So Gerald Strickland was a Protestant. Winston Churchill may just as well never have existed. School-leavers cannot answer questions because they do not understand them. Vocabulary has become an inedible ‘minestrone neither English nor Maltese.

What is Malta’s future as a nation, a State, a democracy? Are we losing ourselves? Can no corrective measures be taken by elected representatives?

Clearly, we are living in dangerous times, here too. For various reasons, many seem to be in denial. Perhaps they cannot face the facts or interpret goings-on. A few others incite, fanning the flames in a disturbingly cynical, if cleverly nuanced, discourse.

Still others of the gemgem variety, docile, gullible, gossipy or passive, may disconnect and let the devil have the hindmost, hands up in the air, until they are hit on the head. One correspondent understandably hoped for the Holy Spirit’s intervention to bring us to our senses.

In addressing us at the Unesco general conference in Paris on November 17, shortly after our own President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca had spoken, President Francois Hollande mentioned the Taliban’s destruction of the famed Buddha statues in Afghanistan, of Timbuktu’s rare African manuscript library in Mali, of the ancient Roman temple in Palmyra, Syria, all Unesco world heritage sites, the attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis…

That, in the wake of the abject, wanton and murderous terrorist attacks on residents in Paris on November 13 and their grisly aftermaths. The applause in Salle 1 was deafening and would not stop.

What can be done, if the authorities wake up to their tasks?

First, the history aspect, to which they were alerted by various correspondents once serious meddling with the school curriculum by the Education Department started. For example, in my article ‘No meaning outside time’ (January 8, 2013) I noted that the very mention of history as a discipline was disappearing in favour of “a curricular mishmash”.

One learned secondary school teacher, Desmond Zammit-Marmarà, lamented (December 29, 2012) that students today often did not have as much as “a rudimentary knowledge of Maltese history and culture… simply pathetic”.

Clearly we are living in dangerous times, here too

History lessons have been reduced and are sometimes unavailable. Can we blame the students? Not to have heard of Churchill in an island razed to the ground during World War II, well within the living memory of parents or grandparents, even suggests an intergenerational rupture.

Second, the language aspect. Scores of articles and letters have been appearing in all sections of the press by concerned parents, teachers and writers, worried sick by the degeneration and nescience caused by uncalled-for top-down changes in established orthography and grammar from the skont council which have just about confused everyone, journalists and publishers included.

The same for encouraging the writing of English words in Maltese, a recent one in a semi-official publication being bejkin. But if we are to save our bacon, literally and metaphorically, remedial action must absolutely be taken at law in the national interest by the Education Ministry without further ado.

Judging by some of the gro-tesque printed stuff, including cartoons being distributed to schoolchildren, the SEC outcome may be depressing. It is not surprising. Worse may be expected. I have written about this to the point of boredom, as in my Talking Point ‘Save Maltese… and English’ (January 8, 2015) eliciting so many supportive comments from readers.

The other traditional prop of Maltese self-identity was religion – that is, in case we get mixed up, the Maltese Church and Roman Catholicism. This may be on the wane but it remains a respected formative influence nationally and certainly historically in many ways, although it seems to be increasingly under threat of penetration.

Thank God Malta did not take the publicly proffered advice by an accredited cleric to cut off the hands of thieves. What a bloodbath we would have had. If the Catholic faith and tradition go, without the knowledge and sense of a shared past in time and without a pride in Maltese literary transmission and expression in past decades by our great ‘classical’ authors, our only survivalist hope might indeed be the intervention by the Holy Spirit. Political correctness won’t save us.

All we needed now was for some burqa fan twinned with a jihadi beard, made in Mohamed Morsi’s Egypt, to be given public space provocatively to insult all Europe’s leaders for trying to secure the lives, livelihoods and lifestyles of us European citizens against repeated vicious and hostile assaults by indoctrinated Islamist terrorists, torturers, murderers and ‘barbarians’ – utterly misguided but very dangerous.

As for Syrians travelling to Malta on forged passports, thanks go to the Italian police in Bergamo and Rome. A bona fide asylum seeker would stand a better chance of recognition if travelling on a valid passport.

Only one newspaper (Il-Mument) dared to report a pro-ISIS midnight carcade on July 4, 2014, starting in Fond Għadir, which the police had tried investigating, with what outcome God alone knows.

Henry Frendo is director of the Institute for Maltese Studies and chairman of the Unesco national commission.