The Maltese language cannot be left to die out in classrooms, and Education Minister Dolores Cristina believes it should not be up to a school to decide whether a lesson is taught in English or Malt-ese.
Mrs Cristina feels that the language used should be determined through a linguistic policy that would be applied across the board.
Within the next few weeks, she will be calling a meeting between educators and linguists who will be invited to make recommendations on which teaching language should be used in schools in the various stages of education.
This will help her draw up a policy to be applied in state schools, although Church and private schools could choose to abide by the same rules, as they have done in the past.
“This will be a sensitive debate... We must decide what language to use during lessons without reducing Maltese to a language only used during Maltese lessons. No country that respects itself does that,” she said during a seminar organised to round up the seven-month consultation period about the draft national curriculum framework.
“We need to draw up a linguistic policy to ensure that students can communicate well in several languages ... We must ensure that our students can communicate in at least three languages, that, apart from Maltese and English, they can speak at least another language,” Mrs Cristina said.
The shadow minister for educ-ation, Evarist Bartolo, agreed with the minister on this point.
He said the subject of the teaching language had to be tackled because, at the moment, there were problems with both English and Maltese.
Mrs Cristina said that the government had been working on the curriculum for three years and the draft had been issued for consult-ation in May.
According to the draft framework, students will be given a more hands-on approach to their own education, with greater emphasis on how students learn rather than on how much they know. Instead of disparate subject areas, subjects have been grouped into eight “learning areas” to better link topics to one another.
The curriculum aimed to realise the country ’s vision for students and for Malta’s future. Malta’s success, she said, had always hinged on investing in human resources.
Mrs Cristina said that for the new curriculum to succeed in its mission there was the need for the collaboration of all, including parents and teachers.
Mr Bartolo cautioned against linking education solely to economic development at the expense of its social and human rights dimensions.
He stressed the importance of involving teachers in the process of implementing the curriculum because its success ultimately depended on what happened in the classroom.
He read out a letter, which he said was sent by a teacher who worked in a government secondary school, claiming teachers were being bullied by students and complaining that discipline no longer existed.
Mr Bartolo cautioned against “reform fatigue”. Introducing too many changes at once could lead to the burn-out of teachers, he said.