The case for cultural literacy

Does the average citizen like what he or she sees when looking at the Maltese educational system?

Recent examination results (once again) exposed wide areas of low grade and alarming patches of illiteracy.

The performance of young people in television programmes often reflects poor or mediocre intellectual candle power.

There is no evidence of active, extracurricular, academic activity by University students outside their lecture rooms and even less evidence of regular cross-fertilisation of ideas between the student body and the outside world.

This, and much more of the same, calls for mature reflection. There is something obviously wrong with our educational system. There are signs of deterioration of the end product.

Literacy standards seem to be plummeting. But the malaise seems to me to go well beyond technical skills of reading and writing.

The real problem is what I would describe as poor "functional literacy" - an inability to understand written material.

Too many students are leaving schools or graduating from university lacking rudimentary knowledge about our history, literature, art and the philosophical foundations of our country and civilisation.

One can conjecture why school leavers can't read or, if they can, why they "don't know anything". Some blame television, popular culture, indifferent or busy parents, jungle-like classes, lack of government funds and so on.

There are some who explain away the emerging situation by stating that schools are a microcosm of society and that, until society gets to the bottom of this problem, schools cannot really be expected to combat illiteracy effectively.

The educational bureaucracy is prone to exculpate itself by blaming society.

What is to be done?

True education ought to equip the rising generation and to provide it with the basic information needed to thrive in the modern world.

It is in this sense that I refer to education as a "functional culture". By culture one does not understand an acquaintance with the arts. Nor should it be confined to one social class.

Schools used to impart the basic information to which I refer. They no longer do so. Today, teachers generally concentrate on their narrow subject and there is no consensus on the most compelling ideas, the most significant thinkers and the books all students should try to read for their edification.

The problem begins to be felt in schools. The blind are leading the blind. One need not study anthropology to grasp the meaning of the truism that all human communities are founded upon shared specific information. It is only by mastering this information that children could learn to participate in a cultural framework that binds them with other members of the same community.

A fundamental goal of education should therefore be to transmit to children and students specific information shared by the community or polis.

Seen in this light, literacy is not just a skill in reading and writing on the one hand and specific content on the other. Children need to acquire the informational context in which what is read could be understood.

The boundary of such information is imprecise. It lies between the everyday level of knowledge and the expert level of specialists.

Therein lies the middle gound of cultural knowledge shared by the common reader. It is this that schools ought to offer to a rising generation.

To what extent do our schools help schoolchildren show sensitivity on matters relating to Malta's national identity and, therefore, to their own roots?

To what extent are children encouraged to interest themselves in Maltese history and the development of our national economy?

How many children (and university students) know that our ancestors developed their own system of local government in medieval times and that, notwithstanding centuries of foreign domination, we had independent judicial systems with Maltese jurists in the forefront?

How many students and adult citizens know about the achievements of Maltese persons who distinguished themselves in different parts of the world? And how many are being oriented to the active players in tomorrow's social milieu?

How many have reached a level of cultural literacy to know what everyone else should know in general terms like, for example, the ozone layer, DNA, the member states of the European Union, Capitol Hill, Vatican II, the Inquisition, the Acropolis, human rights, fundamentalism in all its forms?

These items have been picked at random. Some may be considered arbitrary or trivial. But a list of this kind could easily establish what the majority of students should know. Sadly enough, there are many who don't know and haven't got a clue.

Once known, these items become available for integration into the larger scheme of "practical" knowledge. If one has a modicum of knowledge about these subjects, what he or she reads about such items integrates itself with other items of information a student or citizen already knows: NATO, world trade, international terrorism, the United Nations organisations and the like.

All of this constitutes an "information databank" for future recall or comprehension.

Such a list changes with the times but there are nevertheless certain constants that form the hard core of cultural literacy.

Of course, the most durable items of information that ought to be stored in the databank of students relate to values and ideas.

The most valuable of these have to do with the ethos of the Maltese national identity.

Our national ethos values the belief that the conduct of our nation is guided by God. It treasures loyalty and patriotism, supports the morality of tolerance, and solidarity. It values altruism, self-help, freedom and the rule of law.

How assiduous are schools in inculcating and fostering this cultural literacy among members of the up-and-coming generation?

And to what extent could we see tangible evidence that the young generation is being fortified in this way?

Every reader could put hand on heart and draw his or her own conclusions.