Hardly anything shows better how education in Malta remains grounded in traditional beliefs than the attitude we display towards it. We all consider the time that an individual spends studying as a time of “sacrifice”, made necessary by the need to perhaps find a good job.

That the years spent “studying” could be a time of discovery, adventure and interest since they open new and valid perspectives about life in general, is an alien idea. If that’s how adults view the situation, the same applies to a greater extent for their children.

So any proposal to lengthen and beef up the period spent at school gives rise to widespread unease. For God forbid, that would place more sacrifices and burdens on children plus their families (even if the average age span of the Maltese population has greatly increased.) Meanwhile, intensive teaching methods have multiplied; they have truly turned the educational system into an exam factory.

Needed: a strong public relations campaign to project the joy that  can be accessed via the educational experience, in and of itself.

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Timely

The government’s intention to prioritise financial support to the elderly and to strata of the population with lower income in next year’s budget is admirable. And timely.

I agree fully with the argument that before any government can distribute benefits, it needs first to ensure that wealth is being created. I agree too that it needs to ensure that all social benefits, whether longstanding or of recent origin, are sustainable.

Such considerations should not serve though as an excuse to allow social inequalities to increase. This has greater relevance in a society where the providers of services are progressively given higher priority in the allocation of shares in the wealth that is created.

It appears that the government has faced up to this problem.

The finance minister stated that the middle classes are the engine of wealth creation. True, they do have an important role in that regard.

However I suspect that in a “services” economy, price and wage relativities are altered in ways that lead to an underestimation of the economic contribution being given to wealth creation by social strata at the lower income levels.     

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Germans vs Greeks?

A friend of mine who is a great admirer of the German and Greek cultures has come to complain at the way by which in recent years, relations between Germans and Greeks were allowed to deteriorate. He insists that actually over the centuries both sides were most appreciative of each other.

To emphasize the point he showed me a poem written by the German poet Holderlin, who lived between 1770 and 1843. Its subject is the German river Main, but first Holderlin describes at length his love for the beauties of Grece and his wish to visit them. Then he declares that even after having travelled to places faraway, he still would not forget the beauties of the German river, which had welcomed him as of when he first approached it. The poem brings together in an extraordinary way a love for the Greek heritage with love for the German way of life. It was written in 1797.

My friend is right to feel aggrieved that German-Greek ties have become poisoned.