Attakk fahxi u moqziez fuq it-tfal tal-Mexxej Mahbub Taghna mis-sahhara kerha tal-Bidnija

Published: April 14, 2010 at 10:11am
F'ghoxx il-leader taghna, Guz - jien gbajt nistenna hawn u ha nitlaq l'hemm. Jekk tridni ssibni niekol ma' Silvio Debono tas-Seabank tal-Ghadira.

F'ghoxx il-leader taghna, Guz - jien gbajt nistenna hawn u ha nitlaq l'hemm. Jekk tridni ssibni niekol ma' Silvio Debono tas-Seabank tal-Ghadira.

Well, Maltstar and FZL elves, I have some more news for you after you found out through me that your Great Leader’s children’s names were in the church schools lottery. He’s now put their names down for San Anton School (ghamel kif qaltlu Defni).

So you see, dear elves, I was right: that’s where he wanted to send them in the first place (progressive, liberal, coed, no learning by rote, fejn marru t-tfal ta’ Daphne), but being the sort of mittilkless people they are – why pay when you can get it for free – the Great Leader and his wife thought they majtezwel chance their luck on getting a couple of free places at a skola tal-knisja.

And if that didn’t work out, well then, just immorru jiktbuhom ghal dik l-iskola fejn marru t-tfal ta’ Daphne, ghax dik nahseb taf x’inhi tghid.

The thing you forget, Labour elves, is that I have rather a lot more experience of life and human nature (to say nothing of politics and politicians, but that’s by the by in this case) than you do.

So when I see people like the Great Leader and his wife heading for the church schools lottery (clash between the values taught in those schools and the values he claims to espouse in politics) and then for San Anton School (the right choice), I can follow the thinking, the reasoning, the thought patterns and the ‘let’s try and get it for free first’ attitude, for the simple reason that I’ve seen it all before in so many other people like them.

What shocks me about the parents who do this is that they clearly haven’t given much thought to the sort of education they want their children to have, beyond it being private.

But there is an enormous gulf between single-sex schooling in a nuns’ or priests’ school where the approach to teaching is doctrinaire and where religion plays a major role, and coed schooling in a secular environment where the approach to learning is that of opening up a child’s mind rather than closing it.




21 Comments Comment

  1. freefalling says:

    The progressive Leader of the Labour Party put votes before his children’s education and welfare thinking “let’s see how this goes down with blue-collar voters.”

    As you quite rightly say, he followed your advice and sought out a proper school for Soleil and Etoile.

    As to “is-sahhara kerha tal-Bidnija” – apart from the fact that Daphne is not ugly by any stretch of the imagination, she has what is called an abundance of attributes that many people find extremely enticing – and this is what mostly annoys the Labour Party.

  2. vomiting says:

    “…mis-sahhara kerha tal-Bidnija”

    for once u were right!

    [Daphne – Careful or I’ll megiks you.]

    • Rover says:

      You will all come to your senses one day, that is apart from the hopeless cases out for a free ride on the back of the Maltese taxpayer.

    • Dem-ON says:

      @vomiting
      Mhux ahjar tmur “tivvomitja” fuq is-site tat-TYOM. Forsi jtuk xi medicina ghall-istonku?

  3. freefalling says:

    vomiting – some food for thought.

    This is not a one-time headline but mimicry of the constant barrage of derogatory names used to describe Daphne.

    Arguments are not won by name-calling but by sound writing.

  4. edgar cayce says:

    Alan (from two and a half men for those who…..)

  5. La Redoute says:

    “…Maltstar and FZL elves,”

    Isn’t that a redundancy?

  6. myriam says:

    Daphne, actually I’m surprised that he’s registered them at an independent school because they still have two more chances in the Church School lottery.

    • Augustus says:

      myriam, what else can he do since Daphne, as the Maltese saying goes, “Kixfitlu sormu”.

    • Snoopy says:

      You want to bet that he will register them again next year?

      This is only a stop-gap solution and a guarantee that they are at least attending a private or church school. From my experince with San Anton (San Andrea had still to open) it is quite tough to find a place – I remember that I had gone in to register my son, at six months (after being prodded by everyone) – the result, he was and remained on the waiting list.

      If I remember well we had registered him at three independent schools and were only successful with St Michael Foundation – and this only because they were enlarging the school.

  7. attent01 says:

    And why not a government school? Isn’t that where the workers send their children? I send my three children to independent schools with great sacrifice, but better this way than denying them a proper education. Those of us like Daphne who have passed through the 70s and 80s church school trauma know exactly what I am saying – we were deprived of concentrating in our education and had little or nothing to look up to hlief xi korp l’hawn u l’hemm. What a difference now to those dark ages.

  8. TROY says:

    Mentioning the Leader’s children is a no no. Trying to dig up lies on Daphne’s children is ok. You f….k.n sick numb nuts.

  9. B Galea says:

    A cynic would argue that he always intended on sending them to San Anton, but knew that if he submitted their names to the state school lottery he’d win brownie points and appear less like your average politician.

    I just hope that two children don’t get bullied because of their father’s politics. In my time, San Anton wasn’t exactly Labour-friendly.

    There was one student in my year whose family were prominent MLP supporters – come election time, the poor guy was mercilessly bullied by as many as two dozen kids at a time. Anything from name-calling to putting insects in his lunch, tearing up his school books or dousing his PE kit in coke. And all because he had the bad manners to be born into a ‘red’ family.

    In any case, Muscat’s chosen to send them to my alma mater, and despite its myriad faults, I’ve got a soft spot for the place. From what I’ve heard about other schools (including private school hell-holes like St Edward’s), it’s certainly one of the better schools on the island.

    [Daphne – I think you’ll find that children don’t pick on other children because of their politics, but the politics is just an excuse for picking on somebody who would have been picked on anyway. It was years before I twigged that one of my son’s friends at school was the son of a prominent Labour politician, for example. It was just never discussed or bothered about.]

  10. TROY says:

    Is the new Leader following in the footsteps of his predecessor KMB – JEW B’XEJN JEW XEJN?

  11. Iz-Zuzu says:

    Lol, “Careful or I’ll megiks you”. Din bil-bajd kienet, mhux bhal ta’ Hal Luqa.

  12. Joe says:

    I hope Joseph Cuschieri invests in at least one other tie before he starts representing us in the European Parliament. In the past three posts on this blog featuring a photo of him, he’s wearing the same red and white checked tie, and all three photos seem to be taken on different occasions.

  13. Pat Zahra says:

    ‘What shocks me about the parents who do this is that they clearly haven’t given much thought to the sort of education they want their children to have, beyond it being private.’

    That’s not always the case Daphne. My first choice for my son was St Benild’s and Stella Maris College which is where my brother and husband went. We weren’t lucky enough to win a place there so our next choice was San Anton for all the reasons you mentioned.

    What other choice did we have? There was no way that I was going to send him to a government school.

    Since I teach in one I suppose I should have shown more faith in the state school system. The fact is that in my experience if you happen to have a daughter who is bright then she will do very well in the state system because she’ll pass the junior lyceum exam and the girls’ junior lyceums are excellent (or will have been, but that’s another story).

    Other than that, late developers in the primary will be relegated to lower and lower streams, will stand no chance in the junior lyceum exams and will fetch up in area secondaries which, in the case of those for boys, make Dante’s circles of Hell look like a vacation in the Caribbean.

    We simply couldn’t risk this happening to our son.

    The way things have panned out now he’s perfectly happy at San Anton and the education he is receiving is worth every penny of the fees.

  14. Dem-ON says:

    While on the subject of schools, last week the BBC ran some articles about the Finnish education system. It quoted international research which showed that 15 year old Finns scored among the highest results in their exams in the developed world.

    Among the distinguishing features in the Finnish education system, the BBC mentioned the following:
    – classrooms with students of mixed abilities;
    – primary and secondary education are combined – no disruption from transition;
    – students are kept in the same class for several years – the teachers get to know a history of their students;
    – main school is started at age seven – in earlier years the children learn from playing;

    I found the couple of articles on the subject very interesting, and they should be of interest to anyone in education policy making.

  15. Riya says:

    Ghandek ragun fuq Silvio Debono tas-‘Sea Bank’.

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