Bondi’s style is totally different, anyway.

Totally agree about Adrian Hillman. My oversight. Apologies to his parents.

School teaches you subjects you may one day excel and choose to qualify in, values to carry with you for the rest of your life- true.

Everything you said holds true but what about character?

I was a restless student and left school with no exam certificates to prove me clever like our man Debono here.

I live a very peaceful and honest life with some enemies and many friend s but importantly with people who respect me and enjoy having me around them.

Success is a mind thing not an O or A level definition.

I believe certain characteristics show up somewhere in the early years of one’s life at school. I’m not, in any way, judging the teachers who had to put up with this lot. On the contrary I sympathise, because you must have had quite a lot to deal with, judging from how ex-Aloysians deal with trivial social, political and moral issues when Malta is drowning in serious problems.

I went to a church school equally prestgious as St Aloysius College and it was totally no-nonsense. Crappy students were immediately assessed and were specifically asked to leave the school for good when their behaviour became repetitively appalling.

Not together, that house is his, if he wasn’t bluffing when he said that only he was paying for it.

Adrian Hillman did not mix with a bad crowd at all, but with a very decent crowd. He is my contemporary and I know exactly who his closest friends are, and his extended circle. He also has extremely decent parents, good people. His choices are entirely his own.

I would not judge his teachers at St. Aloysius’ College. I was one of those teachers. No, I am not proud of the outcome of this corrupt and amoral clique.

However, we worked hard and strove to educate people like Debono, Muscat, Gafa’, Cardona, Zammit Lewis and Schembri, and Hillman. We passed on to them those values which would have helped them to become strong men with values. The problem lies in the choices – the wrong choices – they made after they left school. It lies in the bad crowd they chose to mix with and the political party they chose to serve.

School teaches you values. It also prepares you about making life’s choices and it endeavours to make you aware of the consequences that wrong choices bring about. Ultimately, it depends on the individual.

School did not make them corrupt or sleazy. Their upbringing and their very choices made them so.

……………………