Princess Sun and Princess Star – what smug arrogance
My babies have all the chances in life, thanks to a Nationalist government
When people come out of nowhere and surprise even themselves with their projection into the limelight, surrounded by the adulation of lackeys and of people who – jahasra – don’t know any better, the more foolish and arrogant of them become convinced that it is all due to their own extraordinary powers.
I believe there are a couple of cautionary tales and fables about this psychological phenomenon, and the risks attendant on it. There are certainly more than a few examples in history, though of persons far more significant than the opposition leader of an island with a population of 400,000.
These are the words of Joseph Muscat, at a village gathering for his EP candidates and their supporters yesterday:
“I am here because I believe: I believe that every little girl should have the same chances of success in life as my own daughters.”
His daughters are babies. There is no way on earth that a baby can be successful. So what he is doing here is making confident and certain assumptions about their future success. Of course they will be successful; they are the children of Joseph Muscat, he thinks.
Let’s leave aside the smug arrogance and his belief that Sun and Star, the daughters of Le Roi Soleil, are on an automatic path to brilliance.
Let’s just give this new parent (and not particularly bright individual) some sound advice as sensible people and experienced parents: never, but never, make predictions about how your children will turn out.
They might turn out to be gay when you’re homophobic.
They might turn out to be cocaine-addicts when you’ve spent years running down the parenting skills of people with drug-using children.
They might turn out to be losers, and comfortable with the idea.
They might turn out to be ugly even if you are good-looking, and dull even if you are clever, because genetic inheritance is the most astonishing thing.
They might turn out to be exactly like the person you cannot stand on your spouse’s side of the family.
They might turn out to be home-breakers and slags and just the kind of women you run down now.
They might turn out to be men who cheat, lie and steal for a living, no matter that you did your best.
They might disappoint you by never marrying or having children, or worse, they might set up home with somebody who’s left his wife and children to do so.
They might be pregnant at 16.
They might have an abortion and not tell you, but all their friends will know.
They might run off with a charming conman at 18.
They might deal with pressure by becoming anorexic.
They might get a breakdown.
They might have no ambition at all and be content to graze off the fat of the land.
Or they might turn out to have very humdrum, mundane lives and be content with that, even considering it to be a form of success.
Then again, they might turn out to be iconic and brilliant, or just get a good job somewhere in the European Union other than Malta (no thanks to Joseph Muscat and his cronies)
How does anyone know what will happen?
Nobody, but nobody, should ever assume that their one-year-old babies are going to be successful purely because of their parents. Very often, the opposite turns out to be true because sons and daughters have an uncanny knack of resisting pressure and expectations, and lots of them have a greater desire to confound their parents’ expectations and to punish them, rather than to please them and win their approval.
It is only when they are around 20 that you can even begin to get an indication of what sort of road they’re taking. Before that, forget it.
Successful babies – that’s a first, even for somebody as silly as Joseph Muscat.
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I think what Joseph Muscat is trying to say is he hopes his daughters are as successful as he is. And you have to admit he has been successful, however incompetent he may be!
I suggest you check what was actually said before commenting. What Joseph Muscat said yesterday was this: “I believe that every little girl should have the same chances of success in Malta”. He didn’t refer to HIS girls, and this doesn’t mean that HIS girls will be successful. What he wants to say is that if you can’t afford private schools, your children have the right to high quality education just the same at state schools. I’m sure that if you heard the recording you would not have written this piece.
[Daphne – Oh, so his own reporters on his own website made that up then. He should chastise them immediately. http://www.maltastar.com/pages/ms09dart.asp?a=1665 You can send your children to all the private schools in the world, and it won’t make a blind bit of difference except to their social life. It’s the networks that are important in private education, and those networks have moved from the private/church schools to the independent schools. No amount of funding of state education is going to change that. The children who fail in state schools fail because of their HOME background and their social deprivation, which is why the worst results are in the inner harbour area. To get them to perform well, you have to change their family, not their school. And make no mistake, I am as concerned about those children as any Labour Party supporter, perhaps even more so because I am keenly aware of how easily a child’s life can be destroyed, but then a child’s life can be destroyed even by wealthy parents with a demanding nature and high expectations – or low ones.]
David Ellul : I hope there wasn’t some hitch in Maltastar’s computer when the report was written.
I don’t want to hear Joseph. I want to hear the candidates talk positively of what they can do for our country in the EU. Up to now I am seeing this LP election campaign developing into an anti government campaign. I never had the opportunity of hearing Joe Cuschieri or the good-looking ‘historian’ (who used to assist Jason tal-fjuri on TV) talk about their dreams for Malta.
People are not voting for Joseph; they will be voting for Maria, Sharon or Louis, and they would not be voting for the LP candidates because this government mishandled the energy bills issue.
Has anyone seen the XOKK billboard? What is it really trying to convey exactly ?
Are people going to vote for the LP candidates because there was a Wall Street Crash resulting in a worldwide recession?
Steve! Measuring success is subjective. What apparently is objective is that your criteria for measuring success are very different from mine. Granted
Daphne, not to defend Dr.Muscat, but he didn’t say his babies are successful. He is calling for more equality, by stating that he believes every child should have an equal CHANCE of success. I see nothing wrong in what he said, it should be a priority that every child gets an equal start in life. While that notion is Utopian, I believe we can come close & in fact we already are, what with free hospitals and education.
Now a little on foresight & on names.
Graham Crocker (on 30/6/08) TOM.com
Well if I was in the political scene (which I’m not and don’t want to be), I wouldn’t put my family in the limelight unless I was really really desperate. (especially children….with rare names such as Star and Sun ) & I’ve already heard cruel comments about their names.
Also I believe things such as difficult pregnancies are not something to be made public, you know J.Muscat, privacy is another way of showing respect & highlighting personal issues can make somebody like your wife subject to verbal abuse behind her back or in her face, by people who hate/dislike you for partisan/personal reasons. i.e. it is an obvious risk.
Question. What is the role of the wife of the leader of the opposition, might I ask? What I mean is, is it worth putting family at risk of being targeted by media & public?
Personally I would have preferred it if he kept the children out of the political arena, because children definitely do not belong there.
Fiona Spiteri (on 30/6/08)
To Graham Crocker
Have you ever criticized the maltese and italian name “Stella”? If you need it translated, it means just the same as Etoile!! Do you have any “cruel comments” to spare about such beautiful names as Etoile and Soleil? Sorry if I am the first person to tell you this, but do you know the meaning of your own name? Graham = A Grey House!!!! Any cruel comments about this?
Also, as a mother myself I could vow that difficult pregnancies become part of the mother’s life. It is an experience that one won’t ever forget. So if I am reading an article “Meet Michelle Muscat” I find it only human to read about her own experiences. So please stop writing nonsense!!
———————————-
Source:http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20080628/local/meet-michelle-muscat
So was I, the Gray House (she clearly hasn’t heard of Graham Chapman) was writing nonsense a year ago and now it isn’t …just look at the title of this article. This is what foresight means Dr.Muscat & Mrs Spiteri, something you both clearly don’t have.
To be fair I think all he is saying is that because of his economic and social circumstances his girls stand a better chance of being successful than other girls from less fortunate families. Aside from being mildly presumptious and pobably not quite the best way of getting his message across, I don’t really think he is saying that his “babies” are already successful or that they will definitiely be successful in the future.
I guess this goes further to show how unprepared he is for the role he is occupying. Can you imagine him as PM?
I had a look for a couple of minutes at your blog (and a few seconds at the Maltastar article…10X 4 D link…) whilst having some coffee. Well, all in all, I don’t see anything wrong with hoping that a baby or child has all the possible chances for success in life. Obviously, you try to give them all the best (not at the expense of somebody else’s son or daughter), than it’s up to them.
I thought the funnier quote was: “I believe that it is not simply a question of voting Labour due to family background, or merely out of habit or due to antipathy towards the Nationalist Party, but stemming from a belief that the Labour Party can truly make a better place.”
Are they trying to lose the election? If people did that, they wouldn’t get any votes at all. For a hopeless party, what a cannibalistic thing to say.
“The change I want to see,” Dr Muscat stressed, “was to be able to have Maltese and Gozitans who, after a long day’s work, could return home, switch on the TV and see individuals working for the country’s future and leading the country to growth and prosperity.”
Dear Leader Joseph Muscat’s North Korean idyll.
here they are
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.smartcellsmalta.com/testimonials/images/T320071206.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.smartcellsmalta.com/testimonials/viewtestimonial.asp%3Fid%3D18&usg=__moUzPW0dWc_Q1LsNmc8q6mo0OAo=&h=121&w=121&sz=6&hl=en&start=352&sig2=JOi23kCwHCtcwHCDnTWPfQ&um=1&tbnid=0kiQMN3T_ntg0M:&tbnh=89&tbnw=89&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsoleil%2Band%2Betoile%26ndsp%3D21%26hl%3Den%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:*:IE-Address%26rlz%3D1I7ADBR%26sa%3DN%26start%3D336%26um%3D1&ei=DEIEStf3Jtm5_AbYlcGIBw
Children coming from good backgrounds (JM’s assumption is that he provides a good background, and he is probably right) are always going to be at an advantage and usually do better in school, and later on in life. They might not all eventually grow up to send people in outerspace but their chance at being relatively successful is by far better.
Children from bad or poor backgrounds start at a disadvantage. Of course, we all know many exceptions to this, and thankfully these exceptions are becoming so common that they almost cease to be exceptions, but the reality is that he is in a way correct. It is only his smugness that is irritating, similar to when he alluded to his “lfiestyle”.
[Daphne – The mistake that you both make is to equate a good background with material privilege. The heroin addicts I knew while growing up came from supremely privileged backgrounds.]
[Daphne – The heroin addicts I knew while growing up came from supremely privileged backgrounds.]
True, there were similar cases at the church school I went to. But they were the few “exceptions” at the other end of the scale.
M’ hemmx limitu ghal naqra pubblicita/Lm40,000 fis-sena http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RKypme4Flo
“Sharon tissapportja bla bla bla…” One is tempted to say “X’ghalab## ##**bi”.
That girl in the clip needs a bra. Hard times maybe? I wonder how much the MFA made from the rights to the excerpts?
Success depends on the strength of the child. His/her background doesn’t matter. The ability to tackle problems which might arise is what counts. I grew up in one of the most deprived areas of Malta – Albert Town, Marsa, but as a boy I wanted to change my life and I managed to do so. It depends on how tough you are. As to Joe Muscat’s children, if they follow in their father’s footsteps then they will fail because he does not tackle the problems which crop up, be it party problems or problems such as immigration.
Hi Daphne,
Excuse my ignorance, but a comment you posted underneath a comment here got me confused. What is, in Malta, the difference between “private/church schools to the independent schools”?
I don’t know how that really works here, that’s why. Thanks a mil :)
Luca
[Daphne – Private schools should mean any non-state schools, really, but because the term has long been used for church-run schools, another term, independent schools, is used for those schools which are independent of both church and state. They are either run as businesses or operated by foundations – schools like San Anton, San Andrea, Chiswick House, St Michael’s.]
Thanks a million, Daph.
Extremely helpful, as always :)
I’m sorry but there’s a fundamental detail missing: Church schools provide ‘free’ schooling because the exchequer pays the teachers. Most of these schools ask the parents for a ‘donation’, and most parents give a donation of around €300 per year. Those who cannot afford to don’t give any money. Parents have to buy the books.
There was an agreement between the Church and State (1988?) where the Church handed most of its property to the state and the latter agreed to foot the salary bill of the teaching staff in return.
[Daphne – Schools are described on the basis of their ownership and ethos, John, and not on how much you pay for your education there, or whether you pay at all. An independent school would still be an independent school, even if it were free of charge – in fact, education there is free of charge for some. I would also add selection criteria. The changes that you describe to the admissions system of church schools – except for St Aloysius, which I believe remains examination-based – means that some of them are now no different to state schools.]
Church schools are very different from state schools; each church school has its particular character whereas state schools lack character (ethos).
[Daphne – They used to have their own particular ethos, but they no longer do. The lottery system attracted not so much the wrong sort of children, but definitely the wrong sort of parents. The schools can no longer use the methods of discipline which we took for granted. Our parents would never have gone to the headmistress’s office and lashed her with a belt – no matter how much they might have felt like doing so on occasion.]
The basic difference between private schools and church schools is in the funding. Church schools are funded by the church, the state and the parents. Independent schools run mainly on the funds provided by the parents.
[Daphne – No, that’s not the main difference. The main difference is in the approach to learning, and the fact that independent schools are all coeducational, with the exception of St Edward’s. Having been to a church school myself, I would never have sent my children to one. There’s too much that is wrong with them, starting from the fact that they are single-sex, and moving on to the approach to teaching, which is designed to close minds rather than open them. Any child with the slightest bit of imagination suffers terribly in a church school, because the system is so regimented.]
In church schools the parents get involved in a wide range of extracurricular activities: bikeathlons, fund raising activities, voluntary work in the school, sports days, seminars and the PTA, just to mention a few.
[Daphne – Not my scene at all, I’m afraid. I’m of the view that school is the domain of teachers and home is the domain of parents, and ne’er the two should meet, except on parents’ evening, which has since become parents’ morning-stretching-into-the-afternoon.]
From first-hand experience I can say that Savio College, St Michael’s School and St Paul’s Missionary College give the best our children can get to become good Christians and responsible citizens.
[Daphne – L-aqwa l-good Christians. I don’t see many good Christians around. Do you? Most of what I see are intolerant bigots or selfish libertarians, and in between, people who are just going through the motions.]
I am not stating that other schools are not as good as these schools .Schools depend on funding; it’s their lifeblood. People my age know it from experience in the 1980s. Independent schools cropped up when KMB tried to cut this lifeblood from the church schools (jew b’xejn jew xejn) to create Wistin’s Socialist generation. If my sums are right it’s the same period when Joseph was attending St Aloysius.
[Daphne – Yes, but you kind of miss the point. It wasn’t the church-teaching that KMB wanted to eradicate. It was the system of privilege. But giving what snobs call NQLUs open access to church schools through the lottery system had exactly the same effect. Church schools were no longer for the privileged – not that they were, anyway. Only some of them were, and he couldn’t do anything about St Edward’s. But KMB didn’t reckon with the determination of some people to keep their children away from state schools and NQLUs, a determination which gave birth to San Anton School – thank God.]
What are NQLUs? They haven’t arrived at the outback yet. Tried to find it on the web.
[Daphne – Not Quite Like Us.]
And I nearly forgot, Nick, the other difference up to now was that if your child does not pass the common entrance examination to a church school, then your best next option would be to send him in a village secondary state school or to fork out your hard-earned money and send him (girls have fewer opportunities for church schools) to San Anton. I know a doctor who did just that.
And yes San Anton is full of pupils whose parents don’t have money problems.
[Daphne – And also full of pupils whose parents struggle to make ends meet so that they can pay the fees and all the other attendant bills like books and uniforms. I should know as we were among them.]
Muscat fishing for Gozitan votes:
http://www.maltastar.com/pages/ms09dart.asp?a=1696
In his speech Muscat is reporting “100 more unemployed”and promising “we will leave no stone unturned” .
And his Gozitan audience patiently listening and thinking: “he doesn’t have a clue of what’s happening on this small island”.
@Daphne, What really makes me sick is seeing all those hoteliers listening to Joey spouting out all that pompous rubbish and not one of them stands up to be counted, by just telling the ”genius” what an ass he really is. After all, you yourself D have as much, if not more, to lose you if he ever gets elected, and yet you never cease to tell the man some home truths.
I’m sorry but most of them are spineless chickens, unless they’re being clever and letting the ”git” drown in his own drivel.
[Daphne – Actually I don’t have anything to lose, personally. I work entirely in the private sector. On the other hand, I have a lot to lose indirectly through instability in the country. But I know exactly what you mean. People are such unbelievable arse-lickers, and so damned keen to keep their heads below the parapet. Il-vera bla sinsla.]
I thought that the original reason for setting up Maltastar was to reach out to people like me for whom English is a first language.
The least they could do is employ somebody who has a good command of the language, but I suspect that they honestly believe that they do.
Another thing, how does a person get a degree when they cannot speak coherent English? A doctorate no less!
David Buttigieg. Haven’t you ever heard some our professors delivering a lecture? That is why we get degrees even when we don’t have a good command of the language.
Do not blame the students completely. It depends a lot on what (and how) you have been taught the language. My six-year-old niece speaks English with perfect pronunciation simply because she is being taught in the right way. She was brought up speaking Maltese like the rest of us.
As Daphne says, a good background does not mean a financially excellent background. What it does mean is a background conducive to the child getting a good education and adequate attention from the parents re what is going on in the child’s life. If the child is left to wander along unsupervised (and not only in educational matters), even though there is a financially stable background, the result will be catastrophe. Failure happens at both ends of the spectrum – children who are underprivileged, and who have parents who don’t give a toss about their education, fail, and so do the children of privileged persons, who don’t give their children the time of day, and are so caught up in their own lives to really bother about their children’s. Of course exceptions do exist, but they are rare.
@Andrea Sammut
Thanks for the link – had not seen it.
This is another reason that I would not vote for Joseph. If he was looking towards stem cell banking, he should be encouraging government to take the initiative and setup a National Cord blood Bank. The actual chance of someone utilising his own cord blood cells are very remote for various reasons:
1. The actual chance of suffering from a disease that requires stem cells is very rare
2. Out of these rare diseases, the most common ones would require a donation from someone else as ones own cells are already compromised.
3. Even if used on cancer and leukaemia, one should be careful as the elements that predispose to childhood leukaemia are already part of ones genomic component, so the risk of redeveloping the disease is much higher than if the donation is from an external source.
4. Many times the amount of stem cells present is not enough for a successful transplantation especially if the person is older than 11 years – usually it would require a still experimental procedure of stem cell augmentation.
One the other hand, if cord blood is donated to a National bank (similar to blood donation), this can be still stored, the bank would be part of a larger worldwide network and if blood stem cells are required for a bone marrow transplantation, a request can go out to all the networked banks for a matching donation. This has the added advantage that more than one lot could be obtained and thus one would have enough for a transplant.
Even the smart cell website contains misleading news items – if one had to read carefully the news all of the items speak about stem cells donated by siblings and not ones own.
I believe that these couples are being approached at a very vulnerable time and convinced in accepting to part with their money whilst nor given the whole true picture – so take advice, research the topic but make sure that you would be reading on public (free) banking and then decide.
At long last .
http://www.maltamediaonline.com/?p=8061
[Daphne – We were in the same year at sixth form, and I feel very sad about all this because he is not well and should have been looked after long ago for his own sake as well as for the sake of all those whose money he took. Sandro joined the Labour Party in anger after he was turned down by the Nationalist Party when he sought to become an electoral candidate. His psychological difficulties were the reason he was turned down. Yet the Labour Party was thrilled to have as a candidate a notary with a smart surname, and accepted him with alacrity. He was promoted heavily by the party, and was elected to parliament. This only served to give him more credibility, which he then misused. But as I said, he needed help, and still does.]
During the EU referendum campaign he announced, with a twinkle in his eye, “I’m all in favour of partnership.”
Is it just me or isn’t it a bit absurd that a public notary was allowed to continue his practice after being convicted the first, second and third time?
I remember Sandro when he was standing for MZPN elections. At that time I also remember him telling me (and not only me) how difficult his life was at university, due to (according to him) his political convictions.
Walking down Republic Street with Sandro by your side was a nightmare. He used to salute every person, and chat with everybody who would stop. Naturally he was the consummate politician, even at 18 (or thereabouts). He knew everybody by name, and their in-laws, or so it seemed to me at the time.
When he was refused by the PN, he did something that I would never have believed possible, i.e. made a dash over to the other side. It wasn’t an ideological metamorphosis, Daphne, which I could have understood. It was just an overpowering thirst for power.
I cannot agree more on this. In my case I adore reading and studying and my house is full of books and I am always with a book in hand but my son turned out to be a dyslexic. I was never keen on sport but my son is a sport freak. I am very careful when speaking so as to use the right ‘language’ at the right time but my son could not give a damn about this and speaks his mind ALL the time, and he is only 15 and therefore I am expecting more and more ‘surprises’ as I go along.
@DCG – “His psychological difficulties were the reason he was turned down.”
I thought it was because he had to sort out some accusations of plagiarism.
[Daphne – He was perceptibly not quite right, even at sixth form.]
The man needs help and we should stop there. Mind you, Joey looks like he also has some character traits which need addressing, And HE could be our Prime minister one day !!
I believe he said ‘ chances ‘ of success. He wasn’t making an assumption as to the outcome of their lives, merely that they have a good chance of success given the environment into which they have been born. Seems reasonable to me.