Education Minister Dolores Cristina's de-fence last week of the Senate regulations on the use of English at University gives me hope in our politicians. She could easily have chosen to go by the (Face)book and mumbled something vacant about national languages.

Instead she chose sense, that being that the formal language of instruction at our University should be strictly and exclusively English.

I have a stake in this one. This is my eighth year as a university lecturer and my second as the head of a department. I suppose this makes me 'biased' - that is, well-placed to assess the situation.

It must be a matter of what serves us best. I have no time for the staple argument that Maltese belongs at University because it is our national language. That's a circular argument that explains something in terms of itself. There is nothing eternal or sacred about national languages. Nationalism, and its various handmaidens, are political creatures that were born a couple of centuries ago and will in due course pass away. Doing things 'for the nation' is silly.

Nor do I care that the EU recognises Maltese as an official language. The EU can only do that because it employs armies of translators, interpreters, and paper-pushers. Universities simply do not have the means (or the self-indulgence, I suspect) to do so.

The argument must therefore deal with the case in question.

University is about two things. First, some form of 'higher' education, in the sense of specialised studies. Technical language is the order of the day. I emphasise this because it has become fashionable to say things like, 'Ah, I may not have a degree, but I've studied at the University of Life'. Rubbish. University is not about being shrewd or sensible (many of us are neither) but about knowing a subject inside-out.

Second, studying at university is a sort of initiation into international scholarship. Our students get marked up if they can show that they've read the latest specialist literature, and this is not because of some esoteric cult of references. Rather, it's because a tertiary education is all about openness and broad relevance. Provinciality is a scholar's worst nightmare.

Sermon over, how does Maltese fare? On the first, alrightish. The language is structurally as sound as any other, and there's no reason why one couldn't write exam answers in, say, physics, in Maltese. Terminology would at first prove tricky but terms can be coined or borrowed, as happens all the time in any language.

Maltese fails dismally, however, on the openness count. It simply is not possible to be relevant and to access and contribute to international scholarship in Maltese.

That's why Maltese can never be the language of University. It is perfectly possible to know only Maltese and be intelligent and have a sense of humour. It is not possible to know only Maltese and have a sound tertiary education. For their own good, students should not be allowed to write their way through University in Maltese.

And please, let's stop comparing to 'other countries'. France, Italy, Germany, and such, are not 'other countries'. We are as sovereign as they are, we have a flag and an anthem, but that's where the resemblance ends. A French academic has whole libraries in their language to work in, we have a bookshelf at best.

One might argue that Maltese and English could coexist, at University as elsewhere. There are two things to say about that. First, that they already do. Most of us use English as the formal language of instruction (that's what the Senate regulations are about) and Maltese as a kind of everyday means of communication. I refuse to take questions in Maltese during lectures, but I spend many hours every day speaking Maltese with students and colleagues in informal situations.

That said, we cannot give students the option of speaking and writing in Maltese at all times. I'm sure many would choose that option, out of laziness (why learn a language if you don't have to?). They would effectively end up with a degree in whatever and an 'O' level standard of English (because that's an entry requirement) to go with it. Because I wish my students well, I won't do that to them.

There's another thing. In truth, latter-day resurrections of the language question are not really about nationalism, but class. When we lampoon softened 'r's and 'MaltesEnglish', what we're really talking about is class conceit.

Which is fine, because there's little value in snobbery. Much as I detest egalitarianism, I cannot uphold any system which condemns people to their birth estate and kills aspiration in the name of some fuzzy notion of 'breeding'.

In these past eight years I've worked with three types of student. The first comes from a relatively privileged background where English is de rigueur. They tend to do well and go on to get good jobs that require a high standard of English.

The second type comes from a background where only Maltese is spoken. They usually find university hard to navigate and, because they are lazy and refuse to make an extra effort to learn English properly, get shoddy degrees and equally poor jobs.

But there's a third sort, which thankfully is not short of numbers. These are students who come from the same background as the second type but, because they are unhappy with their birth estate, spend their time reading and working hard on form. They realise soon enough that a solid command of English is the key to their aspirations. For this group, University is an epiphany.

Heaven knows each of these three types is here to stay. The question is: Which group do we want more of? And what sort of Senate regulations will encourage more students to join that group? I won't waste your time with the answer.

mafalzon@hotmail.com