Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1473504
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 17 JULY 2022 9 INTERVIEW ered acceptable? Why do they not provoke concern, anger, and political and civic action? The problem with education in Malta is that there is a history of state intervention that many perceive to have been disastrous, leading to a situation where the interests of the middle class are met outside the state sector. La- bour will not dare mess around with schools again. Its strategy is clearly one of appeasement: help out the middle classes, to the point of heavily subsidising their schools, and try to make state schools function properly, by extracting any student who is likely to be a problem. It is not a coincidence that the Minister of Education has not engaged with the situation, as I invited him to do. Nor, by the way, has the PN. This is anoth- er case where the PL's and PN's interests work hand-in-glove, leaving problems to fester… un- less, as with the Comino deba- cle, civil society says: "Enough is enough!" At the same time, however, part of the discrimination boils down to the age-old issue of 'haves' versus 'have-nots': in this case, those who can afford private education; and those who can't. But isn't this a uni- versal (and inescapable) fact of life? And as such: can it even be addressed, at policy-level? In international studies of ed- ucation, socio-economic back- ground accounts for much of the difference between achieve- ment of individuals and schools. There are lots of reasons for that, many of which are not within the direct control of the educa- tion sector. However, some are – including, for instance, the way public resources are distrib- uted, who gets access to support, where the most experienced and effective teachers are deployed, and so on. In my article, I placed the em- phasis on 'peer effects' and 'con- centration of disadvantage'. I am here referring to the effect of student-mixing on learning outcomes. If, in the same class- room or school, you get a con- centration of students who are either demotivated, do not see the point of schooling, are not especially driven by parents at home… it goes without saying that a counter-school culture develops. They will play up. They will construct a sense of identity based on resistant behaviour, which will earn them status among peers. Doing homework is tantamount to being a 'sissy', and so on. This is also tough on teachers, who understandably – if not professionally – end up lowering expectations, abandoning the curriculum in an effort to sur- vive, and generally speaking, be- coming demotivated themselves. They will tend to slide towards the least common denominator if they do not feel some pres- sure from educational leaders and parents to be accountable. Add to the mix an unreasonable concentration of students from different ethnic backgrounds, not to mention other students with special learning needs, and frankly, one should not be sur- prised at the result. This does not, of course, mean that teachers are not to be held accountable; but we do need to create environments conducive to learning, and to ensure that every student has access to an enriched curriculum, engag- ing pedagogies, and meaningful learning experiences. We also need to get to know those state schools that are doing wonders for their students, and which re- main hidden from view, secreted away among the statistical aver- ages. The constant association of state schools with mediocrity is not only unfair and unjust: it risks further demoralising the sector. Could it be, however, that dif- ferent socio-economic brackets simply have different expecta- tions from the educational sys- tem? And if so, doesn't it justify the creation of separate pull- out spaces, such as the ones you mention? (e.g., 'nurture groups', 'alternative learning programmes', 'learning sup- port zones', 'core curriculum programmes')? Yes, there is a lot of interna- tional evidence that suggests that attitudes towards schooling differ across social groups. But we need to be clear here: we are talking about a particular form of schooling. I mean, from one point of view at least, locking up kids between four walls during the best years of their lives, can hardly be considered the zenith achievement of our civilisation! The modern school is only 200 years old; and I would not be surprised if, in another 100 years or so, humanity will look back on us and condemn us for our inhumanity! But school, as a life 'game', is more compatible with the life-styles of some groups, than others. It values the kind of dispositions and cultural orien- tations that come 'naturally' to some, but cost blood and tears to others. We are not talking about learning here. As a human species, we are condemned to learning all the time, in order to survive. But we learn in different ways. That kind of pedagogical flexi- bility can be present in the same school, on condition that there is parity of esteem – including respect for student entitlement – across the board. My fear is that the context of 'negative differentiation', encouraged by a tripartite system, transforms every experiment into a mirror of itself, reinforcing distinctions that are incredibly harmful to one's access to knowledge, and one's sense of self. Earlier you mentioned 'state intervention in education'. All recent governments have claimed to possess their own vision for the sector; yet only two Education Ministers in the last 30 years – Evarist Bartolo, and Dolores Cristina – had any direct teaching experience/ qualifications themselves. Would you agree, then, that the current situation is partly the result of political neglect, over the years? This is not a question of 'ne- glect', as much as political expe- diency. Now: I would wager that Evarist Bartolo is familiar with the arguments I'm making. Pos- sibly other previous Ministers of Education as well. I know next to nothing about the current Min- ister, a lawyer. There are some advantages in having a Minister of Education who has a good grasp of the field. At the same time, it needs be said that sometimes there is what a colleague of mine calls 'ministerialisation' of policy, that closes debate in the belief that 'the Minister knows best'. That is a pity, and also goes counter to the idea of education as a con- versation in a democracy. Frankly, my own experience has been that sometimes those Ministers who were least knowl- edgeable about education, were most open to learning from those of us who had made it their life mission to research the field. I am not saying that aca- demics and researchers should be the only ones present at the table – far from it. But is it not a waste, and a pity, that they often are absent? You also observed that: 'It all boils to what we want from education'. At a certain level, it seems evident that the State (and also the private sector) still regards education as a breeding ground for potential future employees. However, you seem to be suggesting that we should be looking at it from an altogether different perspective. Could you expand on that? What do you yourself 'want from education'? There is nothing wrong in pre- paring productive citizens. In- deed, to me it goes without say- ing that we should do that. The community invests resources in preparing the younger genera- tion to maintain a quality of life marked by dignity. The problem is not with preparing for em- ployment, but what kind of em- ployment, and what kind of life more generally. In other words, the education I envisage is one that provides citizens with the tools to make sense of the complexities of our world, to learn how to decode what is going on, and to critical- ly engage with the world as it is, in order to imagine how it could and should be. In my article, I referred to John Dewey, a thinker who thought of education in profoundly politi- cal and social ways. Let me give him the last word again: "The kind of education in which I am interested," he wrote in response to one of his critics, "is not one which will 'adapt' workers to the existing industrial regime; I am not sufficiently in love with the regime for that." Those words strike true now - in the age of precarity – as they did then.