A hundred years of history teaching and learning in Malta

Abstract

In the Maltese educational system, history teaching can be traced back to at least the 19th century when popular education was established in Malta. It was in the year 1800 that Malta became part of the British Empire and this political development imposed on Maltese students the learning of the history of the mother country. On the other hand Malta had, since the Middle Ages, a strong predisposition towards the Italian/Sicilian culture and this led to a strong Italianisation of both the language of teaching and the subjects taught. This was the background to the evolution of the history lesson in Maltese schools at least up to the beginning of the 20th century. At this time Anglicisation became evermore prominent in local education and linguistic and cultural pressure determined a reform in the history syllabus which became much more ‘English’ in form and tendency. All this changed once again with Malta’s political independence from Great Britain in 1964 when national issues and interests became embedded in the new history syllabus. From the 1960s onwards, therefore, Maltese schools taught more the history of Malta, with British history being substituted for European and World History.