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The founder of the Spanish Kabala lived there for some time and wrote his most important books there. For many years most of the people living there were Moslems and they lived at peace with Christians and Jews. A man was burned alive in the square for spreading the books and teachings of Luther. Walking up and down the streets of the city you could hear many different languages being spoken.
Have you ever been to this country where all these different things happened? As you try to answer this question you are probably going through your memory, trying to remember the different countries you have visited over the years.
But to visit such a country you do not have to go far, well to a certain extent. All those things happened in the Maltese Islands in the past centuries. We do not know about them because of the way we have been brought up to look at our past. Most of us look at our past with a set of ideas and assumptions immersed in myths, legends and lack of information that give us this simple picture of ourselves and our ancestors: since practically the birth of Christ we have always been Catholics, converted by St Paul nearly 2,000 years ago and we have always remained faithful to the one true religion and church.
This paradigm, this view, this way of thinking about our country and us is such a poor caricature of our rich past and identity! We need to discover ourselves. But to do that we must stop hugging the old familiar coast we know. We must sail forth, away from the comfort zone we have created. It will be worthwhile as the Maltese Islands we will discover, will equip us to feel more at home in the diverse, borderless and multicultural world of the 21st century.
As Andre` Gide says: “One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore.” Are we ready for it? We now have enough serious historians who have researched and discovered our past but their work has still not reached our schools and media and so we still look at our country and ourselves with the same old eyes.
Science is a waste of time
A young primary schoolteacher who specialised in science education wrote to me about my interview with Professor Alfred Vella, a fortnight ago, on what must be done to attract more students to science. This teacher said: “I must admit I am not an expert but what I have learned I have tried to use to instil in my pupils a a love for science. Therefore, I integrate it with different subjects during lessons and pupils also participate in simple experiments (my pupils are only 6 years old).
“So you can imagine my surprise and shock when an Education Officer came to visit me and commented that three hours a week for science is too much! This is not rocket science that I teach my pupils but I try to help them learn how to observe and analyse! It is true that my kids are young but believe me, in the older classes they do not have time to do science. In fact my daughter, who last year was in Year 5 never participated in a science lesson - unless the peripatetic teacher visited (which happens once every blue moon).
“How do we expect pupils to choose science subjects when the first time they are exposed to them is when they are at secondary schools? In the primary years pupils should have the opportunity to become aware of what science is about.”
Such a letter from a primary school teacher makes me sad and angry about what is going on in our schools. No wonder we are at the bottom of the heap when it comes to science graduates compared to the other 24 countries in the European Union! How many more years are we going to waste talking about the ‘new’ curriculum and setting up new study groups and publishing other reports and holding many media events before we change what matters most - what happens every day in our classrooms?
ChooseMalta
www.choosemalta.com is a new website that promotes Malta as a destination for leisure, business or residence. It enables customers to purchase flights, hotels and tours online through its booking engine. I really enjoyed meeting Chris Knights and Jonathan Shaw who designed this new travel and business portal and run it together with David Shaw and Kurt Arrigo.
They created this website because “an internet presence is crucial for travel companies and destinations. 80 per cent of Internet users research their holiday online. 60 per cent of these also book online and these figures are rising! We felt there was a gap in the market and that our site could target such customers.”
Jonathan told me that “companies featured on the website have been very supportive and believed in the project before we went live. Now we are getting a stronger response from the tourist industry with a number of companies wanting to be included in the portal.”
The website has a constant flow of visitors. A number of business requests have been generated and two weeks after going live they also had their first booking.
The project took over a year from the date of conceptualization to complete and they went through a long process of brainstorming and fine-tuning. They engaged the services of both Maltese and foreign companies to give themselves a fresh and competitive edge.
What kind of education should we be giving our young people to have more of them skilled to work in the ITC industry? Jonathan answered: “Young people should get out there and start getting involved in the private industry before they finish their studies. By working part-time they will gain the practical skills needed when working and interacting with both clients and colleagues.”
evaristbartolo@hotmail.com
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