on ‘learning’ can help convey the idea that it is not individuals who need to adapt to the institutions and agencies by which they are taught but it is the institutions and other agencies that must adapt to them."
"There is a flip side to this," he points out. "This change in emphasis ties in beautifully with the current all pervasive thinking that education and social well being - as with the talk about the transition from the welfare state to a ‘welfare society’ - are the responsibility not of the State but of the individual and communities. By implication, any failure in this regard is to be blamed not on the system but on the individual or the communities concerned. "
"Documents such as the EU Memorandum on Lifelong Learning, which seems to have become a very important source of reference locally, are also full of this kind of discourse." Mayo draws parallels between what is happening in education globally with what has happened in certain countries to pensions and health care – becoming an individual rather than a shared concern. "The state cannot abdicate its responsibilities in this regard. "
We switch to what has become another area of interest for Mayo. 2003 saw immigrants and refugees take a major role in media articles and Mayo states the Malta is increasingly becoming more multi-ethnic. While the media has been arguing for better treatment of illegal immigrants, it has been suggested that treating immigrants well will only attract more of them to our shores and create a greater problem.
"Those involved with any potentially educational agency, including the media, need to make everyone aware why people have to emigrate. We have to understand the current situation concerning the intensification of what we fashionably term globalisation which has brought in its wake not only the mobility of capital but also mass mobility of potential workers across the globe - two types of mobility which, of course, do not occur on a level playing field. This situation is certainly evident throughout the Mediterranean, which has frequently been described, owing to the migration of people from its southern shores to its northern ones, as the ‘new Rio Grande’."
It has been suggested that the people coming to Malta are mostly criminals who can only cause problems here, but Mayo dismisses the argument. "This argument is made not only in Malta but in several countries witnessing waves of immigration. Who is to say that these people are unwanted in the receiving countries? It has been argued that the economy of certain countries requires certain types of labour and these requirements cannot be met or are deliberately not met (to minimise labour costs) by the internal labour market - and all this despite the high levels of unemployment experienced within a number of the receiving countries. Put crudely, rather than these immigrants being ‘unwanted‚’ the presence of immigrants can suit unscrupulous employers in
the receiving countries fine; these employers can avail themselves of a pool of potential workers who can perform the job at hand at a rate substantially lower than that paid to the local workers."
"As far as Malta is concerned, we have to treat immigrants in a manner marked by respect for basic human dignity. Few readers would need reminding that many of them are forced to flee their homeland risking life and limb in a bid to avoid the great misery that results from an unequal global distribution of resources. This occurs partly as a legacy of colonialism, partly through the policies of the major institutions that support the process of globalisation and often partly also through the corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency of governments in the country of origin."
Mayo argues: "As somebody involved in education, I would argue that multi-ethnicity is one of the key issues facing our educational system at the start of this new millennium. Cultures that for centuries have been constructed as antagonistic are now expected to co-exist within the same geographical space. This creates tensions often induced by fear of those we have been constructing as ‘the other.’ There is a lot of work to be done in this area, including educational work on a large scale that involves a variety of agencies, including schools, higher education institutions, the media etc. "
The process of working towards greater multi-ethnic conviviality in Malta has not moved ahead like it has done in other larger European and some North American countries, but it has started and Mayo welcomes it as he welcomes the idea of living in a multiethnic society: "I found living in the multi-ethnic city that is Toronto, where I studied for my PhD, a very enriching experience."