Over the last 50 years true poverty has undoubtedly faded away from the Maltese islands and living standards have quadrupled. Furthermore, we boast, and rightly so, that our infantile mortality rate, previously of a staggering percentage, is now among the lowest in the world, while life expectancy is acclaimed as being among the best in Europe.

This is a veritable achievement after centuries of colonial domination. However, it has to be acknowledged that Britain invested heavily in furthering education particularly in the equal opportunities schemes at the Naval Dockyards, Rhodes Scholarships and innumerable Commonwealth bursaries.

But are we now matching this bonanza with real love of learning, when the Maltese reading public has plummeted to its nadir?

Sadly we hold the unique double distinction among our European brethren as having a very low reading public and the highest obesity rate.

The title of this letter is not totally original; I adapted it from a phrase by the Florentine philosopher Marsilio Ficino who in the mid-1450s dubbed the younger generation devoid of an enquiring mind and bent on stuffing their bellies as “Fattened Cows and Undernourished Philistines” – a biting criticism which startedthe flowering geniuses of the Italian Renaissance.
The English poet Robert Browning expressed the inward drive to extend oneself in his poem Andrea del Sarto with the famous lines: “A man’s reach must exceed his grasp or what’s a Heaven for.”

The recent stunning negative report of Matsec shows underlying deficiencies in their approach to learning, a farcry from the recommendations of a more liberal approachto education.

The indicting report also underlines the limited vocabulary used by our students revealing without any shadow of doubt their aversion to reading.