In his letter Enjoying Birds Up Close, Theodore Sammut (January 23) states: “In Malta, we should emulate other European countries and encourage more children to love birds. To learn how to feed and enjoy watching birds close by is much better education than to learn how to exterminate anything that flies while poisoning the environment.”
Our children’s bird ‘education’ is provided by Birdlife Malta as part of their curriculum, unlike other European countries, where children are also given the opportunity to learn about hunting as part of a balanced education.
Maltese children are being subjected to indoctrination. Are we after educating children to form their own opinion after having heard both sides of a story or anti-hunters who abhor hunting? Considering the various futile attempts to meet the Education Minister to address the issue I am led to believe the latter.
Being a hunter who observes the law, one of seven million European hunters, it is indeed hurtful to be called a murderer by your children or to have your child scorned when trying to justify that game birds are eaten at home. This is the consequence of a biased system where the Government has permitted the hijacking of children’s minds.
If our educators can justify to young minds why we can eat a farmed duck but not a shot one or fish to our heart’s content but not hunt, I would rest my case. As things stand, environment teachers are urged, as part of Birdlife’s Dinja Waħda environmental campaign, to “get kids to do a survey on attitudes to hunting”.
Having had no opportunity to learn about hunting other than from what Birdlife Malta and “trained” teachers have to say, does the Education Minister consider the environmental education imparted to children as being balanced where birds are concerned?
Certainly, birds and all other animals are to be loved, respected and enjoyed but why should we have our next generation conditioned to accepting the killing of animals with stun guns, electric shocks or decapitation as being quite normal and yet cringe at the mention of a shotgun?
Understandably, I will not even bother to change the correspondent’s opinion but am I to understand that the Education Ministry has formed the same protectionist opinion and chooses to impose it upon all children?
Perhaps after thousands of young minds having been indoctrinated and years of complacency, the ministry might wish to explain why hunting is being depicted to our young as being wrong.