Li ghandek sistema edukattiva tajba kemm hi tajba … mhux ma kulhadd thalli l-frott kif mixtieq.

At this stage, I sincerely hope that he’s not a university student, though.

Forsi kien jitghallem ftit kif kienu verament l-affarijiet regward l-edukazzjoni dak iz-zmien.

Did the bulb light up in his head after seeing the glitzy brochures for The World and the three Palm Islands developments which were a big thing in Dubai until the world came to its senses and noticed that we were spending more money than we had!

Joseph Muscat was in Form 2 at St Aloysius College in 1987, so in 1985 he left the state educational system and continued his education in a Jesuit school. Is this lack of trust in the Labour’s educational system?

So Muscat’s education was mostly under the Nationalist government and the opportunities opened by the said government can be shown by his ability to further his education. Would it have been the same if Labour was in power? But then it would have been whom you knew to progress in your career.

Alfred Sant was the man, aided and abetted by a person who had to obey orders in the fear that her husband would not be allowed to stay in Malta, being English. Entry to university was practically reserved for people whose parents were definitely Labour – with or without qualifications. Those were the golden years for you.

When Joseph Muscat was elected leader of the party, I listened to his address to party members when he told them to love his wife. That embarassing appeal accompanied a story about an intelligent boy from a modest family who grew up to be well educated thanks to the education system that the old members of the party had built up. That boy was himself.

At that very moment I knew that I could not trust that man because he must have known that Mintoff’s experimentation in education was condemned by no other person than R. Dahrendorf, a German educationist recruited by Mintoff, who refused to be associated any longer with what Mintoff was implementing.

The number of courses offered by the university had been significantly reduced and made utalitarian in content, student population plumeted to a very low level, places were limited while entrance depended on sponsorship.

Secondary education was modelled on the Chinese communist work-phase system which the Chinese were abandoning.

The list of graduates from the Royal University of Malta, prior to 1971, contains persons from all walks and levels of Maltese society, including many within the fold of the Malta Labour Party.

That is the truth.

Actually MCAST already existed but as soon PL/MLP were voted into power in 1971, when University attendance was already free, MCAST was disbanded and it had to be PN in government to re-establish this educational institution.

Medical students were banned because they dared to protest against the government. Sixth formers from private schools were refused entry at Malta University because of the infamous twenty points.

Practically the only way to get through was to migrate to the New Lyceum after fifth form. Many of my classmates gave in to the pressure and did that. We have to remember that there was huge fear. Labour thugs and police were even stopping children from entering their schools.

My qualifications were enough to get me in notwithstanding the private school penalty but for some mysterious reason I was kept out. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I had dared to represent the students at a mass meeting organised to protest against the attempted closure of the schools.

Maybe we would need to ask the person who was the head of the selection board at the University of Malta at that time. He still sits in parliament today.

Obviously our education system failed Mr Ellul (well, that’s what parents like to say).

But our system afforded him an opportunity elsewhere and he took it. His Maltese spelling is atrocious, and I suspect so is his English. Yet even for people like him, MCAST offers a second chance at becoming something other than an uneducated outCAST in society.

He can’t even spell the title of his own job, but he graduated as a draughtsman all the same.

He’s too young to have experienced Mintoff’s education system first hand, so he can only rely on the stories that were passed on to him, totally oblivious to the fact that those stories belong to the Children’s Fiction section.