One of the strangest reactions provoked by the pre-budget document launched recently by the Government was a ‘comment’ on what this document says about the education sector, a comment made by none other than MLP Deputy Leader, Charles Mangion, in a contribution to another section of the press. (‘Where is the beef?’ - The Malta Independent on Sunday, July 29).
This is what Dr. Mangion had to say:
‘Prime Minister Gonzi has at last acknowledged that education is a core value we need to cultivate in our society. He stops short of acknowledging that the Nationalist government’s performance in education in the almost uninterrupted last 20 years is at best shameful. But once again he promises to spend more money to build schools. He repeats the same mistake of measuring performance in education with the amount of money spent in providing the services. He repeats hackneyed mantras on the importance of making IT education a backbone of our system.
‘Nowhere do we see a critical analysis of why we are underperforming in this sector. Nowhere do we see any concrete plans how whole generations of young people who left our educational system in the last 10 years are going to be given a new chance to integrate in a new economy that has little space for unqualified workers.’
Considering the incredibly dismal record on education of the successive 1971-87 MLP administrations, I must confess that I had to read this observation a number of times. I thought that, perhaps, this was a classic example of the philosophical debate between perception and reality. Perception, as has been said, is the essence of propaganda and this piece of hogwash written by Charles Mangion was certainly nothing but unadulterated empty propaganda.
The record of the 1971-87 Labour administrations in the education sector was a disaster of gargantuan proportions. The notorious and amateurish attempt to abolish examinations and grammar schools (the Lyceum) imposed on the country without any sensible preparations and without first seeking to have the teaching profession on board, ruined the state education system for decades. There was an increase in the number of schoolchildren who did not know how to read and write and these were simply dumped in so-called ‘trade schools’ that ignored any formal academic subjects.
The situation was later compounded with the infamous lock-out of teachers under Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici’s tenure of Minister for Education – a crisis created by the government itself and that led to socialist bullies taking care of classes and deciding how schools should be run – pale shades of Mao’s Cultural Revolution!
Church and independent schools suddenly became the only reliable educational institutions, attaining an undeservedly superior rating, not because they had made any discernable tangible progress but simply because the state education system had gone to the dogs. This led to the mad rush to enlist children in these schools as parents wanted to avoid state schools at all costs. In fact, it is only now, two decades after the end of the bad old Mintoff days, that the state education system is recovering its appreciation among the general public.
On the tertiary level front, the Labour administrations simply closed up the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST) and restricted courses at the University to utilitarian ones, abolishing all degrees in Arts and Science. Moreover it limited the number of students attending utilitarian courses to a magic number that some socialist planner had decided was how many graduates the country needed every year! Meanwhile these students had to follow a six-month study/six-month work regimen, with the so-called work phase often being unrelated to the field of study. Learning IT was of course verboten, as according to socialist petty-mindedness competence in information technology meant a reduction of available jobs!
One would have expected that it was the MLP that should have apologized for this unmitigated disaster, or at least acknowledged its shameful record in education. But Charles Mangion forgets all this and even pretends it is the PN that should humbly acknowledge its shortcomings.
As fate would have it, less than two weeks after Mangion’s article, the National Statistics Office (NSO) published the results of the 2005 Census of Population and Housing. This exercise showed in no uncertain ways that there was an appreciable rise in literacy and language ability in the ten years between 1995 and 2005. The overall literacy rate stood at 92.8% in 2005, an improvement of 4.1% over 1995. During these ten years, there was a drop of 28.3% in the number of illiterate people from 36,444 in 1995 to 26,121 in 2005.
While the proportion of people who speak Maltese remained as it was in the previous ten years ago, the 2005 census shows that in the same ten years there was a growth in the ability of the Maltese population to speak other languages. The number of those who can speak English rose by 62,197; Italian by 87,162; French by 43,969; German by 13,303; and Arabic by 8,091.
This tangible improvement in the level of education of the Maltese population is no shameful record. It is a record that the PN should be justifiably proud of. A lot has been done on the educational front since the PN’s return to power in May 1987, and the result is there for all to see. This is not to say that we should rest on our laurels. There is still ample space and scope for even more improvement. However, the least the MLP should do is to avoid politicizing the education issue, as Charles Mangion has pathetically attempted to do.
At the end of the day, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The quoted figures speak for themselves and show how reality is very different than the propaganda that is being foisted daily on the people by the socialists.
