You can’t help but feel sorry for many of our schoolchildren and students. We have one of the most intense, in fact over intense, schooling systems in Europe. Kids are pushed to read and write far too early, before they should even be holding a pencil in the writing position. Schoolchildren spend an inordi-nate amount of time regurgitating never-to-be-used again information. After school it is just homework, extra lessons and extra-curricular activities, which are often handled with the same manic

competitiveness.

Maltese parents are over ambitious, of that there is no doubt. Then, after all those years of gruelling grind and work, students start, if they are lucky and sufficiently academically oriented, to enter our sixth form and our university, where the same sorts of principles apply, where egos and established interests often, and in some departments particularly, come before real education. And at the end of it all, if they are lucky enough to graduate, they are finding it incredibly hard not only to find work, but even harder to find work which in some way at least reflects the 16 or so years they have wasted on an educational system that produces people who can repeat information, but not much in the way of innovation, creativity, public spiritedness or even enjoyment of learning – for pity’s sake! The desire to think independently is not even remotely there...

Is the solution to all this money? The news that grants may be reduced across the board but increased for some courses for which few students apply is not bad in itself. The question is really if it is sufficiently radical to produce a new generation of kids hungry to learn, to achieve and ultimately to contribute to this fast-deteriorating community of ours.

Is it really worth going to university at all, or taking certain courses particularly, in order to find fulfilling work? In one respect, yes. Those most likely to be unemployed have not completed higher education, while those who have, are least likely to be unemployed.

But a look at where many of our graduates are working, and what they are actually doing, does make you question our whole system.

This phenomenon has already happened in the UK. Graduates increasingly cannot find work, or end up working in areas for which they did not need a degree anyway. Some are choosing not to go to university, preferring to gain some life experience through working first, starting at the

bottom of the rung in various companies, and then having a huge edge on your average graduate who, at 22, knows little more than how to repeat information at exams and write nice essays or put together good projects. These are hardly skills which are mainstream, or particularly needed in an average working day. New employers usually want work experience, which is often very difficult for a new graduate to obtain.

Although the student worker system was in some ways a disaster, I do believe that both private companies and public ones in Malta who do benefit from graduates should be organised into giving graduates some work experience during their course. This experience would not only help graduates find work and beat the insurmountable threshold they sometimes find themselves trying to climb over, but also to give them a clearer idea of what a day’s work in their chosen area of study might entail. Many are dispirited, disillusioned or worse, when they realise, too late really, that their area of study was not where they wanted to be work-wise at all!

The focus on money only – or at least mainly – in the proposed reforms is worrying. First of all, we mucked things up by paying youngsters to study, even though most children live at home with everything provided for. So we spoilt our kids and their attitude, as they expect money to just be there and are then gutted by how little and low working salaries are for a full day’s work.

And now we are going to have means tests. Now that’s fine but, of course, children whose parents work in the well-known areas of tax evasion will be far more likely to benefit (as usual!) than those who have a good salary and have no choice but to declare it all. It seems that wherever you turn in Malta, those who can avoid tax are rewarded at every opportunity, ranging from undeserved social security and now to better grants.

It might have been better to give tax breaks to those parents whose children go into full-time study. Very few of those who will receive the extra grant will really be poor. You can smell real poverty, and believe me, the vast majority of the kids of the really poor in Malta will not and cannot get to university for an extra Lm20 or so a month. It will be an achievement if they leave school being able to read and write!

We need to not only improve our stipends system but also to put the joy back into education. The values are all wrong, as they are in our society in general.

Has anyone else noticed?