Qamel update: Millionaire cabinet minister queues for free place at church school, competing with parents who can’t afford the fees at independent schools
Last Wednesday, the Police and Army Minister, millionaire Manuel Mallia, accompanied by his Romanian wife Codruta ‘Injoranti Maltin’ Mallia, were seen at the church school selection for (free) places for girl-pupils, which was held at St Joseph’s School in Blata l-Bajda.
The person who sent me this photograph, of the millionaire minister bustling around with applications for a free place while others waiting there turned round to gawk, said:
While he has every right to choose a church school his presence there still beggared belief.
Quite frankly, whether he has a right to choose a church school is irrelevant. With places so limited, they should be left for those who can’t afford to pay the burdensome fees at independent schools, which are unaffordable to most people especially if they have two or three children.
There is nothing which a church school provides that isn’t also provided by independent schools, in many respects several times over and better.
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Ghax ma jirrangax ma’ Varist u jibaghthom fi skola tal-gvern?
Mela jisraq ta’ dawk li ma jistghux?
Veru kas ta’ hanzir bla denb.
If he’s ‘bla denb’ that’s because he’s very likely to have sold it off.
Fu**in unbelievable! Veru, mejjet bil-guh.
He still echoes KMB’s 1984 battlecry :
“Jew b’xejn jew xejn”
Let’s hope he’s after the values given in Church schools.
Once you’ve touched on education I wonder how you read the reintroduction of some form of streaming. It has never been discussed here. I see it as a means to keep the ignorant gladly so and not to aspire for anything different-another tool of control.
Most teachers will tell you that streaming is good for students. “A” stream pupils can advance at a fast rate; slower pupils go at their own pace and enjoy school rather than always hanging on at the lower end of their class.
I have no idea which teachers you’ve been speaking to. Teaching mixed abilities students is actually easier because the stronger students can help the weaker students.
A class full of weak students may never reach their full potential as they will not be motivated.
I was an A student myself and attended a co-ed school with mixed ability students in a class and I honestly feel that I received a better education than those of my friends who went to same sex streamed schools.
[Daphne – I agree with you. I experienced streaming directly from third form upwards and nobody benefited. For the girls in what was clearly and unashamedly the ‘stupid stream’ – the stream in which you were put to mark time until you turned 16 – it was an abject disaster. Many of them were not stupid at all. They were just bored or distracted or had home environments that didn’t help. And the clever stream was a joke, because picking sciences does not automatically mean you are intelligent and real intelligence is not the same as studying to pass exams. I was in this stream and spent the whole of the three years in the back row (I would always bag the remotest seat to escape scrutiny as much as possible) reading non-curricular books, daydreaming or writing satire about the teachers. Most of them pretty much left me to it, because they couldn’t do otherwise. Meanwhile, my sons went to what I suspect is the same school you did, and everyone did well regardless of their natural abilities, in classes that contained children with Down’s Syndrome and children with a super-normal IQ.]
Makjavel,
There’s no need for Evarist Bartolo to fix him anything – each and every child has a right to free education provided by the state.
And I really wonder why all the fuss – up till the 9th of March 2013 it was not the first time you’d see GM cars picking up school children, even from church schools.
Yes, but none of them were millionaires….
Spiru, I don’t understand how your mind is set. Do you expect a millionaire to queue for a free place for his children in a church school? The whole point here is that he has taken up one of a very restricted numbers of places which should have gone to a family who can’t afford to pay fees at independent schools like he can (and does for his twins). His presence there, for sure, was to influence.
Where is his security? Isn’t he taking too great a risk without them?
Xieraq anqas donation ma jaghti issa!
It’s glaringly obvious there’s a big hole in the private school sector: an all-girls school. We send our son to a private all-boys school and our only option for all-girls is a church school.
We can afford to send our children to private schools, we just don’t want to send them to a mixed school, which apart from St Edward’s, is all we have in Malta.
Call us conservative or fuddy-duddy, whatever, but that is what we want for our children. Maybe if someone can come up with filling this strange blip in the market, there will be fewer applications for church schools.
[Daphne – All-girls schools are the outer circle of hell. I can’t imagine why any parent would want to send their daughters to one. Our parents had no choice, but we do. Aside from being an abnormal environment, they are unutterably tedious and a breeding ground for bitchiness. All-girls schools are one of the main reasons Maltese women tend to be so backbitingly competitive and snarly towards other women, and completely unable to behave normally around men. It’s because that’s the main lesson you learn at an all-girls school. I would never have sent my daughter to an all-girls school if I had one. I would never have sent my sons to an all-boys school, either, and I am ever so glad I did not, as are they.]
Spot on Daphne!
Conservative, fuddy duddy.
With all-girls church schools there is an adjacent factor to the one you mention: the girls grow up without sufficient everyday interaction with boys and leave school thinking all males are wonderful, which of course they may well be, but I’d wager girls leaving mixed schools are more discerning.
I must then be fortunate for not having ever attended an all-girls school. Are co-ed schools therefore better? Can’t girls be bitchy towards boys in these schools?
[Daphne – The focus of Maltese bitchiness tends to be other women, because it is competitive bitchiness with the ultimate aim, even in girls too young to be conscious of it, but who have been programmed by their mothers, of acquiring more male attention than other girls and women.]
Horses for courses. Though I’m surprised you think women in Malta are bitchy to each other because they went to a girls’ school. Women in Malta will back bite each other no matter where they were schooled; it’s a non-discriminating widespread disease. And they’re still doing it, fresh out of mixed schools.
Like you, I wasn’t keen on convent school but things have improved since our time and the children coming out are well-rounded and happy. Unfortunately I can’t say the same for those coming out of mixed schools. I see bitter, disappointed parents and apathetic, uninspiring children.
[Daphne – I don’t share that experience. The boys and girls (men and women now) from my sons’ years have all done very well – many of them remarkably well – with just a few exceptions for which the school was most certainly not to blame. I think you will find that it is the bitter, disappointed parents who have produced the apathetic, uninspiring children, and not the school.]
Maltese women are bitchy because it’s their nature not because they attended an all-girls schools.
Even boys back then attended all-boys schools and they are not bitches.
[Daphne – You miss the point, Ms Borg. Bitchiness is not nature but nurture. Maltese women are bitchy because they are taught to be: at school and at home. Throwing large numbers of girls together without boys around is a hot-bed breeding-ground for bitchiness. Without the distraction of boys, girls just round on each other and distract themselves with spite. Also, because Maltese women are all – with the relatively few exceptions who are in their 20s and who came out of the independent schools – the products of single-gender schooling during the most crucial years, they tend to have absolutely no idea how to behave naturally around men and can communicate only through flirting, manipulation and stupidities, even with their male relatives. They do not even know how to talk to a man or have a conversation with one. It’s fascinating to observe.]
And I must say that church schools offer something more than independent schools – a family environment. And by family environment I am not referring to a Catholic environment only, but a sense if belonging.
[Daphne – Total rubbish. I went to three church schools from the age of 3 to the age of 18 (St Dorothy’s School in Sliema, St Dorothy’s Convent in Mdina and St Aloysius College) and I felt absolutely no sense of belonging at all. Rather the opposite: I felt totally alien and alienated. There was absolutely nothing about any of it that appealed or was familiar, except for my friends, though primary school was a lot better than the rest. Any kinship I felt or still feel was to my friends and not the school/s. Also, all my children went to an independent school, and in the time they were there, it was a great environment, largely because the school had been set up by a group of parents and everybody knew everybody else and had very clear ideas of what things should be like. There was a very good atmosphere that far surpassed the horrid strictures and tedium of single-sex church schools. Children are always happier in that kind of environment and the results speak for themselves. Now that the social make-up of the school is completely different, so is the environment, because the new parents have very different values and attitudes.]
What I find unacceptable is the fact that most parents queuing for church schools boast that they can’t be bothered about whether they are practising Catholics or not! I think it’s about time that to attend a church school you have to be a practising Catholic!
You can’t say that all children are always happier in an independant school though! Co-ed students are complaining about it. I attended a church school myself, and together with my school mates we feel that is was one of the happiest moments in our life! And that’s why most of us send our own children to church schools.
[Daphne – You were happy because your standards and expectations were low, as indeed most people’s were, and you knew of nothing else that might be possible. Another factor might be that you clearly were not beleaguered by an English teacher. Other than segregation, my main difficulty with church schools is that they produce adults who write like this. I am not being sarcastic – it really is worrying.]
Re below…that is not my point! I never mentioned the quality of education in church schools – you did. If I was not beleaguered by an English teacher, as you are saying, you also attended a church school…… My standards and expectations were not low. They were, and still are, different from yours. After all, being well educated is not just the way you write in English.
[Daphne – Articulacy is a major part of, and indicator of, education. And it is most definitely not ‘the way you write in English’. You cannot express yourself in English, and I suspect you can’t express yourself in Maltese either. That means your school failed in its stated objective, and you haven’t bothered to improve matters since.]
As far as I know the main topic of all this was not to discuss my own level of English and Maltese. I was just stating my opinion.
[Daphne – Yes, I know. And I appreciate that. But my point is that people have an unjustifiably high opinion of Catholic schools in Malta precisely because expectations are so low and no distinction is made between schooling and education. Also, we were programmed to believe that Catholic schools were by definition good because you had to pay to go there, and later win a place in a lottery. The reality is that they are not good at all – or rather, no better than state schools at this stage – and the results are there for all to see, with people able to pass exams but still somehow unable to think, write, formulate thoughts and arguments and express them coherently and properly in at least one of two languages. My own school was a failure in that respect, lest you think I am suggesting otherwise. Arlette Baldacchino of Imperium Europa and I came up through the same system in the same year. Yet she is completely illogical, inarticulate and incoherent. There were many others like that in the same year, but I can mention only her because she is a public person. Worse still, some of my classmates performed absolutely disastrously at school and were literally written off as hopeless, leaving with no O-levels or maybe just a couple. Then in their early 20s they went to university and progressed right through a first, second and third degree, and are now working in academia and the professions. And that means the school failed them catastrophically in not only missing their potential but actually writing them off as disasters because they couldn’t cope with the tedious rigmarole of verbs by rote and logarithms.]
You are so right. I decided to send my daughter to an all-girls school because when she was little she did go to a mixed one but kept going on about hating having boys around.
I thought OK, maybe because her siblings are brothers and not having any feminine company besides me that is what she needed. At first it was great, but the older they got the situation became unbearable because of the bitchiness.
She was and sometimes still is miserable but is learning how to deal with it.
And another thing with Maltese society and maybe others too: my daughter has discovered at a young age that in Malta boys rarely regard girls as mates. She now much prefers the company of boys but boys immediately think they have to ask you out if they like your company and if you handle well the insulting but funny friendships males have.
[Daphne – Well, that’s the other side of the coin, isn’t it. Maltese women can’t be friends with men either; they can only communicate through flirting and trying to get a sexual rise out of them, whatever the context and even if they are not actually interested in the man. They do not see men as human beings but as objects requiring particular handling. That comes from segregation in the developing years.]
It comes too from Maltese men not having any opinions. They go through life pressing the Like button on everything.
The result is that when children who have gone to single-sex schools reach 6th form, they continue to behave abnormally and are unable to handle the situation because they have no experience of mixed schooling. And all sixth form colleges are mixed.
I am not surprised that Dr Mallia would like his daughters to frequent this particular church school because of the high level of education it has always offered.
[Daphne – She wasn’t necessarily selected for St Joseph Blata l-Bajda; that was just the venue for the ballot. And no, that school never offered a high level of education and still does not. What it provides, and has always done, is good schooling, which is different. It’s the same with all the church schools, incidentally: average to good schooling, but zero education. Any time you encounter a former church school pupil who is well educated, 99.9% of the time that will have come from his or her home background and not the school. If church schools provided such a good education, there wouldn’t be so many inarticulate people barely able to have a conversation coming out the other end.]
Are you surprised? This is the couple whose nanny fled back to Romania because there was no food or water in the house, and who was made to go to the public fountain at the mainguard to fill jerry-cans.
Does he also get free rice and supplies for those who are in need from the parish halls given by the EU?
X’jaqq ta’ nies. U ma jisthux. They are confirming the saying ‘you do not make make money by giving it away’.
Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the – ahem – gentleman would like his children to have an – ahem – Catholic education.
I hope he sends his children to North Korea to do university there at least.
Cheap fat bastard.
Are the school buses at Church schools free? Will the children eventually be walking home? Is driver service planned?
Attending a church school is a question of instilling core values that are the guiding principles that dictate behaviour and action in future life.
[Daphne – You are wrong. Those values come from the home and from the child’s out-of-school social and family environment and not from any school I can think of, whether church or otherwise. That is why so many adults who went to church schools are beyond awful and even amoral, and why so many adults who went to government schools and independent schools are decent and have sound principles. No school can mould a child unless it is a boarding school, and even then it is difficult. It is the home and parents that primarily do this. All teachers know this. It is the reason schooling is so difficult in deprived areas, for instance. The school, the building, the lessons, the teachers are of the same standard as everywhere else, but the parents and their attitude are problematic, and their children become next to impossible to teach.]
Attending a mixed school is irrelevant to this equation…just because you couldn’t stick St Dorothy’s, doesn’t mean Church schools should be for the less fortunate.
[Daphne – You can’t have received a good education, because you have failed to understand my very simple argument. It is not church schools to which I object, but gender-segregated schools. My primary school – a church school – was mixed, and I was happy there. Maybe if I had gone to a single-sex primary school, I would have adjusted better to the switch to segregation between the ages of 11 and 15. But perhaps not. The fact is that mixed environments are more fun than segregated ones, even for children. Children genuinely cannot work out why they should have to be separated according to gender for schooling when they are allowed to play together outside school. It gives them completely the wrong message: that a boy’s education is different to a girl’s education. Children are very logical. If the girls are separated from the boys then it must be, in their minds, because they are being taught different things in different ways, one way suitable for girls and the other way suitable for boys.
Incidentaly, ‘stick’ – what an awful word and so very Maltese in the wrong (uneducated) way. ‘Ma nistax nistikkja…’. You see, this is exactly what I mean about schooling vs education. This is what our schools produce: adults who can’t express themselves like educated adults and whose vocabulary is really limited. I’m sorry if I sound rude, but this is exactly what I have been talking about. The purpose of schools in this era should be to provide an education and not mere lessons. ]
What girl’s schools are you advocating?..St. Martin’s, pathetic breeding ground for bitches and wannabes , St Michael’s ? you’ve really pushed up their ratings lately, San Anton ….. endless waiting list.
[Daphne – I do not advocate girls’ schools. I am totally against segregation in schooling, whether by gender, religion or intelligence quotient. The schools you mention are not girls’ schools, but mixed schools. Your terminology and attitude leave a lot to be desired. Are you the product of a segregated church school?]
I feel the Church in Malta is failing in her mission as regards education.
So typically champagne Socialist. If you’re really Labour, Dr. Mallia, send them to a state school. Or is ideology only good for other people’s children?
For heaven’s sake. girls and boys should be raised together and educated together. It teaches them to co-exist and to appreciate different views.
It teaches boys to be more gentle whilst it teaches girls to be tough too.
Don’t you even understand that one of the main issues on this island is that boys who are now men have no idea how to deal with women, even more so if they have a brain and are assertive? And that women objectify men and can’t communicate with them normally and without flirting?
It is parents like you who destroy the notion of equality for the next generation.
Lest we forget. These are the schools which Labour wanted to shut down or take over completely.
I don’t know what to say.
What this tells me is that the Minister does not want his child educated in a government school – the very group of schools directly managed by the government.
So these schools may be good for the children of the ‘poplu’, but not for the children of those in government (ministers, parliamentary secretaries, etc).
Why did he feel the need to present the application himself?
Let’s hope the nuns won’t be tempted to give him preferential treatment ghax huwa l-Ministru.
He sends two of his assistants every day in a ministry car to pick up his twins from St Edward’s College kindergarten.
The height of his thrift and arrogance has manifested itself horizontally.
This guy is always in the news for the wrong reasons. Shame on him and his Romanian peasant wife.
And I’ll wager a bottle of beer that his daughter will be accepted.
I’ll wager a jerrycan of water.
Valletta fountain water at that.
Dear Daphne, I am sorry if your time at school was unhappy (perhaps it was not) but I went to an all girls school and did not experience what you describe.
[Daphne – My time at school was not unhappy. It was just incredibly boring. Part of that boredom, apart from the badly taught lessons, was engendered by the seething mass of undifferentiated humanity: all girls. Having gone to a mixed-gender primary school (St Dorothy’s Convent in Sliema), which was so much more fun, and having grown up playing on the streets and the beach with a mixed group of boys and girls from the neighbourhood, I found the all-girls environment of senior school extremely difficult to adjust to – and yes, extremely boring.]
Whether there is bullying or bitchiness (or the male or gender neutral equivalent) depends on the ethos or culture of the school which is driven by the staff and leadership of the school head. It can and does occur in some mixed or single sex schools. It can occur in any type of school religious or not.
[Daphne – Yes, bullying and bitchiness are present in all schools, the difference being that both male bullying and female bitchiness are vastly watered down in a mixed-gender environment. Staff and leadership have no control over bitchiness and bullying. If it is clamped down on in one place it will squeeze through elsewhere. You can’t change the nature of certain people or the nature of ‘Lord of the Flies’ group behaviour. What works is that girls don’t like being perceived as bitches by boys and boys control their more savage instincts around girls.]
My daughter goes to an all-girls school and my sons went to an all-boys school (in the UK). They are and were very happy. They did not board so have experience of socialising outside school so have not been brought up or exposed to an unnatural environment.
The statistics in the UK show that overall children from religious schools have better results and girls do better in single sex schools and boys in mixed. However each child is individual and depending on their temperament, skills and interests may do better is one school rather than another.
Perhaps Dr Mallia was choosing what he thought was the best school for his daughter (though he may of course be thinking more of his pocket despite its cavernous proportions).
Perhaps you are right, though research evidence strongly suggests that the attitude of staff and the leadership of the head are the most important aspects in bullying rates and school atmosphere.
Boredom in school is highly correlated with teacher skill, curriculum as well as attitude and expectations of pupils so perhaps at the time you went to school, there was poor quality teaching, a limited curriculum and very little was expected of you and your fellow female pupils. This is certainly not the case now.
[Daphne – In England, where your experience lies, perhaps, but certainly not in Malta where church schools remain exactly the same with only the buildings (in some cases, like the school I went to) having changed. On the contrary, rather a lot was expected of us – or at least those of us who were in a certain stream, while nothing was expected of those in another stream. The boredom factor most definitely came (other than from the tedious teaching) from the undifferentiated environment of nothing but girls and all in the same uniform. I was not at all bored in primary school, largely because it was mixed.]
Very little required then to deal with your boredom, a selection of uniform choices and boys! PS I attended school in Malta and I have to say that I was not bored (perhaps because I was in the top stream – but then so were you).
Thinking back what would have made school more interesting would have been better teachers, some teaching us O-level only had an A level in the subject so we could not have wide ranging discussions, a more varied range of future options to think about (though this I suppose was driven by the very limited number of faculties at university for example) and a focus on extra curricular or non academic activities.
[Daphne – Well, in my case, thinking back nothing could have made it less boring. The whole set-up and concept was wrong. The approach to teaching in Maltese schools is terrible and purposely designed to restrict thought, inquisitiveness, imagination and analysis. The results are all around us and they have been catastrophic for Maltese society. New independent schools like San Anton had to make a conscious choice to break away from that approach, and the results were successful in the years my sons were there – but then we don’t really know whether it was just the school or the fact that most of the parents at that time had the same attitude to life and education, as distinct from schooling. In my case, I was saved by the fact that I read voraciously from a really early age and was instinctively curious about facts and information, and observant. By the time I was in secondary school, I literally came from a different culture and had a completely different knowledge base and outlook and geometry and Italian felt completely irrelevant, largely because they were.]
I have to say that at the Convent of the Sacred Heart the teachers were great, bar the maths, where we had a great turnover of dull teachers.
The environment was what the girls made it and though there was a certain amount of social grouping it was fun.
The nuns added a cultural dimension with minor exception. That cultural dimension was there for the picking.
I wouldn’t exchange Sacred Heart then for any school available now.
[Daphne – You need to factor in that, like me, you were a voracious reader, and so you took to your school something that was not already there. I think we can safely say that neither your outlook nor your education actually came from the school. The reality is that many of your and my contemporaries who went to a girls’ church school – St Dorothy’s, Sacred Heart, St Joseph, the lot – are very poorly educated, have scant general knowledge, no interest in current affairs and can only hold a conversation at 40/50 at pretty much the same level they did at 16. Those of us who are not like that are not like that not because we went to this or the other church school, but because we read and were curious and wanted to discover things, and did so. It came from us, from the way we were, and from our home environment and not from the school. Let us not forget that many parents of our respective contemporaries sent their daughters to a particular church school precisely because they wished them to conform, be conformist, and be the sort of girl who would get a husband and a place in society. These were priorities which, in those days, manifested against any real education and not for it.]
To go into specific detail Christine Firman was the best teacher there together with Rachel Cassar Pullicino.
The Jesuits at St Aloysius College were also amongst the best teachers I ever had: the wealth of knowledge and background cultural discussion that took place is something that I shall always value. It was the lay teachers that were utterly boring at this institution.
[Daphne – You’re right in that. That was my experience too.]
It was the University of Malta that was utterly but utterly boring and mediocre, with an exception of four lecturers out of the very many who really went out of their way with transfer of discipline, exposure of angle and a genuine awe of the subject that was theirs.
[Daphne – And conversely, that was not my experience, because both archaeology and anthropology were very small and highly engaged groups of students with very good teachers.]
I don’t think all church schools in Malta then, and perhaps now, can fall into the same general basket.
At Sacred Heart we were challenged to question everything and were allowed enough freedom to express this openly.
I think this really came from the school.
Even now, when I meet my contemporaries, their spirit is similar.
[Daphne – I’m afraid I can’t say the same of my contemporaries who were at that school, in general, whereas with my friends who have that spirit (and others I know who were at the same school and who also do), it is clearly a matter of personality and home background. Indeed, a few of them have developed their personality to an extreme degree, and have even made a point of being consciously outrageous, which I think is actually a reaction to the school’s and fellow-pupils’ emphasis on conformity and not being thought different.]
I agree that a lot of that also came from the home environment and reading. I agree that the forthrightness of outlook is also due to experience post-school but, one can add, formed also due to the conditions in Malta at the time.
As to the rest: true, true and true.
School taught me nothing. I learned everything I know after I left school.
No, not even reading and writing. I could do that before I started school.
And when I taught myself sartorial matters (after leaving school) I discovered I had been tying a half Windsor all along.
The thing is that the process is about four hours long, boring and frustrating. Most of the time only the mothers are there. So why was he there?
He is a cabinet minister so I assume he has better things to do than sit and hear numbers being called out.
Did he have an ulterior motive or agenda?
I believe this was all a messa in scena. Most of us know that no matter how transparent the Curia tries to be, personal politics prevail.
I am a single parent with a clever son, but I have witnessed politicians or relatives of theirs squeeze their way through. And yes, I had super rich people queuing up with me to submit their application.
Dr and Mrs Manuel Mallia are fervent Roman Catholics and I’m sure that’s why they were there. Before the 2013 election they attended Sunday mass alternately at the Sliema parishes. They haven’t been seen since.
This is exactly the same as voting Labour for “Kacca”, Imperium Europa Because of immigration – it’s OK to throw all moral principles to the wind where it suits you: mail order bride with a nanny sent to fill jerry-cans at the fountain, treasures unexplained in your mattress, being in charge of probably the most dubious scam this island has ever seen (passports), immoral transfers and promotions in the army and the police, but then you must give your children a church school education, because maybe just maybe they will grow up and not become lost sheep like the parents. And as Daphne points out, it’s free. Pathetic.
Enjoyed the discussion, Daphne, while drinking coffee with a beautiful view of Spinola Bay. I enjoy your blog very much.
[Daphne – Thank you. You will have gathered that I have very strong views about single-sex schools. Mine is not the parent’s perspective, incidentally, but the child’s perspective. I don’t think there is any child who would willingly or instinctively choose to be in a single-sex environment. Children from an early age love mixed company and are manifestly happier in it.]
Just for the record, I am against mixed schools for boys. Literature is surfacing that shows that whilst girls seem to thrive in mixed schools, boys tend to languish in a system that needs to be adapted mostly in favour of the integration of the girls.
[Daphne – That theory is not ‘surfacing’ but is three or four decades old. Alfred Sant’s ex wife, Mary Darmanin, who teaches at the University of Malta, has been a proponent of it for the last 30 years at least. The reason why their only daughter, who is now 29, was baptised at almost the age of three and against her father’s will (he stood in protest at the back of the back of the church and did not go to the font) was to obtain a baptism certificate that would allow her to apply for a place at the Convent of the Sacred Heart. By then the marriage had already broken down, so the child qualified automatically for a place under the ‘children from broken homes’ provision which existed then.
I held the opposite view, and was so much against single-sex schools, whether state, church or independent, that I took a chance on a brand-new school that had been open for just a couple of years, simply because it was the only one that was mixed gender. It worked out well. And they were boys, not girls. You really can’t go on the basis of studies that seek to prove a point. The reality is that girls tend to do better at school anyway because they’re persistent, and boys tend to do less well anyway, because they’re more easily distracted and have other priorities, whether they are at single sex or mixed schools. By girls schools are full of girls who do really badly, and mixed schools are full of boys who do really well, and the inescapable but often ignored fact is that schools are not about schooling, but about education in life and for life. Part of that is not segregating girls from boys because there are important, non-schooling lessons they need to learn about how to get along together.]
Boys need discipline, guidance and a whole different ethos. Male hierarchical structures are also disturbed when girls are introduced.
[Daphne – Oh honestly, what rubbish. How fascist and right wing. Girls need discipline and guidance too. ‘Male hierarchical structures are also disturbed when girls are introduced’. Exactly. That’s the point – unless you envision, in Norman Lowell terms, a society in which women do not disturb male hierarchical structures. One of the reasons many Maltese men are so impossible, with the result that their wives are running off in droves and their women colleagues cannot work with them, is because of this way of thinking in which they were raised and schooled. If they had had their male hierarchical structures disturbed at school by some girls, they would have had more successful marriages and would have been more tolerable in the office, to say nothing of socially.]
Less and less boys are finishing school, attending university or indeed even entering the workforce. I won’t reference my comments but there are ample sources such as journals and books for those who are interested in looking into this further.
[Daphne – I suggest you look at their social and family background. They are not the ones going to fee-paying mixed schools. They are the ones going to gender-segregated state schools. Their problem is not the school, though, but the home and general environment in which they live. Girls from that sort of environment often have an acute awareness that they need to put their nose to the grindstone to avoid their mother’s lot or marriage to a man like their father or brothers, but boys don’t. That’s the difference. Sending a boy like that to a fee-paying mixed school would actually change his life and prospects for the better, but it can’t happen because even if his parents had the money to pay the fees, it would most definitely not be a priority. It’s a catch 22 situation.]
Hierarchy, however much you try to remove it, as did the Communists for example, will not disappear. It is not Right-wing as you call it and I take exception to being in any way associated with Lowell’s views. For the record I have always worked almost exclusively with women and personally I love it. The only people who seem to complain on end about the fact that there are too many women are the women themselves.
[Daphne – My point is that in life outside school, purely male hierarchy does not/should not exist. So it’s best to get boys used to that at the outset, to avoid having them turn into the insufferable equivalent of their fathers’ generation.]
I find your views here rather surprising actually considering the extent to which you berate Muscat’s smugness having been schooled at St Aloysius as opposed to St Edwards where you say he would have been ‘sorted out’ by the big boys who would have knocked the smugness out of him.
[Daphne – He would have been best off at an independent co-ed school. Too bad they didn’t exist in his day. And yes, he would have been sorted out sharpish at St Edward’s. St Aloysius was absolutely the wrong environment for only sons of older parents from heavily sheltered backgrounds, or for any boy from a sheltered and fussy background, full stop. It just compounded matters.]
You accuse me of having looked for the sources that most suited my prejudiced thinking when in actual fact you could be accused of the same. Your negative experiences at an all-girls school prompted you to send your boys to a mixed school much in the same way as I would send my boys to an all-boys school due to my having had positive experiences at an all-boys school after having suffered in a mixed-school for many years.
[Daphne – No, it wasn’t my ‘negative’ experience at a girls’ school that prompted me to send my sons to a co-ed school. It was unfavourable observation of segregated schooling in general, especially boys’ schools. Segregation of children by gender is abnormal and freakish – they get exactly the same education and follow the same curriculum, and segregation dates back to the era when they did not. I was absolutely determined that my sons would go to a co-ed school because I didn’t want them to end up like so many of the men of my generation, who have such serious problems with women in relationships and in the workplace.]
What makes a school’s education good is how close its learning environment is to the world outside. Limitations are not restricted to gender, though that is, by far, the greatest restriction of all.
There is plenty to say about this subject.
The state schools start with mixed schooling and once the pupils start the secondary schools they are divided. It’s always been like that. Church schools start from the early grades with gendered classes.
[Daphne – I went to a church school and the primary was mixed. It was a really big shock transferring from that jolly environment to a segregated senior school at the age of 11. It is difficult to move from a mixed environment to an assembly hall with 400 girls in it, knowing that this is your fate for the next five years.]
Church schools are free of charge in Malta, something which does not exist abroad. But parents complain if the school direction asks for any financial help. Most of them are bothered by the fact that they have to buy the books. They want everything for free if possible. State schools are totally free, so stop complaining and send your children to one of these schools.
“Church schools are free of charge in Malta, something which does not exist abroad.”
It does exist abroad. Besides the State subsidies to Church schools that exist, there is – available to anyone who asks for it and provides the necessary justification in the form of tax declaration – a full scholarship.
Without scholarship the fees are not as exaggerated as the Maltese private schools: these drop to 450 euro per year and decrease when several children are enrolled at the same school.
Those that fall into the lowest bracket are given a full scholarship and the rest is according to a means test.
Church schools abroad even receive state subsidy on school transport. This is not like Malta where the bus or van practically turns up behind the door or at minimal walking distance. For those parents that have to already travel a distance by car to take their children to pick up or drop off points, there is a further state subsidy available that is not means tested but would need to be requested.
Oh, and books are free.
The Church should really revise its school system in Malta and operate on this “franchise” system freely available abroad.
Another thing: their schools there are mixed.
Spot on, our views, opinions and even prejudices develop from our experiences and sometimes from misconceptions if all we read is lies and a corruption of the truth.
I am not talking about schools here but about the importance of challenging lies and a distortion of the truth every time it occurs.
Sometimes it makes no difference anyway but a significant proportion may question future dogmatic statements. For example, yes it is true that the stipend has been increased. But every time this is said or someone reads it they need to be reminded it is by 6 Euros A YEAR or 50c a month. Amazing generosity.
I wish someone would stick larger stickers on all the illegal posters about this with the words “by 6 euros a year”. I wish they would do something about all the posters.
By church schools I think you are referring to religion schools and you are wrong about them not being free abroad.
In the UK there are primary schools attached to parishes (Catholic and Protestant) that are free. There are also religious schools which are Muslim and Jewish also which are free though I am not sure how they are organised.
There are also free religious secondary and grammar schools. My children attended catholic primary and grammar schools. They do however have a very eclectic education and learn about other religions and cultures and certainly the schools my children attended engendered a positive and non discriminatory ethos about religion and culture
From the point of view of my discussion, I can clarify that these are the same Sacred Heart, St Joseph’s etc. schools and not only are they mixed and up to sixth form level, but they also do boarding.
I would like to repeat yet again, it would be superb if the church in Malta had a profound rethink on these lines.
The lottery system was a strategic MLP move that served no one any ultimate good (let’s look beyond the money factor), at the end of the day.
The lottery system should be made obsolete.
I live in Italy. My daughters go to a Catholic school run by nuns and nothing is free.
The systems Ms Tabatha White referred to do not exist in Italy. Church schools do receive a subsidy from the state, but parents pay for everything.
Parents with more than one child at the school do not even have lower fees. The fees are high but not as high as those of non-Catholic private schools.
Cat,
The systems I described run that way in France.
France is where the Orders of The Convent of the Sacred Heart and St. Joseph’s – as we know them in Malta – originated and that is the reason for quoting how these Orders are run as schools: for there to be a direct parallel.
Would the church school your children are at form part of these Orders or Orders present in Malta?
There may be particular provisions according to Order. I do remember that Sacred Heart in Malta also used to include a section referred to as “the poor school” before students at this section were, I believe, integrated into the mainstream.
These two Orders in particular maintain operations in a wider international context, which is why I am of the opinion that the way they are run in Malta may be updated and refined to reflect a broader solution that would be more just in the local “market.”
This, without having touched upon Universities abroad run by other Orders, also present in Malta.
Pity there are no boarding schools. That would have settled the increased daily demand for water in the household.
The Catholic Church should only admit students if there’s a reasonable hope they’ll be raised in a Catholic environment at home. Otherwise, what’s the point of giving your children a Catholic education?
Send them a state school if you can’t afford an independent one. They follow the same curriculum, so all that’s required for your child to succeed is the eagerness to learn on his/her part.
By opening their doors wide open to every Tom, Dick and Harry, church schools have become renown for one thing only: churning out an endless stream of caustic anti-Catholic bigots – how ironic.
Yes, the irony there is that people who are dismissive about the Catholic Church can then appreciate that the values they impart are positive.
Please append the crucial point: “in Malta”.
Nowhere else do Catholics have these hang-ups. Except perhaps in Spain, Italy and Ireland. The others just get on with it.
But in Malta, everything is the new everything. Catholic-bashing is the new gay. Gay is the new Atkins diet. Catholic zealotry is the new Goa trance.
And so on.
I do not wish to ridicule any of the arguments put forth by others; but simply add my penny’s worth on gender segregation.
I raise dogs, not humanising them but but letting them be dogs, and that has taught me a lot about primal instincts. A male pup, early weeks/months, is left with his mother and other females, so that he learns from them the signals and acceptable behaviour.
A male dog who is not trained that way will not be a successful ‘mate’ in later years. Same for females as we call them (unintended pun) ‘bitches’: we do not raise bitches in the same kennels unless one wants continuous fights and ‘bitchiness’. Ergo: segregation is not even what nature intended.
Can you tell us about the underdog? How does it behave when it comes out on top? What makes it tick? (surely, ‘tock’? Ed.)
How does it behave when it comes out on top? Like a Super One reporter who finds himself in a real job which he lets someone else do for him while he calls it ‘delegation’.
What anti-social behaviour. Does the Labour Party still call itself socialist these days?
My boys and girls went to all boys and all girls schools.They left school with flying colours but neither of them was bitchy towards other students.
[Daphne – Boys are not bitchy, Persil. And as for your daughters, they may not have been bitchy to others, but others may have been bitchy to them, or they will have observed displays of bitchiness by others to others.]
Maybe so. I remember that a boy of younger age and a short one used to bully one of my sons who was very much taller.
But his mother was very jealous of me and my children because they were intelligent.
So it was coming from his mother as I believe she used to compare her son to mine. I never spoke to her again.
[Daphne – I can’t say your attitude was particularly helpful.]