The Maltese media has finally woken up to the fact that education is big news.

This clearly indicates what a lot there is to be said about a crucial, multifaceted subject. Wherever they appear, it's always a pleasure to read well-researched write-ups about the wonder of children's brain power; the increasing coverage given to how pivotal parents are in children's overall development; the intrinsic correlation between emotional, spiritual and physical growth; education in a specific cultural context that in turn is being overhauled and re-defined by changing social patterns, particularly as regards the concept of family and the dizzying leaps in information technology.

Therefore, five, 10 years from now the world we live in will be a very different place. Yet the need to acquire basic literary and numeracy skills will remain as pressing. Unlike speech, writing is not an instinctive means of communication and admittedly knowing how to write coherently does not make anyone more loving and loveable. But living in today's world, what kind of future do illiterate people have? Moreover, the human urge to clinch a more comfortable and fulfilling life can never be crushed, though priorities change and even warp.

Talk of education invariably opens up a never-ending exploration of so many significant and inter-related spheres that it's actually talking about the magma of life. Of course, cynics jeer as they decry the political mileage gained when the focus falls on government policies and plans to upgrade education facilities and improve standards. Which party in power does not blatantly blow its own trumpet on actual or imaginary achievements?

Given the pathetic stagnation of our partisan politics, petty minds will be content to quote an overheard opinion rather than think things over for themselves; so failing to see that education and schooling are not one and the same thing.

The political (at its most pitiable) drive to redress the dismal state of many state schools does not detract from the good intentions underlying the need to make schools a far more enriching and successful experience. Incidentally, state schools are not the only ones that need a colourful and welcoming décor for starters as well as overhauling teaching methods.

More significantly, all schools face huge challenges in tackling bullying, gambling, alcohol and drug abuse; in sustaining high standards of hygiene, safety and security, in integrating children with special needs, in dealing with the entire spectrum of parents from the smothering type to those who can only be described as parents on paper. All this, plus homing in on nurturing ethical values, discipline, healthy nutrition and creating a happy balance between class work, play and homework while devising a framework of assessments and exams still does not encompass how complex and far-reaching teaching responsibilities are.

Rather than sinking into the quagmire of partisan bickering, reportage and opinions about what's going on in our schools point to the dire need to think and think hard about what we are doing to ourselves and our children.

Apart from the fundamental difference between schooling and education, no plan, no matter how holistic and comprehensive, is (or can ever be) a panacea to all the grey and murky areas involved in teaching. While fully acknowledging that we are all fallible, I still want to know what lies beneath the plans for today's and tomorrow's schools.

Does it involve a pool of ideas and suggestions by enthusiastic (as against indifferent or disillusioned) educators whose days are lived in a classroom? And I certainly don't have private lessons in mind. Or is it an obfuscating vision drawn by gurus who are extremely adept at Yes, Minister politik, but have either never walked into a classroom or, if they did, it's a dim and distant memory?

We all expect and demand schools at their most basic to teach children how to read, write and count. So illiterate 15-year-olds, despite 11 years of compulsory schooling, are an unequivocal statement of failure that involves the "education" system as well as parents. More so when figures run into hundreds.

Moreover, the shocking news of poorly performing students sitting for SEC exams clearly indicates that both the students and the system are on a rotten track. Equally worrying is the growing gender divide.

If education means guiding children to nurture an enquiring mind and generous heart as well as being considerate, content, responsible and successful adults, we need to be more conscious and conscientious in coming up with workable solutions by questioning, re-assessing and embracing new teaching methods and making mental shifts. For instance, the stigmatisation and victimisation of child-streaming at primary level has further inculcated our myopic exam-centred schooling that completely undoes the fun of learning.

Both the dark horses and the bright stars suffer in believing in a misconceived perception of themselves. While a number of schools have given streaming at secondary level a more human face by allowing students to learn core subjects at their own pace, the move towards more course work is still plodding, for fear of change unsurprisingly runs deeper than limited resources. While acknowledging that any "solution" is a risk, we also need to share and highlight the achievements and joys of teaching and bringing up children.

Going to school geared at giving an education is not stepping into an insular world that's totally cut off from all that's going on around us and where teaching is demeaned to baby-sitting. Nor is it simply a place to clinch a certificate that will set children on their career path. Children cannot learn tomorrow's skills in yesterday's set-ups. It would be folly to deny this. As for funding, primary and secondary schools (both of which are compulsory) should be top of the list because they are the most essential in contributing to character formation.

Which brings to mind our university. At the beginning of October, headlines squeal a record-breaking intake of freshers. They've been doing it for a good number of years. At the surface they remind us of how incomparably grim things stood two decades back when the degree courses on offer were meagre to put it mildly.

Perhaps you will find a snippet (buried in acres of mostly inconsequential news) noting how an abysmal number of students from depressed areas have made it to sixth form and university. This shows how the definition of an underclass is the uneducated in the fullest sense of the word.

You will also find a momentary media blitz on the phenomenal numbers of freshers. The furore however soon fizzles out. Are we expected to hip hip hooray classes comprising 700+ students? Does it take a fired imagination to figure out the number of failures at the end of the pertinent first and second year? Nor will the culling end there. What about the job prospects of the ones who make it?

What about the areas of study that do not attract a sufficient number of students? Once more, you will find platitudes about the need to channel university and other institutions towards changing economic patterns. But where are our economists and their hard-nosed advice?

How can you not query current university requirements? Why do a number of faculties rightly demand a C grade or higher at A-Level as the minimum threshold, while others do not even demand an O-Level certificate? If what is meant to be our highest academic institution has come to resemble a sausage factory, the end product can only be... sausages.

What is the point of swelling numbers in tertiary education? Are the considerations so depressingly bound to political gain? I feel as if I'm collating a questionnaire - the very ones that are thrust into my snail or e-mail, and which I tear or delete without even wanting to digest their inane purpose.

Yet more and more questions keep popping in my head. The indigestion will not ease for it's feeding on an "education" system that stifles a sense of curiosity. Asking Who? What? When? Where? How? goads on an understanding that shines if based on a combined analyses and syntheses. Asking "Why?" casts us into an open sea of soul-searching.

There's no guarantee that we'll make it safely to shore. But allowing ourselves to remain grounded leaves us fettered to manacled minds damned to perpetrating gullibility and mediocrity.

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