Illiteracy and arrested development

To the specific question "How do you plan to tackle illiteracy?" put to the Minister of Education and the Shadow Minister of Education (February 27), the minister, while quoting "the recent Household Budgetry Survey", said that illiteracy among those between 10 to 19 years of age was 1.7 per cent. The shadow minister said that, when compared to other European countries, illiteracy in Malta "is still high".

The NSO statistics, according to the census, show that illiteracy in Malta was 11.24 per cent in 1995 and 7.20 per cent in 2005.

The Minister for Education (February 4) put forward a battery of social problems as causes of learning difficulties and arrested development in schools. These problems, in fact, are not decreasing but increasing because personal and social problems in Maltese families are also increasing.

Social problems in other European countries are much bigger and complex than in Malta and these may have accounted for the need for special reception classes because children experiencing acute personal and social problems in their families - of whatever sort - tend to fall back in their studies at school and their development is arrested.

I recall a case of a very bright 10-year-old category A girl in a primary school in Malta who fell back drastically in her studies at school when one of her parents died and she thought that she was going to die of the same illness as her parent.

This is probably also one of the main reasons why the Labour Party, perhaps unknowingly, has come out with the idea of a reception class after quoting what is happening in other European schools. The fall-out from so many dysfunctional families in many European countries is very likely to be also one of the major causes of so many personal and social problems experienced by many children in all levels of schooling. These problems are increasing in exponential terms much more than they are doing in Malta. To my mind, illiteracy and arrested development, and their causes, should be looked at in broad terms while perspectives shouild not be limited to the unidimentional one of the educational sector. Personal and social problems produce children unable to read and write - even more if these happen in their early childhood - and can paralyse them, render them social casualties for life and without the necessary skills to cope in life. These can produce disturbed children lacking self-worth, bullying in schools and in the neighbourhood, deviancy, crime and dysfunctional families.

The shadow minister (February 27) seems to have realised now, as his leader - Cottonera MLP mass meeting (February 10), that the approach to these problem requires the invaluable help also of psychologists and social workers and has now included them in his formula for the solution of the illiteracy problem. I would add also for problems connected with the arrested development of children and young people of all ages.

The Minister of Education, in spite of giving what seems to me a very good explanation (February 4) of the causes of illiteracy and arrested development, so far has failed to show that he is giving the necessary consideration to solving the illiteracy and personal development problems also by social, besides educational, means.

While I see great sense in the suggestion by Charles Mifsud of the Faculty of Education (The Sunday Times, February 17) to put "more depth, than breadth" in what both kindergarten classes offer our little children, the social component of the illiteracy and personal development problems calls for social solutions.

In this regard if the collective agreement signed by the government and the Malta Union of Teachers in the middle of last year has really made more effective provision for the solution of the illiteracy problem, as some teachers are arguing, why not bring this out now for the information, and the peace of mind, of the public, especially anxious parents?

Maybe when both sides of this debate converge, as they seem to be doing already, probably when the election campaign is over, and when heads can think in a more rational way, that will be the day when the MLP will realise that copying what other countries are doing in what looks like similar though in fact different problems is not on... and that local problems require local, not imported, solutions. The PN, on the other hand, will have been made to think more seriously on the problems of illiteracy and arrested development of children to apply also more effective and permanent approaches to tackling these problems than it is has done so far.

The educational authorities must have more than two psychologists and five (?) social workers to do a good job and they can do it even better when the tandem of home and school is really in place, as it was suggested earlier, and as very eloquently suggested also by Kenneth Wain (February 25).

Mr Mifsud is a former director of the Department of Family Welfare.