Impetus to geography teaching in 19th century elementary schools in Malta

Abstract

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Elementary School curriculum in Malta was a very narrow one. In 1850 when Canon Paolo Pullicino, the newly appointed Director of Education on his return from Dublin, where he had gone to study the Irish Education system, initiated the first attempts towards reform, he was so disappointed with the existing system of education in Malta, that he devoted a great part of his First Report (1850)1 to expounding its main defects. He criticised the quality of instruction being imparted in the twelve primary schools in Malta and the two schools in Gozo, and complained that the instruction given was inadequate.