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.

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!

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 – Really, how – because there are so few people called David in Malta?]

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.

[Daphne – Hey, Mario, you have no idea who David is.]

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.

[Daphne – English teachers as in economics teachers and chemistry teachers…..]

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.