PERSPECTIVE

"'Dr Muscat was irresponsible to call me bishop' - Edwin Vassallo" - timesofmalta.com

"He could have used proper political language and, as a self-proclaimed liberal, he should accept different points of view."

Last week, they've said that sixteen year olds were too young to be given the right to vote in Local Council elections. Well, they may not vote, but they may be given the opportunity to start getting brainwashed just about four years before hitting the age of eighteen.

Maltarightnow: Today's main points - "Students experience the Prime Minister's work"

Students as in, 14 / 15 year olds are already getting exposed too much into government / political affairs. Going for an 'educational outing', the tour guide being Gonzi himself, 'experiencing the Prime Minister's work'. Fascinating

But really, it's ok to fill up a 14 year old mind with your propaganda but not letting a 16 year old to vote.

"bil-kollaborazzjoni tal-Ministeru tal-Edukazzjoni"

Boasting again are we? How about giving a proper explanation to what happened to the Philosophy A-level exams? I guess we still need to set our priorities right.



References: http://www.maltarightnow.com/Default.asp?module=news&at=Studenti+jesperjenzaw+il-%26%23295%3Bidma+tal-Prim+Ministru&t=a&aid=99837448&cid=19

 "Dr Gonzi also accused Labour Leader Joseph Muscat of copying a campaign logo - guaranteeing jobs to young people – from European socialist parties." - Timesofmalta.com Sunday Article.

Accusing are we now? Is it for copying? So what, why not walk on the footsteps of other European Socialist parties if Labour believe they are right? Probably Gonzi's idea came from some of his fellow team mates - I heard that there are some professional copiers.

But anyway, take a good look at this:

Ensemble, tout devient possible - which in english is: - Together, anything is possible


Rings a bell, doesn't it? So who's the copy cat anyway? Funnily enough the French responded to Sarkozy just recently, and we all know their answer do we?

Timesofmalta.com Headlines

Yesterday's youth discussion with Joseph Muscat and the Labour party was indeed very interesting to follow. Representatives from every political opinion (including MZPN) were present for the discussion. This shows how the labour party is ready to work with people coming from different opinions.

I find timesofmalta.com's headline title quite misleading. Why did timesofmalta.com focus on just this particular proposal? Why all the fuss created about only one point? During the discussion Joseph Muscat mentioned several other important points which reflect on today's youth. One point was the fact that with the labour party in government, stipends would be secured and even strengthened. Another point was the possibility of University exams to be also held in Gozo so as to make the Gozitan's student life more comfortable. Joseph Muscat also mentioned the possibility of increasing alternatives with regards to tertiary education institutes, as in Malta we have only one alternative, that is going to University.

I was quite shocked with all the fuss created on Facebook. It seems like when the Labour party comes up with new proposals PN activists do nothing but complain. What's wrong for sixteen year olds to vote in local council elections anyway? What's wrong in giving a younger generation the ability, duty and the willingness of giving his or her contribution to the country. After all, why are you complaining anyway? Some of you are still with the "Il- Kbira ma tehduwha qatt!" mentality. Others, (who, by the way, were probably part of the PN even at the age of 16) criticized 16 year olds by saying that they are not mature enough to vote. After all it's just for local council elections not for the general elections, so far in foreign countries this system has proved to be a success, so why not implement it ourselves?

I would like to see some people's reaction if PN came up with it.

We have all sat for some kind of exams in our life. An exam or test is aimed to measure the test taker's ability in that particular subject. But does an exam really determine the test- taker's ability? Is it completely fair to test someone's ability on just one test? How do exams really prepare us for solving our daily problems in our daily life?

Lets face it - we all study loads of things for that one special examination day until it is then useless so we probably forget most of the stuff we studied by the end of the week. What do we usually do when we come across something that we are not sure of? We just research our books and internet no?

Lately, a new idea of examinations was introduced, the open book tests. Tests are constructed in such a way that a person would still need to study, and most of these tests are constructed of multiple papers, thus if you go wrong in one paper you still have a good chance to go better in other sections of the exam. You can refer to your text book to aid you in anything you are not sure of, obviously you can't research anything as you have a small period of time allocated for the exam. This beats the problem of forgetting things because of panic for the test taker. This is also a good method to prepare the test taker for problem solving in his daily life.

However, this does not completely solve the fact that the person is assessed on only one day (or just a small amount of days). This is why today we have introduced assessments in our overall mark. Students should be assessed for their work over the whole year not just one particular day. On that day the test taker may be sick or might not be in a good frame of mind for the test.