The birth of the Gozo Lyceum

Abstract

Only those of us who are well-acquainted with local history can fully appreciate the utter neglect - by foreigners and Maltese alike - in which Gozo and its people have patiently had to toil and suffer throughout the centuries! Even if we focus our attention only on the very slow and belated development of education during the British era, it will be enough for us to realize our dear little island's plight. For, whereas in Malta, by 1850, quite apart from the University, there was a well-attended Lyceum, 24 Government Primary Schools, a night school for adults in Żabbar and an "industrial" school for orphan girls in Floriana, there were only 4 Government Primary Schools in the whole of Gozo: one for boys and one for girls in Rabat and two similar ones in Nadur. However, all the four Gozo schools were considered 2nd class institutions, like those in the minor villages of Malta. In 1850, however, Canon Paolo Pullicino, then Director of Education, asked that the Rabat school be upgraded to lst Class. It must be remembered, however, that the Rabat Boys' School was not the local Government's brainchild, for it had been opened by the "Societa' Della Scuola Normale Di Valletta" around 1820, in its highly commendable attempt to revive an old, endowed school which, for centuries, had been run by the local municipality - then known as "Universita '" - together with the Collegiate Church in the citadel. The school had often closed its doors for lack of funds. Thus, when Monsignor Pietro Dusina in 1775 asked the Vicar Forane, Don Laurentius a' Papis, if there was a local school, the answer was in the negative. But the school went on shedding its spasmodic and feeble light till the arrival of Napoleon in 1798, when it was still being run by Don Giuseppe Cremona.