The examination period is very much upon our country’s younger generations at the moment, as children of most, if not all, ages across the country contend with their mid-yearly tests and exams.

This editorial is born out of something related to that period.  A member of our newsroom this week recounted a story in our offices at how a Scout Group that he is involved with was forced to cancel an event which is held every year on 10 February.

The reason for this cancellation was largely due to the participants – aged between 11 and 15 – not being able to attend “because of exams.”

It’s a phrase which anyone involved in any form of extra-curricular activity – be it any NGO or even sports club – knows all too well around this time.

It’s also a phrase which illustrates Malta’s plainly unhealthy fixation with examinations and formal education, even from young ages.

We all know of situations such as this: of children being forced to briefly stop – or stop altogether – extra-curricular activities at a fairly young age in order to focus on exams, or in order to attend even more private lessons – even in the case of children who are in primary school!

Exams are important, without a doubt, but it’s high time that parents realise that children need to be allowed to live and that education isn’t exclusively what is done in classrooms.

Non-formal education – which is essentially the education gained from non-school settings, such as through youth groups or through practicing sports – is an extremely important part of the development of any child.

Indeed, the flexibility of non-formal education allows for more personalised learning, because people attending are attending because they purely want to learn and/or enjoy themselves, to be developed for each person.

Furthermore, there are significant proven mental health and social benefits for children if they do attend places such as youth groups or sports clubs, as it gives them an outlet which can serve as a stress reliever and a new social atmosphere for them to develop and make friends in.

Countries which have adopted systems – and, more importantly, mentalities – which strike a better balance between formal and non-formal education (Finland is one such example) tend to end up having students who perform better when it does come to schoolwork.

In Malta unfortunately there seems to be too much of a mentality to force children to enslave themselves to their studies in the hope that they will get better marks in exams which – in the grand scheme of things – won’t mean all that much once they grow up.

Very little is realistically achieved by having children locked up for hours on end reading the same thing in the hope that it will be memorised.  Likewise, missing out on an extra-curricular activity in favour of going to a private lesson, in most cases, is largely counter-productive.

At the moment, parents are conditioning a generation of children to think that it’s perfectly normal to lock themselves away for hours on end to study, and that that is the only way that they will learn anything about the world.

It’s not true.  The real world cannot be experienced based on what our study books tell us. Children need to be let out of the bubble of their textbooks, to experience new things, meet new people, and – especially – enjoy themselves a bit.

That’s the mentality shift we need in the parents of our children, for the good of the country’s next generation.