The distinction became a famous part of educational folklore in University College Dublin.  A professor of education was asked to explain the difference between education and training. Her response invited those present to imagine themselves as a parent of a twelve-year-old young woman who announces at dinner that in school tomorrow, as part of a relationships and sex education programme, ‘we will be doing sex training’.

I think we can all clearly understand and appreciate the implications of her answer to an apparently simple question.

There is, of course, a world of difference between training and education. Education and schooling are about training (in its widest sense) but they are also about much, much more than that.

In very crude terms, education has two key functions. One is utilitarian, the other cultural (again, in the broadest sense). While education should enable us to become efficient and effective in the basics of life, it should also enable us to think independently and critically not just about technical matters but also about broader social, political, and cultural matters.

Referring to that UCD educationalist, we cannot reduce education to training alone, or the consequences for society and humanity will be negative. That should be obvious today, in an era of environmental destruction (to highlight but one dimension). Ultimately education is about formation, empowerment, critical ability, engagement, and perspective.

It cannot simply be about me and us, it needs to also be about you and them. It cannot be reduced to what’s good for industry or the economy; it must also be about what’s good for society, citizenship, and the planet. Being gifted with advanced technical skills or reasoning (in whatever important subjects or dimensions) yet deficient in morals and ethics is a Faustian pact.

Equally, education cannot simply be about what happens in schools or colleges, it must also be about what happens in society. Education that begins and ends with efficiency (especially if limited to economics and industry) has proved itself to be a menace to society.

Recently, some forty academics (in science, technology, engineering and mathematics) wrote to government ministries expressing their concerns about Malta’s education system and its failure to produce ‘critical minds’. Interestingly and unfortunately, academics from other equally important disciplines were missing from the initiative.

Students at a summer school. Photo: Mark Zammit Cordina

In their letter, they criticised Malta’s ‘rote learning’ model which produces a ‘workforce’ ill-equipped to engage in critical and innovative thinking. Their letter spoke of the negative implications of this for the ‘workplace’ but stopped short of extending those implications to other key locations - home, community, or the wider public sphere. 

Surely what is crucial in this context is that Malta is far more than just a workplace; Maltese people are far more than just workers and that it can be readily argued that the country’s weaknesses and failures are not even primarily in industry. We can agree wholeheartedly that Malta’s education system is failing to encourage ‘critical’ minds, but that failure is endemic across Maltese society.

Malta’s schools are not failing Malta – it is the other way around. Malta is failing Maltese schools and it is an intentional and calculated failure. The last thing Maltese political and business leaders want is a critically aware population. Their fortunes (literally) depend on fostering and maintaining social and political illiteracy. 

The default setting of the currently dominant Maltese (mis)leadership is an ‘uncritical’, ‘unthinking’ and ‘unreflective’ majority body politic. In the lead-up to an election, it is a political imperative.

The real-world behaviour of very many of Malta’s ‘educational (mis)leaders, including its Education Minister makes it abundantly clear that they care not a whit for critical thinking or literacy – they are actively opposed to it. 

It is utterly dishonest to task schools with building a critically aware and skilled society that is sustainable or just, while those same schools exist in a society built around rampaging corruption and criminality.

Training, not education remains the name of the current Maltese game…at least for now.