The University of Life

Over the past few weeks, the newspapers have been filled with congratulatory messages for graduating university students. The number of university students in Malta is always on the increase, which looks good on paper. But is it in practice?

Does our university apply the slow food principles or has it become the equivalent of a fast food store? How many of the graduates come out with the ability to debate, to think outside the box, to come up with inventive approaches to life?

I hope that it's most of them. But I have this nagging feeling that the real picture is a different story, because I have myself as a case study. I came out of university spoon-fed like a chubby baby. I got an electric shock to the system when I started work and then another one when I was studying in the UK, in an atmosphere of survival-of-the-fittest.

To a certain extent, our university is an extension of secondary school. Close geographical proximity does not even encourage moving out of the parents' home to facilitate maturity on the independence level. But even more worrying is that most students do not consider university as a decision which they reach after sitting down and pondering it. It's simply the next thing to go through after getting A-levels.

Which is why I think it's high time we introduced a new concept to the Maltese education system: a compulsory gap year between Junior College/Sixth Form and university. I'm referring to a travelling-abroad-on-a-shoestring kind of gap year. And it should be one of the requirements to get into the tertiary education system.

Why? Because unfortunately, many of our students reach their final year with a trip to Catania being their only exposure to a foreign country. Experiencing life away from our shores would help young people realise that our island is not the world. They would be able to see, touch, feel and hear firsthand what it means to be a citizen of the world.

This is what gets the young mind thinking and formulating its own opinions. Having such a requirement for any university course would ensure that our young students would not be just sitting on the benches for the sake of getting a certificate at the end of the four years, but because they really want to contribute to making the world a better place.

Such a thing as a travelling gap year would expose 16- and 17-year olds to different cultures. Most of all, it would expose them to arts and culture the way our contemporaries experience them overseas; where, for example, classical music concerts are attended by all and sundry and not simply by a posse of theatre patrons.

Hopefully, this would air our stuffy outlook on the arts. The next generations would never contemplate the laughable proposal of not having an opera house in Valletta because the area is deemed theatrically over-saturated. Why did our students not take to the streets about such a proposal? Where is the student voice on the future of our arts? Nowhere. They are to be found in the other spectrum of culture vultures, glued to television sets.

You might disagree with this, especially if you've read the recent NSO lifestyle survey. It declares reading as the top hobby of 38 per cent of Maltese adults, followed by internet surfing (21 per cent).

But, I ask, how come TV watching does not feature in the list? Maybe TV does not qualify as a hobby anymore but an extension of our very being?

The harsh truth is that television is like a utility to teens, just like electricity is to adults. I know households with up to three sets. I know young teens who have their own DVD player in their room and who stay up till past midnight watching movies. These, of course, then graduate into teenagers whose main interaction with their peers is online.

So when are people talking to each other, eating together, and living real life?

Maybe a compulsory gap year is our last hope for this communication crunch.