Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/388498
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 28 SEPTEMBER 2014 Opinion 24 The proof of the tablet is in the reading (and writing) I still remember my first day at school a very long time ago. I recollect going to the stationery to buy a pencil, a copybook and an eraser, the staples for any student at the time. Fast forward to today and the arse- nal of today's young learners sports much more than the traditional writing instruments. It now includes a computing device and Internet access. No one can deny that technology continues to shape education at all levels, opening up new possibilities which I, as a child, couldn't even dream of. Our pledge of giving a tablet to each and every child as from Year 4 in State, Church and Independent primary schools opens up new pos- sibilities not just to our children but also to our educators. Teachers are on the front-line of our education system and while we all admit that our children feel quite confident using the latest technology, our teachers need to feel just as pre- pared and comfortable to exploit the potential of tablets in the classroom. For this very simple reason the government has decided to go for the longer but ultimately more produc- tive route of conducting a pilot project with tablets rather than just get tablets at a good price, dump them in the classrooms, call the media and boast that the electoral promise has been kept. Experience with the introduction of new technology in the classroom has taught us, the hard way, how the pri- mary focus should be on the teacher and the student rather than the technology, if we want technology to succeed and serve as a valuable tool. Indeed the whole One Tablet Per Child initiative is being managed as an educational project and not a technological one. Educators are in the driving seat. The scope of the pilot project with tablets is to evaluate the best way to introduce tablets in the primary classroom and maximise the benefits that this technology brings to teach- ing and learning, especially literacy. Indeed the tablets initiative is framed within the National Literacy Strategy for All published a few months ago. The pilot project is limited to around 400 students in 20 State, Church and Independent schools in Year 3, 4 or 5 across Malta and Gozo. All teachers are volunteers and they will be using tablets loaned by local and international tablet suppliers based on iOS, Android and Windows software. The suppliers came forward with their tablet solutions and are investing, between them, around €200,000 in hardware, software, training and support. This is just the first step in our long and winding road of introducing tablets in our classrooms as prom- ised. We have a lot of questions that need to be answered, ranging from a simple "what is the ideal screen size?" to "how can our students read and write more and better with the help of the tablet both at school and at home?". Some parents seem very impatient to have the tablet. Others are pro- testing, quite forcefully, at the fact that their child is not getting the tab- let as promised, genuinely mistak- ing the pilot project with a limited number of students for the actual national roll-out. We will keep our promise to give a tablet to each child as from Year 4 of the primary school but only after we have successfully concluded the pilot towards the end of this scholastic year, done the pro- curement of the ideal tablet solution based on the evaluation of the pilot, delivered the training to teachers and gave them time to familiarise themselves with the technology, and upgraded Internet access in State schools to cater for the increased demand brought by the tablet. Just like teaching a child how to hold a pencil and write legibly, it takes time to assimilate and effectively use technology that costs hundreds of times more. We don't want to see money washed down the drain because the focus is on the technol- ogy rather than the teacher and the student. I wish good luck to the educators and students in the pilot project with tablets and thank them for helping us make the right choices when giving the tablet to our children. I promise you that we will listen to their com- ments and act on their suggestions. Evarist Bartolo is Minister of Educa- tion and Employment Evarist Bartolo Malta's midlife M iddle age is a funny thing really. It sort of creeps up on you unawares. One second you're deep in the habit of prefacing all your thoughts with: "later, when I'm older". Then suddenly you realise: hang on… I'm older now. What happened to all that stuff I'd said I'd do? It's a little like that classic Dan Quayle quote: "The future will be better tomorrow." Or that classic bar sign about drinks being 'on the house'… the following day. Hence the funny part. We all know that if there's ever going to be a time when things actually do get better, it can only be when we force ourselves to stop think- ing in the future tense, and start living in the present. But while it sounds simple, it turns out to be horribly complicated in practice. Those among you who have crossed that invisible (and hope- lessly arbitrary) threshold of mid- dle age will know what I mean. Just cast your minds back 20 years, and try recalling how you once imagined your life would be like "when you were older". Then compare that vision to your life as it really is right now, and see where it takes you. Interestingly enough, this week we got a rare glimpse of how the same midlife crisis affects entire countries instead of just individu- als. Malta turned 50 last Sunday (at least, as an independent state)… though none of the main protagonists of independence are alive to make the same compari- son today. Who knows what they would have seen, had they cast their minds back 50 years and tried to recall how they imagined Malta half a century later? What would George Borg Olivier have seen, I wonder? Impossible to say, but he did leave behind a few clues. This is what he told the Chatham House Independence Conference of 1963: "The Constitution which we envisage incorporates the principle of responsible parlia- mentary government based on a tested democratic system. It safeguards the interests of the nation and the fundamental rights and freedoms of the indi- viduals composing the nation. It secures the independence of such organs and authorities as must be outside political influence. It reaffirms the political sovereignty of the electorate by ensuring the holding of free elections at fixed intervals..." And there you have it: how baby Malta imagined itself as an adult… at a time when it was still a tiny toddler trying to climb out of its cot. And already we can see that it is not unlike many of us in this regard. It had lofty ambi- tions. It saw big. In fact, judging by the type of Constitution that was originally envisaged for inde- pendent Malta, you'd never guess that the same document has had to be amended 26 times since then… and evidently still needs amending today. In fact a think- tank called the Today Public Policy Institute has just published a "Review of the Constitution at 50"… and calls for yet another long overdue reform of this document, of the sort that has been variously promised by governments (then promptly forgotten) for years. It is as though suddenly, without warning, baby Malta has found itself half a century old… without having accomplished half the things it had earlier promised itself it would 'one day do'. For the purposes of this, my own review of the Constitu- tion at 50, I will stick broadly to the same themes that concern the TPPI: electoral reform, the judiciary, neutrality, etc. In all such areas, I found that the single underlying problem – the rut, so to speak, in which the wheels of Constitutional reform got stuck – has always been the same. The Constitution envisaged by Borg Olivier in 1963 was supposed to guarantee "the independence of such organs and authorities as must be outside political influence". In practice, however, it omitted itself from that consideration. It provides protection for the judiciary (though not, as shall be seen, very successfully), and for other autonomous arms of the state; but it contains no mechanism to protect itself from the clutches of Malta's bipartisan system. As a result, it has time and again been hijacked by political interests. Unsurprisingly, therefore, in all areas where the Constitution has been amended since 1964, the amendments were the fruit of ne- gotiations that were satisfactory only to the two parties occupying Parliament at the time. Equally unsurprisingly, in all areas where no such satisfactory agreement could be reached, the Constitu- tion was never amended at all. The most obvious example is electoral reform. The TPPI review places much emphasis on the 1987 agreement between the PN and MLP, in order to avoid a repeat of the 1981 election result. Quite aptly, it describes this amendment as "a grand political bargain between the two political parties." What it doesn't do – tactfully, no doubt – is point out that the result of this cosy arrangement has made a mockery of demo- cratic principles. The 1987 amendment sought to ensure proportionality between a party's share of the nationwide vote, and the number of seats it is given in parliament… in part because our incredibly compli- cated electoral system can still throw up situations where a party may win a 50%+1 majority across the entire country, but find itself in opposition anyway. Immediately, two glaring flaws swim into view. The first is that our 1964 Constitution had failed Raphael Vassallo