Pergamon Int ] Edutammal DevehPpmrnt, Vol 17, No 3. pp 335-351. 1997 © 1997 El:~vtcr Sctence Ltd. All nghu reserved Pnn~'d m Great Bntam 0738-0593/97 $17 IN) ÷ 0 04) PII:S0738-0593(96)00078-8 EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN POST-COLONIAL MALTA: CHALLENGES FOR A MEDITERRANEAN MICRO-STATE RONALD G. SULTANA Faculty of Education. University of Malta. Msida, Malta Abstract--This article presents a critical and evaluative account of the growth of educational provi- sion in the small Mediterranean island of Malta. Education is defined not only in terms of its con- tribution to the economy, as in human capital theory, but also in terms of its facilitation of human development generally, as defined in the United Nations Development Programme. Both quant,tative and qualitative dimensions of the educational service are therefore addressed, and it is pointed out that the tardiness and accelerated nature of educational development in this post-colonial micro-state has led to a number of challenges. These are described and placed within the economic, political, social and cultural context that currently defines the Maltese islands. ~ 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd INTRODUCTION Education can be considered as one among a number of features of a social formation that contribute to human development. The latter is conceived differently by a number of develop- ment agencies, depending on their respective philosophies and ideological orientations. The United Nations Development Programme (1995), for instance, thinks of human develop- ment in terms of a particular goal, that of cre- ating 'an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives', widening people's choices and increasing the level of their achieved well-being. Besides health care, politi- cal freedom, guaranteed human rights and self-respect, education figures highly as a con- tributing element to the fulfilment of these aspirations. Agencies such as the World Bank, for instance, adopt a human capital framework and tend to look at people as a means to an end, that is as inputs to increasing production. In this model (cf. Schultz, 1961), education is an indus- try which generates the desired amounts of functional manpower, so that the development of educated and skilled people, their number, quality and utilization, is the most meaningful index of the wealth-production capacity of a country. Education produces an increase in general and in job-specific knowledge which individuals can subsequently apply in an expand- ing economy, both to better utilize new techni- cal developments and to generate innovations. The result is a marked pay-off in terms of increased production, yielding greater national wealth, corporate profits and individual wages (cf. Sobel, 1978; Sultana, 1994a; Violas, 1981). Human capital theory approaches have been very influential in Malta ~ from the post-war period (Balogh and Seers, 1955) to the present day (cf. Sultana, 1992a, pp. 2, 159,289), irrespec- tive of whoever was in government, and as is evident in the various Development Plans that closely link education with economic progress (Baldacchino, 1993; Sultana, 1992a). What I intend to do in this article is to associate myself rather more closely with the less technocratic, more emancipatory definition of education that is intimated by the UNDP perspective, in order to consider both quantitative and qualitative issues in educational provision in Malta. Adopt- ing such a framework leads one to ask: 'How has educational expansion increased the well-being of Maltese citizens?' Of course, the quantitative dimension of the question is rather more easily addressed, given that 'all' it requires is a set of statistics to measure the trends and direction in the delivery of the service. The qualitative dimen- sion, signalled by the woolly phrase 'well-being' of people, is much more subjective and less amenable to measurement. But for all that, the UNDP approach would have us insist, it is no less important. Indeed, the treatment of people as "human capital', as units that contribute to production, obfuscates and mystifies the rela- tionship that exists between education and pro- duction on the one hand, and domination and 335