San Andrea Senior School Comenius meeting

Pollution is the negative influence of man on his environment.

The adverse effects of pollution are being felt by society not only because of people who are becoming increasingly selfish, but also because of a gross lack of awareness.

To help create an environment where aspects of pollution are identified and discussed at an early stage in the life of a student, is the main reason why San Andrea Senior School of L-Imselliet, l/o Mgarr, has embarked on its Comenius project; it is the co-ordinating institution with other participating schools in Finland, England, Denmark, Sweden and Romania.

The Malta Comenius meeting was held between April 26 and 30. Most meetings and discussions were held at San Andrea, but numerous other discussions and fruitful information exchanges were held during site visits to various spots on the islands throughout the week.

The visiting teachers were Jenny Hermansson from Sweden; Tomi Gabriel Rewell and Tom from Finland; Denis Hopkins from England;Ivan Munch Pedersen and Anders Andersen from Denmark.

The guests were introduced to the teachers involved in the Comenius programme followed in Malta - Elaine Bajada, Christine Bonello, Therese Cacciattolo, Andrew Tocharewsky, Gilbert Fenech and Paul P. Borg.

They were also briefed on the nature of some of the intended future investigations to be made by the Maltese students with the help of other teachers.

The visiting teachers were invited to visit the San Andrea Stephen Hawking Science and Technology exhibition and to follow power point presentations by students on topics related to science, some of which included a discussion on pollution.

The Comenius teachers were taken on a number of site visits around to evaluate the pollution aspect of the Maltese Islands.

These included Wied iz-Zurrieq, Hagar Qim, Ghar Hasan, Mdina, Marsa, Maghtab, Gnejna, Buskett, Ta' Hagrat, Rabat, Dwejra in Malta and Xwejni, Qbajjar, the Citadel and the Azure Window in Gozo.

Common approach

As a common approach to the pollution problem, the participating institutions decided that students become aware of the pollution problem both locally and globally by pooling together individual investigations in an effort to avoid the negative results.

It is important that students understand that the scale of pollution differs in the countries involved in the project so that sharing of information should develop some reasoning to explain such differences.

Students in different countries will have the opportunity to investigate the different pollution realities characteristic to their environment and share them with their participating counterparts.

Investigations were done to see the level of pollution in rainwater and in the air.

These tests involved testing seawater pollution by means of virtue racks placed in the sea, testing for organic material using methylene blue method and other tests involving the Merck compact laboratory for water testing.

Air testing included the measurements of acidity of rainwater using any technique involving collection of rainwater from various parts of the island and measurements with pH meters.

Other tests in monitoring the pollution of air were lichenography, using a commonly designed OHT sheet to sample across a tree trunk. This involved also the identification of different types of lichens and set against the environment.

Oazone level measurement is another indicator of air pollution so that ways and means of monotoring this were investigated using a rubber band system.

The students of San Andrea Senior School are being made aware that pollution will not only affect the natural environment, but also our social and cultural environment.

As the environmental, technological and cultural characteristics of Malta are somewhat differing from those of other participating schools in other countries, San Andrea Senior School proposes also to extend their own investigation of pollution in areas such as sound, language, economy and the social environment.

Therefore for the extension of the Comenius Project for 2004-2005, San Andrea Senior School has proposed a more intense investigation of pollution in a broader spectrum of investigation, embracing the linguistic, cultural and economic aspects amongst others.