Daniel Cilia (‘Sette Giugno should be in Maltese’, The Sunday Times of Malta, May 22) may be right to question the language implication behind this retained memory of the unfortunate event, wherein a number of Maltese civilians were killed by British soldiers in 1919 during a tense period, right after World War I.

He might be a victim of a system of education wherein history – especially during the teenage years of our students – remains on the border of the curriculum. Removing the Sette Giugno event from its Italianate cultural capsule of the language question by referring to its memory in Maltese would possibly risk forgetting part of the process of the political birth of a national movement towards self-sufficiency.

Not so different from disturbing our centuries-old collective memory of La Valette when ‘correcting’ his name to ‘de’, Cilia’s suggestion may require educating. As historian Marc Ferro would attest, past memories are alone capable of writing an authentic history.

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