The Battle of the Leaks
First we had Alfred Sant rising like a phoenix to pounce on the naughty government because he thought somebody was prying into his emails (they weren’t). Then it turned out that the government is investigating a couple of people who are employed with the state’s IT agency and who appear to have been trying to obtain information through the IT system by illicit means. These people are being processed, so to speak. But what strikes me as odd is the way the Labour Party, busy berating the government for its assumed security shortcomings, hasn’t bothered to ask the question – why?
One assumes that it is lack of common sense, as with so many other difficulties that have beset the Opposition over the last several decades. But when the former and present leaders of the Labour Party suggest that the government is using illicit means to pry into, say, Alfred Sant’s emails, they are missing the point that the government, should it wish to do something so dastardly, illegal and invasive, does not need to hack into its own system or use amateurish spying devices because, to put it bluntly, it runs the show. So – ding, dong – anyone trying to obtain personal information about politicians through the government’s IT system must have an agenda of a different nature. One assumes that it is not Alfred Sant’s emails they want to look at, but those of a politician in government. When all is revealed, if it ever is, I rather suspect that the people doing the hacking and prying will be voting Labour in the next election. That’s an assumption, but it’s a fairly safe one.
Now we have Joseph Muscat playing the Victorian maiden who has just seen some 19th-century porn and has to be revived with smelling-salts. This is because the green (as in new, not ahdar) secretary-general of the Nationalist Party foolishly failed to keep to the time-honoured advice of never putting down in writing anything you don’t want others to read. If that held when writing meant pen and paper which could be put in a drawer and locked, then it is far more important with emails, which are not secure and which can be forwarded repeatedly or sent to the wrong person when a similar name comes up automatically in Outlook. That’s what happened to Paul Borg Olivier. It’s also what happened to one of the elves in Sant’s grotto, who were mass mailing the correspondence columns of the newspapers with ‘I am Nationalist but will be voting Labour’ letters in the run-up to the general election. One of them sent a private email to the wrong person, and the private email ended up in a newspaper editor’s in-box. And that’s how we found out that the elves whose existence we suspected really did exist, and that the letters they were writing were fake and generated in the grotto.
So, to get back to the secretary-general of the Nationalist Party: what worries me is not that he asked for the contact details of unhappy people who are turning against the government because of some real or perceived problem. That’s customer relationship management. Private companies do it (or should); state-owned monopolies should do it but rarely bother, and the political parties who do it win elections, while those who don’t stay in Opposition and grouch. Alfred Sant did it in 1996, meeting all the grumblers one by one and promising them the earth and a cure for cancer and the common cold. The difference is that he couldn’t deliver and he didn’t really care. All he wanted was to get into government.
Yes, there are privacy issues which bother me, but privacy issues of this nature have bothered me for a long time. I can’t stand the way the political parties know whether you’ve voted or not on polling day, for example, and spend the entire day hassling you if you decide to avoid the queues and go at night. Every general election I get a phone-call, even last time, when I gave the poor woman at the other end of the line a telling-off. What did she imagine, for heaven’s sake? That I wasn’t going to vote? That I was going to vote for Harry Vassallo or Alfred Sant? It’s not like the whole country didn’t know what my views were. Half the country was reading my blog that day. It got 120,000 hits despite a denial of service attack. “I know,” she said. “I feel so silly. But you’re on my list and I have to cross you off.”
That was as nothing compared to a couple of general elections back, when my husband the early bird went off to vote and get on with his errands, while I took the view that the polling-station wasn’t going to run away, so I could stick to my Saturday routine and go after dark. One of the Nosy Nancies called at lunchtime: “Your husband has voted and you haven’t. Why not?” You should have seen me bounce off the walls. I received a letter of apology from the Nationalist Party’s then secretary-general, but it was the underlying principle that upset me so much and not the fact that they had called me. I am just as upset that others are called and hassled in the same way, made to feel that they are being spied upon and that their privacy is being invaded by crass persons who make assumptions about their voting preferences.
So no, the really worrying thing about Paul Borg Olivier is not that he has carried on in the grand tradition of trying to keep people happy by sorting out their problems even if it means invading their privacy. And that’s what it’s all about, rather than a case of ‘give me their names so that I can exact revenge’, which is how some fools are trying to depict it. The worrying thing is that he is so cavalier with emails and with putting things down in writing without considering whether they might cause embarrassment if they fall into the wrong hands. That’s not a clever thing to do at all, and the secretary-general of a political party, as amply proved by Jason Micallef, must be very, very clever indeed. The cleverest non-elected politician in this country famously never puts down anything in writing at all, except the barest and most obvious facts. Others need not go to that extreme, but it is basic good sense when you are secretary-general of a political party to think, before you write something and press the send button, what it will seem like if read by somebody other than the intended recipient. Most of us have made one or several embarrassing mistakes of this nature, but when you are one of a political party’s main men, things take on a different slant.
That doesn’t mean to say that Joseph Muscat isn’t over-egging the drama by striking horrified poses and describing Paul Borg Olivier’s stupid mistake as “scandalous and shameful”. I can think of several things that are scandalous and shameful, and none of them have anything to do with Borg Olivier, who is basically a decent man from a good family. For example, scandalous and shameful would be an apt description of an Opposition leader who claims that his fictitious foreign policy has won the referendum on Europe when it hasn’t, following this up with a tantrum on a lorry while encouraging his bewildered supporters to celebrate, while the present Opposition leader, then in a previous incarnation as a Super One journalist, misinterprets the referendum result via the party media, to bolster his boss.
Oh, there’s more to this story of the Battle of the Leaks. Austin Gatt stood up in parliament and said that independent investigation into the ‘leaks and hacking’ accusations show that no unauthorised persons have gained access to data from the government’s IT system. The stories which the Opposition orchestrated, and which were reported in the media, were just a pack of lies. Somebody was trying to get information, but nobody did. Then Gatt made an interesting accusation, which dropped right into a news-reporting vacuum as usual. He said that “the Labour Party traffics every day in data leaked and stolen from government departments”.
Please, sir, may we have some more? I think we’re owed a more detailed explanation.
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7.30 Super one news!! Flash!! Daphne is berating the new PN Secretary General – (awe and more awe)). She is saying in her website that the PN Sec is not doing his job well – he is not fit to hold the postion– (cant guess how many minutes will be dedicated to this wonderful piece of news).. will wait and see….sigh sigh
I thought you would write something about this very good news:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081119/local/more-inclusive-system-proposed
Even the Opposition is in favour:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081119/local/opposition-welcomes-education-reform
[Daphne – I don’t think it’s good news. It’s just more of that syndrome which refuses to acknowledge that there are differences in abilities and that some people are smarter than others. It’s an iss hej mhux fier attitude that doesn’t allow high-achievers to high-achieve, just in case the low-achievers feel hard done by. What is the point of having junior lyceums if they are accessible to even the slow kids? Don’t you see the inherent irony in removing the distinction between junior lyceums and regular secondary schools? If everyone can get in, then what’s the point? It’s either a school for smart kids or it’s not a school for smart kids. The deterioration of the state education system in Britain began with the removal of the grammar schools, sort of the equivalent of Malta’s junior lyceums, on exactly the same grounds that it wasn’t fair to stream off the clever kids. It’s true that slow kids do better in a classroom with a higher threshold, but the same can’t be said for quick kids, who are held back by the slow ones, get bored and get into trouble. So no, I don’t agree. I can see it from the point of view of the smart kids and the smart kids’ parents – why in heaven’s name should they be held back just because genetics aren’t socialist in doling out brains?]
And yet private and Church schools have, up till now, approached mainly the inclusive way of doing things. What makes their students garner better results in the end?
[Daphne – Their families. That’s the short answer. The children who go to independent schools and church schools have parents who prioritise education, otherwise they wouldn’t be prepared to jump through those financial and other hoops. In the case of independent schools, the likelihood is that the children have parents who are also highly educated and that they live in homes where there are books and newspapers and proper conversation about current affairs and general knowledge. There’s the genetic explanation, too. People with brains are more likely to do well in life and have the money to pay the fees at independent schools. Because intelligence is mainly a genetic trait, with some environmental influences, people with brains usually have children with brains, so what you have in independent schools is a predominance of above-average children spawned by above-average parents. The socialists won’t love this, but it’s a fact of life. But going to an independent school or a church school is not going to help below-average children pass their school-leaving certificate examinations. Going to an independent school will help with matters like truancy but it won’t put brains where there are none. The idea that intelligence can somehow be magicked out of thin air is another example of socialist (small s) thinking, rooted in the attitude that there should be equality in all things. For example, the teaching at the school I went to was absolutely, horrendously lousy. For three years, I studied biology, chemistry and physics entirely on paper and without setting foot in a laboratory even once. The only reason I knew what a test-tube or dissection kit looked like in real life, as opposed to on paper, was because my father’s company imported them and I saw them in the stock-room. It didn’t prevent me leaving school with 14 O-levels, though I have no doubt at all that I would have been much happier and done much better all round had I been to the sort of school my sons were fortunate enough to go to, and which did not exist at the time. Equally, many of the girls in my class left school with just one or two O-levels or none at all. They could have done better with better-quality instruction, but only slightly better because the real problem was total lack of interest. It was the same at my sons’ expensive independent school. Some of the kids left 5th form with a string of good passes; others with none at all.]
Some Church schools practice streaming too – St Aloysius will not accept below par students either and is considered THE 6th form to go to! Others, like my former school used to accept ANYBODY into 6th form as long as they could pay the hefty fees (I didn’t go there for 6th form by the way). It ended up having a reputation as being only for people with a lot more money then brains even though there have been notable exceptions. They even had an easier course for those not going to university.
DCG:
The rot in government boys secondary schools started when the Lyceum at Hamrun was relegated to become an ordinary secondary school by the MLP:from the best,with the ablest teachers and the best labs and the best male children from working class families who received the best education free of charge it became a nonentity!How is that for envy! We should take special care of our brightest kids whatever their family background:they will serve as role models for the rest,and create the wealth that the less intelligent and other kids will require in future years.
What makes their students garner better results in the end?
1. Also consider the fact that teachers have to be more accountable in private schools. One gov school recently had a 100% failure rate – no worries, blame it on society. Its all about rights and no responsibilities.
[Daphne – It really is not the teachers’ fault. The school in question is saddled with children from socially deprived backgrounds. Social/financial deprivation today is very different from social/financial deprivation 50 or 100 years ago, when there was no class mobility. Back then, you had very bright kids from very poor backgrounds, because poverty was not the result of a lack of intelligence, but of social factors and lack of work opportunities. Today, it’s different: lack of intelligence is a very big contributing factor towards messy lives and poverty. People who have a below-average IQ pass this trait on genetically, so their children are triply handicapped – by not being bright, by having parents who are not bright, and by coming from a deprived background. No amount of teaching is going to change that. What they need is to be lifted out of their environment and shown something different – possibility. As things stand, they are locked in – frog in the well syndrome. They don’t know what lies outside.]
Let’s stick to the subject:
Latest news http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081120/local/central-bank-investigating-information-leakage-claim
Daphne, skimming through the comments, I must say that I absolutely concur with you on most issues. I am in favour of streaming, particularly at a later stage of our childhood, early and mid-teenage years. Children with a higher intelligence (intelligence is genetic as you rightly point out) should be given the opportunity to expand their understanding and knowledge and to learn in the most effective manner. The environment at school as well as at home is certainly conducive to enhancing the child’s aptitude towards learning. We live in a real world where competition is rife. The best should compete with the best. That is the only manner for them to keep on improving.
Doing away with streaming and Junior Lyceums in the public educational system is a step in the wrong direction. I firmly believe that the government should continue offering those children who excel academically and whose parents cannot afford to pay the fees for independent schooling, an opportunity to achieve high standards of education. The brighter students deserve this opportunity, out of social justice. It should be noted that a great part of the students who used to attend Junior Lyceums, when the numbers of Junior Lyceums were few, eventually turned out to be very successful in their careers and life in general.
On a side note, socialism has nothing to do with this issue. Actually, if I am not mistaken, in socialist regimes, chosen ones (based on their academic and sometimes physical performance) are given the opportunity to advance their knowledge and talents to eventually become part of an elite group.
[Daphne – In communist regimes, not socialist. And it’s not done for the development of the individual, but for the good of the state.]
“David Buttigieg Thursday, 20 November 1748hrs
Some Church schools practice streaming too – St Aloysius will not accept below par students either and is considered THE 6th form to go to!”
Erm, not very Christian-like of whoever runs the show there, if I may be allowed to say so.
“Daphne- It didn’t prevent me leaving school with 14 O-levels, though I have no doubt at all that I would have been much happier and done much better all round had I been to the sort of school my sons were fortunate enough to go to, and which did not exist at the time.”
Bet you were not interested in applying to send your sons to a free church school at the time anyway.
[Daphne – Definitely not. I didn’t want them educated by nuns or priests and I think that segregation of the sexes in different schools causes more problems than it avoids, and might even be a cause of the profound gender/relationship problems in our society.]
Re Paul Borg Olivier “Being a decent man from a good family” won’t win you elections. Unfortunately PBO’s track record as Valletta mayor is lousy. So much could have been achieved ; and please no excuses about financial limitations . Be creative and you can achieve anything. PBO lacks it big time.
@ David Buttigieg I attended the same independent school you did , and absolutely have no regrets, as it precisely brought out the creativity in its students, rather than straight A’s in exams . True most of my friends did not make it to university, but are successful in the business world .
When recruiting people , I notice the product of Malta’s university are very much in a mental straight jacket , and just cant think out of the box (excuse the over used cliche)
[Daphne – “Being a decent man from a good family”: I never said it was a quality required of a secretary-general, or that it would help the party win elections. It’s a factual description, that’s all. It’s a pity that more decent men from good families don’t have the qualities that make for clever politicians, because quite frankly, they’re less of a risk or a problem than the usual johnnies with chips that this country has had to contend with for years.]
Isa Thursday, 20 November 1342hrs
“7.30 Super one news!! Flash!! Daphne is berating the new PN Secretary General – (awe and more awe)). She is saying in her website that the PN Sec is not doing his job well – he is not fit to hold the postion– (cant guess how many minutes will be dedicated to this wonderful piece of news).. will wait and see….sigh sigh”
If I had to place a bet on who will win at the end of the day ,the Sec.Gen. or the lady, I will put it on Daphne.
[Daphne – Sorry to disappoint, but there’s not going to be any slanging-match.]
Re:Schools
At last! I thought I was the only human being in Malta who thinks that all this is one great big cazzatta! I find myself in total agreement with Daphne on this, both on streaming and on why a certain locality got 100% failures.
Our education system was heavily attacked (with consequences still being felt today) twice in recent times, by Ms. Barbara in the 70’s and by the great KMB in the 80’s. Seems that now is the time for the Third Great Wave of stupidity.
Can anyone please explain what is wrong with streaming? When I was a kid in govt primary, our poor teacher (I feel I should name him for he was a great teacher and I owe him a lot) Mr. Tonna had to split our class in two and prepare two separate lessons for those who were bright enough and had the right aptitude to prepare for the religious schools exams (there was one per each school at the time), and for those who unfortunately could not cope.
There is a great hoo-hah about inclusion, but it seems that the powers-that-be have twisted the original good idea of inclusion (i.e. that children with special needs, especially physical but also mental, should not be barred as outcasts, but merge with other children) and made it to be that a classroom should contain a mish-mash of children with a normal upbringing and intelligence and those with sorry social problems and downright little criminals, with the net result that the overall level of education is biting the dust!
Daph, you said “What they need is to be lifted out of their environment and shown something different – possibility”
Frigging right! Let me tell you: I know a number of teachers in the Cottonera area who actually love their work, and see it as their vocation in life to somehow give these children a brighter future. Most of these children, as you rightly said, have, through no fault of theirs, a bleak future in life, and are commonly very lacking in self esteem.
What these teachers tried to do was to create a syllabus customised to the level of intelligence of these children, regardless of age. These teachers tell me that the children’s glow in their faces when they congratulate them for some well-done classwork makes their day.
You know what these teachers get in return? A telling-off from their superiors, and what’s worse, sometimes even a good physical beating from the children’s parents (“Ghalfejn lit-tifla ittiha homework differenti mit-tfal l-ohra? Pamm, Bang, Poww!!!!)
[Daphne – Definitely not. I didn’t want them educated by nuns or priests and I think that segregation of the sexes in different schools causes more problems than it avoids, and might even be a cause of the profound gender/relationship problems in our society.]
I seem to remember a few particular “hot” articles in one newspaper re the introduction of the ballot system for places in church schools a couple of decades or so ago. Guess I was mistaken.
[Daphne – The fact that I disagree with the ridiculous ballot system does not mean it’s because I wanted my sons educated in a church school. I started writing my opinion column in 1990. All three of my sons were down for San Anton School in 1988. The youngest was just a few weeks old.]
“David Buttigieg Thursday, 20 November 1748hrs
Some Church schools practice streaming too – St Aloysius will not accept below par students either and is considered THE 6th form to go to!”
Since bloody when? When I was there it had already gone to the dogs.
[Daphne – It wasn’t the school or the teaching that was good, but the fact that they creamed off the best of the crop, who were by definition bound to perform well regardless of the quality of the instruction. And that brings us back to my earlier remark that clever people will do well regardless of the teaching environment, and that streaming off the best is good for them because they compete with each other and feed off each other, but mixing things up lowers the bar instead of raising it. When I was there in 1980-82 the teaching quality was varied, to use a restrained term. We had three different economics teachers in 18 months, and we didn’t know whether we were coming or going. Our English teachers were excellent, though. Accounts? I don’t know what possessed me. I skived off most of the time. What I do remember clearly is that more attention was paid to whether I was wearing bleached jeans and tops with straps (a ‘go home’ offence) than whether I was doing my economics work (I wasn’t).]
“…Borg Olivier, who is basically a decent man from a good family.” (What year are we in again?)
On a more serious note, however, I wonder whether Austin did the right thing in naming and shaming the individual who (allegedly) passed on the data to Muscat. If there is reasonable suspicion that this person did actually pass on that data, then there’s internal audit, security, and if need be, the courts (and in most cases, there’s two words: summary dismissal). He does deserve the sack if it turns out that he did pass on sensitive data, but that’s not for Austin to decide. God forbid we go back to the times when politicians intruded in central bank processes – especially their internal audit.
What worries more than this, however, is the apparent ease with which any MP with a grudge against someone can draft an email with that person’s name on it, table it in the House, and destroy that person’s career in a second. That’s done in Zimbabwe, not Malta.
[Daphne – Oh, I wouldn’t say that. One of Tony Blair’s people lost her job on account of an email sent in haste and repented at leisure: “This is a good time to bury bad news.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/1588323.stm ]
Jo Moore was a senior government advisor – not a central bank employee. Plus, the call for an investigation came after the official was investigated by her superiors, not before (whether she should have been fired is another story).
This is besides that fact that the gravity of Jo Moore’s actions and those of the Maltese central banker are completely different. Jo Moore would not have been kept in her job had she leaked data. All the more reason to be more careful when naming and shaming people the more serious the breach is – as is the Maltese case.
re mixed schools;
Most school kids nowadays attend additional lessons in arts crafts music dancing sports etc after school, where segregation is nonexistent anyway.So the presence or absence of segregation of the sexes in schools hardly matters anymore I think.
[Daphne – Of course it matters. The genders are mixed in life, so they should be mixed in school. An all-girls or all-boys environment is artificial and skews attitudes. How does a girl learn to relate to boys, and a boy to girls, if they never mix during the day?]
“Emanuel Muscat Thursday, 20 November 1754hrs
DCG:
The rot in government boys secondary schools started when the Lyceum at Hamrun was relegated to become an ordinary secondary school by the MLP:from the best,with the ablest teachers and the best labs and the best male children from working class families who received the best education free of charge it became a nonentity!”
How right you are. And it was not just working-class children that went there.Most of my contemporaries at university came from the Lyceum and they weren’t just from the working class. The vast majority had parents who were very well-known and highly respected university academics and high ranking civil servants.
[Daphne – Yes, my father was at the Lyceum too.]
St Aloysius is bound to get good results as all its students get top marks in the entrance exam. You can`t compare it to other Church or Independent schools that accept children at age 5 and so end up with a mixture of abilities. Some 30 years ago, the only boys’ independent school used to actually interview the 5-year-olds.
“It’s a pity that more decent men from good families don’t have the qualities that make for clever politicians, because quite frankly, they’re less of a risk or a problem than the usual johnnies with chips that this country has had to contend with for years.”
To enter partisan politics necessarily means that one has to have a chip – a massive one – on one’s shoulder! Clever – as you call them – people can’t be bothered with partisan politics.
[Daphne – I’m sorry, but I don’t agree with you at all there. Lack of interest in politics is almost always a reflection of a general lack of intelligence, which tends to manifest itself in the absence of interest in what is going on around one, and a feeling of detachment from current affairs. Intelligent people are naturally curious and pro-active. That is not to say that the Maltese political scene (and that of other countries) is not riddled with inane politicians, but to say that involvement in politics is evidence of lack of intelligence is most inaccurate.]
[Daphne – Their families.]
Exactly. Now, basically I went through the same motions you did. Attended a Church school, with the difference of Government 6th Form, then went on to University. My children were already registered in an independent school register when they were a few months’ old – a school which they went on to attend.
In both my case and my children’s there was no streaming to speak of, and yet the majority of kids managed to get enough O levels to get along. I never noticed that the high-flyers in my class were held back. They flew and excelled, and continued excelling everywhere they went afterwards. Similarly, the high-flyers in my children’s classes seem to do just fine. If anything it is the “slow” kids who fall behind.
But when it comes to slow kids (not socially deprived kids, for which there is hardly ever any reprieve), one can never say! These kids may be slow, not because they are unintelligent, but because they are more immature than the rest of the lot. They are the slow developers. In time, they mature and learn, and many times they suprise us all by catching up in the later school years, and doing just as well as their class mates.
A schooling system which judges children on their abilities at the age of eleven, and condemns those who are not up to scratch at such a tender age, to a second-class education (when there is still a great possibility for improvement, and for getting there), seems to be, to say the least, unfair.
What is being proposed is that children will not be obliged to sit for exams which separate the so-called chaff, from the so-called grain, at an age which is, by all means, too young. In other words, the system will come to resemble the set-up in independent schools, and some Church schools (especially girls’ school) where the promotion to Form 1 (and the school which one will atend) does not depend on the results of an exam.
I don’t think that streaming will be totally eradicated, and that may be a wise thing, seeing the number of social cases which seem to languish in Government schools, and who live in a family environment which is much more harmful to the child’s education than simply being “slow”.
As things stand, genuinely slow children and slow developers are lumped in area secondaries together with the real social cases, to the formers’ further detriment.
Maybe it is time that the ones who genuinely try (but are slow learners) are separated from the I-don’t-care-and-never-will children.
The genuine triers can then be educated with the main-stream, possibly with additional classes and help, plus efforts to pin-point the reason for their difficulties with the help of various professionals. Children with dsylexia, ADD or ADHD (the latter two making up about 10% of all children) may appear to be slow, but be of average intelligence (IQ) or higher. Recognising their problem and catering for them and their difficulties will help to bring out the best in them. Lumping them together with social (generally I-don’t-care) cases will not.
Maybe it’s also time that children who don’t show any promise whatsoever even at the age of 13/ 14, and are genunely wasting time at school, and whiling away the time until they’re 16 are thought some form of skill, instead of formal schooling. It might be doing them a favour to teach them a skill rather than force them to continue something which they do not want to do – in that sense, trade schools were a good thing.
In short, one may have to stream, given the large numbers which attend Government schools – however, one must be careful not to condemn children to the rubbish heap when they are still so young, and when anything is still possible. One must also be careful not to miss certain conditions which might be hampering otherwise normally intelligent children (Dyslexia, ADD and ADHD), who might do infinitely better with professional help, and with being educated with the mainstream.
[marika mifsud – St Aloysius is bound to get good results as all its students get top marks in the entrance exam. You can`t compare it to other Church or Independent schools that accept children at age 5 and so end up with a mixture of abilities. Some 30 years ago, the only boys’ independent school used to actually interview the 5-year-olds.]
This will now stop as St Aloysius will soon start taking all pupils from Stella Maris, Balzan, irrelevant of how brilliant or not they are. IN this way, entry into St. Aloysius will be governed by the ballot system.
As for St Aloysius 6th Form, I see no virtue in a school which only takes the most brilliant students around. A good school is good, and a good teacher is good, when it/he/she (as the case may be) manages to make winners out of average students, and not when already brilliant students get A grade after A grade.
[Daphne – They made exceptions in many cases, anyway, because Sandro Schembri Adami was with me at 6th form, and so was a girl who was with me at school, a year older, but two classes below, and who left school with maybe two O-levels, if that.]
[Daphne – Of course it matters. The genders are mixed in life, so they should be mixed in school. An all-girls or all-boys environment is artificial and skews attitudes. How does a girl learn to relate to boys, and a boy to girls, if they never mix during the day?]
I agree wholeheartedly.
I insist that people involved in partisan politics are people with little or no interest outside gossip on a national level.
Policy makers should be above all that AND they should be philosophers, scientists and economists of a certain standing.
[Daphne – No way. I would no more want a philosopher, scientist or economist to run the country than I would want one to run a company. Some types of scientists make the best managers, yes – engineers, usually, and chemists. But an economist? A philosopher? Not quite. They’re there to give advice, but the moment they start trying to run things, God help the rest of us.]
I think this aptly fits here, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h67k9eEw9AY&feature=related
[Daphne – Of course it matters. The genders are mixed in life, so they should be mixed in school. An all-girls or all-boys environment is artificial and skews attitudes. How does a girl learn to relate to boys, and a boy to girls, if they never mix during the day?]
My own personal opinion was that girls and boys are better off in schools where there is segregation of sexes, and for one good reason.In a mixed sexes school ,when the awkward teenage years arrive, girls tend to lose the edge they have over boys in the earlier years as far as academic capabilities are concerned .The normal hormonal induced emotions common in girls at that age will hamper them from giving their best as they would have done in a girls’ school with the end result that the girl will never reach her full academic potential. Girls end up eventually as the secretary or underdog whilst the boys end up being the boss in life .Again , this is simply my personal opinion on the subject.
[Daphne – That was a rubbish theory that Mary Darmanin likes to bang on about, denying the evidence that is all around us. To judge different outcomes, you have to compare like with like: in other words, you have to put THE SAME GIRL at the same time in the two different environments, and assess her performance. Of course, this is impossible, so people who like this theory imagine that they are somehow right because, to their mind, they can’t be proved wrong. The fact is that the girls in question, who were segregated, might have performed exactly the same in an environment with boys around, or even better. Malta now has a 20-year track record of independent co-educational schools, and a quick flick through their records will show you that the girls and boys are doing equally well, and that over the last few years the girls are even outperforming the boys. This is no surprise, because it is precisely what has happened in Britain, which has a many-decades long track record of co-education in state schools, and where girls are now outperforming boys on every score. This always seemed to me to be obvious – once you remove the essential reason why girls won’t perform in front of boys – they’re not used to them – they will derive immense pleasure from scoring points off them. To put it bluntly, the women who think that girls won’t show off their brains in front of boys are those who were raised and schooled in precisely that sort of environment – not to show boys they are clever in case they are put off. Today’s young girls don’t give a stuff about this rubbish. Anzi, rather the opposite: the trophy chicks of the new generation are the ones with brains and achievements, while the silly chickens are laughed at. The girls in my sons’ classes at school were notable for their self-confidence, self-assurance and self-belief – and their exam results. So no, this theory is rubbish and those who still cling to it despite the mounting evidence against it are relics from the past and wishful thinkers. The very idea of segregating girls to protect them from the deleterious influence of boys is ……unbelievable.]
I said policy makers not managers. Then you employ people who are good at managing to run the country along the policies established by people who can rise above petty politics.
I tend to agree with you that scientists, philosophers etc are not fit to manage anything because they are too busy looking at the big picture to be bothered with mundane issues which mean the world to the “foot soldier”.
[Daphne – No, it’s not because they’re too busy looking at the big picture. It’s usually because they can’t distinguish between theory and reality, a notable characteristic of Alfred Sant and several of those who surrounded him, and who still surround Joseph Muscat today. Sant and the divorced-from-reality academic to whom he was married are noted for their inability to understand that real people and real situations cannot be bent to fit theory. And that is why the infamous ‘repeater class’ proposal – give a wild guess who suggested it – lost them the election. Then, of course, we have the most infamous example of all: partnership with the European Union, a theory that existed only in his mind, but which he was convinced could be made reality.]
You cannot logically base an argument on the failings of one individual and extrapolate your “findings” to identify a whole group. What you’re doing is called “induction” in the Popper sense and he identified several shortcomings with that methodology.
Having said all this, scientists/philosophers etc worth their salt are under constant “peer review” pressure, so if anything is seriously wrong with an assumption/theory they’re sure to have it shot down within weeks of “publication”.
Also, you’d need to have a “committee” of sorts where interdisciplnarity is the name of the game, because you can’t expect one person to know all there is to know about everything – except, perhaps, in Malta.
[Sybil – My own personal opinion was that girls and boys are better off in schools where there is segregation of sexes, and for one good reason.In a mixed sexes school ,when the awkward teenage years arrive, girls tend to lose the edge they have over boys in the earlier years as far as academic capabilities are concerned .The normal hormonal induced emotions common in girls at that age will hamper them from giving their best as they would have done in a girls’ school with the end result that the girl will never reach her full academic potential. Girls end up eventually as the secretary or underdog whilst the boys end up being the boss in life .Again , this is simply my personal opinion on the subject.]
In my experience, girls who have been educated in a mixed class from the word go, are not bothered with having boys around, and in fact take them for granted, so that there is no question of girls keeping mum or not doing their best, to “hide” the fact that they have brains.
Even with girls who are educated in a same sex school, I wouldn’t think it would be the case. I remember that part of the fun of attending mixed private lessons was beating the boys at their own games, and getting better marks (and eventually grades) than them.
Daphne,
Economists can’t manage?!? You have stuck a mortal blow to my self esteem. I shall crawl into a corner and whimper while assuming the foetal position. What will my staff think?
Hope you got your goose cooked, for you surely have cooked mine.
Did you actually have English Teachers???
Well, we had a couple teaching English ,Chemistry and some other subject!
Naturally this did not please our Maltese teachers and their contract was never renewed!
[Daphne – English teachers as in economics teachers and chemistry teachers…..]
Oh really Zizzu? Scientists are the greatest conniving backstabbers, political nepotists, and all-round bastards I have ever seen, bar none. Their “peers”, if they’re buddies, will accept any crap publication with jubilation, and shower it with praise. If your “peers” happen to dislike you, then god help you, because your career will go nowhere.
But how on earth did we end up talking about this anyway?
Let’s get back to St Aloysius. I was in the last group to get in before the introduction of the infamous Common Entrance Exam (which, incidentally, gives away the number of grey hairs on my head). So, according to some of you here, we should have been the Ivy League equivalent of Malta. Only, we weren’t. The abysmal level of sheer idiocy and ignorance I saw beggars belief. The result? The cretins held everybody back, and some of us fizzled out before we reached adulthood.
As for having co-ed schools, it’s a question of logistics. You’d need double the number of toilets, double the number of dressing rooms, double everything which involves sport. It was bad enough having every school going it alone where sports facilities were involved. Of course this means that just about the only “sport” you can practise is “mixed-aggregate footshytball”, where the slightest tackle would see you coming away looking like Messala after the chariot race. Unless schools pool their resources, and I’ve been told that independent schools do so, they’ll all be shyte.
British public-school pupils (i.e. non co-ed) grow up mens sans in corpore whatever, but that’s because their parents pay through their noses, and they’ve got enough rainfall to play cricket on a proper surface.
“…Borg Olivier, who is basically a decent man from a good family.”
@David S. He happens to be that way, and I stand by him. Your stance however is understandable, as he is a threat to the guy you so favour and who has been so good to you re directorships.
[Daphne – Hey, Mario, you have no idea who David is.]
I’m going to have to join Harry Purdie in the ‘Economists do not make bad politicians’ corner.
In any case, when has Malta ever had a proper economist as a politician? (Don’t even go there – you know who I’m talking about).
We’ve had lots of lawyers though. And accountants. Which might explain why our politicians spend most of their working days in court, signing the next libel case, or signing off the proceeds from the last one.
Hey Daphne, I have a very good idea who david is, and i hope he takes it in jest……..didnt your sister say i knew everything on everyone? At least, he has the courage to say who he is, sort of. everyone knows who I am.
[Daphne – Really, how – because there are so few people called David in Malta?]
@ HP Baxxter
a) have you just finished “The Path to the Double Helix”, by any chance? What an irrational and baseless outburst!
b) Anyone taught enough Maths and English (for an 8-year old) could make it through the Common Entrance exam. I remember going for mine, the Inner Ground (of Yellow door notoriety) was teeming with 8 yo hopefuls … of course only those who passed muster made it through. It’s not that we were the Ivy League, but the ones who didn’t make it were absolutely hopeless – in my day at least. (I started Prep I in 83/84 and went the whole hog, leaving there in 1992 – after 2 years of Preps, 5 yrs of Secondary and 2 years of 6th form) … and I’d do it all over again.
@ Daphne…
There’s a Sister David too…aaarrghhhh she was my Headmistress! Still get the Heebie-jeebies just thinking of her.
Let me tell ya, Lizzie Borden had nothing on her!
[Daphne – That was a rubbish theory that Mary Darmanin likes to bang on about, denying the evidence that is all around us. To judge different outcomes, you have to compare like with like: in other words, you have to put THE SAME GIRL at the same time in the two different environments, and assess her performance. Of course, this is impossible, so people who like this theory imagine that they are somehow right because, to their mind, they can’t be proved wrong. The fact is that the girls in question, who were segregated, might have performed exactly the same in an environment with boys around, or even better. Malta now has a 20-year track record of independent co-educational schools, and a quick flick through their records will show you that the girls and boys are doing equally well, and that over the last few years the girls are even outperforming the boys. This is no surprise, because it is precisely what has happened in Britain, which has a many-decades long track record of co-education in state schools, and where girls are now outperforming boys on every score. This always seemed to me to be obvious – once you remove the essential reason why girls won’t perform in front of boys – they’re not used to them – they will derive immense pleasure from scoring points off them. To put it bluntly, the women who think that girls won’t show off their brains in front of boys are those who were raised and schooled in precisely that sort of environment – not to show boys they are clever in case they are put off. Today’s young girls don’t give a stuff about this rubbish. Anzi, rather the opposite: the trophy chicks of the new generation are the ones with brains and achievements, while the silly chickens are laughed at. The girls in my sons’ classes at school were notable for their self-confidence, self-assurance and self-belief – and their exam results. So no, this theory is rubbish and those who still cling to it despite the mounting evidence against it are relics from the past and wishful thinkers. The very idea of segregating girls to protect them from the deleterious influence of boys is ……unbelievable.]
I humbly disagree with most , though not all of what you wrote , especially where you put words in my mouth. Again , we agree to disagree. No big tragedy either.
@ Zizzu, re. point (a) No I haven’t. I stand by what I said, since it’s based on personal experience, so I don’t need to base my comments on some “paperback”.