A statement that has always intrigued me is famously attributed to President Harry Truman, who said “the world is run by ‘C’ students”.

I like this statement not only because it suddenly makes me proud of all the ‘C’s I have garnered throughout my education, but it effectively dilutes the stress connected with achieving the best marks possible while underscoring that the road to success is made up of a lot more than excellent marks.

Of course, being top of the class is a phenomenal achievement and should be lauded. However, as Truman so wonderfully hinted, it is only one block out of a whole structure. The ability to work in a team; perseverance; courage; maturity of judgment; practical intelligence and confidence are equally important.

To use football as an analogy, top marks allow you to beat Arsenal or Liverpool, but all the other abilities taken as a whole can make you win the Premier League.

Big as it may seem – in terms of its goals – the Lisbon Strategy is the key to the future for Maltese students in this day and age. And funnily enough, as I leaf through its ambitious goals, I can’t help reading ‘C’ in all four of its symbolic corners.

The Lisbon Strategy is not based exclusively on academic excellence. It takes a more comprehensive approach that celebrates the beauty of innovation, social and environmental renewal and the need to achieve a learning economy in this age of discontinuity.

And since the words “innovation” and “learning” are intimately linked to education, it is wise to question whether university – which is the womb that should nurture the best students on our island – is giving birth to “Lisbon Strategy compliant” students or simply aims to produce compartmental ‘A’ students.

The ideal situation would be to gear student towards working in Lisbon-Strategy mode while realising their intellectual levels to the full. However, given that resources are limited and every nation needs to put its money where its mouth is, I would happily embrace ‘C’ students able to ride the crest of Lisbon – students who would be the most innovative guns in Europe, who realise that knowledge is a brilliant tool and not merely the classical, albeit beautiful, end product.

I am sure that had Truman lived in our times, he would have been an excellent, Lisbon-compliant C student.

Clearly, this is not an ode to mediocrity. Rather, what I am putting forward is the claim that we must shift our goal posts.

Malta, in many cases, is languishing near the bottom of the list in Lisbon Agenda statistics. This is simply unacceptable and we, as students who should be the main feeders of a truly dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy, must do our best to turn the tables.

We need an educational earthquake on two levels. First of all, as a nation, we must ensure excellence in the bread and butter issues of education, in the way education translates to students.

Fortunately, in this regard, the European Union is creating a unified approach through the Bologna Process. This process aims to create a European Higher Education Area by 2010, in which students can choose from a wide and transparent range of high quality courses and benefit from smooth recognition procedures.

The three priorities of the Bologna Process are: Introduction of the three-cycle system, qualifications and periods of study. Hand in hand with this process is the need to grant students their fundamental right to the best education possible with able lecturers; a good environment; good means of redress in cases of malpractice; and a set of rights which hold in favour of the students, who are partners and not simply consumers of education.

But on a second and far more important level, we should revamp the whole educational system, not least university, into more than education for education’s sake. The old definition of education is, like the old definition of art, quite useless. The celebration of a super grade and nothing else is a recipe for disaster and irrelevance.

The Maltese have innovation, fortitude, knowledge and perseverance in their genes. Let us all be courageous and aim to be the best in Europe and top of the Lisbon list.

Because Lisbon begins with a C.

Nikita Zammit Alamango is a member of the Executive Committee of the Malta Labour Party and International Secretary of the Labour Youth Forum

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