Malta has a very similar education system to Britain and like Britain we also have the equivalent what the British call the “Grammar Schools”. These schools are intended for students who get a higher academic result than the average student, and hence are known popularly as “elite schools”.
If my mind recalls correctly, Malta has around eight of these “elite” schools, all run by the Church whose admission is managed by the Common Entrance exams. Saint Aloysius College is one of these schools, and it’s particularly popular in Malta for being a school which has produced a significant number of politicians and public figures. Some of these include Joseph Muscat, Keith Schembri, Simon Busuttil, Franco Debono and even the incumbent Prime Minister Robert Abela.
There seems to be a lot of taboo about this topic, and also a great deal of insecurity, mostly by the students who attended the college itself. Yesterday, I received a deluge of comments from Saint Aloysius alumni accusing me of being jealous for making a satirical comment about Saint Aloysius and Saint Edward’s College. Other comments were more reasonable, noting that both good and bad people have come out of the College, while some were more good-humoured and took it lightheartedly.
I also a share a degree of suspicion towards critics of successful people, but this should not be a disqualifying factor for a serious analysis and a judgement based on evidence and results. Luckily, I have some authority over this taboo-subject that hurts the sensibilities of many, since I was actually one of the students of the eight schools with a relatively good national ranking.
I didn’t attend Saint Aloysius and my choices were more limited to transport and distance issues rather than the kind of education or the social environment offered to us. At that young age, I was not aware of major cultural and social differences between the “elite” schools and they were all presented to us students in a very similar manner: we were to have a rigorous Catholic education dressed in a relatively expensive uniform that our parents were forced to buy from a monopoly that sold all of these uniforms.
I had a very different experience from those who attended Sain Aloysius College, but I also do have many testimonies and stories about students who attended Saint Aloysius – and they all say the same thing. Students from a working-class background or from Labour Party families were bullied and shunned by their classmates. These were not just isolated cases, but it’s the universal experience of working-class students at Saint Aloysius of several generations. And both Joseph Muscat and Franco Debono are a product of this environment.
Joseph Muscat’s history at Saint Aloysius has most probably deeply affected his later behaviour in politics and the way he got to view his political opponents. Having experienced what may have been a very cruel form of classist bullying at a young age from the same people he would challenge politically at a later stage in life, Muscat emulated their ways and behaviour to extreme levels with the aim of outgrowing and even dominating them. Even his corrupt power station project was drawn on these lines: if they could do it, I could do it even better and bigger.
This may sound hyperbolic, but I am very fond of the Bowles and Gintis theories which give some logical explanations on the effects of our childhood education. In fact, Joseph Muscat’s history is very similar to Franco Debono: another working-class kid who was shunned by his classmates for his background, and shunned again by Saint Aloysians later on in life (in parliament). Even Franco Debono himself admitted to the class challenges he faced in life many times over: his toughest challenge in life was to exceed in the legal field as a lawyer in an industry which was dominated by legacy names.
Both Franco Debono and Joseph Muscat were brought up in an environment in which they had to work harder than their classmates to achieve the same type of rewards. This shouldn’t be a taboo and it provides a a great deal of context to dynamic and relationships between these politicians today.
Of course, today, these colleges have changed dramatically since the aforementioned events happened. Women have started working in Church schools in which they were previously barred from, and economic growth has also radically changed the class dynamic. The dynamic, culture and anthropology of these schools today is radically different from decades prior.
On the other hand, the Saint Aloysians fretting in anger over my comment only demonstrate that they have come to believe in rigid orthodoxies that are beyond criticism: not to mention their catastrophic inability to distinguish between satire, figurative language, and literal speech.
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