Let me dream! : transforming educational futures

Abstract

The issue of underachievement in education has preoccupied educators over the past century at least. And yet, there has been little progress made in addressing the problem, to the extent that large groups of students fail to flourish intellectual in a school by environment. Moreover, whether we are looking, at the United States, Europe, or Asia the groups of students who underachieve and who drop out of the educational enterprise have a similar identify. They generally share one or more of the following aspirations: namely, they have what can be broadly called a working class background, are migrants or children of migrants, and/or come from an ethnic "minority" background. The report I will be critically engaging with in this paper, namely To Learn More than I have: The Educational Aspirations and Experiences of the Maltese in Melbourne (Terry, Borland & Adams, 1993) looks squarely in the face of these facts. reflecting on the issue as it applies to one particular group of students who underinvest in education, namely chil- dren of Maltese migrants. What I will attempt to do in this paper is to weave a narrative, drawing on the Terry et al. study as well as on my own research and experiences in education, to make sense of the lived realities of this group of people. Needless to say, this is in my ways my story, my interpretation, informed as it might be by many interaction with people and ideas. I cannot claim to represent the voices of the subjects we are considering, namely Maltese background children in Melbourne. That would not only be pretentious, but undignified. All that I can offer are some critical reflections which could be of some use to the Maltese community in Victoria as they seek to empower themselves and their children.