Vassalli's plan for primary education in Malta (1796)

Abstract

One of the first - possibly the first - plans for primary education in Malta was the one advanced by Michael Anthony Vassalli, published in 1796. This plan is a four-page section entitled Progetto which is itself part of a forty-two page treatise introducing his Ktyb yl Klym Malti mfisser byl-Latin u byt-Talyan sive liber dictionum Melitensium, hoc est Michaelis Antonii Vassalli Lexicon Melitense-Latino-Italum published in Rome by Antonio Fulgoni. Very rightly, Vassalli is regarded as the 'Father of the Maltese Tongue', and it was indeed mainly to further the cause of his native language that Vassalli promulgated the plan under discussion.