This is exactly what I meant:

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120610/opinion/Setting-the-bar-even-lower.423607

I don’t know (and don’t want to know) what that luminary Colin Apap replied to his reader – but the point is that there are people for whom learning many languages is a real ordeal … Let’s teach them how to think … they’re not leaving Malta anyway, so if we’re stuck with them, at least let them make our lives less miserable.

In the state schools and other private schools there is a very little time dedicated to English. At primary level there is only an hour every week, at secondary level two hours a week, and three hours a week at post-secondary level.

It’s become very common that no English is done at all in the state schools due to financial disaster the country is in.

That’s it!

Where there is a historically strong, centralized-State people do not learn other languages – unless they are specialized linguists.

Which is what I suggest for Malta. Let a few, select people learn the languages, and the others how to think.

We need thought, more than foreign languages.

For once, stop thinking in the Imperialist mode. We don’t need English to function in a worldwide Empire. Some of us need English to function in the outside world – the majority need thinking skills (in their native tongue) to solve the myriad problems plaguing us in our daily lives.

That’s my point SC!

Not all Maltese can master two languages perfectly – so we end up with diglossia.

We don’t need linguists: we need people who can think. Teach them in Maltese and let’s move on.

With regard to the Swedes. No, the Swedes do not speak perfect English – but they do speak a very good English for, at least, two reasons:

1. English and Swedish belong to the Germanic family (even though English has a strong romance element – which the Swedes never really master well);

2. The Swedish accent allows more accomodation to the English accent – and you are fooled by this into thinking they’ve got a good mastery of vocabularly and syntax …

Sweden is a country made up of 9 million people. I have still not met a Swede with anything less than near perfect English. Sweden does not dub any of its films or foreign TV programmes so everyone speaks English at a high level.

Malta on the other hand has 400,000 speakers here and the quality of spoken English is just plain terrible.

Sorry – I meant to say (it’s 1:30 am, you see!) that “the sciences require more NUMERICAL and abstract thinking than the humanities” …

Also, I believe it has been established by science that in the sciences you do not need “greater thinking skills” but “different thinking skills”. Indeed, psychometric tests show that linguistic, verbal and abstract thinking make use of different parts of the brain. The sciences require more verbal and abstract thinking than the humanities.

I would like to quote from this article: http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~lds/pdfs/spelke1999.pdf

“Specialized cerebral circuits for number processing

“Our behavioral and brain-imaging results indicate that the rote learning of arithmetic tables is based on a linguistic representation of numbers, and therefore that such learning requires the ‘recycling’ of initially non-numerical brain circuits, such as language circuits, for the purpose of mathematics2. However, is that the case for all of our mathematical competences?

“Our research has uncovered a second cerebral circuit that depends on the left and right intraparietal regions, underlies the understanding of proximity relations between numerical quantities, and is particularly important for approximation
and number comparison. We view this circuit as providing a biological foundation for number sense.”

Who is this everybody?!

Ms Saliba: try presenting a PhD in Sweden … http://www.studyinsweden.se/How-To-Apply/Doctoral-studies/Admission-requirements/

Swedish is required for many programmes … Ah, but this is Sweden, so that’s ok …

Can’t understand the stance some of you people take: you seem to think through your noses.

Observation is not enough. The problem with Italy is the budget, not culture.

Yes, I heard a similar appeal from a Cambridge professor who urged students to forget about Chaucer and Shakespeare, and concentrate on IT.

Utter rubbish. IT is important, literature is important too.

But Cecchi Paone was never a bright chap.