Adult Education by Television
Mario A. Azzopardi B.A. (Educ.) (Hons.), Dip. Educ. (Adm. & Mgt.)
A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty ofEducation in Part Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree ofMasters in Education Uuiversity ofMalta.
May,2009
ABSTRACT
Mario A. Azzopardi Adult Education by Television
Malta has a long tradition of adult education that dates back to at least 1850. Yet, compared to other EU member states, the percentage of adults aged between 25 and 64 participating in education and training is relatively low. In a globalised environment, where the world seems to be shrinking, and businesses half-way around the world can exert as great an impact on a business as the one right down the road, our small nation-state cannot allow such a large human capital to remain passive in a growing and competitive knowledge society.
There are a vast array of reasons why so many adults opt to be so passive to learning. While many argue over these reasons, a phenomenon has been taking place and it has been affecting the Maltese society over the past two decades. This is pluralism in television. As a consequence of this occurrence more Maltese adults are participating in television programmes, with the result that more adults watch locally originated television programmes.
The latest statistics show diagrammatic opposite trends. On the one hand, learning activity declines as the adult becomes older. Concurrently, adults watch more television as they become older, probably because they have more leisure time.
Within this scenario, it is logical to ask: how can television be an effective stakeholder in adult education in Malta?
II The question becomes more relevant, when one of the channels available in Malta, the educational channel E22 is facing an uncertain future.
This research will explore why E22 has landed itself in this uncertainty and the rationale behind it becoming an effective transformative agent for adult education.
M.Ed.(Adult Education) May,2009
Adult Education, Television
iii Acknowledgments
During my research, I merged two distinctive areas: adult education and television.
With regards to the discourse about adult education and lifelong learning, I have to admit that I am entirely indebted to Prof. Kenneth Wain, Prof. Peter Mayo and Prof. Carmel Borg. They were my mentors throughout the whole journey, always ready to encourage me and give me all the assistance I needed.
I would like to thank Jacques Sdberras (CEO, National Commission on Higher Education) who has helped me to concretise the country's needs in education for the future.
As regards the local television industry, I have liberally depended on my gained knowledge and experience. In the last months before I submitted this dissertation, I worked closely with the Management Board of E22, and in particular with Fr. Joseph Borg (a member on the Board). Besides being an expert in the field of broadcasting, Fr. Borg helped me to gain more knowledge about broadcasting. I am also greatly indebted to Keith Fearne (former CEO of Maltanet a subsidiary of Maltacom plc before this company was privatised) and Jack Mizzi (Content Manager of GO plc ). Both of them guided me about the new technologies. This is the subject of Chapter FIVE.
Moreover, this thesis could never have been completed without the academic supervision of Dr. Carmen Sammut who has unreservedly dedicated many hours of guidance to organise my thoughts. She led me to other literature on media studies and tutored me on how to present the following academic work in a rational way.
Finally, I thank my wife Louise and my daughter Myrna. They did the proof reading and above all, supported me throughout.
Mario A. Azzopardi May,2009
v Contents
Acknowledgements Page v
Chapter ONE Replacing gloominess with confidence 1
Chapter TWO Walking on a widened tightrope 11
Chapter THREE It is doable 29
Chapter FOUR In the wilderness 38
Chapter FIVE The future is bright 50
Chapter SIX Tackling the crunch 59
Chapter SEVEN And the winner is ... 69
Chapter EIGHT The way ahead 81
Bibliography 111
vi List of Tables:
Table 1: Total Daily Average Audience Page 41
Table 2: Description of Programmes Produced by E22 and Transmitted on TVM (Autumn 2008) 44
Table 3: E22's schedule from 13 to 17 October 2008 45
Table 4: Role of Present Staff at E22 47
List of Charts
Chart 1: Progress towards meeting the benchmark in Lifelong Leaming (EU average) 36
Chart 2: TV Viewing and Adult Leaming Compared to Age Groups 36
Chart 3: Participation of adults in education and Training (2005-2006) 81
Chart 4: Proposed Organisational Structure for E22 90
Appendices
Appendix 1: Link page for Lura jil-Klassi 99
Appendix 2: Sample Worksheets used during Lura fil-Klassi 101
Appendix 3: Application Form 108
Vil viii Chapter ONE
Replacing gloominess with confidence
The summer of 2008 featured disquieting information.
In July, the Council of the European Union published a Draft Progress Report for 2008 on "Delivering lifelong learning for knowledge, creativity and innovation". In Malta, the percentage of the population aged 25-64 participating in education and training in the four weeks prior to the survey in 2005-2006, stood at 5.5% (CEU, 2008). The participation rate benchmark set by the EU for 2010 is 12.5%. The EU- 27 average in 2006 stood at 9.6%. Malta ranks nineteenth out of the twenty seven member states.
In September, Prof. Kenneth Wain, former Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Malta, long-time lecturer and strong advocator for lifelong learning since the late seventies, as well as one of the main architects of the national minimum curriculum, underscored the need for a national strategic plan for lifelong learning. Malta, he said, has not yet completely understood the concept of lifelong 1 learning, or taken it seriously, while it appeared in every EU policy paper •
Prof. Wain was participating in a political forum, in the presence of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Education. No one commented otherwise on Profs. Wain' s speech.
1 As reported in The Times, September 5 2008, p. 48 A few days later, I was perturbed during a research interview with Francis Borg, Permanent Secretary2 at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport (henceforth referred to as Ministry of Education), who admitted that the educational 3 channel in Malta, E22 , did not have a structure and that by summer 2009, a political decision has to be taken on the future of this channel within the National Broadcasting Policy.
During the same interview, it was revealed that the responsibility for E22 was no longer under the aegis for the Directorate for Educational Services4 but the Ministry of Education had assumed direct responsibility for the day-to-day administration of the channel. The Minister had appointed5 a Management Committee to oversee this operation. It is chaired by the Permanent Secretary 6 within the Ministry ofEducation •
This decision was taken notwithstanding that in a recent call for applications7 for Service Managers in the Directorate for Educational Services, one of those appointed was earmarked for lifelong learning. In this particular Service Manager's portfolio, it was specifically stated that among the duties, the person selected had to 8 "manage and participate in matters related to educational broadcasting ".
2 Since I conducted the interview, Mr. F. Borg has moved on as Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Social Policy. As a result he relinquished the post of Chairman of the Management Board of E22. 3 Formerly known as Channel 12, Education Channel and Education 22. Henceforth, I will refer to this channel as E22. 4 The Department of Education was reformed into two directorates as a result of the Education Act, 1991 (Chapter 327) of the Maltese Laws, by the amendment XIII. 2006.6. The two Directorates are called: Directorate for Quality and Standards in Education (Part II, Article 8) and the Directorate for Educational Services (Part II, Article 10). 5 The first meeting of the Management Committee was held on August 5, 2008. 6 The members of the Management Committee are Rev. Joseph Borg and Ms Nadette Bugeja. The present Head of E22 is called for these meetings but is not a member of the Management Committee. 7 Circular Reference AE 1/2008, dated January 4, 2008 8 The Service Manager (Lifelong Leaming) was excluded from the Management Committee but was invited for the Management Meetings as an observer after January 2, 2009.
2 The decision to reassign E22 to the Ministry rather than the Directorate for Educational Services may be interpreted that it is in conflict with the present legislature, namely the Broadcasting Act of 1991. In the Second Schedule, National 9 Broadcasting Plan , it is specified that pluralism is to be established in Maltese television and that "an educational channel will also be operated in conjunction with the Department ofEducation" 10 (my italics).
There are two reasoned arguments that sustain why E22 should return within the remit of the Directorate of Educational Studies.
Malta is a politically polarised country. Broadcasting is one of the most hotly contested political issues on the island. The political party in opposition (whichever it was) over the past forty-five years has consistently made serious accusations about the political bias in national broadcasting. The cause of these allegations always stemmed from the selection of the CEO, and from the composition of the Board of Directors and/or Editorial Board in charge of the News Department of the 11 public broadcaster PBS • Both boards are selected by the Minister responsible for broadcasting, which currently (that is in 2009) falls within the portfolio of the Minster of Education.
Therefore, to have E22 within the remit of the Directorate for Educational Services will safeguard it from a perception of backroom political manoeuvring. So far, E22 has always stirred away from political squabbling.
The second cause which supports the argument that E22 ought to be the responsibility of the Directorate for Educational Services stems from the argument that the public broadcaster has over the past years lost most of its public service
9 Last amended, XV. 2000.16. 10 Maltese Laws, Chapter 350, Broadcasting Act of 1991 and subsequent amendments, as available on http://docs.justice.gov.mt/lom/legislation/english/leg/vol_9/chapt350.pdf. Quote is from p.35, Second Schedule, Article 2 (3). 11 Pubic Broadcasting Services Ltd (PBS) operates the national television station TVM and two radio stations, Radio Malta and Magic,
3 obligation. Even prominent persons in high positions at PBS have criticised and eventually resigned due to the fact that PBS has ignored the regulations in the 12 Public Statement oflntent (PSI) under the excuse of profits .
When PBS was placed under the portfolio of the Ministry of Education, the philosophy behind the choice of programming did not show any improvement for positive discrimination in educational content during programmes.
On the other hand, it is one of the general functions of the Directorate for Educational services to: ... promote, support, coordinate and ensure lifelong learning services and initiatives, including educational and cultural initiatives within the community, elearning and distance learning, adult education, evening classes and other initiatives relating to complementary education and services for persons having specific learning difficulties. (Education Act) 13
At first glance, the three concerns highlighted may be judged to be unrelated to one another. Upon deeper reflection, it becomes clear that television may be an effective tool for further dissemination of adult education in Malta, thus involving a higher percentage of the population in lifelong learning. As a member of the EU, Malta has subscribed to reach the objectives and benchmarks.
The infrastructure of educational television is already available, and valuable experience has been gained throughout sixty years of educational broadcasting in Malta. It is therefore reasonable that one may argue in favour of a strong case for educational television to continue to operate in conjunction with the Directorate for Educational Services and that one of its prime roles should be to disseminate adult education and celebrate good practices in lifelong learning.
12 Concern expressed by Mr. John Camilleri in his letter of resignation from Chairman of Editorial Board of PBS which was made public. The resignation took place in August, 2007. At that time, PBS as an entity was not under the remit of the Minister of Education. 13 Education Act of Malta (Chapter 327), Article l l.2(h). Available online on http://www.education.gov.mt/ministry/doc/pdf/acts/edu_laws/edu_laws_2007/chapt327.pdf
4 Also, published documents and one which is unpublished have consistently highlighted the need to incorporate television as part of the lifelong learning strategy.
Adult education by television already documented In the Report on the National Consultation Process on Lifelong Learning (2001) 14, in Section A, Background, the Report refers to the electoral manifesto of 1998 of the party in government and quotes: Major efforts will be made in the field of adult education, with special emphasis on those who left school early. This will be incorporated into the concept of lifelong learning. Wider use will also be made of distance learning through radio, T.V., and computer. (my italics).
More deliberate is the unpublished 2003 Draft Strategic Plan, entitled 15 "Lifelong Learning in Malta: Towards the Learning Society" • When identifying the Supporting Agencies (Section E), the Draft Strategic Plan refers to the DFSAE 16 (Department of Further Studies & Adult Education which is now defunct ) and specifies that 'it is moreover, responsible for developing Channel 2i7 on cable Television into an educational TV channel by producing good quality educational and cultural programmes for schools and for a medium for distance learning.' (Unknown 2003: 197 - bold words are attributed to the author/s)
14 Report available on the website of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth & Sport, http://www.education.gov.mt/edu/edu_division/report_lll_Ol.htm 15 This Draft Strategic Plan is still unpublished. The copy I read did not bear the name of the author/s. Still, the word among those in the know is that Profs. Kenneth Wain is one of the authors (if there are more than one) of this Draft Strategic Plan. 16 After the thorough restructuring of the Education Department, the services offered by DFSAE have been incorporated within the Directorate for Educational Studies, Student Services Department. As per circular OPM 25/2008 of 24 November 2008, a Director for Lifelong Learning will be appointed in 2009. It is still unclear the composition of this department and whether E22 will be part of this Director's remit. 17 As already noted in footnote 3 on page 2, Channel 12 is now known as E22.
5 When the unpublished Draft Strategic Plan lists the strategy, it is earmarked that, The University's underutilised radio 18 and the DFSAE's still more under utilised and scantly resourced, television channel 22 are already existing distance learning resource that would complement web-based learning for a rich provision. The three partners (that is, DFSAE, the University and the Malta College of Arts, Science & Technology) should work together for an integrated and comprehensive national policy on distance education which would involve the sharing of resources and expertise between the partners in order to rationalise the service, avoid duplication and economise on expense.' [Unknown 2003 :205 - bold words are attributed to the author/s]
Notwithstanding these statements, the future of E22 is still in a shroud of doubt. Most of the programming scheduled on E22 continues to be far off the mark. It is not addressing the key issues and challenges in Education and Training as indicated in the National Reform Programme: Malta's Strategy for Growth & Jobs - Addressing the Lisbon Agenda (MCC 2005).
In building the rationale for E22 as an effective stakeholder (that is a distance learning resource in adult education), there is the need to:
• map out the relevance of lifelong learning, and eventually the role of adult education, as a means to face the challenges of globalisation.
• Discuss the impact of television on the audience and find out if there is an audience for educational television.
• Identify the roots of the present concerns that are jeopardising the future of educational broadcasting in Malta.
• Examine the technology of the immediate future and further study how its availability will overcome the issue of interactivity between the learner, the teacher and other learners.
• Assess some theorists' perspectives in adult education and identity the relevance of their theories in formulating a future for adult education by television.
18 The author is referring to Campus FM.
6 • Explore a case scenario of one of the programmes produced by E22. • Propose a road map so that adult education by television can become an undeniable reality as part of a lifelong strategy, essential for a modern evolving small nation competing in a globalised world.
Methodology The ability to analyse this research on adult education by television is the result of a 27-year career as an educator. Currently, I am occupying the post of Service Manger (Lifelong Learning) within the Directorate for Educational Services - a position that keeps me in touch on a daily basis with adults who have chosen to continue learning. This experience has served to mature me further in this research.
Concurrently with my career as an educator, I have worked for the past 30 years as a free-lancer in the local television industry. For a short period of time, I also served as the officer-in-charge of the Educational Broadcasting Unit, the precursor of E22.
This dual experience has brought me in contact with several key stakeholders who have shaped both sectors in Malta.
Besides my personal experience and my readings, I opted for what Patton (1980:26) termed as the interview guide approach. I decided on the sequence and working of questions. Topics and issues were covered and specified in advance in outline form. The sequence and working of questions was decided during the course of the interview. Therefore, there was an increase in the comprehensiveness of the data collected. Logical gaps in data could be anticipated and closed. In all cases, interviews remained fairly conversational and situational. Due to my knowledge of this field and the choice of leading stakeholders, important and salient points were not omitted.
7 All interviewees selected are knowledgeable of the subject matter, experts in interaction and communication. During the past years, I have worked professionally with most of the interviewees; therefore I was in a unique position to enjoy pre-established rapport with them. Hence they knew that I am also knowledgeable of the subject matter such that the interview could be conducted in an informed manner.
Yet, as Cohen et al. (2003 :279) recommend, the ethical dimension of the interview was followed rigorously, ensuring informed consent, guarantees of confidentiality, beneficence and non-malfeasance.
With the exception of some instances, the problem of comparability of responses was not a detrimental issue because each interviewee was interviewed about a different aspect of the field of study.
Over a period of twenty months, I interviewed the following (in alphabetical order): Dr. Kevin Aquilina, CEO of Malta Broadcasting Authority; Stephen Azzopardi, Head of E22; Rev. Joseph Borg, Lecturer at Centre for Communication Technology at the University of Malta and member on the Management Committee of E22; Francis Borg, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport and Chairperson of the Management Committee of E22; Juan Borg Manduca, Director of the Institute of Information and Communication Technology, which is one of the Institutes that forms part of the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST); Dr. James Calleja, CEO of the Malta Qualifications Council; Profs. Juanito Camilleri, Rector of the University of Malta; Bruce Clarke, Head of Leaming and Engagement, Swindon Borough Council, UK; Michael Cohen, President of the Association of Local Councils (Malta); Albert Debono, CEO of Public Broadcasting Services; Anthony DeGiovanni, Director of the Department of Further Studies and Adult Education (DFSAE); John Demanuele, presenter of 'Lura fil-Klassi'; Moyra Felice, producer of 'Lura fil-Klassi'; Jack Mizzi, Content Manager at GO plc.; Jacques Sciberras,
8 CEO of the National Commission for Higher Education (NCHE); and Robert Sultana, Director, IT Services, University of Malta.
Since conducting the interviews, Kevin Aquilina, Stephen Azzopardi and Francis Borg have moved on to other posts. Anthony DeGiovanni has retired.
I interviewed two other persons who preferred to remain anonymous.
Statistics collaborating my arguments are available and reliable. The sources include: National Office of Statistics, official documents published by the Malta Government, statistics gathered through my office of work, that is the Adult Learning Unit, and Eurostat.
I also selected a case study of a locally produced programme to illustrate what adult education by television would be like. The programme that I chose is Lura JU Klassi. I interviewed the presenter John Demanuele and the producer-director Moyra Felice because I wanted to portray 'what it is like' to produce such a programme. I opted to give what Geertz (1973) describes as 'thick description' of the experience the protagonists lived. I followed Nisbet and Watt's (1984) counsel and I avoided journalism, selective reporting, an anecdotal style, pomposity and blandness. Thus I hope that future presenters and programme producers in adult education by television will have a close-up of the reality of life behind the cameras.
9 Conclusion The rationalisation for E22 as an effective stakeholder in adult education is not an impulsive or futile exercise. It earns the considerable weight from our need to reckon that being a small island-state we are heavily influenced by neoliberal globalisation. This is not simply economic domination by a number of conglomerates. Globalisation means also the imposition of a monolothic thought and prohibiting the public from imagining diversity in egalitarian, horizontal terms (Ledwith 2005:20).
Faced with these challenges, we cannot perpetuate a status quo in the medium of television, in particular by letting E22 be the victim of lack of vision. Globalisation presents increasingly complex, interlinking and overlapping oppressions that are poorly understood and therefore infrequently challenged.
E22 has a force and ability to work towards empowering the people to be critically reflective. Television has infinite transformative learning capabilities, both as a source and as a resource. E22 can contribute to the building of new epistemologies, new ways of seeing the world, which in turn lead to new ontologism, new ways of being in the world. Television can serve as the pedagogy of difference.
10 Chapter TWO
Walking on a widened tightrope
Watching television is never a politically neutral passive activity. The influences of political elites and neo-liberal capitalism are consistently being preserved through the effective use of commercial television that focuses on economical issues and financial dividends rather than human values.
To ensure the dominance of their philosophy, neo-liberals are now intruding on public broadcasters and forcing them to lose out on the public service obligations unuer the pretext of survival in a free market environment. Public broadcasters are succumbing to the idea that to be able to survive, they need to be commercially viable. The Maltese public broadcaster, Public Broadcasting Services Ltd. (PBS), operators of Television Malta (TVM) has already fallen into this trap.
So far, educational television channels throughout the world have been spared the impregnation of this monolithic thought. However they are still vulnerable because not all educational television channels are self-sufficient and may, to a large extent, depend on public funds.
They are also regularly exposed to the statistics of audience ratings which are generally poor (although the way audience surveys are normally conducted may be 19 biased against educational channels) •
19 Programmes which attract high audience ratings generally depend on the participation of presenters and performers who are likely to draw in audiences due to their track records or on the sensationalism or controversy of the topic discussed during the programme. Educational television aims to present knowledge-based programmes. Due to limited budgets, programmes on educational television do not attract high-profile presenters and performers. Therefore, programmes on educational channels do not create the hype necessary to secure high audience ratings.
11 That educational television has been spared the permeation is not casual or incidental.
The postmodern world, dominated by globalisation, urges a non-stop learning lifestyle. The individual is permanently in a state of becoming, a fact that as Wain (2004) puts it, makes lifelong education (which includes adult education), natural for a human being.
The fact that lifelong education has become natural for a human being makes one of mankind's current favourite pastimes (i.e. watching television), a realistic option to be used for the purpose of transmitting non-formal and informal education. With public broadcasters divesting more of their public service obligations, the same institutions which nourish globalisation realise, that even for their own purpose, the existence of educational television can be strategically important to convey and fulfil at least some of the educational needs of society in facing the challenges of globalisation. Educational television may also help in the process whereby societies retain their unique cultures, promote active citizenship, while still functioning within the wider globalisation process - what Robertson (1995) calls glocalisation.
Therefore, the validity of each educational channel rests on its raison d'etre. Will it succumb to the rules of the free market environment (similar to the fate of public broadcasters) or will the educational channel serve to empower the adult? It is, metaphorically speaking, a question of widening the tightrope so that it ensures its survival.
Ideally, Malta's educational channel E22 should strike a balance between its obligations towards the students within the formal education years and adult education. In Chapter EIGHT, I will argue that even in reaching the target to suffice the needs for students during their formal education period, may serve the adult education needs. It is to be understood from beginning that E22 cannot exist
12 on its own but has to function in an effective synergy with the new interactive digital media as will be explained in detail in Chapter FIVE.
The growing importance of adult education Although education beyond schooling age is finding a respectable place on today's global agenda, this does not mean that the significance of adult education was recognised in the recent past or with the advent of television. The roots of this discourse go deep into the 17th century. Bogdan Suchodolski (1979:38) commends John Amos Comenius (1592-1670) as the first exponent of continuing education.
In Malta, we do have a long tradition in adult education. Van cell ( 1997) has found that state-sponsored adult basic education in Malta dates back to 1850. It took on the forms of a community school in Hal Tarxicn and vocational schools, Sunday classes and night schools in other villages.
The discourse we now commonly refer to as lifelong education took off, early 1 in the 20 h century following the memorandum connected with the report of the Adult Education Committee of the United Kingdom, published in 1919. This memorandum had concluded that in the new post-war world, "adult education is not a luxury for a limited, exclusive group of specially selected individuals, but an integral part of social life," and should therefore, "be made available for all as well as be made permanent." [Dave 1976:58; Wain 2004:2].
In those early decades of the twentieth century, Britain also played a pivotal role in trade union education, another form of adult education. At the November 1922 meeting of the General Executive Council of the Transport & General Workers Union (TGWU), the Council considered a resolution to call representatives of all the trade groups together 'with a view to arriving at a comprehensive scheme of education for the whole of membership' [Fisher 2005:15].
13 It was after the Second World War that the term lifelong learning gained prominence. This was achieved as a result of organisations such as UNESCO adopting the concept of lifelong education (Lengrand: 1975). Thereafter many publications, emanating from UNESCO, developed the concept further. A milestone in the evolving concepts on adult education in Europe is the 1972 Report, Learning to Be: the World of Education Today and Tomorrow, published by the International Commission on the Development of Education chaired by Edgar Faure, hence the Faure Report.
The Faure Report stated that the normal culmination of the educational process is adult education, and that allowances must be made for adult education in policies and budgets. The Report emphasised that development of adult education through educational strategies must be seen as a priority objective. The value of assisted self-learning is exalted. Teaching should adapt itself to the learner, not vice versa. Further to this, all learners should be able to play a responsible part in their own education and in the totality of the educational enterprise.
The sentiments of the Faure Report were echoed by the Delors Report (1996) in which it was claimed that learning has four pillars - learning: to know; to do; to live together; to be.
These advocacies from the Faure and Delors Reports along with the discourse put forward by Paulo Freire, Malcolm Knowles and others will serve to inspire the 20 arguments on how adult education by television can be developed •
The learning society
Some argue that these reports and others such as the I lam burg declaration are all utopian. Others counter-argue that in today's world there are three major forces,
20 Chapter SIX focuses on this.
14 which are acting in unison to generate an interest in, and the need for, lifelong learning, thus strengthening the need for adult education.
The first of these can be described as the rapidity and constancy of change in society. Educators at all levels have realised that the life skills necessary to cope with rapid change, technological developments, constant concerns, and constantly evolving lifestyles are not completely developed in the formal curriculum at school. Thus, continuous change requires continuous learning.
A second major force and one certainly related to the first, is the continuous march by many adults toward occupational obsolescence. Today, we speak of occupational half-life. This is based on the assumption that enough new developments, techniques, and/or knowledge evolve in such a short period of time that a person becomes almost half as competent to do the job for which he or she was initially trained. Consequently, adults must frequently turn to vocational learning activities in and out of the workplace to maintain or regain competence.
The third force that has helped create the interest in and the need for adult education, deals with the change in lifestyles or value systems affecting so many people. Whether it is pressure from the leisure industry, a movement toward self actualisation, or the many concerns for saving or improving the environment, most people believe that a full and rich life is possible, primarily through the maximisation of individual potentiality. Increasing attention toward interpersonal communication skills, values clarification and self-identity activities, are becoming recognisable in people's learning efforts.
These three forces have done much to heighten and establish an awareness of adult education as a viable means for obtaining necessary knowledge or a skill.
Most of the adult education offered in Malta takes place by extending the classroom-style format of formal education. When interviewing the providers, the
15 main argument brought forward to defend this option is, that in the classroom-style format, the teacher and the learner have constant face-to-face interaction; dialogue can be maintained throughout the whole process and the socialisation process is promoted. This argument is valid but ignores other important elements for adult education.
It cannot be ignored that there are a number of deterrents which affect the level of participation by adults in adult learning. McGivney (1990:79) lists ten deterrents of which seven easily apply to most adults who opt not to follow any course in adult learning.
These are:
• Lack of time.
• Negative effect of school experience.
• Lack of confidence.
• Lack of childcare.
• Lack of day-time opportunities.
• Education is regarded as irrelevant.
• Reluctance to go out to learn in the evening after work.
From my work experience, which includes interaction with adults who opt to apply voluntarily for adult evening courses, I wish to include another deterrent which affects participation. This is peer pressure. A good number of applicants ask to speak to me in confidence before they submit the application. Their concern is the locality of the school where the courses are held. Being inquisitive about such a concern, several applicants confide that they prefer that their close friends do not know that the applicant is 'going back to school'. Having a school or a local council venue in a small village serving as a site where adult courses are held is sometimes problematic for these adult learners who are affected by this form of peer pressure. In an interview with Michael Cohen (President of the Local
16 Councils' Association), he concurred with me that this concern had been expressed by a good number of would-be learners. This concern was expressed to him personally, as Mayor of a relatively small locality and he knows that other Mayors and Councillors have been faced by the same concern.
The deterrents from the McGivney list, which are not applicable to our 21 circumstances, are: lack ofmoney , distance from classrooms and lack of transport. The latter two are a result of Malta being a small island and the enormous widespread of adult learning centres. The issue of distance from classrooms and lack of transport become top priority in the case of Gozitans who have to travel to Malta for such courses. Unfortunately, this issue (of Gozitans having to travel to Malta for adult learning courses) has never been quantified by research, probably because the number is insignificant as there are good adult learning centres in Gozo which suffice most of the demand.
Although one may argue that adult education by television can never be an absolute alternative to the classroom-style learning experience, educational television can, in several instances, be a complementary option and even a resource in itself, because television supplemented by the new interactive digital media has unlimited potential.
Adult education by television lessens the negative effects of eight deterrents, because: • Programmes may be repeated during different times and on different days. Besides that, programmes may be recorded, viewed and re-viewed at one's leisure.
21 Courses at the Lifelong Learning Centre and Evening Classes organised by the Directorate for Educational Services are free for unemployed persons or those who are under the poverty line.
17 • The television is in one's home, which is a completely different environment from that of the classroom. The home setting should not emulate the bad school experience. This scenario may become less conducive to learning if the adult learner is living in a family with social and marital problems.
• The adult learner is on his/her own; thus he/she does not need to be concerned if he/she fails an exercise.
• Being at home, the adult learner does not need to bother him/herself about peer pressure because he/she can watch whatever he/she likes on television without having others know what the adult learner is following on television.
• The home setting will not deprive the parent from constant childcare. If a programme is recorded, the adult learner may watch it while the children are playing or are at sleep. Also, the programme may be stopped if the need arises to tend to the child.
• The local educational television channel is nowadays available on the two platforms (cable and digital terrestrial). The penetration of both platforms amounts to 84%22 of the households. Therefore, the availability of E22 (available on both platforms within the entry tier) can be considered widespread and can be reached by a significant amount of households, hence adults. As a result, when E22 offers adult education, the adult learner eliminates the handicap of distance, means of transport and inclement weather, all of which would otherwise affect the learner's participation if the learner has to go physically to an adult or community learning centre. Still, the fact that 16% of the households do not have access to these platforms is a datum that cannot be overlooked. It may be that most of these households arc close to poverty line, and cannot afford
22 There were 117,761 subscriptions in September 2007 according to News Releases by the National Office of Statistics (Ref. 179/2007). According to the 2005 Census, there were 139,583 households (NSO, 2007)
18 subscription. It may be also that they lack some of the basic learning skills.
• If educational programmes are attractive and relevant to the adult, he/she may overcome the mental blockade that education is regarded as irrelevant.
Adult education by television can offer another added advantage. It can develop into a learning system that brings local and worldwide expertise, as well as situations and illustrations to the comfort of one's home.
The wider use of adult education by television will inevitably change the interaction between educators and learners. The idea of dispensing pre-established knowledge to a vacuum in the form of a student (Freire called it the "banking" approach) should be substituted with a cooperative relationship between the learner and a number of "experts" in a mutual process of problem solving, self-discovery and learning how to learn. This experience can take a globalised dimension rather than a localised one. Therefore, using television as a source, the learner can be conscientiously globalised, and each learner will reach the ultimate state of what Faure (1972) termed as a "learning society" in a globalised sense.
Empowerment at the heart of adult education Commercial television is not interested in helping adults in their lifelong learning process unless there is a financial gain. As already stated, public broadcasters are becoming less inclined to support initiatives which lead to adult education. Educational television can serve as the medium that rebuts inequality using the same tools for educating adults.
Offering adult education on television goes beyond the mere availability of another genre of programming. Bringing local and worldwide expertise and situations to the comfort of one's home may address one of the challenges of adult education: to motivate learners to think and work as conscientious human beings,
19 civilised, coherent and disconnected from evil greed. The goal is that these adults gain empowerment.
It is a fact that neo-liberal globalisation has spread and dominated the world because it effectively monopolised the global mass media systems, in particular, television. It is a fact that television helped to undercut totalitarianism (images of Berliners hacking down the wall is an eloquent example). At the same time, the same medium was quick to bulldoze cultural empiricism that promoted what Barber (2003) and others termed as "Mc World". The idea promoted by the corporate mass media is that there is no alternative to neo-liberalism.
This domination of neoliberalism (or capitalism) can be partially defeated, by using the same weapons (its own gravedigger in Marx and Engels' sense). Adult education can give political, social and economic strength to individuals and communities. It can empower adults, not just to understand our world, but to use that understanding to bring about positive change. Giving ordinary citizens the opportunity to influence and access television programmes empowers them psychologically and forces them to realise that the dominant medium of television is not the sole domain of powerful politicians and the elite. Empowerment is a key concept at the heart of adult education, because it can offer new paradigms, new worldviews which would in turn offer new possibilities to the learning adult.
Empowering adults goes further to incorporate the encouragement and development of self-sufficiency skills with a focus on eliminating the future need for charity or welfare among the individuals of the group. Such a project is not easy to bring into existence, nor is it easy to implement effectively, but it can be done, with conscientious and correct attitudes on the part of those who are helping to empower others. Television is an effective source that can promote and celebrate the process.
20 Adult education can fight apathy This sufficiently shows that television (like education) can never be neutral. Therefore, the political function of television (as Freire argued vis-a-vis education) is to liberate or domesticate. Once television liberates the individual, then it must be stressed that adult education is a critical key in the twenty first century, for the individual to he able to fight apathy. For this to happen, adult education must instil awareness and consequently motivate initiative among citizens.
Both Paulo Freire and Malcolm Knowles have identified relevance in education as the key to direct the energy so that people can act positively. Adults will respond positively when they participate in a process that is rooted in their lived reality. If this is done on television, making full use of learners, there is a more positive impact on their self-esteem as a direct result of the gained attractive reputation normally associated with television appearance.
Consequently, adults will be more willing to start questioning, and so they would make critical connections between their lives and the structures that shape their world. When adults are guided by critical pedagogues, they gain practical knowledge as a result of action research. They will also be able to find a more equitable and sustainable relationship with the wider ecology of the planet of which we are an intrinsic part.
Therefore adults can do action research; a research which besides describing how they and their communities behave in the outside world, also instils a change in mechanism that helps humans and communities to reflect on and change their own systems (Reason & Bradbury, 2001).
From his early days in Brazil, Freire recognised that if people are made to maximise on their energy by using popular education for critical consciousness, then this energy is spent positively on changing their community and the world.
21 People will act on the issues on which they have strong feelings. There is a close link between emotion and the motivation to act. All education and development projects should start by identifying the issues which the local people speak about with excitement, hope, fear, anxiety or anger. [Hope and Timmel, 1984, p8]
People make critical connections when they link cultural, political, social and economic issues with their everyday experience. In Freire's pedagogy, this counters the apathy and passivity, both symptomatic of a culture of silence - an oppression that functions to maintain the obedience to paternalism.
One has to imagine the added impact if the counter-responses are formed with the help of television. These will instil in apathetic adults extra confidence when they are watching their peers on the same medium that is so highly associated with powerful people.
When education makes adults question the contradictions that shape their lives, they will be able to gain critical autonomy. Doyal and Gough (1991) see this as the prerequisite to critical participation in society, the basis of collective action.
Collective action is the process by which people join together to bring about change. If we fail to take our practice beyond local issues and local projects, we fail to realise this potential, and our work is good but not transformative; it is making local lives easier, tolerable and more pleasant, but it is not addressing the root source of the problems which gives rise to injustice.
Adult education is imperative today more than ever before, because the process of globalisation has accelerated and has become a dominant ideology. This is very precarious because like any dominant ideology, principally aided by the use of commercial television, it is being absorbed into the very fabric of people's being, influencing continuously the way we see the world and how we engage with it, creating a false consciousness that does not question reality.
22 Using the same media, in particular television, adults' energy can be directed towards community development practice - a venture that emerges from a strong value base founded on an ideology of equality. Adults require the tools to challenge their inner attitudes and prejudices and work towards a healthy community.
In a small state like Malta, where there is an over-abundance of local councils, directing an adult's energy for building healthy communities, is a pragmatic alternative to petty bi-partisan political pique that often characterises the very existence of these councils. Adult education can be the source to conscientise the citizens to overcome apathy and become the fulcrum of change in the community. In Malta, there is no space available for local councils to provide adult education on television. This does not mean that there are no available channels for this realisation to take place. The educational channel, E22 is underused in this regard. This issue will be discussed in Chapter EIGHT.
Adult education and employability Earlier on, I argued that the same institutions that nourish globalisation realise that even for their own purpose, educational television is inevitable because it can help to fulfil some of their targets. I intend to elaborate on this argument in this section.
The EU is one of the key players in the globalisation process. At the same time the EU firmly believes in adult education. This is not circumstantial; as a key player, the EU wants a "knowledge society" (in recent documents, "knowledge society" has substituted the term "learning society"). The EU envisages a society whose individuals must update and complement their knowledge, their competencies and their skills throughout life, to maximise their personal development and to maintain and improve their position in the labour market. As a result, the EU ensures its competitiveness in a global economy with a clear political objective to become a world leader.
23 Notwithstanding this publicly declared philosophy, the Feira European Councii23 has acknowledged that European adult learning participation rates are lower than those of its major global competitors, whether in higher education, adult education or continuing vocational training. Most of the countries have only employed traditional formal education strategies.
In fact, just fewer than 47 million Europeans (10.2%), aged 25 to 64, stated that they received education or training in the four weeks preceding the survey of 2005-2006. The information collected relates to all education or training irrespective of the relevance to the respondent's current or possible future job. Malta placed at the lower end of the league with 5.5% participation as already stated in Chapter ONE. Sweden ranked first with 32.1 % participation.
In the framework of the "Education and Training 201 O" process the adopted Reference Level of European Average Performance (benchmark) for lifelong learning has been established to be at least 12.5% of the adult working age population (25-64 age group) by 2010. Our objective is to reach a target of 7% of adults in lifelong learning by 2010 (MFEI 2008: 19).
How can countries, markedly below EU benchmark attain the target? The Employment and Training Centre (ETC) in Malta is the front agency responsible for vocational training education (VET) and retraining for adults. In a private conversation, a senior executive at ETC identified that the response for their courses is more than satisfactory but sometimes they cannot meet the demand because of lack of human resources. Our private discussion then turned to the possibility of using a digital television platform to transmit their courses, supplemented by video on-demand (VOD) over the internet until it is made available by the introduction of digital television and other new technologies which will be discussed in detail in Chapter FIVE.
23 Santa Maria Da Feira European Council was held under the EU Portuguese Presidency between 19 and 20 June 2000.
24 ETC is said to be evaluating this concept with a local provider. This is an example of adult education by television aided by the new digital media - an example whereby educational television aides key players in globalisation to reach their targets.
In a private meeting with Jacques Sciberras, CEO of the National Commission for Higher Education (NCHE), this subject also cropped up. He argued that a factor that is contributing towards this low achieving figure is that most of the professions and trades in Malta are not regularised. This means that in most professions, very few are obliged to retrain once the individual is employed. In the teaching profession, the agreement between Government and the Malta Union of Teachers (MUT) stipulates that a teacher is only obliged to attend a three-day in service course if the teacher is called to do so by the Education Officer within the Directorate for Quality and Standards in Education (DQSE). This is likely to happen once every two or three years.
In the case of self-employed individuals, there is no obligation that the person has to undergo a course in the trade or business before or during his/her operation.
E22 can play a vital role in this aspect by organising programmes which are aimed at improving the capacity of the adult in his/her profession, business or trade to be able to adapt to the changing requirements of the knowledge society.
Television as an endorser of adult literacy According to the 2005 Census (NSO, 2007), 26,121 persons or 7.2% of the population is illiterate.
Although total eradication of illiteracy is always the ideal scenario, this figure per se is not alarming at first glance. It becomes disconcerting when minutely examined. 5% of the adolescents aged 10-19 years in Cospicua and Vittoriosa are
25 illiterate. This means that illiteracy is confined to a certain strata of society and to particular geographical areas of the island.
Statistics continue to be glaring when considering the fact that during the academic year 2008-2009, only 89 adults from the Cottonera area (Cospicua, Kalkara, Senglea and Vittoriosa) attended adult learning classes organized by Adult Leaming Unit within the Directorate for Educational Services. 67 (or 75%) were females.
In recent years, literacy specialists have moved away from the view of illiteracy as a disease, the germs of which may be 'eradicated' with the administration of an appropriate drug or vaccination. Rather, literacy is now more broadly viewed as a product of educational, social and economic factors that cannot be radically changed in short periods of time. A new approach to learning is being emphasised. Focus is on measurable learning achievement, ergo the results, rather than mere class attendance or participation which is only a kind of means towards an end.
It may be difficult for television to substitute the teacher-learner's direct contact. On the other hand, we need to acknowledge that by using the formal education format we are not solving the illiteracy issue.
Statistics that are fathered from the Adult Leaming Unit within the Directorate for Educational Services show that there were 245 adults (70 males and 175 females) who were attending courses in Basic English Literacy during 2008. The courses were taking place in 20 local councils in Malta. There are only 2 local councils organizing courses in Basic Maltese literacy for 13 adults. If we add up the attendees, assuming they are all different individuals, this amounts to just less than 1% of the 'illiterate' population according to the 2005 census.
26 E22 has the ability to initiate the endorsement of literacy programmes for the illiterate adult. Educational television can be an effective tool to bring home the message to this target audience that literacy and numeracy is not a mechanical manipulation of letters, words and figures but should be regarded as being located within the social, emotional and linguistic contexts. If an adult abhors school due to past unpleasant experiences, another medium has to be employed to reach-out to this adult. Television can be a medium that can be employed effectively.
In several countries, such as Scotland, educational television is effectively used for what is termed "family literacy learning". The family is viewed as a 'learning unit' and the central assumption is that there is a high degree of correlation between the literacy difficulties of the child and those of the parent. In such a case, it is encouraged that these two areas of difficulty are tackled together. Television is used to drive in this message and detailing the good practices and experiences of other families who accepted to undergo a formal literacy programme as a learning unit. The response is judged as very encouraging.
Conclusion In today's world scenario, there remains little scope in arguing about the eroding of the public service obligations by public broadcasters. Most have succumbed under the pretext of survival in a free market environment. The Maltese public broadcaster is no exception.
E22 is at crossroads because for the past twelve years, since it was launched, its role has never been defined and consequently it has lacked a vision and a policy. Like any other educational channel, E22 walks on a tightrope because it depends heavily on state aid and its programmes are never bound to capture high audience ratings in relation to TVM, the political and other commercial television channels available in Malta. Rather than heading into a limbo, E22 could easily widen this tightrope because there are several areas which our educational channel has not yet explored and which are essential for active citizenship.
27 The widening of this tightrope by making adult education by television at the core of its vision will enable E22 to become a strategic player in the quest of reaching the political target set by EU, that is, participation of the 25-64 age group in lifelong learning should be not less than 12.5%.
On the other hand, adult education could and should make a greater and better use of television (that same medium that helped neo-liberal globalisation spread like wild fire in a short span of time). Then adults will be able to see another side of our own world which is definitely unlike the Mc World that dominates our lives today.
28 Chapter THREE
It is doable
In the previous chapter, the main argument was to find a raison d'etre for the validity of educational television from the point of view of adult education. Now, the focus of this chapter will shift on to why adult education by television is doable. Before answering this question, there is a strong need to evaluate the television's impact on audiences and also assess the reality of an audience for educational television.
Impact on audience Giddens (1991) and Beck (1994) refer to today's societies as risk societies. They are so as a result of the fast changing technology taking place and above all, because these societies are highly influenced by the media, in particular television.
Adult education by television would take a higher dimension were it to serve as a flow of ideas, once citizens are able to make critical assessment of issues and events. The media of the public sphere have the potential to go beyond mere information dissemination. Television is able to stimulate audience activism that could trigger political, economical and social changes - the essence of the whole scope of investing in adult education by television.
This sense of optimism does not exclude the existence of many concerns. These relate to the effects that the use of television can cause on audiences, especially on those who are not media literate.
In fact, for many decades, media research focused on the negative media effects (particularly political, moral and behavioural impacts). On the one hand, institutions (states, political parties, churches) have often exploited the media by
29 sending out their messages while at the same time, they panicked about the media's impact. These institutions have frequently sought to 'control' and restrain media power through various forms of blatant or subtle censorship, media management, spin and PR and counter-propaganda tactics.
With the rise of the broadcasting media, critiques of the early-to-mid twentieth century suggested that the media destroyed the individual's capacity to act autonomously. The most notorious case is the Payne Fund research studies which examined movies and their effects on children. Exponents of the 'Frankfurt School', such as Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, saw the media as a 'culture industry' impacting on a sea of passive individuals, who merely absorbed any information, they were exposed to. The influence of Karl Marx's alienation theory is clearly evident in their perspectives.
The influence of television on its audience continued to be looked upon negatively, even in the sixties. Marshall McLuhan (McLuhan & Fiore, 1967) offered the insight that the medium is the message. Studying the impact of advertisements on consumers, McLuhan adapted a technological determinist position and argued that it was the medium of television that shaped the messages that consumers received. A corollary to that insight was the notion that whoever controlled the medium was in control of the message. Since controlling the medium meant the message would influence the behaviour of the people, advertisers sought to secure the market for their products.
McLuhan (1962) argued that unless vigilant action was taken against the media's impact, the global village had the potential of becoming a place where totalitarianism and terror rule.
With that prevailing mentality, proposing adult education to be disseminated by television meant ostracising the whole concept of adult education by television.
30 However, later empirical studies, suggest a more complex interaction between the media and society, with individuals actively interpreting and evaluating the media and the information it provides. This form of activism gave plausibility to the argument of adult education by television.
Stuart Hall's 1980 publication of "Encoding/Decoding" brought about a change of paradigm to the model of communication. The early theories of the media were constructed on the basis of the unidirectional model Sender ---+ Receiver (where S is the media institution sending the message and the forces that influenced its functioning and R is the receiving part). Hall's model of encoding and decoding of media discourses emphasises an interaction of Sender +-7 Receiver. Hall argues that the meaning of a text lies somewhere between the sender and the viewer. Even though the producer encodes the text in a particular way, the viewer may decode it in a slightly different manner - what Hall calls the margin of understanding. This line of thought has links with social constructivism that is how individuals and groups participate in the creation of their perceived reality. Hall and a string of followers deemed audiences to be empowered individuals who may decide to accept, reject, oppose or negotiate a message.
For instance, Thompson ( 1995) in supporting this paradigm, applied it to counter the concept of media imperialism. He argued that media messages are commonly discussed by individuals in the course of reception and subsequent to it, these messages are transformed through an ongoing process of telling and retelling, interpretation and reinterpretation, commentary, and criticism. By taking hold of messages and routinely incorporating them into our lives, we are constantly shaping and reshaping our skills and stocks of knowledge, testing our feelings and tastes, and expanding the horizons of our experience. Hence Thompson disagreed with those who in the 1940s and 1950s perceived the "hypodermic needle theory" which implied mass media had a direct, immediate and powerful effect on its audiences, as a result of 'shooting' or 'injecting' them with appropriate messages designed to trigger a desired response.
31 In spite of the active audience perspectives, a key theme in Cultural Studies, concern over the power of media structures and ownership matters still persist, especially in political and economic accounts. Television has become intrinsic in our lives, because the media and technology have amalgamated forces to produce a powerful global communications network. Supported by sophisticated telecommunications technology, the media transcend space and time to reach a global audience almost instantaneously.
The mass media have in effect become a series of continuous non-formal and informal adult education, since they are so pervasive and people are opting to interact with them for several hours a day. This implies that we should move away from the pessimistic and deterministic accounts of media influence. On the contrary, we need to realise the potential and positive impact of the media on the audience, without ignoring the concerns. Unfortunately, we sometimes fail to consider that the global media has the power to select, produce and disseminate meanings. Television could also promulgate educational messages that empower citizens to deliberate rationally about social and political processes. Hence, while we have to be clear and knowledgeable about the concerns and potential dangers that television offers us, it is time to look at media influence in a positive way.
Educational Space in the airwaves' jungle There is a strong tendency for us to look at media as a commodity, something to be consumed, rather than a tool for public discourse. Jilrgen Habermas (2005) attributed this as one of the factors for the decay of the public sphere. In order to reap the benefits of television as a tool for adult education, we have to understand the major concerns that television poses to adult education and counteract them. This can be done by giving prominence to media literacy across the curriculum during the formal years of schooling. This aspect has been ignored for a number of years in our state schools, notwithstanding the subject's prominence in the National Curriculum framework (MEDC, 1999: Objective 8, p. 58). In state schools, the first concrete initiative in this regard was taken in November 2008, when three
32 workshops on the theme of media across the curriculum24 were organised and targeted for Education Officers, secondary and primary school teachers. Workshops were open to state, religious and independent schools. Mr. Ian Wall a media educationalist from UK, was the guest speaker.
One of the crucial ideas of media competence is the ability to assess and understand how this industry operates. This is a matter of concern because to conceptualise television as a means of non-formal and informal education, we have to make sure that we as adults are not deceived about the reality we are living and the information we are receiving.
In many parts of the world, public service broadcasting dominance is on the 25 decline (Picard, 2001) . The consumer is now more willing to pay for television, after decades of having been accustomed to having state-funded "free" channels (supported through obligatory television license fees and advertising). Concurrently, in Europe, we experienced the rise of commercial generalist television channels and also of thematic channels. Most of the latter are excellent sources for non-formal and informal education (examples: the Discovery Channels, The History Channel and National Geographic Channels).
These thematic channels which attract limited advertising are constrained to pay-TV. Therefore they have limited access to the public on grounds of financial restrictions (imposing to a large extent the Matthew effect - those who possess money and knowledge will acquire more knowledge and therefore more money). The public service broadcasting and commercial generalist television channels remain, for the time being, "free".
24 Cicular CMeLD 184/2008 dated 22 October 2008. 25 Malta may be considered an exception in this regards. The public broadcaster's audience share was 34.7% as compared to 26.22% audience share of the six other local channels (MBA, 2009: 14)
33 To maintain this status, most (including public service broadcasters who are receiving less money from the country's exchequer) depend on large revenues from commercial entities to produce their own programmes and rely on imports to fill in their 24-hour schedules. This is an area of concern for television as a source of non-formal and informal education, because commercial pressures may be encouraging the marginalisation and tabloidization of information programmes (Curran, 2005).
For the past ten years, the local national television station, Television Malta (TVM) has excluded documentaries from its schedule. In an interview, Albert Debono, CEO of PBS, did not mince his words on this subject. "During prime time (considered to be following the 8 p.m. news up to 10 p.m.), one needs to attract a wide audience. There are two strategic aims. When you attract a large audience, you can draw heavy advertising. Secondly, once this audience is captured by the channel, you can expose it to the type of programming that suits our society. Documentaries will never attract such a large audience; hence we will not get the desired high audience shares. In other slots, I agree that we need to have more documentaries and educational programmes."
Yet, while public broadcasters are closing doors for programmes with high educational content, it is a fact that educational television channels are on the rise. In Italy, RAI operates Edu I & Edu 2. In the UK, BBC has the excellent Learning Zone. In 2004, the Britihs Department for Children, Schools and Families contracted an independent media consortium, Education Digital, to operate Teachers TV. All channels are supported by superb interactive websites.
Added to these, IPTV (internet protocol television channels) sponsored by universities are mushrooming. The GEANT project (I will refer to it again in Chapter EIGHT), is a very exciting project. Therefore, while audiences will definitely continue to flock for commercial mega shows on television channels, it is illogical to argue that educational television is doomed. The question is: how can educational television find the right space to be doable in a jungle of airwaves
34 dominated by commercial television channels and a public broadcaster that is losing its public service obligation?
As already argued in the previous chapter, the answer lies in finding the right recipe, now that technology has opened greater possibilities. And the raison d'etre could be found in putting adult education at the core of its mission. In following this rationale, adults seek educational television at some time in their life as the concept of lifelong learning becomes internalised.
Conclusion The concept of adult education by television is doable today because there is a wider acceptance of the positive aspects of the interaction between the sender (that is the broadcaster) and the receiver (the viewer or the learner in the scenario of adult education by television) which are facilitated by the highly diffused technology. This acceptance does not exclude that television as a medium poses a number of concerns and that through the amalgamation of several forces, media has become a powerful global communications network.
If the right media education is provided during the formal years of education, school leavers will find in television a series of continuous non-formal and informal adult education, that will help them develop to be better knowledgeable selves and with enhanced competitive edge in a globalised economy.
Statistics prove that adults understand that it is impossible not to be lifelong learners. Chart 1 is extracted from the Commission Staff Working Document, "Progress towards the Lisbon Objectives in Education and Training, Indicators and Benchmarks" (EU, 2008: 1O; CEU, 2008: 22). The graph shows how participation in lifelong learning has increased throughout EU member countries from 2000 till 2007.
35 Chart 1: Progress towards meeting the benchmark in Lifelong Learning (EU average)
120 Progress Required 8 100 II - - 80 ------60 -- --.... -- ~ 40 ____ ...... ,.-~ -- --- ""' I<::> 20 _,,,,,, -~ ----..._-- """'..... 0 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Statistics also show that more people are considering watching television as part of their leisure time.
If we are to zoom in the focus and restrict it to the local scenario, Chart 2 shows it in a graphical representation.
Chart 2: TV Viewing and Adult Learning compared to Age Groups26
60% ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
50% -1-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~-=--....~~~~-1
40% -1-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.... --ll!!!:::=--~~~~~~~~~~~-1
30% -1-~~~~~~~~~~-:::;,,,,,-:=.'--~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~--i
20% -1-~~~~~~~-:;;Plc:;:_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~--i
10% -1-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~--i 0% -1-~~~~~~~~~...,-~~~~~~~~~-.-~~~~---~~~~--i------AgeGroups 25-29 30-40 50-64
• TV Viewing __._Adult Learning
26 Data for TV Viewing is based on the Audience Survey carried out by National Statistics Office (NSO) for the Malta Broadcasting Authority (MBA). The survey covered the period October 2007 and September 2008, published on 20 November 2008 (available on website http://www.ba malta.org/prdetails?id= 142). Data for Adult Learning is based on statistics published in Operational Programme II (PPCD 2007:22)
36 These are not facts that cannot be compatible. We need to be pragmatic and concede that adults will continue to choose to watch mega shows and blockbuster movies on television. But this should not be demoralising. There are successful educational channels. The new technology constantly at our doorsteps will make adult education by television exciting and interactive. There is a very clear message that the internet and media and telephony are converging and that this convergence will lead us to new tools for learning and innovation (the subject of Chapter FIVE).
The next chapter will demonstrate that, notwithstanding that adult education by television is doable, we are wasting our resources because the state of educational broadcasting in Malta is in the wilderness.
37 Chapter FOUR
In the Wilderness
The present uncertainty of educational broadcasting in Malta referred to in Chapter ONE did not happen overnight. To the contrary, it is the sum of several wrong decisions on programming taken over a number of years, together with the lack of financial capital and human investment.
The History of Educational Broadcasting in Malta Broadcasting in the nation state of Malta was introduced and developed under a British colonial nexus. Initially, in 1933, the Dritish Colonial government initiated transmissions from the naval wireless station at Rinella to counteract Fascist propaganda reaching the island from Italy (Borg, 1997). In 1934, the Colonial Government commissioned the Rediffusion subsidiary, Broadcasting Relay Services (Malta), to establish a broadcast receiving station. To a large extent, Rediffusion evolved the broadcasting system on John Reith's philosophy, whereby the programmes tried to educate, inform and entertain the whole nation. The licence provided for a connection by cable from the station to the premises of the subscribers (Vella Laurenti, 1993).
It was immediately after the end of the Second World War that the island witnessed the start of Maltese broadcasting on a more organised basis. It is also significant that in April 1949, school broadcasting was inaugurated on Network B of Rediffusion. The broadcasts were run by the Education Department (Borg, 1997)
The introduction in 1970 of compulsory secondary education was supported by educational television programmes which were transmitted at 11.00 a.m. to coincide with the resuming of lessons following the mid-morning break. The
38 programmes were intended to serve as direct teaching, covering two subjects, English and Science. The School Broadcasting Unit printed books to accompany the broadcasts.
Even though watching television was an innovative experience for students (not so many families owned a TV set at the time), the broadcasts rendered the experience tedious because many students were crammed into a room which was not fully equipped except for a 21-inch black & white television set on a rostrum.
Broadcasting was nationalised in 1975 and a subsidiary (Xandir Malta) within the Telemalta Corporation was entrusted with the running of the public broadcasting stations. As regards school broadcasts, these continued unchanged until 1983 - a time when I was appointed officer-in-charge of the School Broadcasting Unit. In that year, the old cable radio sets in the schools' classrooms had reached a state beyond repair. Therefore school broadcasts were switched to Radio Malta and morning radio broadcasts were heard in the primary schools via radio sets. Housewives could also follow these broadcasts and I recall receiving queries from them on the possibility of buying the worksheets aimed at schoolchildren, so that they could follow the school broadcasts. Due to internal bureaucracy, the School Broadcasting Unit could not sell these worksheets to adults.
In 1983, television transmissions of morning school broadcasts were discontinued because they had faded out-of-fashion so to say and proceeded to a natural unnoticed death. Concurrently, the Education Department reached an agreement with Xandir Malta to allot airtime during the evening schedule for educational programmes produced by the School Broadcasting Unit, which was restructured to Educational Broadcasting Unit. In 1984, the twice weekly programmes produced by the Educational Broadcasting Unit were targeted for students but also served as a form of non-formal adult education. I left Educational Broadcasting Unit in 1986 to pursue new opportunities, including adult educational
39 programmes at Xandir Malta. At that time, there were already talks with the late Anthony Schembri on behalf of the University of Malta to pursue the idea of' Open University' programmes based on the British model. This project never materialised and by 1987, I had moved on to classroom teaching.
The 1991 Broadcasting Act, brought in a thorough different scenario. It established pluralism in Maltese television (and radio) and formalised educational 27 television . This Act defined that "An educational channel will also be operated in conjunction with the Department of Education. " [Second Schedule, Article 11 (1) (C), National Broadcasting Plan].
The dawn of the educational channel The educational channel, E22 was officially inaugurated in 1996. For some years, the Education Officer (EO) in charge of Media was directly responsible for the running of the channel. The EO (Media) used to fall under the aegis of the Directorate of Further Studies and Adult Education within the Education Division.
A number of teacher-trained personnel were seconded to the channel which operates from a building annexed to St. Ignatius College Girls Junior Lyceum in 28 Blata l-Bajda . A small amateurish studio was equipped in the same building to house most of the productions.
Soon after the initiation of E22, the channel reached a strategic agreement with the Malta Broadcasting Authority to make use of a state-of-the art studio inside the Authority's building.
27 The first time that an Educational Channel was mentioned was in the Public Call for Proposals to develop a Cable Television Service for the Maltese Islands (DOI, 1989). In Article 9.6 Government obliged the cable operator to provide to its subscribers a channel on "educational matters agreed upon with the Ministry of Education". In Article 9.12, the cable operator was obliged "to install and provide free of charge, the cable service to all registered schools." 28 This school is populary known as Maria Regina Girls' Junior Lyceum.
40 29 The studio had been built to serve the Community Channel , which the Authority had planned to operate. In an interview, Dr. Kevin Aquilina, then Chief Executive of the Malta Broadcasting Authority (MBA), confirmed that the MBA leased its studio to E22.
"We have leased the studio to E22, at a nominal rate. It is not our aim to make any profit," Dr. Aquilina told me. This information was confirmed by Anthony Degiovanni, then Director of Further Studies and Adult Education within the Education Division at the time of my interview with him. DeGiovanni retired in 2008.
Organisational structure Since its inception, E22 has been battling to find its niche. Audience research 30 ratings , especially during the past few years have not been encouraging. Table 1: Total Daily Average Audience
TV Oct-Dec Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Oct-Dec Jan-Mar Apr-Jun Oct-Dec Station 2006 2007 2007 2007 2008 2008 2008 TVM 29.7% 29.3% 28.8% 26.8% 26.9% 33.0% 34.7% One 28.0% 23.8% 24.4% 20.7% 21.0% 15.1% 20.0% Net 13.3% 10.8% 8.9% 12.1% 13.4% 8.5% 6.0% Smash 0.1% 0.1% 0.7% 0.7% 0.5% 0.6% 0.2% E22 0.4% 0% 0% 0.1% 0.1% 0.2% 0%
Source: Various Audience Reports published by the Malta Broadcasting Authority
In all fairness, one may see a disadvantage with the way audience ratings are conducted in Malta, because they rely on telephone interviews and not on Media Monitoring Systems (MMS). The archaic survey system still in use in Malta depends very much on how the question is put by the interviewer to the interviewee, the state of mind the interviewee is in and other subjective variables.
29 The administration of the Community Channel was passed on to PBS after a Government policy decision in 1997. Eventually, PBS closed down this channel in 2004. This channel never acquired a defined status under PBS and served only to show repeats of programmes originally scheduled on TVM. 30 The audience research has to be carried out by the Broadcasting Authority Malta in accordance with Article 30(2) of the Broadcasting Act, Chapter 350 of the Laws of Malta.
41 In an interview Anthony DeGiovanni said that he is not preoccupied with these results because he does not see E22 as one of those channels likely to score high points in audience surveys. He implied that with the presence of political television stations in a country obsessed with politics, people tend to prefer to state their choice of TV channel according to their political allegiance. DeGovanni said he is convinced that people do watch programmes on E22 at certain times. To prove his point, he argued that programmes that include phone-ins from viewers were inundated with calls, confirming that there was an audience watching. DeGiovanni said he thought that the educational channel should continue to strive to find those small niches in education to serve the public. He insisted that their only aim is to create a learning experience through television.
One agrees that educational television channels are not there to win audience surveys but to create an effective learning experience. There is also an agreement that E22 is not to be benchmarked like any commercial channel. On the other hand, after twelve years of broadcasting by the educational channel, there is a need for self-evaluation and self-criticism. Over the years, the mode of operation of E22 was highly amateurish, lacked consistency, and landed itself in a financial mess.
Lack of vision In the Annual Report 2006 of the Ministry of Education, Youth & Employment31 (2006), Education 22 (as it was known then), was defined as 'a very important tool for lifelong learning. Its remit has been broadened to encompass a wider audience beyond compulsory school age' (MEDC, 2006 - my italics in this quote). This is a solid statement which is highly commendable. But, the short report on Education 22 falls foul of the channel's own lack of vision. The Annual Report cites the magazine programmes 22 am and 22 pm as the sort of flagship programmes of the channel. Both programmes do not qualify as important tools for lifelong learning and both were discontinued in the autumn 2007 schedule. In my
31 The Ministry of Education included Employment in its portfolio prior to the March 2008 election.
42 interview with DeGiovanni, who was the Director of Further Studies and Adult Education at the time the programmes were broadcasted, I was informed that he did not approve of magazine programmes because the public never knows beforehand what the programme will include. DeGiovanni favoured programmes with a specific theme, a specific target audience and scheduled at a specific time, so that one can plan to watch them or record them for viewing at a later convenient time.
When DeGiovanni was asked about the programme Kilo which was broadcast for several hours every week on Education 22, he chose not to comment. Kilo was a scandalous programme - a perfect case of what never to transmit on an educational television channel. It was an amateurish reality show about a number of obese women doing some sort of keep-fit exercises. There was no identification of learning outcomes about this programme. During the week Monday 16 to Saturday 21 April 2007, there were 4 7 hours of transmission of this programme, which means 46.8% of the total transmission time aired by the channel.
It was revealed to me by a person who wished to remain anonymous, that when the programme was approved, the producer misleadingly gave the impression that the intention was to show how a Mediterranean diet and specialised keep-fit aerobics could help obese people lose those extra kilos. Within the context of the problem of obesity in Malta, this programme was seen to fit as part of a lifelong learning process in healthy lifestyle living. When the same anonymous individual was pressed to reveal if any attempts were made to stop this programme (since the programme producer had not delivered according to the original production intent), surprisingly, the curt reply was that the only attempt to stop the programme was when the producer failed to pay the dues for a number of weeks.
Such bitter experiences have not served as lessons for the same mistakes have been repeated. In the summer of 2008, it was an open secret known at various sources that E22 was in financial dire straits. This information was confirmed in an answer to Parliamentary Question 2467 tabled on September 29, 2008. In her
43 answer, the Minister of Education stated that E22 had €178 for educational programmes till the end of December 2008.
There is not much that can be done in television with €1.92-a-day. Yet, and this is most unfortunate, E22 has opted to continue to repeat the same old mistakes in the October-December 2008 schedule.
Every day from Monday to Friday the national broadcaster Television Malta (TVM) offers one hour of its schedule for the transmission of the supposedly flagship programmes of E22.
During the week Monday 13 to Friday 17 October 2008, this sixty-minute slot from 10.00 a.m. to 11.00 a.m. on TVM was used to broadcast the following programmes (all of them sponsored) as per Table 2. It is worth recalling that in an interview, Albert Debono confirmed that the Board of Directors agree in principle to offer sixty minutes of their schedule to E22. Debono calls this "a permanent fixture".
Table 2: Description of programmes produced by E22 and transmitted on TVM (Autumn 2008) Name of Day Content Duration Programme Review of films in theatres released Monday Skrin 60min. during the previous week. Promoting good practices of school E-Updates 30 min. children Tuesday Public Relation exercise about the KMS Sportlink 30min. different sport associations in Malta Review of basketball games played the Wednesday 3-Pointer 60min. previous weekend Magazine programme where the presenter Thursday Perspettivi meets several people and discuss different 60min. topics Public Relation exercise about different sport events organised by sports MIA Olympic Special 30min. associations affiliated in the Malta Friday Olympic Committee Sharing experience with students and EU Passport adults who participated Ill EU 30min. programmes
44 This is not the kind of future one envisages for an educational channel. Most of the programmes should not even fit the remit of an educational channel, let alone be the flagship programmes.
The whole programme schedule for E22 is even less appropriate if we need to address the challenges of a knowledge society. T am here reproducing it as printed 32 in 'The Times' . The schedule is inundated with programme repeats (marked 'rpt'). Moreover, it gives the impression that the programme planner was only interested in filling the time slots rather than in capturing a niche audience that would like to follow educational programmes. A classical example is the Monday, 13th October schedule.
At 6.00 p.m. a programme about Maltese artists is scheduled, followed by a programme about horse racing. At 7.30 p.m., there is a programme about art (Mit Tila). At 8.30 p.m., a programme about the basketball league (3 Pointer) is shown. This is followed by drama (Five-0-Six) and at 10.30 p.m., E22 put on air a repeat of the adult learning programme Lurafil-Klassi. This confusing scheduling is not a one-off but it is repeated throughout. It is very difficult to capture a loyal audience with this form of scheduling.
Table 3: E22's schedule from 13 to 17 October 2008 Monday, 13 October 2008 8 a.m. American Passages (rpt.jj) 8.30 Wara s-swar (rpt) 9 Bum bum il-ktieb (rpt) 9.30 E- Updates (rpt) 10 EU Passport (rpt) 10.30 Nahdem u kif (rpt) 11 Media Centre slots (rpt) 11.15 Ghada Jisbah ukoll Noon KMS Sportlink (rpt) 12.30Taht1-ilma 1.30 Mit-tezawru 2 Kontrattakk (rpt) 4 Lura fil-klassi (rpt) 5 Biography of America (rpt) 5.30 Versi hajja (rpt) 6 Artisti Maltin (rpt) 6.30 Tigrijiet hiss 7.30 Mit-tila 7.45 Close Up 8.30 3 Pointer 9.30 Five-0-Six (rpt ofTVM's drama) 10.30 Lura fil-klassi (rpt) Tuesday, 14 October 2008 7 a.m. 22PM (rpt) 9 Adverts 9.30 Storja ta' Ballun (rpt) 10 Tur fir-Russja (rpt) 10.30 Project News (rpt ofTVM's programme) 11 Waltzing Matilda (rpt ofTVM's programme) 11.30 Splaxx (rpt) 12.30 Rakkont (production by Campus FM) 1.30 Cinescena (production by Campus FM) 2 Lura fil-Klassi (rpt) 3 Stage Kids (rpt) 4 Promos 4.15 Yes! (rpt) 5.15 22 PM (rpt) 6.30 U30 (rpt) 7 Forum EU 7.30 Muftieh (rpt ofTVM's programme) 8 X'Festa (rpt ofTVM's programme) 9.15 Promos 9.30 Lura fil-klassi (rpt) 10.30 22PM (rpt) 11.45 Adverts
32 The schedules are as printed in the issues of the daily The Times from 13 October to 17 October, 2008. 33 (rpt.) means that the programme is a repeat of an earlier broadcast.
45 ' Wednesday, 15 October 2008 8 a.m. Indian Documentaries (rpt) 8.30 Atena (rpt) 9 E-ktieb (rpt) 9.30 Gbal dinja abjar (rpt) 10.15 BBC Focus (rpt) 11.30 Perspettiva (rpt) 12.30 p.m. Ikoni muzikali 1.30 Temi fil-letteratura 2 Malta Grajjietha (rpt ofTVM's programme) 3 Kinder Klabb 3.30 Tini 5 4 Lura fil-klassi (rpt) 5 American cinema (rpt) 5.30 Physics High (rpt) 6 It-tarbija fil-guf(rpt) 6.30 Collage 6.45 Kwarta fl-Ewropa 7 MIA Olympic Special 7.30 Click (rpt) 8.30 GFA Review 9.30 Box Office 9.45 QalbinNies (rpt ofTVM's programme) 10.30 Lura fil-klassi (rpt) Thursday, 16 October 2008 8 a.m.American Cinema (rpt) 8.45 Physics High (rpt) 9.15 It-tarbija fil-guf 9.30 Collage 10 Kwarta fl-Ewropa (rpt) 10.30 MIA Olympic Special (rpt) 11.15 Click (rpt) 12.15 p.m. GFA Review (rpt) 12.30 Box Office (rpt) 1.15 Stravinski - kompozitur u artist (production by Campus FM) 1.30 Nobbli fil-bsieb (production by Campus FM) 2 t=Iajja 2.45 EU Parliament 3 Kinder Klabb 3.30 Tini 5 4 Lura fil-klassi (rpt) 5 Chinese Documentaries 5.30 Stile! tal-Passat (rpt) 6 Nanniet u Ulied (rpt) 6.30 Pot Pourri 7 Nurseries 22 7.30 Inbarsu/ Aikido 8 Take-Off 8.30 Skrin 9.30 Klinika (rpt ofTVM's programme) 10.30 Lura fil-klassi (rpt) Friday, 17 October 2008 8 a.m. Chinese Documentaries (rpt) 8.30 Stile! tal-passat 9 Nanniet u ulied (rpt) 9.30 Pot pourri (rpt) 10 Nurseries 22 (rpt) 10.30 Inbarsu/Aikido (rpt) 11 Take Off (rpt) 11.30 Skrin (rpt) 12.30 p.m. Crieki kkuluroti 1.30 Kull bidu mill-bsieb 2 Venere 2.30 Emigranti 3 Kinder Klabb 3.30 Tini 5 4 Lura fil-klassi (rpt) 5 American passages (rpt) 5.30 Wara s-swar (rpt) 6 Bum bum ii- ktieb (rpt) 6.30 E-Updates 7.30 Nabdmu u kif (rpt) 8 Media Centre slots 8.15 Gbadajisbab ukoll 9 KMS Sp01tlink 9.30 Ghawdex ilium (rpt ofTVM's programme) 10 Bus Partners 10.30 Lura fil-klassi (rpt)
Lura fil-Klassi is one of the very few redeeming programmes that was scheduled during 2008 and which qualified as an adult education programme. This programme will be discussed in Chapter SEVEN.
Conclusion
Admittedly, in this chapter, harsh criticism was levelled at E22. The facts speak for themselves and leave very little possibilities for a positive outlook. It is rather strange that although the people in key positions whom I interviewed had clear ideas and concepts on how to run E22 and what programmes to be scheduled, the outcome was diametrically the opposite.
From what was gathered during interviews with official and unofficial sources, there are three main problems that have to be resolved:
46 1. A management structure. Over the years, there was a lack of audit trail that transmits the educational priorities from the policymakers to the management of the channel. When I was in charge of the Educational Broadcasting Unit in the early eighties, this line of communication was inexistent. I always relied on intuition about the themes to be addressed in the programmes produced by the Unit.
This communication lifeline was opened in later years but was inconsistently maintained because E22 was often given the Cinderella status, orphaned from a defined organisational structure. This resulted from constant shifting of E22 between the Ministry of Education and the Department of Education. A step in the right direction was taken in August 2008 when a Management Committee under the chair of the Permanent Secretary was appointed. The Committee includes the participation of the Head of E22 who has an observer status. This is the first time E22 had such an organisational structure.
2. Investment in the human capital. In November 2008, there were ten persons at E22. Table 4 describes the role of these members of staff.
Table 4: Role of present staff at E22 (as in December 2008) Position Role 1 Head of Channelj4 Management 1 Teacher Senior Programme Producer 1 Programme Director Programme Producer 3 Supply Teachers Programme Producers 2 Programme Editors Programme Editing & Cameramen 1 Executive Officer Administration & Clerical work 1 Assistant Producer Operntions C:o-orclinl'ltor
34 The Head of Channel, Programme Director and one of the Supply Teachers are ex-employees of Public Broadcasting Services Ltd.
47 No funds are available for training of the personnel. It is to their merit, that the output is voluminous and a number of productions are good. When I was officer-in-charge of the School Broadcasting Unit, there were six teachers and two clerical officers to produce two hours of television programmes, seven radio programmes and a bi-monthly magazine to serve as worksheets to the radio programmes. All the technical staff required used to be provided to us by the national broadcasting station.
Over the years, teachers became less attracted to working at the educational channel because of the insistence on the part of the authorities that the teachers work a 40-hour-week (instead of 271/z hours per week which is the normal teaching-working week). Teachers were asked to work office hours without financial compensation for the extra hours worked.
3. Capital and recurrent financial investment. In the early eighties, the only capital investment made in my three-year stint was the purchasing of a second-hand broadcasting camera. The budget allocation at that time was Lm7,000 per annum. We could make use free-of-charge of any equipment and technical personnel available at the national broadcasting station. During the eighties, the Unit was not allowed to make its own revenue from advertising.
Today, E22 has to run its own channel with a budget allocation of €233,00035 per annum. It does not have any technical support from the national broadcasting station. Production of programmes is executed from ft stnrlio leftserl from the Rroarlc;:isting Authority at a nominal rent. Today, E22 has the facility to raise money through advertising and sponsorship of its programmes.
35 Budget estimates for 2009
48 From my interview with the Mr. Francis Borg, then Permanent Secretary and Chairperson of the Management Committee, the concept of sponsorships of programmes is envisaged to be the rule in the foreseeable future. This will open a Pandora's box because E22 is being put in the same pathway as national broadcasters before they started losing on their public service obligations. The Permanent Secretary emphasised in the interview that as long as he holds this office, he will see that sponsoring of educational programmes will not translate into commercialisation of the channel. His comment implies that this concept depends on his authority and a different Permanent Secretary may opt to take a different path.
The negative perspective shown in this chapter will be made up for in the next chapters, where it will be shown how E22 can be regenerated to a bright future.
49 Chapter FIVE
The future is bright
In Chapter ONE, I quoted the unpublished Draft Strategic Plan of 2003, where the author/s recommended that the educational television channel should focus on the production of good quality educational and cultural programmes for schools and act as a medium for distance learning. The author/s also recommended in the plan of action, that by December 2004, the University of Malta should publish the distance education plan (Unknown, 2003 :281 ).
It is a pity that this Draft Strategic Plan on Lifelong Learning in Malta never saw the light of day.
The distance education plan is one of the few proposals that has not been set in motion yet. This has been confirmed by the Rector of the University of Malta, Profs. Juanito Camilleri in a research interview conducted for the purpose of this thesis.
It is worth recalling also that the unpublished Draft Strategic Plan already underlined that distance education would facilitate 'the sharing of resources and expertise between the partners in order to rationalise the service, avoid duplication and economise on expense.' (Unknown, 2003:205).
Although Profs. Camilleri says that he has never read this Strategic Plan, he is in unison with this concept. The Rector sees great advantages were the University to seriously consider the option of distance learning by merging the new technologies and television. This was no surprise to me, considering the fact, that before becoming a Rector, Profs. Camilleri was the first CEO of the second mobile
50 telephony that started operating in Malta. Later, he joined the cable television company.
Profs. Camilleri revealed in his interview, that the Ministry of Education has offered E22 to the University of Malta. The Rector refused the proposal because the University was going to be compelled to fork out the capital and recurrent expenditure to run the educational channel from the already tight allocated budget to the university. If this financial issue is resolved, the University would give favourable consideration to the prospect of taking onboard E22. Profs. Camilleri supports the concept that the channel can play a crucial role in adult education by television.
Profs. Camilleri would sec four roles for the channel, supported by the new technologies and as part of a distance learning programme: 1. a training ground for students studying communication in the Centre for Communication Technology; 2. a platform to televise certain lectures that can be followed simultaneously from both campuses in Malta and Gozo - therefore economising on expenses; 3. a medium to transmit master class surgery or a world class orchestral performance or any other activity taking place in Malta or anywhere else in the world and which is a learning experience for students who are on campus or could be at home or at their place of work; 4. a means for what he terms 'reinforcement courses'. Profs. Camilleri insists that knowledge today is enriched with important data which is discovered and/or made available every day. Even the most recent graduate cannot stop learning the day following his graduation. The educational channel needs to embark on programmes to continuously reinforce the competencies of all adults if we would like to be key players in a knowledge society.
51 Distance Learning The model of distance learning is not a recent discovery. As Jarvis (2004) rightly reminds us, distance education actually began when James Stuart experimented with correspondence education for women in the 1870s. It is well known that distance education grew in popularity late on the 20th century through the British Open University (Rumble and Harry, 1982). Globalisation has also left its mark in affecting educational systems as a result of the changes in the substructure of the globe due to rapid diffusion of information technology.
Our country is also affected by these changes. Distance education by television, must now be viewed in the context of the EU' s directive to switch over from analogue to digital broadcasting by early 2012. According to Press Statement IP/05/595 issued by the European Commission Representation in Malta (dated 24 May 2005), Malta is set to make the switchover two years earlier than the cut-off 36 date - that is in 2010 • Digital Television (or DTV as it is popularly known), creates an exciting new scenario for distance learning. DTV will actuate Otto Peters' prediction of 1967 (Stewart et al., 1984:68-94) when he stated that distance learning would eventually become a process of dissemination of knowledge along the lines of mass production. Theoretically there will be no limit as to the number of copies of the same course that could be produced or the number of students who would study the course once it was produced.
DTV represents a new generation of broadcasting transmission technologies, in which the signals are sent and received in digital format. This technology is characterised by its potential: • to have a much simple user interaction model, when compared to computers; • the technology improves audio and video quality;
36 The target date was further confirmed by the Malta Broadcasting Authority document, "A Policy and Strategy for Digital Broadcasting that meets General Interest Objectives. This document was published in February 2009.
52 • increases the number of channels; • allows high definition television (HDTV); • has a flow of data associated to each channel; • unlimited possibilities of media convergence with the Web, allowing the user to access the Internet through television.
As most cable and digital platform users are already aware, a reception equipment, called settop-box (STB) processes video and audio signals. One of the features of the STB is to process and display on the screen applications of interactive DTV (iDTV) that may come in the data stream. These applications can include e-mail clients, e-government applications, educational applications and web browsing. The television is used as an interface to the user.
The applicability of DTV is made much more user-friendly because the user does not have to interact with the STB's operational system. In these equipments there is a software layer called middleware, which is an interface between the iDTV applications and the hardware of the (STB). This will facilitate the interaction between the user and the applications on iDTV.
DTV will revolutionise the learning possibilities with the use of television because in addition to the broadcasting reception there is another communication channel. This is called the return channel. Depending on the system installed, individualised content (including personalised interactive worksheets, browsing of the internet and much more) may be delivered to the user and through which the user can send back information to the sender. DTV may be conceptualised as a reinforcement of Holmberg's (1989) humanistic vision of distance learning as a form of guided didactic conversation.
Systems already developed provide the facility to have access to IPTV (Internet Protocol Television), thus expanding the range of channels that can be accessed and allowing the user to interact with other learners and with the teacher
53 through video-conferences with the use of IPTV- STB. This is already happening in other countries. A case in point is open2.net, the online learning portal from The Open University and the BBC.
With wide access to the return channel it is therefore possible to establish virtual learning communities with the other students and with their teachers, not necessarily in one's own country. With E22 as the catalyst in Malta, this can provide a much richer learning environment.
In other words, DTV has the capability of bringing about a convergence between e-learning and educational television, which can be labelled as t-learning (learning through television). This can assist in limiting social exclusion. A family which cannot afford both a television and a computer may opt for DTV and the family may still benefit from the advantages of the internet for learning. DTV s are also considered more user-friendly than most computers. Hence, older adults who have built an inner resistance to computers may still not feel excluded from this technology if they opt for distance learning as, for example, a consequence of mobility problems.
An important tool in the use of t-learning software is the Personal Video Recorders (PVRs) which are now standard features in most STBs for DTV. These equipments allow storing digital video and applications content that can be monitored whenever the teacher or the learner needs them. In this way, it is possible to interact with an educational video more than once, rewinding for better understanding or viewing at one's leisure. The fact that PVRs on STBs are becoming standard features (as part of the hardware in the STBs), will further assist social inclusion, as this would mean one can follow distance learning from the comfort of the home with much less hassle and no extra expenses. Moreover, PVRs do not occupy additional physical space or storage space for cassettes. PVRs are also less prone to damage, to deterioration of picture and audio quality and it is easier to catalogue the content.
54 Television is the medium that should make t-learning more exciting because of the added element of entertainment. Any formal lecture depends on spontaneity, where several factors are beyond the teacher's and the learners' control. On the other hand, television production can be recorded, edited, aided with computer generated images, interactive games, clips, archive footage and interviews. A television production can be supported by web material, carpeted with the right music, and many other resources. IPTV opens up the possibility of having a global classroom by interacting with other learners from different countries. This is the most distinctive speciality of the digital television platform: its ability to present information to the learner in different ways that formal lectures in a classroom cannot. This is a unique opportunity for learners who are unable to study at a university or who have failed during their compulsory attendance in educational institutions (Bates, 1998: 215). It is the oppo1iunity where education can be teamed up with entertainment and the learner experiences the world as the global village it has become.
Once the learner breaks the first barrier of interaction through the use of edutainment applications, then he/she should be more inclined to get seriously committed and engaged in his/her studies.
2010 may be a magical year for making adult education by television doable. It is the year that should see the launching of 4G, an abbreviation for Fourth Generation. It is the term used to describe the next complete evolution in wireless communications. A 4G system will be able to provide a comprehensive IP solution on mobile phones where voice, data and streamed multimedia can be given to users and at higher data rates than previous generations. One of the objectives of 4G sets is to provide applications like wireless broadband access, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), video chat, mobile TV, HDTV content and Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB). This would literally mean that adult education by television can be available "anytime, anywhere".
55 t-learning vs. e-Iearning As with any other system, there are advantages and disadvantages. While in e-learning studying is considered an individual activity (only one person generally stands in front of a computer screen), in t-learning applications, it may be considered that watching television is a group activity. Therefore a new scenario exists, where t-learning applications may explore workgroups, in cases where there must be collaboration and cooperation between the learners. In the case of t learning from home, other members of the family may be induced to participate in the learning process.
The screen distance is another issue that cannot be ignored. In general, users sit at a further distance from the television screen than they sit from the computer monitor. In this way, when watching television, their visibility to the rest of the ambience is bigger; therefore the eventuality of being distracted increases. Consequently, there are some strategies in modelling DTV applications that purposely aim at maintaining the viewer's full attention, such as: clear and large text fonts, spaced text and text divided in small parts, the use of sounds, colours and images that attract the user attention.
One advantage of e-learning is the use of the keyboard for inputting the data. In the case oft-learning, the input of user data is made by the remote control which is much smaller than the traditional keyboard. This may impose some restrictions vis-a-vis e-learning because the use of the keyboard and a mouse is much more convenient for inputting. Some strategies for solving this problem can be put in practice, including minimising the number of keys that can be pressed and avoiding pages that need the scrollbar. The text input is a particular problem that can be solved with the use of a virtual keyboard in the television screen, manipulated by the remote control, or the use of an alphanumeric keyboard to the selection for characters, such as is done in cell phone keyboards.
56 Some STBs which are already available do have the added functionality that accepts commands from an infra-red operated keyboard.
Conclusion In this chapter I have given an overview of what is technologically possible beyond 2010. This is not science fiction. Most of the applications described are already in use in several countries. Other applications are on the brink of being commercially viable.
It is no longer an impossible dream for adult education by television to become doable. DTV will strengthen the transnational facility of television broadcasts, thus contributing to overcoming the problem of inequality and imbalance among the various world regions by providing equality in opportunities. Though television production of educational programmes is a complicated process when compared to classroom instruction, the cost per learner could become less prohibitive if one takes into consideration the wider audience it can capture and the shelf life of the programme.
Moreover, in a globalised world typified by large scale migration, the media are means of communication that enable diasporas to connect to their original identities. For instance, this will help in the integration of economic immigrants that are coming to Europe, thousands of them passing through Malta. This issue has been ignored by the educational channel. The channel should have served to avoid the xenophobic attitude expressed by a considerable number of citizens.
With digitization, television has no boundaries. Its cameras will take the learner to the deepest end of the ocean or to the highest peak of a mountain. In a short span of time, it can travel across cultures and time, to bring to the learner a visual experience of different civilisations. At nominal expense, television can bring to the viewer's home, the expertise of the leading professors on any subject. Countries like Malta can never have these accessibilities in human resources due to
57 economic viability. Hence the media are increasingly reducing the country's geographical and economical marginalisation. DTV will go one step further. It opens wide possibilities for the adult learner to interact from the comfort of his home.
DTV will make adult education so much easier and accessible for those adults who have many commitments and do not afford the time to commit to regular and fixed classroom sessions. Adult education by television is also an attractive option for those adults who are afraid to go back to a classroom due to unpleasant experiences during their schooling years.
The technology that will be available past 2010 will open unlimited possibilities for adult education by television, making it more of an 'optimistic enterprise in the provision of lifelong learning' as envisioned by Charles Wedemeyer ( 1981) when he assessed distance learning in the beginning of the eighties. How far in we venture, depends on the intended commitment that will be endowed into adult education. It also depends on the audacious vision for E22.
The educational channel can be a catalyst for adult education by television by opening up to distance learning. This form of learning may stretch as far as being part of a global classroom by interconnecting with other systems of distance learning. Thus the knowledge component of learning will become more equitable with those of other learners who have more and/or different resources. This will result into an integrative experience that will help the adult learner enhance his or her capabilities to deal with the complexity and unpredictability posed by the globalised economy.
To make the future bright, adult education by television can even achieve portability through 4G mobile phones. When this happens, adult education by television will be "anytime, anywhere". Then we would dare to say: 'Bring on what's next.'
58 Chapter SIX
Tackling the crunch
The merger of new technology and the media technologies can be effective for adult education by television only when the right programmes are produced. This chapter will examine the theoretical and the practical viewpoints of what kind of programmes need to be produced to reach the principal objective, of adult education by television.
Some Theorists' Perspectives The starting point is to reflect on the work of five theorists, each of whom, in their various ways, has examined different aspects of adult learning. Three of these major contributors assume a psychological perspective while the other two take a sociological viewpoint. The writers chosen are: Paulo Freire, Malcolm Knowles, Jack Mezirow, Carl Rogers and Robert Mills Gagne. These have been selected because, in their different ways, they have contributed to the theoretical knowledge of adult learning. I will be concentrating on those parts of their contributions that will lead us on the right pathway to make adult education by television a reality.
1. Paulo Freire Freire contributed a philosophy of education that comes from both the classical approaches stemming from Plato, and the modern Marxist and anti colonialist thinkers. His major work is Pedagogy of the Oppressed (first published in Portuguese in 1968 as Pedagogia do oprimido) where he discredits what he calls the "banking" concept of erlnc(ltion, in which the )e(lrner is viewed (IS an empty account to be filled by the teacher.
59 Since Freire had a humanistic concept, he regarded people as learners, and he expected that once the people had actually learned they should not remain passive but become active participants in the wider world. Hence, for Freire, education could never be a neutral process; it's either designed to facilitate freedom or it is education for domestication.
Freire also believed that through the process of literacy education, learners are enabled to reflect upon their own understanding of themselves in their social cultural milieu. It was this combination of action and reflection that he called praxis (Freire, l 996a:68). Freire argues that people are able to process their experiences and reflect upon them; herein lies the difference between human beings and other animals. Through the process of reflection, individuals may become conscious of realities other than the one into which they have been socialised. Freire described this as conscientisation. Taylor (1993: 52) argued that in this process, the learner understands the power to transform reality.
Freire also defines the concept of dialogue as not just the depth of understanding, but an integral part of making a difference in the world. Dialogue in itself is a co-operative activity involving respect. The process is important and can be seen as an enhancement of the community and the building of social capital. The end result of such a process is to lead the adult participants to act in ways that make for justice and human flourishing.
A fourth concept in Paulo Freire' s work is the insistence on situating educational activity in the lived experience of participants.
2. Malcolm Knowles Credited as a fundamental influence in the development of the Humanist Leaming Theory, Knowles is best known for the use of the term "andragogy" which was originally coined by Alexander Kapp in 1833 and adopted in the old Yugoslavia by a host of scholars, such as Dusan Savicevic, from whom Knowles is
60 said to have derived the refernce. Knowles held that andragogy (from the Greek meaning "adult-leading") should be distinguished from the more commonly used pedagogy (Greek: "child-leading").
Knowles' theory (1968) is based on four postulates: 1. Adults need to be involved in the planning and evaluation of their own instruction. 2. Experience (including mistakes) provides the basis for learning activities. 3. Adults are most interested in learning subjects that have immediate relevance to their job and personal life. 4. Adult learning is problem-centred rather than content oriented.
3. Jack Mezirow Mezirow is synonymous with transformative learning and his theory can be crucial in adult education by television in a risk society. Mezirow argues that through an event such as a traumatic one like losing a job, an individual becomes aware of holding a limited or distorted view. If the individual critically examines this view, he opens himself to alternatives, and consequently changes the way he sees things. As a result, the person has been transformed by making a meaning out of the world.
In his book Learning as Transformation, Mezirow defines learning as 'the process of using prior interpretation to construe a new revised interpretation of the meaning of one's experience as a guide to future action'. Mezirow (2000: 19) claims that learning occurs in four ways: 1. elaborating existing frames and reference; 2. learning new frames of reference; 3. transforming points of view; 4. transforming habits of mind.
61 4. Carl Rogers
As a humanistic psychologist, Carl Rogers began the formal definition and advocacy of experiential learning - that is the process of making meaning from direct experience. The classical example often quoted to define experiential learning is the "Zoo Case". One can go to the zoo and learn through observation and interaction with the zoo environment, as opposed to reading about animals from a book.
Experiential learning can be a highly effective educational method. It engages the learner at a more personal level by addressing the needs and wants of the individual (Jarvis, 2004: 135). Experiential learning requires qualities such as self initiative and self-evaluation. For experiential learning to be truly effective, it should employ the whole learning wheel, from goal setting, to experimenting and observing, to reviewing, and finally action planning. This complete process allows one to learn new skills, new attitudes or even entirely new ways of thinking. Thus, the aim is that the television programme does not instruct but rather facilitates learning.
5. Robert Mills Gagne This American educational psychologist pioneered various instructional strategies. In his book The Conditions of Learning (1977), Gagne identifies nine conditions of instruction. Three of these conditions are of particular interest. These are: (1) gaining attention, (4) presenting the stimulus material (9) enhancing retention and transfer (Gagne et al., 1992:203)
Furthermore, Jarvis (2004) argues that problem solving is behind Gagne's hierarchy and that the learner draws upon his previously learned rules in order to discover an answer to a problematic situation.
62 Transposing these concepts into education television These concepts should be our guidelines to make television a pedagogical tool m adult education, especially in Malta where we have a unique scenario in broadcasting.
On the one hand, the public broadcaster Television Malta is losing its public service obligation and assuming the role of a commercial television station. This is no longer a matter of opinion. Profs. D. Fenech, a former member of the editorial board of PBS (the state-owned company that runs TVM) was publicly quoted as saying that "sometimes, financial constraints push PBS to take certain decisions. If a programme makes money, it's hard to manoeuvre and ratings have become sacrosanct, when these alone should not be everything. We need to strike a balance between our public service mission and ratings." (Massa, 2006)
A year later, the same argument featured in John Camilleri's letter of resignation from Chairman of the Editorial Board at PBS. Mr. Camilleri resigned "in protest against the miserable situation the board of directors has driven the state broadcaster into." 37 Mr. Camilleri made it clear he was all in favour of the fact that PBS could not run at a loss, however, it was wrong to ignore the regulations in the Public Statement oflntent (PSI) under the excuse of profits.
Besides Television Malta, the Maltese television scenario is also dominated by two television stations which belong to the two major political parties in Malta. The channels, One and Net are media whose outcome serves the political party rather than the public. Instead of a media where there is dispersal of shareholding so that the 'proprietorial' control is weakened and editorial independence is achieved, both Maltese political parties have created boards of directors made up of persons blindingly loyal to their party leadership. Most of their financing comes
37 Quote from Mr. John Camilleri's resignation letter to Hon. Minister Dr. Austin Gatt, as published in "The Times" of August 29, 2007.
63 from marathon programmes throughout the year, urging party followers to make donations to sustain the TV stations.
The programming of the political stations (especially the political discussions), bring to mind Paulo Freire's analogy of the waiter who serves coffee to the guest and interviewer during a television programme. While the political guest is projected as a thinker and an expert, looked at courteously and thanked for his service, the waiter is ignored, as if he is not a human being but just a robot programmed to serve others (Freire, 1996a).
The television stations owned by both political parties, act as if party sympathisers are waiters, programmed to serve them financially (through the fund raising marathon programmes) but they do not have any opp01iunity to pmiicipate. The way these political stations are currently operating, are far from the process of liberation, as Freire advocates. If the political television stations were to realise Freire's philosophy, we would make a giant step in adult education by television.
Instead of dialogue, political television stations impose a monolith thought, a dominant ideology, intended on being absorbed into the very fabric of people's being, influencing the way the people see the world and engage with it, creating a false consciousness that does not question reality. In short, the political stations invoke obedience to the hegemony - the exact opposite nature of the rationale behind adult education.
The immediate outlook of this Maltese scenario is not prompting any evolvement that is significantly different; hence the role of E22 becomes crucial. It is the television medium that can stimulate positive action, encourage reflection and inspire adults to participate in a process of lifelong learning, away from dazzling images of a dream-world and media circuses.
64 E22 can create a public space outside the control by the state (and political parties), where individuals exchanged views and knowledge. This brings to mind, Habermas, Offentlichkeit or public sphere. Since political party television stations are abdicating their mission to create space for discussion to influence political action (one of the few missions that may justify their existence in the first place), E22 is the only platform that can bring people together to discuss freely and identify societal problems, so that through discussion they may influence political action.
For this public sphere to be evolved and be transformative, E22 has to reflect on the foundations put forward by the five theorists referred to earlier in this chapter where there is a lot of common ground, starting from Freire's insistence that the learner is not an empty vessel which is ready to be filled.
Television programmes as part of adult education, need to take into consideration the wealth of experience the adult learners have inside them, which has been gained through formal, informal and non-formal education.
Freire, Knowles and Mezirow argue that adults require that their gained experience provides the basis for learning activities and that there is immediate relevancy to their job and personal life. Rogers and the above mentioned three writers acknowledge the issue of addressing the needs of the learners. These concepts are an eye-opener on how to tackle themes in programmes as part of adult education.
Producing programmes, as 3-Pointer, KMS Sportlink and MIA Olympic Special (which are practically a public relations exercise for the sports associations concerned) is not the role of E22. These three programmes are the opposite of what Knowles is advocating: the programmes are indeed content-oriented and not problem-centred. As a matter of fact, most of the programmes on E22 are content oriented.
65 The role of E22 is to produce programmes that emphasise the need for participation in sports to ensure a healthy lifestyle. Sports related programmes should emphasise the relevance of sports as a means of reducing stress. Sports programmes should aim at dispelling the misconception given to children that taking up sports makes them lose out on study time. E22 should be producing programmes on different sports disciplines and how these require different training strategies, different diets, and different rules to practice them. A country with one of the highest incidence of obesity (7.9 per cent according to a report from Queen's University in Kingston carried out in 2005), requires its educational channel to educate adults to pursue a healthier lifestyle because it is one of their needs. Tackling the programme from this perspective, becomes problem-centred. Identifying the lack of investment in this sector helps influence political action
The benchmark for these programmes would be the identification of transformative learning among adults in line with Mezirow's last two conditions: that is: (i) transforming adults' points of view and habits in mind so that adults become more active in sports and (ii) the incidence of obesity makes a sharp decline.
The issue of attracting an audience remains crucial for any channel and in particular for an educational channel such as E22. Some of the conditions of instruction put forward by the psychologist Gagne offer us an insight, especially now that we have to deal with what is referred to as the 'MTV generation'.
This generation of adults has been nurtured on strident music videos interrupted with fast-paced adverts, put together with the single purpose of selling products and services to youths as an integral part of their culture. This style of programming has left its indelible mark on any future TV production, not least educational programmes. Currently, all E22 programmes are too slow moving in their production style. Programmes aimed for adults who are the product of this MTV generation, need to adopt a fast-paced, multiple-format delivery to gain
66 attention. The material in the programme has to be stimulating. This is the only way these adults would enhance retention and eventually transfer the knowledge gained as proposed by Gagne (gaining attention, presenting the stimulus material and enhancing retention and transfer) and therefore achieve what Freire sees as an enhancement of the community and the building of social capital.
The programmes that should fill E22's schedule are therefore those which are based on these ten commandments. The more commandments the programme provide, the greater the transformation of adult education by television.
Programmes should: (a) recognise that adult viewers are not empty accounts to be filled by the conttmt of a programme (freire ); (b) Involve adult viewers as early as possible (Knowles); (c) Advocate experiential learning (Rogers) by making meaning of direct experience (Freire and Knowles) to gain their attention (Gagne); (d) Elaborate existing frames and references (Mezirow); ( e) Be intended to stimulate active participation (Freire) by learning new frames of reference (Mezirow); (f) Help reflection (Freire) to transform points of view (Mezirow) because the content has immediate relevancy (Knowles); (g) Promote dialogue (Freire); (h) Be problem-centered rather than content oriented (Knowles), intended also to transform habits of mind (Mezirow); (i) Be presented in a stimulating manner (Gagne); and (j) Enhance retention and transfer (Gagne).
Conclusion According to Pfannhauser and Reichhart (2003), educated consumers base their choice on: legal quality; nutritional quality; sensorial quality; socio-ecological quality and convenience.
67 To a large extent, these criteria are the key for success for any adult education programme on television. These programmes need to have "legal quality", mainly they do not contain misleading information and the agenda is clear from the word "cue".
Programmes need to have "nutritional quality", meaning, they comprise the essential components of what adults need. It is worth recalling Knowles first andragogical assumption: "Adults are motivated to learn as they experience needs and interests that learning will satisfy" (Levine, 2005: 65).
The "sensorial quality" translates into the fact that programmes need an attractive packaging in the way they are produced, so that they gain attention, which is one of Gagne' s conditions for instruction.
The programmes need to have a high level of "socio-ecological content". Adults must feel that participation in such programmes will eventually bring about change in the way they live because they are relevant for themselves. Mezirow' s and Rogers' perspectives help the approach adopted by adult education by television, to bring about empowered adults by means of self-realisation and by being transformative in nature.
When this is achieved, adult education by television will become a source of dialogue as Freire has conceptualised it, resulting in a process that leads the adult participants to act in ways that make for justice and human flourishing in this knowledge society.
68 Chapter SEVEN
And the winner is ...
So far, reference to programmes on E22 was made to highlight the deficiencies of the channel. The resulting impression may well have been that one cannot identify any redeeming production on this educational channel. This is not so.
Over the years, E22 produced a number of good quality programmes aimed at adult learners. One of them was Lura fil-Klassi presented by John Demanuele. It was transmitted between April and June 2008 and repeated excessively until 38 December 2008 • Initially its production had been planned for the October 2007 to June 2008 schedule. When interviewing Albert Debono in 2007, he had been confident that this programme would be the educational programme transmitted via E22 for the 2007 autumn schedule of PBS. It is rumoured that budgeting was the reason the programme was delayed by six months.
Lura fil-Klassi was totally financed by E22 and it absorbed almost all the budget allotted to the channel. As a matter of fact, the planned resumption of the series in October 2008 was postponed because as already noted in Chapter FOUR, 39 E22 had €178 left in its budget .
Lura fil-Klassi was a five-days-a-week, 60-minute programme. The presenter had five guests. Two tackled DIY, one computer and two other guests embarked 11pon hmgmiges (Jtnli:m :m 38 A new series of Lurafil-Klassi started in March 2009. 39 Parliamentary Reply by Hon. Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport to Parliamentary Question 2467 tabled on September 29, 2008. 69 The series was complemented with a website (http://www.E22.com.mt/lurafilklassi.htm). The user-friendly website had ten links (see Appendix 1, page 100). For each day (it-Tnejn to il-Gimgna), there was a link, complete with notes and worksheets (samples are included in Appendix 2, pages 102-107). Another link (ikkuntattjana) was to facilitate contact between the learner and the production team. A seventh link (on demand) made possible the availability of programmes as video-on-demand (VOD). The link at the far right (streaming) provided live streaming of the programme. The ninth link marked Ikseb certifikat issa! Ni±±el l-applikazzjoni issa ta' Lura fil-Klassi (see Appendix 3 for a copy of the application form, page 109) provided the opportunity for the learner to register and once the learner completes the worksheets, he/she receives a certificate of participation in the course. This certificate was not endorsed by Malta Qualifications Council (MQC). This was confirmed in an interview with Dr. James Calleja, CEO of Malta Qualifications Council (MQC) and Moyra Felice, the producer of Lurafil-Klassi .. At the bottom of the webpage (see Appendix 1, page 100), there is a link to a competition (marked kompetizzjoni). One of the prizes was the book reviewed by the presenter in that particular programme. Lura fil-Klassi can be a good model for a start to further develop adult education by television in the future. I interviewed presenter John Demanuele and programme producer Moyra Felice to learn about the challenges they faced in producing the series. The concept of the programme originated from Anthony DeGiovanni. Both the former Director of the Department for of Further Studies & Adult Education and Moyra Felice confirmed this in the research interviews I had with them. This is a resume of the interviews with John Demanuele and Moyra Felice. 70 Interview with John Demanuele The well known television personality John Demanuele, who is a teacher by profession, says that he was uncertain at first when he was offered the opportunity to present the programme. He acknowledged that he loves the Italian language, but he did not know a single word of Spanish, he is not a computer wiz and he detests doing the odd jobs in his own house. Demanuele was roped into this programme because he was asked to play the role of the average learner, who does not know these competencies but wishes to learn. Demanuele was an asset because he is an experienced television presenter and had the flair to conduct the programme. On the other hand, the teachers were not so familiar to conversing in front of a camera. Therefore John Demanuele's television experiences coupled with his teaching skills were pivotal in countering any slips of the teachers due to camera shyness. The presenter admits that some of the teachers did not immediately accept the way the lesson was being conducted on television. Some teachers were rigid at first, forgetting that they are in front of a camera and when Demanuele realised this, he used to cut into the explanation in a gracious manner so that his guests would face the camera or show their resources more adequately. When Demanuele felt that he did not understand the point, he would be quick to ask them to explain further. Demanuele acknowledged that the public's response was exceptionally good. Since the programme continued to be repeated several times during the summer and autumn months, he kept on meeting people who referred to this programme. His most emotional moment came when an elderly lady he never met before, told him that through the programme she realised the minor fault in the electricity supply in her kitchen. She was able to fix the fault herself without any help because it was all due to the misuse of a multi-pin plug. She learned this when the subject cropped up in one of the programmes about the misuse of multi-pin plugs in Maltese homes. 71 Another satisfying personal experience for the presenter came when he acted as tour leader on a visit to various Spanish cities. Some of the members of the group were able to communicate in Spanish as a result of following the programmes in Lurafil-Klassi. Demanuele declared that he actually felt jealous that he had not learned Spanish at least to be able to communicate like some of the members of the group. He disclosed that since the programme did not have the services of a floor manager, at times, Demanuele himself had to see to certain matters like minor technical faults, details about phone callers, timings for commercial breaks and communication with the programme's director. These matters usually distracted the presenter from what his guest was explaining. Demanuele admits that at times he was caught off guard by the guest, but through his vast experience in front of the camera, Demanuele could avoid embarrassment. In these awkward situations, the presenter would compare himself to a student who gets distracted in class and so asks the teacher to repeat the last part of the explanation because the student 'did not understand it well'. John Demanuele thinks that his audience was composed of housewives, unemployed persons and pensioners. When the presenter made this comment, his subconscious assessment was probably based on the original transmission time of the programme. As noted elsewhere, most particularly in Table 3 of Chapter FOUR, the programme had a wider audience, due to programme repetitions on several days at different times. Demanuele admits that no audience market research was performed on this particular series. He also acknowledges that he was never involved in meetings between the educational authorities and the production team or in a post-mortem exercise. Scripts were always ready weeks in advance, such that he was usually well prepared for the programme. As a matter of fact, Demanuele explains how he prepared for each programme. For example, when 'Spanish traditions' was going 72 to be a topic in the programme, and a reference was to be made to Pamplona, he would do a Google web search on the city to be able to learn more on events of the San Fermin festival and the running of the bulls or encierro which is one of the main attractions. He records that during this kind of research, he felt he was learning. In this particular case, he learnt that this festival was first brought to wide spread attention by Ernest Hemingway in his first novel, "The Sun Also Rises" and he was proud to bring up this information to his viewers during the programme, to emphasise how much he too was learning, even by presenting this programme. Moyra Felice's original concept during the production stage included the facility of video-on-demand (VOD). John Demanuele understood the importance of VOD from a learning perspective. Therefore apart from reminding the viewers about VOD, he used to insist with the guest expert on ICT to show the viewers how to make use of this tool, keeping in mind that there are viewers who may not be so computer literate about web access. Initially, John Demanuele was hesitant about encouraging viewers to do the worksheets which were available online, so that whoever follows the whole series and sends in the completed worksheets would be awarded a certificate. Demanuele disclosed that he changed his mind as soon as he started receiving phone calls during the live transmission of the programme asking for clarifications about the worksheets. The number of completed worksheets sent in by e-mail or by post was so encouraging. These were corrected by the guest experts. Copies of some of the worksheets available on line are shown in Appendix 2, pages 102-107. A certificate was issued to a number of viewers. This certificate was issued to those viewers who completed all the worksheets. Unfortunately the endorsement of the Malta Qualifications Council was never sought. Moreover, although the series was repeated several times after the initial series came to an end in June 2008, worksheets were never accepted again for evaluation by the guest experts and no 73 certificates were awarded to viewers who started following the series after June 2008. Therefore part of the original capacity of the adult educational series was lost, due to the lack of infrastructure and human resources at E22. Demanuele remarked that although E22 works on a shoestring budget and with a skeleton staff, he found full co-operation from everybody concerned and found the staff multi-skilled. The positive attitude adopted by the staff was translated into a serene environment which helped the presenter and his guests to overcome several technical obstacles which any live transmission is destined to encounter from time to time. The presenter supports the idea of a competition tied with the live transmission of the programme and further suggests that the viewers' participation in the live transmission should be increased so as to boost the rapport between the programme and its viewers. According to Demanuele, audience participation will also help to address any shortcomings in the explanation at real time. Demanuele discloses that as part of his preparation for the programme, he used to go through the book which was going to be given as a prize so that he knew well what the book-prize is about. He admits that when on air he used to open the book, it use to be a pre-selected page so that he will be able to share the information with the rest of the viewers. Demanuele believed that Lura fil-Klassi had to maximise on the knowledge that should be passed on to the viewers; therefore from an educational point of view no stone was left unturned during the programme. Interview with Moyra Felice When I interviewed Moyra Felice, she was in an ecstatic mood. Two days earlier, she had won the Malta Television Award for Best Educational Programme. The winning programme was Lurafil-Klassi. 74 Felice felt proud to have got the award because that meant her strenuous efforts in producing the programme had been rewarded. The idea of this programme had germinated in her mind when she had felt so helpless whilst trying to fix a simple maintenance problem at home, or tried to communicate with a person whose language she did not speak or when trying to use a computer programme but did not know how to navigate. Felice admits that once in innocuous discussion with DeGiovanni, it turned out that he was thinking on the same lines and both agreed that Felice should develop a programme plan based on this concept. Inspired by a quote attributed to Aristotle, All men by nature desire knowledge, she wanted to develop a concept which was innovative for E22, in that it gives viewers the opportunity to follow lessons from the comfort of their own home, send in homeworks and acquire a certificate. Learners could follow Lura fil Klassi on TVM at 10.00 a.m. and on E22 at 9.30 p.m. During the April-June schedule, a repetition on E22 was also aired the following day at 2.00 p.m. and during the weekends an omnibus (of the five programmes of that week) was repeated several times. Felice says that she also agreed with Degiovanni that Lura fil-Klassi had to come up with an even better option. With the introduction of VOD, students could literally click on the programme's website and watch the programme in their own time. This service has also enabled students who missed the first few transmissions of their chosen subject, to catch up with the rest of the class. This website was continuously being updated so that students could download class notes and exercises immediately after the lesson went on air. Moyra Felice revealed to me that VOD of Lura fil-Klassi went beyond everyone's expectations when a Maltese citizen who resides in the UK enrolled to follow the Spanish Course and acquired a certificate. She says that next time she 75 will take into consideration the overseas dimension and take it even further, considering the large Maltese communities that reside abroad. The programme producer says that the choice of John Demanuele was hers. Besides the fact that he is teacher-trained and versatile, she saw in Demanuele's personality the right mix: a fatherly figure for school leavers and youths; has an appealing charisma for middle-aged women; and a peer for the older generation. Felice confirms that the response to Lura fil-Klassi was overwhelming. In the first few days it went on air the programme's website had over 1,000 hits. Viewers' interest continued at a steady pace and the website boasted 11,000 hits. Several learning viewers enrolled for their chosen course and sent in their homework on a regular basis. On August 29, 2008, 77 learners graduated in a ceremony held in the gardens of Casa Leoni in Santa Venera, which houses the Ministry of Education. The biggest group was for the Spanish course. Moyra Felice says that as a result of the programme's success, she had to convince the E22 management to employ a customer care representative on a part time basis. Miriam Ellul (who was responsible for the make-up for the presenter and guests) had to assume this added responsibility at no extra cost. "The phone simply didn't stop," enthused Felice. "Queries varied from people wanting more information about the programme to the students' day to day requirements. I have never seen such a keen interest and this proves that Education can be popular after all" All the efforts were immediately rewarded. The audience survey by Media Warehouse, conducted during the first week that Lura fil-Klassi went on air, revealed that since the series started in April, TVM became the most watched of all the local competing TV stations during that time band. The highest results were achieved on Wednesdays, during the Spanish language lesson. Lura fil-Klassi 76 multiplied the ratings, and this led to TVM capturing 78% of the audience share at lOam. The courses on Lurafil-Klassi were meticulously chosen to address particular educational and practical vacuums. Moyra Felice described the general set-up of the programmes. Mondays were dedicated to computer and IT lessons, a basic need for all citizens to fare better in today's society. Ray Abela took the learners through the basic computer skills to other more advanced courses such as ECDL and the two modem Operating Systems, Windows XP and Windows Vista. Special attention was given to electronic services available nowadays as part of the e-Govemment project, so as to enable learners to download certificates and pay bills in a faster and cost efficient way. Tuesdays and Thursdays were set for the DIY course which was spread over four modules: plumbing, electricity, painting and decorating and woodwork. This course was designed to enable learners to handle simple maintenance problems and to increase the learners' awareness of the do's and don't in our homes. The course was spread over 26 weeks and each module was taught by a teacher from MCAST. Learners following the Spanish course on Wednesdays were inundated with a fiesta of Spanish language and culture. Alessia Cilia took the viewers through the basics of the Spanish language, enabling them to cope successfully in ordinary situations, like ordering a coffee in Spanish or asking directions. The lesson was further enhanced with role-plays, Spanish jokes and proverbs. The Spanish Embassy also gave its input in promoting the Spanish culture. The Italian language course was scheduled on Fridays. Bernadette Gerada Aloisio built her lessons on an Italian comedy, specifically produced by RAI TV, to teach Italian to foreign students. Each episode centered on the charismatic Family 77 Montalcino, who through their humorous escapades, made learning Italian so much more enjoyable. This course was carried out in collaboration with the Italian Embassy and the Societa' Dante Alighieri. A look at the registered learners shows that there were almost twice as many females. Many women also showed a keen interest in the DIY course, emphasising the fact that they feel better knowing that they can handle day to day maintenance work in their homes. A good number of the learners were pensioners, some of whom were housebound and were making the most of this service. The daily book review complemented each subject, so that students were encouraged to read books that can enhance their knowledge in the subject of their choice. At the end of the series in June, John Demanuele had reviewed 65 books. The same books were given away during a daily competition together with other attractive prizes. In separate interviews, Moyra Felice and Anthony DeGiovanni concurred on every aspect of the production except on the name of the programme. DeGiovanni did not agree with the title, because adult education by television should not imply, even subconsciously that one has to go back to the classroom to learn. Moyra Felice disagreed because she insisted that there is nothing bizarre about going back to the classroom - in her case, the virtual classroom she wanted to create for this series. To prove her point, Felice was very open-minded when she delegated the set production to designer Dorianne Saliba. Moyra Felice insisted with the designer that she wished to have a classroom ambiance that would please the eye, be non traditional and make the learner feel at ease. Felice was happy with the final output but it took several designs before she agreed on the one used in the series. 78 In her 11-year career as television programme producer and director (most of which spent at the national broadcaster), Moyra Felice admits that Lurafil-Klassi is the first programme to have fulfilled her career's ambitions. "The biggest challenge was to make education fun for my viewers. I suppose any project has its own challenges but with education, the rewards seem nobler. I take pride in the fact that I made a difference in people's lives," she said in the research interview. Conclusion Lura fil-Klassi was chosen as a prototype programme because it takes into consideration many of the arguments already raised so far. Going back to the perspectives referred to in the last chapter, one sees that Lurafil-Klassi: • recognised Knowles' postulate that adults are most interested in learning subjects that have immediate relevance to their job and personal life; • acknowledged Mezirow' s line of thought of using prior interpretation to construe a new revised interpretation of the meaning of one's experience as a guide to future action; • as a programme, it followed Gagne's strategy for instruction because the series gained attention, presented stimulating material and enhanced retention and transfer of what has been learnt. One important aspect is missing m Lura fil-Klassi - an aspect which is endemic, or maybe ingrained in the Maltese culture. At no stage, were the adult learners involved in the production of the series. Subliminally, adult learners were treated like empty vessels, ready to be filled. Freire speaks of the importance of dialogue as a process to enhance the community and build social capital. Knowles insists that adults need to be involved in the planning stage as well (the programme involved adults in the evaluation). The programme failed in Rogers' perspective that for experiential learning to be truly effective, it should employ the learner throughout the whole learning 79 wheel, from goal setting, to experimenting and observing, to reviewing, and finally action planning. In 2007, on a visit to Swindon as part of an Arion Study Visit funded by the European Union Programmes Agency (EUPA), I witnessed adult education in practice where the adult learners were involved at all stages. Beyond this aspect, Lura fil-Klassi was a commendable effort and deserved to win the 2008 Malta Television Award for Best Educational Programme. 80 Chapter EIGHT The way ahead Lura fil-Klassi offers a good starting point. But a bigger picture has to be tackled. There is an urgent need to devise a lifelong learning strategy and E22 has to be an integral part of this policy. The notorious information that surfaced in the summer of 2008 confirms this urgent need. The information that contributed to this desolation was: • Statistics published in the EU Draft Progress Rep01t f01 2008 on "Delivering lifelong learning for knowledge, creativity and innovation" (CEU, 2008) show that in 2005-2006, 5.5% of the population aged 25-64 participate in education and training, putting Malta at the lower end of the EU Table and far off the EU's 2010 benchmark of 12.5%. This information is alarming and becomes more so on deeper analysis of the participation in adult education and training of different age groups (See Chart 3). Chart 3: Participation of Adults in education and training (2005-2006)40 (1)8% ...c CU c.6% '() t: cu4% ~ -02% ' 40 Source: Operational programme II: Cohesion Policy 007-2013 - Empowering People for more jobs and a better quality oflife (PPCD: 2007). 81 Malta's National Reform Programme 2008-2010 (MFEI, 2008) claims that the proportion of adults in lifelong learning stands at 6.0% in 2007. The Reform Programme further illustrates that 'among those with higher or medium educational attainment, the lifelong learning rates are higher in Malta than in the EU27 (Malta's high: 19.3%, EU27: 18.6%; Malta's medium: 11.2%, EU 27: 8.9%). The opposite is true for those with low educational attainment (Malta: 2.8% compared to 3.9% EU27).' (MFEI 2008:18) • The reconfirmation of the lack of a national strategic plan for lifelong learning. For the March 2008 general election, only one major party mentioned lifelong learning in its electoral manifesto. During the budget speeches on the Education Vote on 15 November 2008, there was no mention at all of adult education and lifelong learning; • The Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport assumed responsibility for E22 from the Directorate for Educational Services which is responsible for lifelong learning. Taking off One cannot find a solution to a problem unless one acknowledges that there is one. As Profs. Kenneth Wain has often reiterated, our country urgently needs a national lifelong learning strategy that coherently addresses the priorities of our knowledge society within the context of a globalised world. There is a strong urgent need to put lifelong learning high on the national agenda. Any reforms in our educational system need to be part of a comprehensive lifelong learning strategy. It is to be acknowledged that for the first time, in the latest call for the 41 filling of Headship Positions within the Government Service , there is a call for a Director, Lifelong Learning. This implies that a department for Lifelong Learning is to be created within the Ministry of Education. No further details have been announced yet. 41 OPM Circular 25/2008, dated 24 November 2008. 82 The 2003 unpublished Draft Strategic Plan, entitled "Lifelong Leaming in Malta: Towards the Leaming Society" puts forward several valid proposals. A substantial number of these proposals have been put into practice during the last five years and positive results are being registered in those sectors where the proposals have been implemented. Other issues raised in the draft plan have been ignored, leaving the educational initiatives beyond the formal years of learning in a desolate state. The result is duplication of resources in some sectors while other areas are completely overlooked. One of the areas overlooked is E22. Going back to Table 2 in Chapter FOUR (page 44), it does not take much to realise that none of the new programmes that made up the autumn schedule of E22 is relevant to any aspiration at closing the gap between our present state of affairs and the 2010 EU benchmark with regards to adult education. Therefore, we take off by assessing the present situation and working out a road map to get to our objectives in the sphere of adult education. Then we have to identify all the available resources and coordinate a strategy on how to reach our objectives. One of the resources available is E22. Education broadcasting can play a vital role in reaching that significant sector of the adult population who have so far been adamant in engaging in any form of learning. Jacques Sciberras, CEO of the National Commission for Higher Education (NCHE) quantifies it as 30%. Dr. Grace Grima, Director General of the Directorate for Quality and Standards in Education (DQSE) repeated that same figure during a televised programme of Xarabank42 when discussing the reform on the 11 + exam and the removal of 43 streaming • Television offers other possibilities to the way teaching can take place. The new technologies on the horizon (dealt with in Chapter FIVE), will make adult education by television an irresistible tempting experience. 42 The programme was aired Friday 17 November 2009. 43 Malta's National Reform Programme (MFEI, 2008:18) quotes a figure of37.6% in 2007 (EU27 14.8%). The same publication notes that there was a positive decline from 54.2% in 2000. 83 The overall mission The 2003 unpublished Draft Strategic Plan has already identified educational broadcasting as a key player. One may assume that any future national lifelong learning strategy will sustain (if not enhance further) the role of the educational television in the overall strategy. The mission of E22 should be tailored around five basic tasks, within the context of a national strategy to achieve the key competencies for lifelong learning. Task 1: Promote and celebrate the good practices within the colleges and schools. Task 2: Create an interactive website that hosts clips produced by E22 illustrating areas of the National Curriculum Framework. Such areas will be better understood by the learners if they are supported by audio-visual aids. This can be on a similar format as found on http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips. Clips may be accessed through computers in classes, computer labs, school libraries etc. These two tasks will be beneficial to students during their formal learning years. They will serve as non-formal and informal learning for adults as all parents enjoy watching their children on television and subliminally, they will learn from the proceedings. P~rents also enjoy being in the know about what their children are learning. Task 3: ''Networking" as a celebration of adult education in the community. E22 can be pivotal in promoting radical community development which is committed to collective action and active citizenship. This could be developed on the Learning & Engagement Teams (LETs) model adopted in UK. Local Councils are to be involved. This task could also go beyond the involvement of local councils and take on board trade unions, political parties, the church and its religious affiliations, NGOs, and the civil society, as long as their initiatives are within the context of the key competencies for lifelong learning. 84 Task 4: As a means of distance learning/open university. E22 should be supported by new media technologies and include the creation of a website similar to http://www.open2.net. E22 needs to work in collaboration with post secondary/tertiary educational institutions, the Employment & Training Centre (ETC) and any other institution or NGO that offers adult learning. This has to be operated within the framework for the validation of informal and non-formal learning in Malta as recommended by the Malta Qualifications Council. Task 5: As a strategic tool to reach national objectives. One of the objectives listed in Malta's National Reform Programme 2008-2010 (MFEI, 2008) is to increase the participation of adults in lifelong learning from 5.5% (in 2007) to 7% by 2010. Programmes devised within the context of Task 3 and 4 ought to be based on the perspectives of adult education theorists already discussed in Chapter SIX. In Task 3, reference is made to the Learning & Engagement Teams (LETs) model adopted in the UK. In May 2007, I was one of ten people from nine EU countries who participated in an Arion familiarisation study-visit on Learning and Engagement Teams (LETs), in the borough of Swindon, England. Throughout the week, we observed, attended and analysed the LETs programme at work. The so called "experts" or academics were not on the forefront, controlling the sessions. Instead, the sessions were managed by the "learning ambassadors", that is the average community members who have followed previous learning programmes and showed unreserved willingness to pass on their knowledge to other members of the community. The Borough Council of Swindon empowered the learning ambassadors to steer their groups and engage with citizens, communities and neighbourhoods to establish priorities and build a capacity to tackle the issues, as well as inspire the empowered participants to participate in the democratic life of the community. 85 The programme further supported citizens to fulfil their personal potential and to collectively advance the well being of their community. All sessions were filmed with the intention of being shared with other groups, so that they engage with each other. This method was used because the council does not have access to a television channel. Instead they use video podcasts. In the research interview with Bruce Clarke, Head of Learning and Engagement, the particular importance of the strategies in adult learning programmes was made amply clear. Clarke and his learning ambassadors insisted that their experience has shown that when adults are involved in the teaching learning stratagem, other adults are more susceptible to learn. Clarke argued that when the teaching-learning model was heavily loaded with "experts" as teachers, adults complained that the sessions were too content-oriented and the "experts" sought more book-based solutions rather than practical ones. Type of programmes Since the Management Board for E22 was set up, a Programme Statement of Intent (PSI) is being published. This is a step in the right direction, but it is too generic. The PSI published for the period July to September 2009 identifies the criteria for evaluation of the submitted proposals. Rightly so, one of the criteria is the "relevance to the mission of the station." Earlier in the PSI, the mission of E22 is specified that: Education 22 is set up within the Ministry for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport and reflects the remit of the same Ministry. It aims to provide high quality educational, cultural, sports and general interest programmes as well as programmes aimed at children and young people. (Borg, 2009: I) For E22 to become a tool for adult education by television, the PSI of E22 needs to specify that all proposals for programmes are to be built around achieving any of the eight competencies as identified in the Lisbon Agenda, namely: 86 1. Communication in the mother tongue 2. Communication in foreign languages 3. Mathematical competence and basic competences m Science and Technology 4. Digital Competence 5. Learning to Learn 6. Social and Civic Competences 7. Entrepreneurship 8. Cultural Awareness and Expression. Three learning outcomes are expected to be reached: a. Knowledge: The outcome is the collection and assimilation of information through learning. b. Skills: This is the ability to apply knowledge and use know-how to complete tasks and solve problems. c. Competence: This is the proven ability to use knowledge, skills and other abilities to perform a function against a given standard in work or study situations and in professional and/or personal development. Adult education by television cannot be left to operate in isolation because it is difficult to achieve the above outcomes at all times. Reverting to the example identified in the interview with the Rector, Profs. Juanito Camilleri (already referred to in Chapter FIVE) he points out that courses in Diplomacy and Geriatrics are already conducted through IPTV. Students also meet on campus for a period of time to perform those components which need practical and student interaction. In following this model, more students from different countries are enrolling and the accessibility of engaging foreign lecturers is becoming economically feasible. 87 E22 is not a satellite channel; therefore it will never substitute IPTV if the University wants to reach foreign students. But this example amply shows that learning can take place through the use of the media technologies, supported by the physical presence for the required completion of the competence. Profs. Camilleri foresees an even more exciting future for the University. He is proud that the University of Malta has joined the GEANT project. This project is the collaboration of 26 National Research and Education Networks, the European Commission, and DANTE (Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe). Its principal purpose is to develop a multi-gigabit pan-European data communications network, specifically reserved for use in research and education. The project also covers a number of other activities related to research networking. These include network testing, development of new technologies and support for some research projects with specific networking requirements. On Profs Camilleri's suggestion, I also met Robert Sultana, Head of IT Services at the University of Malta and we discussed the benefits of the GEANT Project. Sultana explained to me that an experiment involving several school classes across Europe (including Malta) has already been carried out. The outcome of this educational experience was overwhelming. For the time being, the costs are exorbitant and not feasible for our economies of scale. Sultana agrees that when the GEANT project becomes more affordable, it can be hooked to a television channel for proliferation of suitable educational material to the general public. If possible, all series produced by E22 should lead to validation and certification on the lines of the European Qualification Framework (EQF). In the research interview with Dr. James Calleja, CEO of the Malta Qualifications Council (MQC) he states that he sees no difficulty in this regard as long as the series respects the criteria of the level descriptors of the level intended to be reached by the series. As a matter of fact, MQC has issued a working document "Valuing All Learning - Frameworks for the validation of informal and non-formal learning in 88 44 Malta" • This document should serve as guidelines for adult education by television. The Organisational Structure and funding 45 In an interview, Stephen Azzopardi, then Head of E22 , argues that it is very auspicious that as a channel, it falls under the same Director (he was referring to the Director of Student Services within the Directorate for Educational Services) that encompasses lifelong learning. To be fair to Azzopardi, this interview took place in April 2008, less than four months before the Ministry of Education assumed direct responsibility of the channel. E22 should return under the realms of the Directorate for Educational Services. It is a service which is crucial and pivotal to meet the challenges ahead. The concept of Management Committee introduced when the Ministry assumed direct responsibility, should be retained but with a different composition. Chart 4 (page 90) details a possible composition. 44 MQC, April 2008 45 Mr. Stephen Azzopardi resigned from Head of E22 in December 2008. 89 Chart 4: Proposed Organisational Structure for E22 Board of Directors composed of Chairperson: Director General Directorate of Education Services Members: Director (Lifelong Leaming) Representative from Employment & Training Centre (ETC) Representative from National Commission for Higher Education (NCHE) 2 Independent experts representing civil society and local councils I Chief Executive I Pool of personnel, specialising in educational broadcasting and lifelong learning. Their role includes: • Assess the needs of lifelong learners • mentoring to free-lancer producers • supervise the educational follow-up • monitor the programme productions • synergise the programmes with the use of new digital media • analyse the feedback from the participants Pool of free-lance producers, technical staff and writers to produce the actual television programmes. This pool needs the support of staff specialised in the development of ICT related matters 90 E22 needs an overhaul in the technical outlay to make the best of the opportunities of the oncoming digitalisation that will happen in a few months time. This translates into more financial investment in the channel. It is a pity that E22 did not seek Structural Funds under European Social Fund (ESF). E22 could fit in the 2007-2013 European Structural Funds (ESF) because Malta's declared ESF programme is focused on employment, education and training to help the country keep pace with changes in the global economy by enhancing its human resources skills. A key objective is fostering access to the labour market by encouraging workers to invest in themselves through embracing life-long learning, while helping those most in need to find jobs through easier access to better training. Special attention is given to opportunities for women and to training in information and communication technologies (ICT). Funding for the development of E22 could benefit from one of two Priority Axes, namely Priority Axis 1 (Improving education and skills) or Priority Axis 2 (Investing in the employability and adaptability of the workforce). E22 needs investment both in the human capital and in the resources. As regards the daily modus operandi of E22, this could follow several models, three of which are: Model 1: Invest in human resources that are multi-task job oriented in both programme production, web content and advertising. Programmes are produced in house. This model is only applicable if Government is in a position to invest more funds in E22 Model 2: Farm-out all productions to media production houses, provided that all programmes' contents are within the framework as directed by the Board of Directors. Programmes are to be self-financed by the media production houses 91 through advertising, support by local councils, civil society, educational institutions, and EU funding. Model 3: The Directorate for Educational Services incentivises employees/teachers to form a co-operative to produce part of the programming. At the same time, there will he space for productions by independent media production houses. A word of caution is appropriate. As the ex-Permanent Secretary emphasised in the research interview, E22 remains first and foremost an educational channel. It cannot lose its objectivity, its impartiality and its mission, whatever the expense. Who should be involved? E22 needs to create an effective partnership with all educational institutions in Malta, and where possible, even beyond our shores. The unpublished Draft Strategic Plan for Lifelong Learning emphasises that E22 is a distance learning resource that would complement web-based learning for a 46 rich provision. The three partners (that is, DFSAE , the University and the Malta College of Arts, Science & Technology) should work together for an integrated and comprehensive national policy on distance education which would involve the sharing of resources and expertise between the partners in order to rationalise the service, avoid duplication and economise on expense. (Unknown, 2003 :205 - bold words are attributed to the author/s) The ex-Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Education and ex-Chairman of the Managing Committee, Francis Borg47 agrees. In the research interview, he was outright in favour of this synergy and confided that these institutions are willing to participate. The Rector of the University of Malta also agrees. Efforts to interview the Chairman of the Board of Directors or the CEO of Malta College of Arts Science and Technology (MAST) on this matter proved futile. Instead, I was 46 Refer to footnote 16, page 5. 47 Since the interview, Mr. F. Borg has moved on to the post of Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Social Policy. This has already been noted in footnote 2, page 2. 92 directed to interview Juan Borg Manduca, Director of the Institute of Information 48 and Communication Technology . From a personal perspective, Manduca was not in favour of this idea on the grounds that from his personal experience, learners will not follow a course if left on their own, unsupervised. The experience from Lura fil-Klassi dealt in the previous chapter, proves otherwise. F. Borg is pragmatic on this subject and expresses that there is a lot of ground work to be done before it can fully materialise. E22 has to go beyond the formal higher education institutions. Local Councils need to be convinced that their role in community development must be at the core of their mission. The aim is to involve every member of the community to be an active citizen. Earlier in this chapter, I shared my experience of Borough Council of Swindon. Community development and active citizenship do not feature very high on the Local Council's agenda. In the research interview, the President of the Local Councils Association, Michael Cohen said that most of the Councillors are not trained in such an area; therefore they cannot take initiatives to foster community development that can bring a collective action for change. This does not mean that community development through E22 should be abandoned. On the contrary, E22 should look for good practices in other countries and bring them to Malta. Margaret Ledwith (2005:81) quotes Barr and Hashagen (2000: 17) when indicating that there are five steps in the process of achieving better community development. These are: • working with communities to develop a shared view about what community interventions are there to do; • deciding how the community and other partners are going to work towards realising the vision; • bringing in the resources the community has, or can access; 48 The Institute oflnformation and Communication Technolgy is one of the Institutes that forms part ofMCAST. 93 • providing opportunities for community members to play a direct role in the process; and • ensuring the community has ownership over the outcome. Filming the whole process and showing it to the local audience will help Local Councils to emulate an essential part of their role, since as Cohen is claiming, several Councillors lack the knowhow of social and civic competences in the community. It is essential that community development takes place and is pushed high on the Local Councils' agenda because the success of our island-state is the sum of how much our community grows. Therefore, E22 should be a channel that practices an open-door-policy for anyone who believes in empowering Maltese adults to lead to a more knowledgeable society. In Task 3, everyone was practically mentioned, because everyone has something to give and something to learn. The result of this rationale should then lead to the acquisition of an audience. Over the past years, E22 has not built a loyal audience because as a channel, it never captured an audience that is ready to identify itself with the channel. Scheduling has been inconsistent; branding is inexistent. Setting the five tasks mentioned earlier in this chapter at the core of its activities and opening up its doors with a clear vision and a specific objective will ultimately attract an audience to E22 that makes the channel sustainable and removes any shroud of doubt about its existence. Moreover, in accomplishing the five tasks, E22 would be striking a balance between promoting active citizenship and promoting employability as they are both equally important and interrelated for lifelong education. 94 Conclusion Adult education by television is not meant to be an alternative or substitute for any initiative already undertaken. Nor is it the intention here to present it as a magic formula or a solution to all our problems in the economic, social and educational fields. The sole purpose here was to present adult education by television as an added option that can be developed on E22. It will enhance this underused television channel, make it sustainable and transform it into a legitimate reference for a learning society, whilst contributing towards community development. This can be achieved as long as we set and agree on clear objectives, within a national lifelong learning strategy. Programmes are then formulated to reach the objectives. In devising these programmes, we need to examine profoundly the rationale of adult educationalists perspectives and apply them to develop programmes which can reach out to that adult population that has resisted all other forms of learning. The size of that population cannot be ignored. It amounts to 3 0% of the cohort. Adult education by television cannot exclude anyone. It is essential that adults are involved in the planning and evaluation of their own instruction; that their experience (including mistakes) provides the basis for learning activities; the programmes must have immediate relevance to their job or personal life; and that such programmes are problem-centered rather than content-oriented. For adult learning to be successful even through television, it is essential that adults are not viewed as empty accounts to be filled by the presenter but the programmes are part of a dialogical process. Ultimately, the goal would be to lead adults to understand their empowerment to transform reality. 95 Over the past few years, I asked several scholars and people holding posts of responsibility the question 'Should adult education by television be the mission of E22?' Almost everyone agreed that this is the way forward for E22. On interviewing Rev. Joseph Borg, a lecturer in Communications at the University of Malta, a member of the Management Committee that is presently managing E22 and a consultant on broadcasting to the Hon. Minister of Education, he noted that according to the National Broadcasting Plan, this is the underlying principle behind the original set-up of E22 and why it was placed under the responsibility of the then Education Department. Furthermore, in a private conversation with Margaret Ledwith during a University of Malta Summer Institute Seminar on Lifelong Learning, while she took an interest in my idea of using television for adult education, she saw in this project a way how to develop collective action. She emphasised that the success of such a project may be attained only when the point of departure is to promote and develop a critical pedagogy that involves questioning, naming, reflecting, analysing and reciprocating rather than dominating. This is the critical pedagogy that ought to underline every programme for successful adult education by television; a pedagogy that is based on a democratic process aimed to bring about transformation. Television can be an effective transformative agent if it is operated in a synergy with the other technologies. Beyond 2010, the world is set to change considerably with the emergence of more technologies. This would enhance the two-way communication, interactivity and active participation in a programme. Throughout most of this academic work, reference was solely made for the better use of E22. It is to be emphasised that no Maltese channel is excluded from incorporating adult education content across its schedules. In fact, I reiterate that the Broadcasting Authority ought to formulate a policy on this issue and that the 96 public broadcaster ought to be a key player. Unfortunately, as Kevin Aquilina confirmed, the Broadcasting Authority has not indulged itself directly in this sphere. Within the evolving local scenario, E22 remains the only channel with a clear agenda and with a potential to direct viewers to develop critical consciousness. It is the channel with the full credentials for serving as a pedagogical tool for distance learning. Unfortunately, the public service provider is forfeiting its public service obligation under the excuse of profits and audience ratings. The political television channels in Malta operate overtly against free, open and critical considerations of political issues relevant to learners. Although E22 needs further investment in human capital and technical resources, adult education by television is a pragmatic attainable vision created through a joint-partnership between the state (which owns the channel), the educational institutions, ETC, the Local Councils, the church, trade unions, NGOs, and the citizens. Everyone has to be involved, because adult education is not a Government programme, or the property of one institution. It is a shared goal relating to the attitudes and behaviour of many employers, individuals and organisations, the mainstream and the marginalised groups. Government has a part to play but government alone cannot achieve the cultural changes involved in making a reality of adult education. E22 can be the powerful vehicle for adult education in creating the conditions in which people, families, communities, civil society and organisations are most likely to learn for themselves. In doing so, E22 will tangibly contribute towards our fulfilment of a competitive and dynamic knowledge-based society. 97 98 Appendix 1 Link Page for Lura fil-Klassi 99 ro ~ • ::; fil!1m --J ii I I it-Tnejn it-Tlieta 1-Erbgha ii-Ham is il-Gimgha ikkuntattjana on demand streaming .Lura fil-Klassi ... Taghlim tul Hajtek Kulhadd jjxtjeq jimxi 'I quddiem fil-hajja imma forsi mhux ku!hadd jista jmur lura fil-klas:;i biex jiq:hallem, min ghal raguni u min ghal ohra. Mill-31 ta' Marzu, tista tinghaqad fi lclassi milf·kumdita ta' darek u tikseb 'Certifikat'! Bil-programm "Lura fil-Klassi". flimkien ma' John Demanuele qed nipproponu propju dan! Pdin l·iskeda. "Lura fil·l • Lezzjonijiet dwar l·uzu tal-Kompjuter u I-Internet • Tahrig ba:ziku tad·DIY, Ii huwa mifrux ferba' Taqsimiet: · • Tahrig baziku fl-Elettriku - Tahrig ba:ziku Ill-Plumbing • Tahrig baziku fix-Xoghol ta' 1-lnjam • Tahrig b I !}' Bravenet Free Counter I 1'11 YIE\1! SITE STATS I lura fil-Klassi qieghed jigi repetut kuljum mit-Tnejn saf-Gimgha f/-4 ta' wara nofs in-nhar u ff-10.30 ta' filghaxija u s-Sibt bejn is-6.30 ta' filghaxija u 1- 11.30 ta' r7/ghaxija. Ikseb certifikat issa! Nizzel 1-applikazzjoni issa ta' Lura fil·Klassi 100 Appendix 2 Sample Worksheets used during Li1ra fil-Klassi 101 ICT Course with Ray Abela Worksheet 13 1. What is a Backup? 2. A virus can be spread by: a) b) lntroducti 3. 5. How can I change the page size from Letter to A4? 102 Institute of building :i.nd construction engineering MC AST Naxxar 'A COLLEGE of ARTS, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Pro_grammi D.I. Y Injam Programm No.4 Suggett: Gboddft Tad-Dawl. Data: \ Introduzjoni Illum zgur li ma tistax tahdem jekk ma jkollokx. xi ghodda tad- Time dawl: Importanti Ii qabel tuzha tkun tafkifthaddimha u Ii tuzha lmin ghalxiex kienet' maghmula. Pero qabel dari naraw kiftibda l?rogett Resorsi 1. Ezempju ta' qisien tal-biccief ghal-progett 2. Progetti semplici 3. Ghodda tad-dawl 4. Jigs Zvilupp Progett • Is-sib jew tohloq disinn tal-progett 3mjn - • Jekk ghadek tibda sib xi hag°a semplici(ezempju) • Qisien skond il-folja jew bicca li ghandhekk • Taghmel lista tal-bicciet u t-qisien Ii ghandek bzonn • Tideciedi il-materjal li ser tuza • Folja pine mod semplici fill:\ux trid tincana Serrieq tad-dawl 8Q1in Qies tal-lupa 19cm mhux g-0ff. 1500watts 4000rpm: • \ • Safety features; Cover Ii dejjem jatti il-lupa,sil 103 , s~w Jekk progett b'qisinn (ezempju) ghandej.( bzonjig ~aw 5min Jig J • Magna zghira relativament bla periklu • Lupa tiela u nizla :fil-waqt Ii ticc3;qlaq il-quddiem u lura • Taqta hi u tie la :tnela tixlifjigi fuq • Taqta sa 60mm hxuna f injam artab u 25mm fiebes • Tinqaleb • Tlett lupi different~ Plywood irqiq tajjeb b'tall-hadid • Jekk tond zghir tisfurzax il-magna.Ma hux adattat ghal xoghol fit-tul favur il-vina majistaxjiehl). post il-band saw Qtuh bil-jig saw Timar.ka • 5mifl • Tibda taqta jekk tond zghir qatta biccidt . • Spicca il-kumenti bic-cana jew raspa u lima • Tista taqta toqba. Tibda bi trapanatqra. Router lOmin Din bicca ghodda importanti bafua u Ii tista tuza ghal s~opijiet differenti kif ser naraw. • Taghqad hafua zohom iqek il-boghod, taftaqla 60 daqqa sakerrim tigbed idejk • Taghme1 hafua storhju u ghabra/nuccali u m~kla • Xorta ma ghandekx ghalfejn tibza • Tipi differenti rigwarq sahha 500/4noowatt u qies tal- gewza 6mm,1/4inch,8mm,3/8mm,12inch • Wahda mhux goffa biex tjbda bhal 1000 watt • Soft start importanti aktar pieta b'sahhtu • Variable speed hu taijeb • Dahhal il-cutter mhux. inqas min % tax-xa:ft • Nizzel 1-istopper j~w dahhal iz.,.zewg spanners u s1kka b' idejk biss. • Taghqad bh~1 arlogg min fuq. Mela timxi biha kontra 1- arlogg1 b'hekk hi ma tigtix fuq ix-xoghot • Setja I-fond fuq bicc~ hazina. • Jekk ghandek qata kbira inzel ftit ~it . • Trapani: Xaft differenti. Dissin differenti. Bearing ghal gnub. Bla bearing biexjintuzaw fm-nofs/guard. • Guard,s,guids,jigs u mejda ghal kbar . Gheluq Fil- programm Ii jmis nkoll}plu fuq power tools. I Noti I 104 ITALIAN (tredicesima lezione) Notes A. Esprimere sentimenti soggettivi - desiderio, speranza, paura. • Spero che vada tutto bene. • Voglio che sia tutto perfotto. • Ho paura eh~ l'ufficio infonhazione cbiuda. • Mi auguro che le ritrovi pd.ma lei. • Spero proprio che scopra qualcosa. CONG regolari) TROVAR.E SCOPRIRE scopra Verbi irregolari ES SERE sia (lui/lei) AND ARE vada 105 B. Chiedere aiuto - frasi da usare • Mi scusi, abbiamo un problema. • Sarebbe possibile fare una ricerca in st~ione? • Si la prego, la situazione e grave. • Per .cortesia, mi faccia sapere al piu presto. C. Frasi al negativo • Ma qui non c'e ness~no. • Non ho mai bevuto un vero cappuccino italiano. • a non ha niente con s 106 H .. W. Vero o falso 1. Laura e Silvia arrivano tardi alla stazione. 2. Elisabeth ha dimenticato le valigie sul treno. 3. A Elisabeth non piace Tltalia. 4. Alla fine Elisabeth trova le sue valigie. 5. Elisabeth ha prenotato un alberg'o a Rbma. Con~iunt1vo Presente 1. Spero che Sandro non (tornare) _,-,--.,.._,...,....,...-tardi stasera. :: t~ ~S:::7~:~d:; fratedYJi?i~' 4. (~i auguro che il treno (partire) 5. Ei~!~i@12lt§he Maria (essere) _-'-'--'-'"--"-' 6. I:'.£"-:iJ 1. Da quel giorno non ha bevuto caffe. 2. Non ho da dichiarare. 3. Ma sei certo che non hai visto ------entrare nelbar? 4. Mia sorella none ---stata in Ameriea. 107 Appendix 3 Application Form 108 Formola Tal L·Applikazzjoni . lsem u K~njorn lndlrizz Postali Ka.rta ta' l'."ldentaa 1 Numru tat-Telefon . lndirizz Elettmniku Kors Htixtieq issegwi Ghandek AcGess ghal Kompjuter Iva Le Ghandek Access gtlall-lntemet Iva Le Biex wiened jingnata c-certifikat ft tmiem i!-kors gl"landu jsegwi kull l.ezzjoni fis-suggett Ujinteressah u jagnmei ix'."xoghol mitltib mill-ghalllem/a taghhom. 109 110 Bibliography Adorno, T. (2003) The Jargon ofAuthenticity, London: Routledge Classics. Azzopardi, M.A. (2007) Community Development - learning from Swindon's success, The Sunday Times, 8 July 2007, p. 63. 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