An 8-year-old girl has began training to become a weightlifting farmer by waking up for school at 5:30am and leaving home with a heavy backpack.
Year 3 student Sophie Scerri, who lives in Mgarr, gets picked up outside her home by a minibus at 6am to get to her school in Sliema for 8:00am, while carrying a bag that weighs more than her.
From a young age, schoolchildren in Malta are trained to wake up at the crack of dawn to help them get used to their future careers as farmers, builders, factory workers, and other manual jobs that require early starts.
The book-filled bags are intended to strengthen the children’s back muscles, not just for their strenuous blue-collar jobs but also for when they eventually enter the world of powerlifting.
“I like drawing, so when I grow up I want to be an illustrator. Or at least I did until my teacher said I had to pick a job where you have to wake up at an ungodly hour. So I chose agriculture because I also like the outdoors,” Scerri said.
“It’s important that we as schools prepare children for industrial work and Olympic weightlifting. When they all inevitably enter World’s Strongest Man and Woman competitions, they’ll already have sturdy frames that can more easily bear heavy loads,” the principal of the Sliema school told Bis-Serjetà.
“If some children end up developing spinal problems, well then they’re just not cut out for adult life and should be thrown down a well immediately,” she added.
