As I write, 400 children are about to be hauled out of bed to a fine Saturday morning’s work. They will have spent the week clocking about from school to homework to catechism to ballet classes to heaven knows what else. It follows that they should opt to spend the first day of the weekend ‘taking part in a consultation process on the selection of the new Children’s Commissioner’ (Times of Malta, November 20).

The auspicious event will take place at a secondary school somewhere in Mosta. It was announced to considerable press fanfare by Social Solidarity Minister Marie Louise Coleiro Preca last week. The ministry people seem to think, one, that children spend their time fretting over who the next commissioner will be, and, two, that consulting them in public about the matter is a wonderful idea.

I trust the first is rubbish. I also disagree with the second, for three reasons. The first is that anything that eats away at children’s free time is bad, unless it is strictly necessary (things like going to the dentist and such).

Leisure is a virtue and it is especially so in that brief period of our lives during which we don’t have to worry about overdue bills and interest rates.

Besides, leisure and creativity tend to go together. Children who are constantly busy doing things other people have told them to do may grow up efficient, but not necessarily creative. The good news is that some will persist in doing things other than their homework. A fine choice, in the right dose.

The second reason why events like this morning’s are no-brainers is a general one and has to do with the principle of public consultation generally. Nine times out of 10, the sound and fury of public consultation meetings is a circus.

Certainly they are something of a tourist attraction in the Swiss chocolate-box cantons of Appenzell Inner Rhodes and Glarus. I’ve been to one so-called Landsgemeinde (communal assembly) and it is just that, a type of plein-air democracy in which locals get to vote by show of hands. More than anything else the Landsgemeinde is a symbol of Swiss-style direct democracy. It’s a piece of political spectacle and performance, in other words.

I wish I had held on to my Svizzera fil-Mediterran T-shirt. Considering the public consultation meetings mushrooming all over the place, we’re doing quite well on this one. Only they’re mostly a complete waste of time. I’ve been to quite a few (I suppose I should get out a bit more) and they’ve invariably turned out to be exercises in cluelessness and pointlessness.

Or maybe they’re simply a newly-discovered type of political spectacle, rather like the Landsgemeinde. That would make them dovetail quite nicely with the rhetoric of ‘saqajhom ma’ l-art’ (with their feet on the ground) and ‘jisimgħu lin-nies’ (to listen to people), qualities that politicians so love to ascribe to themselves.

In which case my third objection follows. If public consultation meetings are nothing more than a cheap but effective piece of politicking, it becomes exceptionally wicked to foist them on children. It reminds me, in principle if not in extent, of a number of historical instances in which the innocence of children was used for political ends that were anything but innocent.

A necessary rider: I emphasise that my problem is not with consultation generally. A few days ago, Coleiro Preca mentioned that research was being undertaken with children in out-of-home care. According to Times of Malta (November 19), 33 interviews were carried out with children living in care, the idea being firmly to root the forthcoming Children’s Act in a measure of field data produced at source, with the protagonists themselves that is.

Now that sounds like one thoughtful piece of work. It’s certainly wise to ground policy in up-to-date research with those whom that policy concerns directly. I assume the method in this case was one-to-one interviews with children within the standard parameters of confidentiality and trust.

A couple of years ago, I co-supervised a doctoral dissertation on obesity among schoolchildren. It was done using an arsenal of innovative research techniques developed in part by the student herself (happily now a resident academic at University).

Anything that eats away at children’s free time is bad

Each of these was premised on the sensitivities of the topic and the respondents and none involved mass-consultation palavers of any sort. Which was just as well, because I would have objected very strongly.

That’s because, as I said, it’s not the principle of consultation that’s wrong. Rather it’s the perversion of that principle into a form of mass histrionics, and especially its incarnation as the new Pied Piper.

There’s a scene in Fellini’s Amarcord in which Ciccio, one of the avanguardisti taking part in a fascist children’s rally and who happens to be physically pretty far removed from the fascist ideal, suddenly finds himself daydreaming about marrying Aldina, the prettiest giovane italiana of them all.

It’s a funny if heartbreaking moment. (Fellini’s work is very much about that – I have in mind the ‘mad uncle’ who climbs a tree and screams for a woman, or Casanova who dances with a mechanical doll.) It’s also a parody of fascism. Above all, however, I read it as a statement of the hope that no matter how crushing and numbing the system is, there will always be a few young minds that drift.

I would like to think two things. First, that 99 per cent of children are profoundly uninterested in government’s choice (for it is) of a children’s commissioner. That’s because they have higher priorities in life, including things like beach picnics with their families and browsing the Net for the latest fantasies. It’s called ‘childhood’, just in case Coleiro Preca hasn’t heard of it.

Second, that a good number of those unlucky enough to find themselves frogmarched to the consultation meeting will in any case drift off into daydreams of giant sandcastles that can withstand the highest waves, and moshi monsters.

If there is hope, it lies with the children themselves.

mafalzon@hotmail.com