WATCH | Marco Bonnici: ‘Our schools are an identical copy of society’

President of the Malta Union of Teachers Marco Bonnici (Photo: James Bianchi/MaltaToday)

Malta Union of Teachers (MUT) President Marco Bonnici believes that schools are a model of the societies in which they operate.
His statement comes just a few days after the shocking stabbing at a Pembroke school, followed by the arraignment of the 14-year-old allegedly behind the attack.

During the interview, Bonnici says that the incident prompts the union he leads to urge the government to review the security protocols in place across schools in Malta and Gozo.

But when it comes to concrete measures for improving security in schools, Bonnici says he much prefers to rely on security experts.
On the subject of educators’ newest challenges, Bonnici does not hesitate to name communication issues such as language barriers and cultural differences as the main problems.

Bonnici further says that the fact that Maltese is no longer the primary language of instruction in most schools undoubtedly has a long-term impact on the language and its speakers.

Here he calls for a linguistic policy in schools, making it clear that the language of instruction should be Maltese whenever possible.

The following is an excerpt of the interview

A few days ago, we saw a shocking case in a Pembroke school where a 14-year-old student attacked another with a knife. We’ve seen all kinds of reactions, but what do you make of this episode?

We were shocked as a union but also as a country. We were seeing similar incidents in other countries, and we’ve just experienced the first of such incidents. That’s not to say that we didn’t have aggression in our schools in the past, but this was very cruel, then we learned that this student had explosive liquids on him, so this was very serious and it could’ve been tragic.

We contacted the school and the [Education] Ministry and offered our support through assistance to the school and its students. But we’ve had to go deeper than that. We’ve requested that the security protocols in schools be updated. There already was a security protocol in place, but it’s quite basic as it was created when security personnel started working in schools.

We need to update the role of these employees, what their powers are, and the general security protocols. We’ve brought this up to the ministry, and we will be discussing this protocol.

Does this incident say something about the state of our schools and students?

What it shows is that we can’t take anything for granted. If we used to see that our schools are being managed and the risks are more or less contained, we cannot say the same thing now. We must look at what risks exist in our schools and how we can manage them.

We have to ask ourselves, “what can we prevent?” and prevent it. We cannot prevent everything but we can introduce some measures. During this entire process, we are going to trust the experts. We are education experts, not security experts. When it comes to security measures beyond education, they cannot come from us, but from other experts. That’s why the ministry’s board also included security experts, because we must learn from them.

So, you’re going to trust in these experts? I assume there are going to be new measures which we’ve never seen before

There could be. There could be measures that are in place in some schools, but aren’t in others. That’s why this exercise has to happen. There might be practices in independent schools or church schools that we need to introduce.

We’ve heard about metal detectors and ex-army employees in schools. Are there fears that the changes to the school environment could be extreme?

Throughout the past decades, we’ve opened schools to the community. Even the building of a school itself has changed. Before we had high gates and perimeter walls, but now, the concept of a school is an open school. If we are to change this concept, we must change the concept of education that is being offered.

We are inviting everyone to come to school, but if we’re doing this, we cannot place all sorts of barriers in schools. We have strict security in prison, in court, parliament, and a few other public places. Do we want schools to move toward these measures with the implicated messages?

I'm asking because I cannot answer these questions myself, they must be answered by the experts that will guide this process.

Another issue that came up through this case is that educators’ roles have changed. They’re not only meant to keep a classroom under control. Are there any other challenges that people might not even be aware of?

First of all, there’s the challenge of communication. If teachers used to speak in Maltese and everyone understood them, this isn’t the case anymore. It’s not even the case that every student understands Maltese or English, as there are students who can’t understand either of them.

Some time ago we had an unfortunate incident where a girl didn’t know that she had to board the transport to go home and she kept waiting outside of school for hours. God forbid something might have happened but fortunately it was okay.

She simply couldn’t understand the instructions given to her as she was told that she had to ride a particular coach. It was a communication problem.

Another problem is the diversity in schools. When I say diversity I mean all forms of diversity, and we should be careful here, because there are students who 100% depend on us because of their needs.

There are schools which are very big. There was a time where schools began shrinking and some were close to being closed, such was the case in Sliema. Now it’s one of the growing schools. In Qawra, we needed to build a whole new school and that wasn’t enough.

The way our population is changing in size and location is changing the way we look at schools.

What changes are you seeing in the dynamic between students? What are the effects of Maltese children growing up with students from all over the world?

The most evident change is language. Maltese is no longer the language of communication in schools. We used to have independent schools speaking mostly in English, church schools had a mix of Maltese and English, while state schools spoke in Maltese. Nowadays, almost all state schools speak in English.

We also have the cultural influence of other countries and religions. I don’t think being exposed to other nationalities, beliefs, and cultures is negative, and we’re learning a lot from it, but it also has its challenges. It’s challenging when you have cultures that don’t mix, and I’m not talking about foreigners with Maltese students, but even different foreigners.

Diversity is part of society, and society is always a model of society… School is an identical copy of our society.