Times of Malta, 24 December 2018
A few days ago, St Clare College primary school in Sliema held its yearly Celebration of Achievements Day event. When I was a kid, this used to be referred to as the Christmas Concert and Prize Day, but the new moniker is intended to reflect celebration and the embracing of diversity.
I attended the event as a parent, and I must say that I was impressed by the school’s efforts to build a learning community, thus confirming the positive impression I built throughout the years my son has been attending.
In her introductory address, Head of School Claudine Muscat spoke in English to ensure that all parents from the scores of different nationalities understand and feel a sense of belonging, but she also made sure to say some words in Maltese to celebrate our national heritage.
The bilingual event itself was a synthesis of the school’s multinational student population and its Maltese identity. The concert theme was ‘Christmas around the world’ - students of different nationalities gave their greetings in different languages and different countries were showcased to the audience. The audience was also presented with a unity and diversity art project which the school is conducting.
Prizewinners reflected different abilities, nationalities and genders, and Malta’s national anthem at the end summed it all up.
In a way, the positive experience in this school could be seen as a microcosm of what contemporary Maltese society could be amid the changes it is experiencing: united in diversity, embracing different cultures while sharing common values and norms.
Malta’s Catholic roots are celebrated, but students with other faiths or who choose the ethics subject are active participants in their school. Teachers give individual attention, and parents wait for their children after school in harmony despite the different class, national and other backgrounds. Furthermore, the school offers after-school services for children whose parents would be at work before or after formal hours.
Now that my son David is at his final year in this school, I want to thank all the staff for their assistance, kindness and flexibility. For it is not easy to be flexible in a setting of cultural diversity. But the school shows that with goodwill, professional pedagogy and dynamic management such challenges are transformed into opportunities for community building.
Indeed, Sliema primary school can be seen as a case study of what social capital is all about. This concept was popularised by sociologists such as Robert Putnam who followed the erstwhile communitarian scholarship of Amitai Etzioni, Emile Durkheim and others.
Here, the person is conceptualised as having both rights and responsibilities within the web of social relationships and interaction. These include family, friends, school, voluntary associations, churches and neighbourhoods. The person is situated within the community and vice versa.
This type of thinking goes beyond the ideological left and right. It focuses on community-building, where cooperation, networking and reciprocity help build a generalised trust and better citizens. This is the essence of social-capital: a civic-minded and public-spirited society with a sense of belonging.
Of course, lines must be drawn for such an approach to succeed, but these should not be based on one’s background, creed or identity. Different identities can reconcile if they share basic common values such as respect and tolerance.
I see this everyday through my son, whose best friends come from different social, national and religious backgrounds. Hats off to the Sliema primary school for this.
In modern liquid Malta, politicians and policymakers can learn through such examples. We cannot go back to an inexistent idyllic nostalgia of a society that might never even have existed. But we can invest in policies which aim to reconcile different identities within a basic framework of values.
Sure, there will always be challenges, inequalities and forms of exclusion, but a lack of social capital investment can fuel rampant individualism, self-centred short-sightedness, intolerance and social ghettos.
