If everything is always going downhill everywhere, how come we have progress as a human race on this planet? It can’t be that bad.

To take your example of the lawyer with numerous spelling mistakes in his letter: other lawyers, his clients, the courts will notice this. They will talk about it. If a lawyer constantly loses his cases, he won’t find many new clients. A hot-shot-lawyer however will gain a good reputation and will find many clients, usually more than he can handle, so that he can pick the most profitable (or interesting if he is so inclined) cases.

The main resources when studying law (and the same is probably true for many other degrees) are your own time and your own brain. Other students, and may there be thousands of them, don’t take this away.

That’s the kind of information I was looking for. Numbers. A bit more objective than some lawyer’s spelling mistakes.

Third time lucky?

Franco for Cardinal

The problem is a different one. The levels of English have dropped considerably. It was always hard to get a grade A but nowadays it’s almost a mirage.

Students have to prepare not only language essays, literary texts and linguistics. They have literary criticism which is all about interpretation and, to my mind, forms a crucial part on the interpretation of the law itself for a good lawyer’s job is that of knowing how to juggle around words and come out with a convincing argument.

Why English is considered a softer option I cannot understand. I only think that, since the levels have dropped, a lot of up-marking is being done which means more mediocrity.

I have always been against this practice, personally but having been an examiner in Malta and abroad, I know it is quite common practice. Today, many students are plain lazy and instead of “punching” them back with their results, most university bodies prefer to inflate marks by 5 or 10%.

I find the language argument holds more ground when students present write ups for their Economics topics. I’ve seen colleagues giving wonderful marks to well-written essays that had no value whatsoever subject wise.

They were perfect in their grammar, punctuation, presentation but the contents were useless. Yet this is more a question of validity rather than difficulty.

I assure you, Lilla, that teachers who graduated in the late 80s and 90s had a two-year probation period too.

I was one of them and we had random inspections.

When we were given the warrant signed by the then Minister of Education Ugo Mifsud Bonnici, it was backdated but given only after we had passed the test and from Teacher I we were then promoted to Teacher II.

And yes, during our course (at that time it was still a 5 year course) we had one case in particular of a student who failed his teaching practice in the final year. He never became a teacher, in fact.

I agree completely. It was hoped that some police officers would follow law courses and become lawyers so as to present themselves better as prosecution officers, this because it’s not the first time we have seen hardened criminals absolved by a good defence team that could portray them as victims and martyrs at the same time.

Yet, the world outside the police force with the right connections is far more profitable. That is why there should be some sort of employment binding clause when sending officials to university (remembering that they were getting full wages during their study period, not a little stipend).