Josephine Gatt-Ciancio’s letter of 5th October entitled “The future educational system” was thought provoking, but ultimately unproductive. Her proposal that a Leaving Certificate should cover a range of skills from the ability to “dress, eat, wash and shop” to “mastery” of Physics, Biology, Chemistry and even Neuroscience, is truly incredible. It might be egalitarian, but it would certainly ensure that the least able children were clearly labelled as such.
Her suggestion that each child should have “a personal curriculum, based on what they want to study” and their chosen career, carries modularisation to the nth degree and is not feasible in terms of staff, educational resources or logistics. She also assumes that children will be largely self-directed and, from an early age, will know and be able to state their interests and proposed occupation.
Ms Gatt-Ciancio’s argument against broadly based education totally ignores the successes of inter-disciplinary research and she even decries the requirement for a psychiatrist to study general medicine, before studying psychiatry. Clearly she cannot realise that different disorders and diseases can have inter-related causes and so the practice of any branch of medicine requires a general and holistic approach.
Today, what is important is not only what is taught (which may soon be forgotten or out-of date), but also the acquisition of analytical skills and a critical way of thinking that will prove useful for the rest of the student’s life. Thus, although I have not been involved in Physics for over 50 years, the training I received still stands me in good stead and, although I am now engaged in totally different fields, I believe I still think as a Physicist.
Thus, education should aim to ‘future-proof’ a student’s skills and to make them transferable to new fields. In the UK there are now ‘museum towns,’ once largely reliant on a single industry, where the factories are now museums. This situation is so prevalent that Museum Curatorship might now be the most useful skill to acquire.
In 2006, while teaching at the University of Malta, I asked an inattentive student what he thought about the matter under consideration. “I’m not here to think, I am here to be taught,” he replied. Later, when I discussed his answer with other lecturers, I was told that this was part of the Maltese culture, with students expecting to be spoon-fed. This I describe as ‘the jug theory of learning’, where the teacher has a jug of knowledge to be poured into the head of the student, without passing through the mental processes of either. In the absence of debate and discussion, neither party benefits. If students are to succeed in their chosen careers and the teaching staff are to be kept mentally alert, this will have to change.
Ms Gatt-Ciancio would be better employed in proposing that a Leaving Certificate should record how successful a student is at assimilating and processing new knowledge and the level of their ability to meet new challenges.
Martin G. Spillane
Floriana