CATS AND PIGEONS

Not bad, ay? Two editions of this blog in the “most commented” list, I mean. I’m not exactly clear on whether I should, actually, be feeling good about this – does it mean that my opinions and expressions thereof are so irritating that you can’t stop yourself writing in to contradict me, or is that I am thought-provoking and so erudite to the extent that you want to bask in my reflected glory?

OK, I’ll stop it now.

But hey, two editions in the Top 10 – this is Beatles quality we’re talking about.

It’s exam result season, as anyone with kids or who has done exams themselves recently knows. Now is the time when that much awaited envelope drops through the door, or when the text message bleeps or the notice goes up on the notice-board or any other form of exquisite torture is perpetrated on the waiting victim. I’ve been through most of them, though in my day, mobile phones were the stuff of science fiction rather than the bane of our existence, so I didn’t get that one. I’ve walked up to notice boards, with the dread figures blurring (that’s when you know you have a re-sit) and I’ve waited, sweating like a horse, at the Reception Desk of the hotel where I was pretending to do summer work, while the kindly clerk at the other end thumbs through the list, to intone the marvellous phrase “Yes, your name is there – prosit”.

Since the son and heir to all my debts has progressed in life beyond the need to convince some nerdish examiner that he can remember, and put down in some intelligible format, the facts and figures that his hapless educators, fine body of men and women that they are, have tried to cram into his fertile but quirky mind (why else would he have become a photographer, the lucky sod?) I haven’t had direct experience of the fun of waiting for results for some time now. In fact, I’ve been a bit on the other side of the fence, since I’ve had to mark scripts for the unfortunate bunch that I’ve had the pleasure of teaching over the year – something I do every year, for what must be my many and grievous sins.

At this point, a discreet veil shall be drawn over the quality of English demonstrated by your average denizen of Tal-Qroqq, to say nothing of the thought processes adopted by a few of the people who have, self-evidently, been judged of sufficient academic prowess to join the student body.

I’ve therefore only been involved vicariously – and on one occasion virtually - in the thrill of getting results. The virtual event was when a Facebook friend was clearly on tenterhooks, wondering not whether she had passed or not but whether she had got a First or a 2/1. At the end of the day, to her disappointment, she got a 2/1, though from where I’m sitting, having been (and still being) a devoted adherent to the philosophy that just enough is more conducive to an enjoyable life than striving for glory, a 2/1 is pretty darn good and then some. So a hearty and public good on yer, you, a 2/1 is fine stuff, especially since you were working full time while suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous examiners.

From what I’ve been hearing, down the scale a bit, as usual the Maltese MATSEC has wrought havoc on the aspirations and immediate plans of a number of kids whose results in other subjects have been more than good enough. It is therefore time to introduce the feline into the coop, maybe I’ll get a hat-trick of blogs into the list on the right.

Precisely why do we need to have Maltese as a compulsory subject for entry into the University? Don’t get me wrong, we have to preserve our language, it’s one of the few identifiers that distinguishes us from other countries within the Union (not that this seems to be such a vital issue, say, in the environs of Belgium, Holland, Germany and France, not to mention Luxembourg, where French and German and Flemish and other glots in the polyglot armoury of the citizenry are bandied about with gay abandon) but is ramming what I remember as pretty turgid literature liberally admixed with arcane grammar down the throats of rebellious young students the way to do it?

On the one hand, I have little patience for the chattering classes who, in breaks between their tennis sessions and before they head off to sip coffee and gossip with their little fingers crooked daintily, mouth off about “ma, how unfair it is” and variations on this same repetitive them, but on the other hand, remembering the ennui with which I faced having to decipher the dark thought processes of the people who passed for poets in the national lexicon, I have to feel sympathy for the poor buggers who have to go through this.

In a bi-lingual (though sadly rapidly becoming mono-lingual) country such as ours, is it not time to give consideration to keeping a formal qualification in Maltese only a sine qua non for areas of further study that demand it? If Maltese can’t survive except by imposition at the point of a bayonet, which is what it must feel like to the hordes who are driven to it, kicking and screaming, should it, to put it brutally, survive at all?

Perversely, since joining the Union, I’ve been more eager to use Maltese (I have done for years, in my real life) but I recognise that, frankly, you can get by without being fundamentalist about it. On a purely utilitarian level, proficiency in English is way more useful than being fluent in Maltese, for all that it is cringe-making to hear the chattering classes murdering both languages in their efforts to communicate what passes for ideas in their muddled minds.

So there you have it: is it time for this discrimination between people who are good at everything except Maltese to be eradicated once and for all? I think so, but I’m not sure that the solution lies necessarily in removing it from the list of entry requirements.

How about, instead, imposing a quality standard on the people who teach it, making their keeping their jobs dependent on their students getting a decent result in a testing system that measures proficiency in a living language and engenders a love for it, rather than an exam that is perceived with such dread that the subject of it, our own language, is loathed rather than cherished?

How about, then, shrugging off the inferiority complex that drives the people who insist that Maltese as it is taught now has to be compulsory? It’s only people who are not confident enough to break the mould and explore new dynamics who cling to the old ways – in this case, ways that were old when I was young, and that’s way too long ago.

There it is, sitting there purring and licking its paws, while the pigeons flock about – haven’t had time to proof read this, as my driver is drumming his fingers outside, so have fun with that aspect too.