Toni Abela has a lovely day out
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December 2, 2010 at 6:37pm
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Looks like he is blowing yet another Lejber bubble.
Ara naqra min irrid ihabbatha ma Gonzi, Tonio Borg, Tonio Fenech, Austin Gatt u l-kumplament tal-Partit Nazzjonalista? Kem qedin sew ukoll!
Dak x’garalu f’wiccu? Qala xi daqqa tal-katina ta’ flushing, jew/ Imma issa bil-haqq ma ghadux jawgurra lil-partiti kollha ic-cinga tal- flushing. Ara vera darbtejn insieru tfal.
This is really shameful. I work at the junior college and every year we get truck loads of drunken graduates making loads of noise.
Some even try to get into the college and we have to stay for hours with the gates closed.
The UOM should condem such events. Politicians should not join in such childish manners.
Yeah, kids having some fun when graduating. What on earth is the world coming to.
That is my point! These are not kids but adult men and women in their in their early to mid twenties.
Being drunk in mid day, hanging out of buses, disrupting lectures and blocking streets is not as a civil way of celebrating. I may expect such behavior from 15 year olds but not from young adults.
[Daphne – Oh come on. They’ve been bossed and bullied from duttrina to private lessons to homework to school to sixth form to university for the first 22/23/24 years of their lives. I’d scream and hang out of a bus too if that had been my experience. Now most of them will go on to live very boring lives without the opportunity to scream or hang out of a bus ever again. This is probably the wildest thing they’ve ever done or will ever do. The sort of students who live interesting and exciting lives do not wait until graduation day and then break out. You can rest assured that they are not the ones screaming and hanging out of buses.]
These “youths” wouldn’t know partying if it put on a purple Afro wig and a pink boa with thirty glowsticks (been there, done that).
I mean look at them, for chrissakes. They’re all more or less sober, wearing identical, printed, uniform, and sober, T-shirts. And silly hats in geeky imitation of Homer Simpson. Some party! You should have seen my mate Spud attached to a drip in the Red Cross tent at the 2007 Loveparade, vomiting for dear life but still raving to the sound of Scooter. Genau!
your comment is a bit stupid Daphne. Hanging out in buses is not on. It is negligence and accidents can happen this way. Have fun as much as you like but with caution. Without getting drunk. Only hamalli do so. They will loose all the fun after all those years studying accademic subjects. And what hs the duttrina got to do with it? Are you that foolish as to hate the time you go to learn to become a good civic minded human being while enjoying life to the full without exagerating?
[Daphne – I never went to duttrina. When I was a child in the 1960s and 1970s, tal-Muzew was something tar-rahal (it still is, but now apparently it’s forced on everyone else too). I can’t recall anyone every going and I didn’t even know what it was. It was completely outside my experience. And that’s one of the reasons why I can think straight and am, indeed, a good civic-minded human being.]
I used to enjoy the time i did at the MUSEUM. I wish I could go back to that time, but life must go on. I know what it means to keep on studying since you are 7 years old till 22/25 years old. You almost lose your teens and half the twenties. That’s why they have a right to have fun and make merry but with dignity and moderation. Not like the hamalli you tease.
[Daphne – My point is that it’s neither necessary nor normal to miss out just because you’re at school or university, that people who do this are actually pretty nerdy types for whom this equates to letting off steam after doing nothing much but study for years. Which brings me back to my original point about duttrina etc. The reason people have to study so hard here is because their minds have been messed with and closed off from an early age. People with strong thinking and analytical skills don’t need to study much at all, because their minds have been formed differently. That’s why you’ll find that people who have had a fairly liberal education designed to open their minds rather than close them do far less work and do much better than the rest.]
“Daphne – I never went to duttrina. When I was a child in the 1960s and 1970s, tal-Muzew was something tar-rahal (it still is, but now apparently it’s forced on everyone else too). I can’t recall anyone ever going and I didn’t even know what it was. It was completely outside my experience. And that’s one of the reasons why I can think straight and am, indeed, a good civic-minded human being.”
I agree. However, it depends on how much you allow them to get hold of your mind. As far as I recall, you are not forced to go to such lessons (maybe in your time they were forced, giving the situation at that time). At home discussions and criticisms were encouraged, a yet I went to Museum. I admit that most of the classes were tediously boring, but I enjoyed giving a hard time to my ‘superjur’ by asking a lot of probing questions during classes. Eventually, I blocked the content from the lessons because I found it useless, and just attended the classes so that I could go on the hikes, football games etcetera to keep in contact with my friends.
“Daphne – My point is that it’s neither necessary nor normal to miss out just because you’re at school or university, that people who do this are actually pretty nerdy types for whom this equates to letting off steam after doing nothing much but study for years. Which brings me back to my original point about duttrina etc. The reason people have to study so hard here is because their minds have been messed with and closed off from an early age. People with strong thinking and analytical skills don’t need to study much at all, because their minds have been formed differently. That’s why you’ll find that people who have had a fairly liberal education designed to open their minds rather than close them do far less work and do much better than the rest.”
I agree that people who miss out are ones who usually try to memorize all the notes and regurgitate them in the exams. They’re good at passing exams not in practising their profession. There is a great of deal of difference between studying and producing good work in your workplace.
However, I do not agree that with a minimum of studying you can pass certain courses such as architecture, engineering, ICT, mathematics and science. You need a mix of good intelligence, creativity and hard-work. Intelligence alone will only get you so far. Science and engineering courses involve a lot of sacrifices in order to pursue intensive research and engage in time-consuming projects. Of course, there are certain courses are university where you don’t need to open a book and still pass exams. I don’t need to mention them, but usually they’re courses with a high number of students enrolled in them.
[Daphne – You misunderstand me. I did not say you can get away without studying or with studying just a little. I meant to explain that when a child is trained to think, that child will grow into an adult (of course, presupposing a certain level of intelligence) with a quicker grasp of complex issues and solutions, and that means he or she finds things MUCH easier, and therefore takes much less time doing them (with far less stress). One of the keys to this is early exposure to thinking about abstract issues. It seems to me that a disproportionately large number of Maltese adults are completely literal in their thinking and cannot understand abstract issues or theories at all. It’s one of the reasons Mintoff’s ‘biblical parable’ style of discourse was so effective. Take law, for instance: those who grasp the essential principles are able to apply them throughout, meaning that they do not have to rely on literal memory-work. Those who are unable to grasp certain principles have to learn everything by rote.]
I don’t always agree with Daphne, but I’m definitely in the same camp on this one. Maybe not so much on the fact that catechism is necessarily ‘tar-rahal’, since I’d say it’s part of the culture across the board. But generally speaking, my experiences confirm what she said.
I had to go to the required catechism classes for getting my confirmation in church. (Bilfors trid tmur! Sejjer ma taghmilx il-grizma??)
It was the dullest, most soul deadening things I had the displeasure to be subjected to. Just countless hours wasted hearing a dull, brain dead, bigoted and eternally grumpy nun rattle out prepared standard phrases, and being made to learn them parrot fashion. (Btw, if you want to make sure your kid ends up hating any subject with a passion, just get a nun to ‘teach’ it to him / her)
It did work though – in reverse. I’m an atheist / agnostic. Well, let’s say that I’m not religious but quite spiritual in my own way. (Just a disclaimer in case someone thinks ‘atheist’ must mean you eat fetuses or something).
Time and maturity do make you think deeper about certain things though. Nowadays I am able to interpret religious teachings differently and dispassionately, and realise how they were a vehicle for imparting concepts of spirituality, psychology, sociology, politics, practical living, hygiene, etc. So it’s definitely something that has shaped civilisation, for good or bad. The problem is that most people are never taught, or teach themselves, to analyse and understand the real practical reasons and concepts behind the teachings, in the context of their times, *and* how to filter the really useful concepts and apply them today.
As someone said, if you want to make sure even the most excellent book on the face of the earth is never read again during a person’s lifetime, make it a compulsory subject in school. It’s always been the bane of our education. Force feeding stuff (with the result that usually you end up hating it and rejecting it), rather than building the mental tools that will really help you along with forming who you are, and engendering the love of learning.
I was lucky to have a very good family background to balance things out, and to have a lot of varied interests. I do trust that things have moved along education wise during the last 25 – 30 years, however. So I hope that my son will have better educational experiences than in my time. (I do see that many things have been improved a lot).
“I didn’t even know what it (il-Muzew/duttrina) was.”
And you still don’t know.You never experienced it.
I recall vividly when ‘tal-Muzew’ used to take us eight year old boys to hikes in Selmun or Buskett Chadwick Lakes or to swim at Marsaxlokk in the afternoon or to a day out in Gozo or Cirkewwa. We used to really enjoy opening the sliding glass window of the tal-Kuskusin or tal-Kexkux private bus and feel the breeze on our sun burnt faces in the long evening trip back to Luqa.
Daphne , you should take into consideration that many people couldn’t afford to take their kids out for a day and some today don’t have/find the time to take them out.
[Daphne – You’re confusing issues, John. If poor children needed a day out, then the do-gooders should just have taken them out. There was no need to exact the price of making them listen to religious instruction. Indeed, those days out were – dare I say it – the equivalent of drug-dealers and paedophiles who win deprived children’s confidence by treating them and giving them attention, only as a way of getting them hooked on whatever it is they happen to be selling. I disapprove – strongly.]
Duttrina is not a Maltese phenomenon. In nearby Italy, Catholics take their children to the Scouts (mixed) on Saturday afternoons and/or to the eight o’clock Sunday Mass, after which the children assemble to learn religion till around eleven.
Some of these Uni students probably never experienced Duttrina or Muzew outings or cookouts with the Scouts ,those who did would feel like eight year olds in those buses.
Spartin Plug and Daphne: taking children for an outing and playing in a yard for half an hour on a Wednesday is done also by the scouts.
[Daphne – The Scouts don’t make the children pay for their fun by forcing them to listen to doctrine.]
Friends of mine take children to piano lessons, ballet, singing, modelling or a football nursery instead of duttrina/muzew, while others leave them watching TV, on a playstation or a computer.
Can you imagine that poor kid? “DO , DO Do , RE , RE , RE press the keys softer Kerstin. Did you practice at home?” , or “UP DOWN UP DOWN look at yourself in the mirror” , or “you’re getting fat you’re not fit for a model” , or “what do you think you are Ronaldo with that stupid back pass?”
[Daphne – I happen to agree with you there. But again, you’re confusing issues. It’s not a matter of either duttrina classes or piano. How about nothing? Letting them do what they like after a long day at school? I even disapprove of homework, and would write notes to the teachers about it.]
Muzew or duttrina are not obligatory; teaching religion is the parents’ responsibility. Whether children go to catechism classes, are taught at home or at school makes no difference.
It’s up to the parish priest/religious authorities to accept children for confirmation.
So according to you, if children are sent to Muzew, oratorju or duttrina by their parents, they should be made to sit down for twenty to thirty minutes listen to what the nun or ‘prifett’ wants to deliver and off to home. No socialising no friendships nothing. Shouldn’t people enjoy life?
[Daphne – You misinterpret deliberately. What I said is that children should NOT be sent to duttrina because the purpose of duttrina is to close a child’s mind to enquiry, therefore ensuring that he or she grows up to be unquestioning. It is not the religion per se that bothers me – I’m a liberal – but the process of closing the child’s mind, which is terribly detrimental to development and leads to an intellectually stunted adulthood, as we can in fact see all around us. Yes, children should be free to play, and not in the context of doctrine classes. That isn’t freedom. It is about as free as being in the schoolyard, which is not free at all. Maltese children and young people are, in the main, hideously unsocialised. They lack the most basic social skills, manners, conversational abilities, general knowledge, eloquence – and this is all because of the tight constraints in which they are raised.]
The purpose of duttrina, oratorju or muzew is to teach children how to differentiate between good and bad in the Catholic sense of coarse.
The best definition of these classes was given by Don Bosco who wanted to make the children good Christians and responsible citizens. Don Bosco was emulated by Dun Gorg Preca and Mons Depiro .
Don Bosco’s method was the preventive system which he did by keeping the children in his oratories occupied and away from crime and sin. He encouraged his oratory children to participate in drama , to go out for walks in the country , and to participate in sport activities. You are looking at it from the opposite side.
Scouts: from what you wrote it is obvious that you don’t have any first hand experience. Cubs also cry and get bored in the scouts lessons and activities. Should they be sent marching on Saint George’s day from the Granaries down Republic street ,turning to Archbishop street and up to Castille Place rain or shine?
You may find this of interest
http://www.theregister.co.uk/
Not suggessting you are a geek btw
The pity is that those are university graduates celebrating in front of Labour headquarters with Toni Abela – how ironic when one considers the harm to university students under all Labour governments and by this I am also including the freezing of EU membership which brings countless of opportunities for such students.
You want to really celebrate and thank someone, dear graduates? Go find Dr. Fenech Adami.
I wonder what the architects are doing with Tony Abela?
Designing him a new rubber dolly? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DJ34MOu_yQ
There are students who celebrate spontaneously on their their graduation day, as the photograph in caption indicates.. What is disgusting when a politician, our Prime Minister LG, contacts representatives of selected local media representatives to be present at a particular day and time
in front of Auberge de Castille, to give him coverage when
he is carried shoulder high by students who had fixed the hoax to impress politically in his favour.
To tell you the truth I find this photo to be PL’s ‘answer’ to Gonzi’s Times photo.
The Times offices are a stone’s throw away from Castille, and in this day and age of high technology (not thanks to MLP) it’s not difficult to find someone with a camera who can shoot ‘spontaneous’ photos (with the thumbs up) like Toni Abela’s photo with these students.
With your reasoning it is even harder to believe that Toni’s photo with these students is not a mise-en-scene.
What really strikes me is that these students are celebrating with the deputy leader of a party which never built a school -it actually sold the teachers college, put many students on a loan for schooling , and left their parents deprived of tertiary education with a points system and numerus clausus on the few faculties which were available .
x’ fiha hazin ghax marru jiccelebraw hdejn Toni Abela, mela n nazzjonalisti tobba biss jistghu jmorru jifirhu ma Dr. Gonzi? Get a life u hallu lil haddiehor jiddeverti ma min u fejn jrid wara snin ta’ studju!
Fejn kien Toni Abela meta l-istudenti kienu jissawwtu mill-puizija u mill-marmalja Laburista? Fejn kien meta Mintoff tajjar iktar minn nofs il-korsijiet mill-università? Fejn kien meta certu studenti kienu jtuhom 20 punt ta’ xejn biex jidhlu ghall-xi kors.
Irid ikollok wiccek u x’imkien iehor l-istess biex ma tisthix tmur tiddandan mal-istudenti meta l-partit tieghek ghamel herba mill-edukazzjoni terzjarja. Meta generazzjoni shiha giet imcahhda milli tavvanza f’hajjitha.
Ara il-Prim Ministru jista’ jmur b’wiccu minn quddiem jiccelebra ma’ l-istudenti ghax kien il-partit tieghu li rega’ ta l-hajja lil università. Ghalik l-ewwel wahda – irringrazzja ‘l Alla li lhaqt gvern Nazzjonalista biex ghamlek nies.
@ Not tonight – hear hear. Fiz zmien il Labour minghajr “sponsor” ma kontx tidhol
Labour hated the students and even sent its criminals to beat them. These people have become students and now graduates thanks to the Nationalist governments of Eddie Fenech Adami and Lawrence Gonzi. No thanks to Labour.
Ta min jfakkrek li kieku ma kienx partit laburista ma kienx jkollna edukazzjoni b’xejn u t tfal tas sinjuri biss kienu jidhlu l universita…dan jfisser diskriminazzjoni mal klassijiet socjali u jien l ewwel wahda ma kienx jkolli l opportunita’ li nigradwa ghal darba tnejn !!!
[Daphne – You are terribly uninformed. Free compulsory education was introduced by the British and the Maltese working-class and rural peasants fought against it because they wanted their children to work not waste their time going to school. It predated Mintoff’s 1970s government by the best part of a century. Secondly, the Labour governments of the 1970s and early 1980s did NOT open university education to all, but rather the opposite. They restricted it to the very few, made it virtually impossible to get in, and decreased the number of courses drastically. I should know because – seemingly unlike you who appears to suck up myths – I was there at the time. And by there, I do not mean university, because for that I had to wait for the post-1987 reforms. It was the post 1987 government which made the university what it is today, the sort of place where everybody who can’t spell can get in and get paid for it, including one of the Labour Party’s deputy leaders and practically the entire Super One crew. Tfal tas-sinjuri ta’ ghajnek, skuzi: even when I was growing up, carpenters and tile-layers had more money than the seriously impoverished middle-classes. By sinjuri, I take it you mean not people with money but people like me.]
Studenta, zgur li m’intix studenta ta’ l-istorja , u hallik mill-class struggle u l-ghanqbud li fixkluk fih u r-ross bil-labbra li temghuk.
Kull ma’ trid taghmel hu li thares harsa madwarek u tara l-kwantita ta’ nies gradwati li ghandhom hamsin sena u minn liema ‘klassi’ gejjin biex ma’ nghidlekx minn liema partit gejjin , ghax bejnietna l-ischolarships u l-boroz ta’ studju u apprendistati offruti mill-ambaxxati kienu jmorru hafna ghand tal-qalba. Hares lejn il-lecturers li ghandek u tkun taf min ta l-ghodda biex jitghallmu ulied il-haddiema.
Irringrazzja l-Alla li ma’ kontx tezisti fl-1976 meta kien ghamel ir-riformi Mintoff ……. HARBATTNA u qatghalna qalbna qabel ma’ bdejna. Kien ituhulek l-istipendju!! Studenta Haddiema imma kont tkun, jew midjuna sal-lum ma’ Mintoff jew Fredu li hadd ma’ jrid isemmihom illum!
Veru geddumek fix-xghir u ma’ tafx il-ghala .Tistudja ghat-tielet karta ta’ l-incova-ghax hekk kien isejhilhom il-perit id-diplomi. Kieku kien jghidlek li int ghandek zewg karti ta’ l-incova , ahseb u ara kemm sa jghinek iggibhom. Kemm ma taf xejn!
Wasn’t it George Vella who described university students as abject, in the 2008 campaign?
Well…it’s tit for tat isnt’t it? Someone at Castille organises a “spontaneous” meeting of graduates with the Prime Minister…and now someone at the Glass House organises the same with the Deputy Leader. That is the level of politics that the present-day PN is taking Malta to. Well done to Dr Gonzi’s advisers at Castille!
Times change. Id-dojoq jinfethu u l-miftuhin jiddejqu.
Certainly no harm in graduates celebrating after their long years of study. However one must always keep in mind that in whatever way one celebrates one has to be considerate of other people. Besides, hanging out a bus is dangerous. Another thing that comes to mind is that while graduates are celebrating, they might also think of offering something like say donating blood or some other civic minded actioin which I am sure will be greatly appreciated.
I assure you the only use that could be made of their blood at that point is to make a Bloody Mary.
Ma nahsibx l-istudenti lil Toni Abela marru jkantawlu “Thank you, Thank you very much” !
Għażiża studenta,
Bejn l-ewwel gradwazzjoni u t-tieni waħda (u forsi anke t-tielet), possibbli ma sibtx ftit ħin biex titgħallem kif għandek tikteb bil-Malti?
Meta nistaqsi lili nnifsi kif il-Partit Laburista, fl-istat li qiegħed fih u bil-mexxej li għandu, jibqa’ jattira daqshekk nies, niftakar f’nies bħalek!
I was really hoping that someone would tell me that ‘yes’ the graduates already do this, i.e. donate blood and participating in a civic activity. How disappointing – seems it is true after all that all they are interested in is whether they can find parking or condoms at the university. Please correct me if I am wrong.
First of all graduates are no longer interested in whether they can park or not at the university. They would have stopped caring approximately 7 months ago. Yes I know you mean students, I’m just being pedantic.
Secondly, going to university does not turn you into some pious, selfless being. You will find some who are selfless, others who are selfish. Just like any other arbitrary grouping of people.
Thirdly, they are just enjoying their graduation. Can’t they celebrate without helping poor old ladies or giving blood? Do you go helping others whenever you celebrate? I salute you if you do!
@studenta
let me give you first hand experience of the education system during the Labour government. To get into University starting 1985, one had to have O level passes in Physics and Arabic irrespective of the course you chose. To avoid this, since I had not studied either of these subjects, I had to study and sit for 4 A levels in one year. To add insult to injury, since I attended a private sixth form, I was faced with a handicap of 20 points as opposed to those students who had attended state sixth form. To add more insult to more injury, then there was the numerus clausus. I ended up following the course which had been my third preference. Moreover, a “scholastic” year at University lasted from the last week of February to mid July – 4 and a half months! In fact it was more like school than University because there was no time to do any research or work on projects. I didn’t opt out not going to University at all because the alternative i.e. finding a job was very bleak in those years.
So much for the education system under the Labour government.
Labour’s track record in education goes back a long time. My late dad told me a few times the story of how he was cheated out of going to university.
My dad had been a brilliant student, despite the hardship of growing up right after the war. Times were so hard that he wore the same school uniform for years on end, so that eventually his uniform trousers looked like shorts on him!
Unfortunately for him, Agatha Barbara was appointed minister of (ha!) education (this was in the mid 50s I believe). So what did she do? She basically declared war against graduates. I can still hear my dad having a ‘total recall’ moment as he repeated the very words Agatha Barbara said in a speech, words that he never forgot:
“Sittin tabib hargu din is-sena! Sittin tabib! X’se naghmlu bihom dawn?”
So they implemented a solution to OPENLY hinder students from entering university, namely that an O level in biology was made compulsory for *every* university course. Even if you wanted to read for a degree in law, or civil engineering, or anything you could think of.
Now my dad, at the time, had just obtained ten O levels in one year, something which at the time was unheard of. He was one of the most qualified students ever – BUT he didn’t have a biology certificate. So he was left out. He could only apply again the following year, but then in the meantime he found a job, so he moved on and kept on working. His chance for a tertiary education was flushed down the toilet just like that. Lovely eh.
R. Camilleri – I do not know whether you are a student or not but your reasoning is exactly what I was trying to explain. Maybe you did not understand what I meant – I said that besides celebrating one could also include a gesture of unselfishness but it seems that is a thing of the past with present students who only seem to think of their own interests. Enjoying one’s graduation does not mean that you can be a nuisance to others whilst celebrating.
There are some people who just enjoy annoying others and yes, I am happy to say that whenever I celebrate something I try to give some good in return to what I have been given. Your comment about helping old ladies or giving blood gives you away as to the type of person you really are.
I was a student. Like the current crop of graduands, I celebrated by going round the island on a bus drinking and making some noise. I guess you can only understand it if you had spent the previous year eating, sleeping, drinking and breathing your dissertation. I am not annoyed by their celebrations because I understand exactly why they do what they are doing. They are much less annoying than the festa fanatics anyway.
When I celebrate, I celebrate. When I give, I give. Two totally distinct activities. My point is, I do not see why anyone would EXPECT other to mix them up. You can if you want to of course.
What’s wrong of having some graduates celebrating after around twenty years of their life studying, and trying to keep up with school/university work? Are we going to shut up celebrations as well? Most of the people here are against totalitarian governments….aren’t you doing just the same thing?
Regarding stipends – yes it’s nice for a student to have a stipend. But I must ask, when was the last time there was an increase in stipends? Do you really think that Lm36/month in the 1990’s is worth the same as Lm36/month in 2010? Well obviously it’s not. If fuel prices increases, the student is also prone to these fluctuations. If prices for books increase, then the students will have to suffer the increase. etc….
And students aren’t selfish (most of them). They help and they care for other persons. It is not true that the only they think about is parking spaces and condoms on campus. You should know how many times the blood drive unit is just outside university and how students go and donate blood.
One last point…if graduates do not celebrate now, when do they celebrate? When they finish work and know that pensions aren’t still there? When they finish paying a loan with all the interest at the age of 40/50? When they get unemployed?
There seems to be a delay action in your moderation.
[Daphne – Sorry, but I don’t employ staff to deal with comments when I’m otherwise engaged.]
@ John Schembri is misinformed about the recent fixed event when our Prime Minister LG was carried shoulder high.
It is evident that, prior to the date when this hoax occurred,
the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) attempted to fix
a particular date and time when representatives of both
the Times and the Malta Independent would be present
at Castille Place, Valletta to cover the fixed event.
The Times adhered to the instructions, received from OPM,
while the Malta Independent refrained from sending
any representative. Before deducing that Studenta
has not studied history, it is advisable that John Schembri
refreshes his memory. It was a Labour Administration which introduced education to all Maltese and Gozitan children both at primary and secondary levels.The Labour Government, led by our ex Prime Minister DM between
1955 and 1958, built most state primary schools in Malta and Gozo concurrently with three secondary schools for Maltese and Gozitan students. The premises of these 3 secondary schools are still occupied by the Lyceum – Hamrun; the MCAST – Paola and the Lyceum – Victoria, Gozo.
Re-writing history seems to be the order of the day here. OK, three schools; the rest were built or extended by the PN.
As I said MLP didn’t like to sponsor ‘Karti ta’ l-incova’ or breed a Red Brigades cell here in Malta.
Was it Mintoff is-salvatur or it-traditur who according to your erratic knowledge INTRODUCED education in Malta? So how come eighty year olds know how to read and write? Hallina!
I have a very bad aftertaste of Dom Mintoff’s education reforms.
Jien fi zmien il-Labour kont skola sekondarja u hlief tahwid u disastri ma kienx hawn inkluz tranfers vedikattivi lil ghalliema.
dear daphne
You should get some newspapers of the late 1950 to see who started free education. I sufferred a lot because I commented that it is good that the government give exercise books. School books were also free at that tine, even though we had to return them at the end of the scholastic year, supposedly in a good condition to be re-used.
There was only the lyceum as secondary school until 1956. 1956 was the year when we could sit for both lyceum and technical school. In 1958, the then St. Joseph technical in Paola was opended in the same year and we were transferred from Mriehel to Paola
Until the late sixtees we had to pay to go to university.
It was the labour govenment who started free education and the nationalist govenment that followed watered it to become like a flower.
regarda