I wonder how St Dorothy and St Aloysius get along in heaven. One is the patron saint of florists, gardeners, lovers, midwives and brewers. The other, a former soldier, is the patron saint of students, the blind and AIDS patients. Conversation must flow on the table: St Aloysius all serious and pedantic, wanting the discussion to start precisely at 15.03 hours and end at 17.13 hours, while St Dorothy is all cheery and jokey and romantic, with a nice, specially brewed Dorothean beer in hand.

I am wondering this out loud, because lately I have been noticing a pattern. We all know that if you want to be a top man in Malta, your odds would be higher if you went to St Aloysius’ College. The statistics say it all – sorry you St Edward’s lot: out of eight Presi­dents, five went to St Aloysius.

But hang on a second, what about the top women of Malta? If you look around you, you see that the most successful women lawyers, politicians, journalists have gone to a convent school which up to a few decades ago, was based in Mdina.

Every major convent or independent school in some way or other leaves its tell-tale signs imprinted on students. You can, for example, spot Sacred Heart students my age, the minute they open their mouths. They are the sort who, instead of saying: “Did you get the pen?”, would say “You got the pen, ey?”. And with that pen, they would go on to scribble in their roundish, fattish handwriting.

You can also easily spot an Edwardian too, because they are the ones who would say: “My father owns the pen company.” And because of their confidence and charm and good manners, you’ll soon be thinking that indeed, his father’s pens are the best in the world.

Students of St Aloysius would pick up the pen, tell you how and where it was assembled, analyse its economy of scale and how it can contribute to the country’s GDP. Students of St Dorothy would be the hands-on, practical ones who’d be most aware that the pen is mightier than the sword.

Every major convent or independent school leaves its tell-tale signs imprinted on students

I am always delighted when I find myself in workplaces where there is a Dorothean. From my experience, they are always up for a good laugh, they value the sisterhood, and half-baked measures are an alien concept to them.

I am not sure what their teaching methods were – I myself went to a very minor convent school – but I can by now easily recognise Dorothean traits: highly opinionated, a certain fearlessness, a confidence which stems from knowledge, a strong sense of gender equality, a sense of justice and fairness, and above all, impeccable language skills (they say: “Did you get my pen?” and “Ġibtili l-pinna?” without sounding like they have a potato in their cheeks).

Was St Dorothy a role model then? I don’t know. She is represented in Christian art with roses in her hand or with an angel standing by, offering her three roses and three apples. But we have to think Horrible Histories not Disney Princesses.

She was beheaded because she would not renounce her faith. Perhaps it is this resilience that the nuns drilled to their girls as they froze in the huge draughty classrooms on the bastions of the silent city.

St Aloysius – let’s call him Luigi, so we spare ourselves the Eloysis or Aloweeshus dilemma – had similar determination. As the first-born son, he was in line to inherit his father’s title of marquis and he trained all his life to become a top-notch soldier.

Then came his vocation and had to argue his way out of his dominant family to become a Jesuit, dying while caring for the ill. “Service to society,” the rector would bark at 11-year-olds in awe, as he paced up and down assembly.

I’m not sure that for the generations after me, this theory still holds. St Dorothy school in Mdina is now a luxury café. The school has since moved to new, purposely built pre­mises in Żebbuġ. Perhaps the hardships of Mdina were part and parcel of the building of a strong character.

There’s also the fact that in these highly inclusive times, every school, including St Aloysius, seems to morph into the other: they’ve become too blurry to distinguish among them.

What I am certain is that for many a generation, if there had to be a University Challenge kind of television show, the final would be a St Dorothy’s vs St Aloysius.

Who knows who’d win?

Guess the college quiz

a) “Let’s organise a pen festival.”

b) “Brother Martin has a pen.”

c) “With this pen I can build a rocket to fly us to the moon.”

d) “This pen spakkejted.”

Answers:

a) Savio College b) De La Salle c) St Edward’s d) Sacred Heart

krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti

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