Save Maltese history
At the same time that political leaders, including the outgoing Head of State, laud tradition and identity, the Education Department seems to be heading in an opposite direction. Apart from disrupting continuity by unoriginally and unnecessarily...
At the same time that political leaders, including the outgoing Head of State, laud tradition and identity, the Education Department seems to be heading in an opposite direction.
Apart from disrupting continuity by unoriginally and unnecessarily changing the name of a historic model school such as The Lyceum, what is worse is a scheme further to downgrade the teaching of Maltese history in secondary schools.
Various history teachers and students have been worried about this initiative conceived apparently by curriculum heads at the Education Department. According to the available information, history will be meshed in with geography and environment and alloted still less time per week than it has had in recent years.
At present, from Form III upwards there is one compulsory 45-minute lesson a week, both in the area secondary schools and in the junior lyceums. When students choose history as an "option" - of whom there are in all only a couple of hundred - they have four lessons a week (including European/international history).
If the proposed plan comes into force, however, the newly-fused "colleges" would retain only two compulsory history lessons every three weeks in Forms I and II (on average less than 27 minutes per week). From Form III upwards they would effectively get only one lesson every three weeks (less than 14 minutes a week). All told, that would mean about a 60 per cent reduction in compulsory history tuition.
While the options in principle would stand, exposure to the discipline in the first years would be drastically reduced, thus imperilling the number of students likely to opt for the subject in the higher forms up to O level. If fewer than 10 students opt to read history in Form III, the subject may not be offered at all. Thus, Maltese history, lumped under "environmental studies" or some such nondescript title, could virtually disappear from the curriculum as a separate subject or indeed as a subject.
The secondary school syllabus has been changed time and again, most recently extending periods and thus diluting substance. In EU jargon, a case of widening as opposed to deepening. Structured, thematic, professionally-written text books are, of course, valuable and necessary, if given time and space; there has been some improvement in this domain. But what is now in store for the rising generation is very probably greater illiteracy in so far as Maltese history goes - an ignorance as to who and what Malta and the Maltese are or have become; the shared past that has seen Malta and the Maltese emerge as a people, a nation and a state. Without a sense of nationality and nationhood based on an empirical non-dogmatic account of past times, especially the last few centuries, there can be little self-identity, self-esteem, affinity, communion, motivation or aspiration or, indeed, critical appreciation or understanding, in any "national" sense.
While inter-disciplinarity has its merits, particularly at a more mature stage in life, to have a distinct old-established discipline replaced by a local variety of goulash - more in less - hardly bodes well for future generations. This is not a question concerning the curriculum chefs. Rather, it ought to figure as a policy consideration on the agenda of the government at the highest levels, engaging every citizen, constituted body or other entity concerned at least with ensuring a good rudimentary knowledge of our own history for posterity, whether written or taught in Maltese or English. Only a minority of secondary school students proceed to University. The issue is not a trivial one. The consequences of Maltese history's eventual disappearance from the upper forms of secondary would be detrimental and lasting, both culturally and nationally. What culture of excellence, or of anything, would that produce?
In the face of rampant globalisation, materialist consumerism in the press and media conjugating everything in the present tense, a possible swamping of this tiny island ethnicity within the European Union, mass illegal immigration from altogether different backgrounds and a generally feeble "national" discourse with much partisan interference, the last thing our country needs at present is potentially the near-abolition of teaching Maltese history professionally in public schools.
While the Malta Tourism Authority dishes out public funds in TV adverts branding our history and heritage as a prime attraction for tourists to visit and the political parties exchange broadsides endlessly about should-be national days or feasts, the Education Department is bent on making it more difficult for our adolescents to acquire an appreciation of their own history and to empathise with it.
Geography and the environment are also important; in fact, these could be seen within a historical context and perspective. The land is the people, traditionally their territorial imperative. Its language and grammar lie and reside in history, otherwise known as collective memory - a kaleidoscope of conditions, events, issues, facts, trends, personalities, sentiments, mythologies and myths included. To mix everything up, while at the same time reducing the time for lessons in the most formative, impressionable stages of a young person's education, is disturbing.
A re-think is called for before it is too late. What consultation has there really been about this proposed move? What feasibility studies have been conducted as to its likely consequences? Those concerned owe Malta an explanation.
The author is professor of history and director, Institute of Maltese Studies.
henry.frendo@um.edu.mt