Symposia Melitensia

UOM JUNIOR COLLEGE RESEARCH PAPERS

Issue no. 1 (2004) ‒ Issue no. 2 (2005)

Symposia Melitensia, Number 1 (2004)

University of Malta Junior College, ISSN 1812-7509, Lm4

Contents:

The expulsion of the Jesuits from Malta in 1639 

Joe Zammit-Ciantar

Before the Birth of Real Popular Education in British Colonial Malta 

George Cassar

Il-Ħrafa Maltija "Is-Seba’ Tronġiet Mewwija" (AT 408) 

George Mifsud-Chircop    

Les ‘abus’ de la psychanalyse dans l’Enfance d’un chef de Jean-Paul Sartre

Anthony Aquilina

A Simplified Strategy for Evaluating Change in Plant Communities

Sandro Lanfranco

L’apport des auxiliaries du discours maltais en tant qu’appuis de l’oral

Anne Marie Bezzina           

Junior College Assessment Practices: Perspectives of the Departments

Jacqueline Pace

The Determination of the Mechanical Parameters of the General Uniform Polygonal Lamina

Victor Cilia-Vincenti

Biographical information about contributors

ISSN: 1812-7509

Review of Symposia Melitensia, Number 1 (2004), in The Sunday Times

Quite literally just a few weeks after the publication of Fora Melitensia, an excellent journal by the department of Maltese, the Junior College of the University of Malta is now launching its own academic journal, Symposia Melitensia, containing eight refereed contributions by its members of staff. Such remarkable academic activity is just one piece of evidence of the dedication and effort that has gone into making the College such a great success in its mere ten years of existence.

          It is a journal that is a great credit to all those involved in its production. With an extremely professional look about it, it has set an excellent standard which future issues should try to retain.

Were the Jesuits expelled in 1639?

Symposia Melitensia is edited by Joe Zammit-Ciantar, who also contributed the first paper on ‘The expulsion of the Jesuits from Malta in 1639’.

          Quite a bit has been written about what has been called the ‘expulsion’ of the Jesuits from Malta, less than 50 years after they had been invited to come to run the Collegium Melitense, the forebear of our university.

          Basing himself on a detailed manuscript five-page account he has discovered in archives at Modena, Zammit-Ciantar’s account postulates a fresh interpretation of the event.

          The basic facts are well-known. Grand Master Lascaris, whom we only tend to remember for his surly expression and killjoy reputation, published a bando on Carnival Saturday 1639 forbidding the wear of masks for the following three days, a decision which was somehow blamed on his Jesuit confessor who had refused to advise him to the contrary. When a young Italian knight was marched off to the prison in Fort St Elmo to ruminate on his decision to make a satirical remark on the subject, his friends ran to the Jesuit college to make their feelings known in no uncertain manner.

          The knights made their way inside and started an orgy of pillaging, casting out to the crowd below the turkeys and chickens on the well laid-out tables and helping themselves to the fine wine from the cellars, which must have contributed in no small way to obfuscate the minds. The rector found refuge in a well.

          The outcome was that some of the Jesuits were advised to leave, a decision which, according to the writer of the manuscript, was welcomed by the people. Still, ‘four fathers, two fratelli, and Fr Spagnolo’ (although other sources differ) were allowed to stay behind, which indicates that the 1639 expulsion was just the expulsion of some individuals and seems to have been a rather spontaneous action rather than that of the Order as such. That was to come 130 years later, as part of the larger political development during Pinto’s magistracy.

Popular Education (1800-1836)

Dr George Cassar, who has written extensively on the development of local education, writes about ‘Before the Birth of Real Popular Education in British Colonial Malta (1800-1836)’.

 In many ways the Royal Commission of 1836 was a watershed for the island, since it set in motion not a few changes that were to have dramatic effects on the colony’s social and political development, not least the idea of the liberty of the press.

          The Order had no system of public education as such, leaving desultory efforts in the hands of the Church. The well-intentioned reforms of the French did not have time to take root, owing to the insensitivity of the new authorities to local cultural values.

          Vassalli’s ideas and plans for a national educational system were indeed far-seeing. He suggested the establishment if 30 schools, and surmounts the endemic problem of public finance with the observation (still topical) that ‘being such a necessary establishment it should not even be pointed out how to provide such a small sum, because the authorities, when they want, have in hand all the possible and imaginable resources’.

          The British did not do much to increase the quantity and the quality of public instruction but when it was the same in the homeland. Moreover there must have always been the hidden fear that any attempt to introduce public instruction would be interpreted by the local Church as an attempt to introduce Protestantism. Still, from the late 1820s there was, as Cassar points out, ‘a greater aptitude for the setting up of schools, at least in the private sector’. By the 1830s Malta was rife for the ‘revolution in the educational system’ that was to follow the Commission’s report.

‘The Seven Inhabited Citrons’

Another member of the department of Maltese, Dr Gorg Mifsud-Chircop writes about ‘Il-Hrafa Maltija “Is-Seba’ Trongiet Mewwija” (AT 408)’.

          The tale of ‘The Seven Inhabited Citrons’ still survives in Maltese folklore, a variant of which the author heard only last year (2003) in Zejtun.

          In this, the first study on Maltese Märchen, Mifsud Chircop sees a complex combination which does not follow Vladimir Propp’s model. The plot which unifies a male hero and a victimized heroine ‘may hint at a combination of two older narratives’. There are three narratives which follow one other but which are thematically unified because of the transformations that join them together.

          Mifsud Chircop’s paper is a first-class example of how the study of all the aspects of local folklore has progressed and is being academically treated.

‘Discourse markers’ in Maltese

Two other articles are contributed by members of the department of French. Area coordinator of modern languages Dr Anthony Aquilina writes about ‘Les “abus” de la psychanalyse dans L’Enfance d’un chef de Jean-Paul Sartre’, while Anne-Marie Bezzina discusses ‘L’apport des auxiliaries du discours maltais en tant qu’appuis de l’oral’.

          In the structure of L’Enfance d’un chef (1939), Aquilina suggests that Sartre appears to be fascinated enough by Freud’s ideas of the ‘super-ego’ and the ‘ego’ to attempt a ‘burlesque sort of psycho-analysis’ of the growing hero Lucien Fleurier.

Ms Bezzina’s paper, also written in French, concerns the so-called ‘discourse markers’ in Maltese (eh, mm, u, mh, etc.). Although these ‘insignificant’ words may not seem to affect directly the semantic content and the syntax, yet they are essential to provide a less mechanical and less artificial way of speaking and writing. Bezzina concludes that ‘they interact with intonation in supporting utterance structure, but they also serve to reduce the strength of potentially offending messages and to ensure a sound thematic structuring of the text’.

Ms. Jacqueline Pace from the department of physics, who has carried out research on assessment and examinations, presents a paper entitled ‘Junior College Assessment Practices: Perspectives of the Departments’.

This is a most important paper which should greatly interest not only educators but also parents and the students themselves, who have to bear the brunt of assessments.

There is a desire to modify the Matsec examinations by including a measure of institution-based assessment, although here, one feels, the treading has to be most careful given our local realities. Another practical suggestion is the introduction of a credit system in the Junior College (but even here the experience at University has not been all that happy since we have ended with a particular crossbreed which is not wholly one nor the other and has succeeded to stretch stress rather than reduce it). The suggested Junior College diploma is also a positive idea and it could be given special value for those (few, but still not insignificant) who do not continue to University.

Evaluating change in Plant Communities

Sandro Lanfranco, area coordinator of science and coordinator of the department of environmental studies, proposes ‘A Simplified Strategy for Evaluating Change in Plant Communities’.

Mr Lanfranco discusses the problems of time constraints when it comes to evaluating changes in plant communities in the case of impact assessments. He proposes a more objective approach by following a semi-quantitative approach to determine the relative abundance of particular species. This method, the author explains, has been tested with computer-generated scenarios but its applicability in the field is scheduled for this year (2005) and the next.

Victor Cilia-Vincenti from the department of mathematics, studies ‘The Determination of the Mechanical Parameters of the General Uniform Polygonal Lamina’ and proposes easier methods for their computation.

Mr Cilia-Vincenti proposes a method to determine mechanical parameters (mass, mass-centre location, and moments of inertia) in general uniform polygonal lamina.

The worked example presented illustrates how the theorem makes it possible to evaluate easily the numerical results and also lends itself well for the purposes of computerization.

Louis J. Scerri M.A.