I  often look at social media and wonder if our education really is offered for free and then I remember that 203,151 people in Malta have what is defined as a low level of education and it all makes sense. And this is literally the only thing that makes sense about the outcry surrounding the subject that I will be writing about today.

Last week, it sounded like every snowflake parent in Malta was up in arms over an ethical question. Not about the lack of space their children have to enjoy, nor about the fact that we have one of the highest teen rates of pregnancy in southern Europe. No, what really got their goat was a moral dilemma question that an unsuspecting teacher gave to a class of 14-year-olds for homework.

In case you haven’t yet come across this great object of offence, the question outlines an ethical conundrum: if you were left alone in a room with a baby and were told that it will grow up to become a dictator and kill millions, would you kill the baby? The dilemma also continued by stating that you would not get caught if you did commit the act.

Apparently, this age-old ethical dilemma was a step too far for many Maltese parents, with some even going as far as calling it “training material for sociopaths”. Yes, this ethical question that you can find in most ethics books, and which encourages people to think instead of repeating vast amounts of information that no one cares about like mangled parrots, is the handbook for sociopaths. The mind boggles.

When will we understand that real education is far more than churned out degrees?- Anna Marie Galea

We have given 16-year-olds the right to vote and decide the future of our country but asking 14-year-olds to be able to reason out an ethical dilemma is not appropriate. It’s bad enough that many Maltese parents seem to think their children are simply an extension of themselves without any right to personhood and spend most of the time wrapping cotton wool around them as if that is going to protect them from the evils of the world but, on top of that, they also want to deny them the right to think in an informed and critical way. God forbid they don’t turn out to be miniatures of themselves with the same small hopes, dreams and voting inclinations.

So many educators have long maligned the lack of critical thinking our education system offers and, instead of parents rallying behind them, we have people actively trying to dumb things down even more when our levels are already abysmal. Some even went as far as calling a witch-hunt on to the teacher who gave out the assignment. What kind of message do they think this sends? Are we now to chain our educators for trying to do their job and educate? When will we understand that real education is far more than churned out degrees? Nations of sleepy brains which have not been stimulated have only ever allowed for corruption and abuse to flourish.

It is not the teachers challenging our young to think who are the problem; it’s those who aren’t able to think who are. It’s clearly too late for some people to have the cognitive ability to wrap their heads around the whole point of asking teenagers these kinds of questions but, at this point, the least they can do is want better for their children.