Media articles that appeared recently about the teaching of Maltese in schools were without any doubt among this year's most important press contributions. Academics and teachers warned that the situation in classes has greatly changed from what it was fifty or indeed twenty years ago.
In addition to Maltese children, other children in class come from different countries with varied cultural and linguistic characteristics. English is becoming the language in which instruction is given and Maltese often ends up being taught as a foreign language. Moreover, influenced among others by social media, children are frequently inserting foreign expressions in what they say, both mangled and correctly formatted.
The problem is especially acute in state schools but is also present in Church and private establishments. If I understood well, the resources needed to enable educators to handle successfully the teaching of Maltese to all students according to their needs, remain unavailable. Also lacking is the training teachers need to acquire the techniques by which to transmit better an understanding of the Maltese language to children coming from various backgrounds.
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LONG TERM
A number of options exist regarding how to process the "long term" decisions that need to be taken in this country. One requires a lot of talk in grandiose and vague terms about a given issue, plus the publication of very well done studies about what needs to be done - but nothing is then done about the whole matter
There is the option which settles for an outright criticism of all long term solutions being proposed because they're too ambitious and require the allocation of tremendous economic and financial resources, or because they give rise to political and social dissent. Such criticism is put forward without proposing instead some other solution.
Finally too there is the option of pretending that there is no need for any effort or concern - things are going along just fine the way they are. We can continue with what we're doing, and not worry about what could happen the day after tomorrow.
It was fortunate that in the past, when the island faced the challenges of Independence and then the dismantling of the British military base in Malta, the decisions that were taken about the long term future of the islands were done without reference to the options that are available today.
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RIOTS
The current wave of unrest among French secondary school students in the higher classes has spread fast across the whole country. Although as far as I can see, few comparisons are being made on this basis, the riots reminded me of the protests that flared up in French universities - with those in Paris at the forefront-in the year 1968. They led to a general strike that almost toppled the government of President de Gaulle.
True, today's circumstances are different. The French riots of the 1960's were part of a general uprising by young people in Western countries, not least in the US. But at the time as well, French protests were driven by rage that the tertiary sector was being allowed inadequate resources and was being run in an antiquated and authoritarian manner. These are the grievances which today's secondary school students are proclaiming out loud.