I guess if you had to ask most middle class people what concerns them today, they would say taxes. By that they would mean what’s actually left for them after they pay for their own schooling, their own healthcare, run their own businesses and the like and yet see less and less available to them.

Working class people on the other hand might say jobs and the recent terrible news that a factory employing hundreds is closing down will obviously bring fear into the hearts of many, particularly those two families who are actually employed in the same factory. A factory goes, two jobs go and really everything goes with it.

Man might not live by bread alone but it’s pretty obvious and understandable that “bread and butter” issues count most to people when they come to vote. After those vote-important issues however, people go on to other things like our roads and our environment – the latter particularly becoming more important to us, as we bring up a whole generation of kids where asthma is on the increase, where you can smell our dirty air, where there is still litter everywhere, although there might now be a green warden, or bring-in sites in sight.

It always fascinates me that education here is not a big issue as it often is in elections of our European neighbours. It’s not, after all, that we don’t care about our kids. We do. It’s not that we don’t think education is important. We do. Every Maltese parent in the current system has to get swallowed up in the immensely-competitive race to repeat and regurgitate information from age six to age “22ish”. So we’re all in it – we’re all complaining, but it just remains at the level of a complaint and never becomes an issue at election time.

So let me say something on behalf of thousands of mothers who do have a vote, who do care about our kids (as do the dads, but we mums are often the homework buddies).

Give our kids their childhood back.

Let them have time to play and do nothing when they come home. Stop testing, examining and assessing at every given opportunity. Stop putting them off studying. And the same applies to the hassle we all have on our kids’ religious education. Let the schools cooperate with the Church so that religious classes in schools prepare our kids for Communion and Confirmation.

What on earth are we dragging them all to 45 minutes here and 45 minutes there of extra preparation for Communion and Confirmation for? The Church will or is doing a study on Church-attendance and the news is not going to be good.

Eight-year olds trying to understand the difference between temptation and sin! I simply told my daughter: “well it’s the difference between thinking about it and doing it!” Being asked at school of a recent sin and having to write it down, she told me she could not think of one and asked if I minded that she had invented one? I mean, I was just proud that she had no notion of anything bad! Was that a sin too, she asked, the fact that she invented a sin?

There is one fundamental difference between our system and what I see today. In my time we learnt to learn. It was not necessary to be tested on everything at every opportunity. Obviously, when exams came, yes, and when we were older and O-levels approached, yes, but there is no reason to treat children like adults, and especially not children under 10!

We all moan and groan if they want to dress with their tummies out like older girls, or if they want to watch older type TV programmes, but in our educational system we treat them like adults before we should.

Ask any foreigner who educates their kids here. They are stunned particularly at how we treat our under-10s. There is too much to learn. We start everything too young and we leave our kids with little time to do anything else. No wonder they don’t want to read. Who wants to read after six hours of school, two hours of homework, revising for tests and the like continually all throughout the scholastic year?

We have a Commissioner for Children. We worried a lot about life from conception. What about the well-being of our kids at school? We have two Maltas in education. One section for kids who do zilch, who are demotivated, under-resourced and who will leave school unable to read or write, or just manage to read or write. They will be the social- security recipients of tomorrow and cost our kids a fortune in taxes! – and another lot who have to endure a ridiculous system which is not producing enough of the bright and the best anyway. I would love to hear any of our politicians handling this issue, or will this piece too fall on deaf ears?

Incidentally when I write on this subject it’s always when I get the largest response, from those who manage to find my email privately. Today I’ll add it to the end of my article, and hopefully forward a good number to the authorities concerned. Someone has to help and things have to change, even if as yet our kids’ welfare does not mould our votes!

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