Two weeks since Daphne’s Funeral… Hands off!
Two weeks have passed since Daphne’s funeral and Malta has received a thorough whamming by the European Parliament on the laxity of the rule of law in the country. The parliament went on to honour Daphne’s memory by dedicating its press room to her. Daphne had been on the forefront of the fight to join the European Union, when this should not have been a fight at all, but a matter of national consensus. The robust debate in Strasbourg showed clearly that, by questioning so vigorously all that is happening in Malta, the European institution we voted to belong to is upholding the democratic values and freedom we believe in and want to see persevere in our country. Meanwhile, it would seem that, given their funereal silence, the police still have nothing to communicate to the people about Daphne’s atrocious murder.
Like many of our politicians, Daphne studied at the University of Malta, which today, as in former Labour times, is once again being threatened by the Labour government. Post-independence history is marked by the attacks on University in the late seventies and most of the eighties, when the Labour government wielded its heavy hand to curb the university’s freedom and Medicine, Arts, and Theology faculties were closed down. The period marked Daphne’s first arrest, and led her to her career as an investigative journalist.
The new law that is being proposed is a fresh attempt at weakening the University of Malta. The full-colour publication entitled “Consultation Paper” comes in the wake of a whole series of initiatives that have directly or indirectly targeted the university. The most scandalous of all these, to my mind, is that by the so-called Institute of Education, a government institution founded in April 2015, which declares itself to be ‘Malta’s Centre for Continuing Professional Learning for Educators’ and which is now offering Bachelors’ and Masters’ degrees in Education, mainly to supply teachers. This Institute is not a university, it is not sanctioned by all the necessary provisions guaranteeing quality, such as those by the National Commission for Further and Higher Education (It is to be said that this latter institution is the one which approved the American University of Malta, one of the latest educational failures of the country). The University of Malta – also paid for through public funds has a whole Faculty of Education capable of delivering these degrees; a faculty, let us not forget, founded by the Labour government itself in the seventies. Ironically, in order to teach the modules, the Institute is seeking ‘Learning Programmes Development Experts’, among members of the University’s own Faculty, instead of asking the Faculty itself to train the teachers in need of this qualification. In other words, this government believes, as the Maltese saying goes, in dismantling one church to build another, so that the process itself can provoke the collapse of the first.
Our education authorities should know that ‘to lecture’ comes from the latin ‘lectura’, derived from ‘lectus’ which does not only mean to read, but also to gather, and to select. This is what the university does – it provides students with the knowledge and the tools to research, gather information, and learn how to select what is useful and can lead to new knowledge that will give added value to the country. It teaches them how to develop their thinking, analytical and creative skills, how to discern between the fundamental and the inessential. The Consultation paper deals with what is obvious to any self-respecting lecturer, and pushes aside all that is fundamental to an institution dedicated to study and research. I have full confidence in the fact that our academic body, composed of lecturers and students alike, has the clear intelligence to see the real intent behind the contents of this document.
Like Daphne, we are neither stupid nor gullible, so… hands off our University!