Two former education ministers have shot down a university academic’s suggestion of introducing politics as a subject in post-secondary schools. Former Nationalist minister Louis Galea and former Labour minister Evarist Bartolo dismissed the idea as too simplistic and said it would hardly address a much larger and deeper problem. They acknowledged the need for schools to foster better citizens and virtuous future politicians but insisted that introducing a new school subject could be futile and possibly divisive. Rather, elements of politics and policy should be integrated into existing school subjects and especially designed workshops, they said. Last month, the University’s head of the public policy department, Mario Thomas Vassallo, told Times of Malta that it is pointless granting 16-year-olds the right to vote if the education system intends to continue shunning politics in the classroom out of fear of labels or controversy. He blamed the declining voter turnout and young people’s reluctance to engage in politics and their desire to leave the country on the lack of political education in schools. Vassallo is pushing to introduce the subject at Junior College and all other...
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