Problem of Educating Natives: Value of Anthropology

with a British and a French judge.

Problem Of Educating

NATIVES Value of Anthropology THE value of the application of anthro- -**- pological methods to problems of native affairs has come to be recognised in Colonial circles generally.

This is demonstrated, as far as Australia is concerned, by the existence of an official anthropologist in Papua (Mr. F. E. Williams, whose publications are widely known), and, nominally at any rate, in the adjacent Mandated Territory; also by the provision, with Commonwealth funds, of a course in social anthropology and related subjects at Sydney University.

There are still many Islands residents, however, keen observers of native affairs administration, who are unable to see any real value in much of the soi-called anthropological work being carried out in the Territories concerned. This is no doubt due to the number of casual “anthropologists” who arrive in the Territories, remain in one region for some months, and take their departure without apparently attempting to make available for practical purposes the data and conclusions of their research.

The truth is that anthropologists to-day represent two different outlooks: those whe are concerned with primitive sociology on the purely academic and theoretical side; and those whose real interest is in the application of their studies to practical problems of native affairs. It is in the training of the latter type that the Commonwealth is specially interested; and the course at Sydney is pointed towards that end, Professor A. P. Elkin himself being a recognized authority upon the problems of the Australian aborigine.

In this connection, it is interesting to note that the mandated little island of Nauru has been alive to the possibilities of such an anthropological approach to its native administration programme. Miss Camilla Wedgwood, of Sydney University, carried out a comprehensive survey of the European-native contact situation on the island last year, and a further step has been taken in the appointment of Mr.

William C. Groves to the position of Director of Education on the island for the next year or two.

Mr. Groves, who was one of the Australian delegates to the Carnegie conference on Education in Pacific Countries held at Honolulu in 1936, and who has been on leave from the Education Department of Victoria for the last few years, working under the Australian National Research Council’s Rockefeller grant for anthropological research, has been invited by the Nauruan Administration to survey its native education programme with a view to placing it on a “nativistic” or distinctly- Nauruan foundation, as far as the present situation will permit. The project is one which will be watched with interest by all who look with concern on the problem of adjusting native culture to modern conditions of life under European influence.

It has been arranged that Mr. Groves, with his w r ife and family, shall leave for Nauru by the Triona in February.

Nauru has pursued a very progressive native policy since the inauguration of the mandatory regime under Brigadier-General T. Griffiths in 1921. A number of natives have undergone higher schooling in Australia; one or two are at the Native Medical School at Suva; and six are at present undergoing various courses at the Technical School at Geelong (Victoria).

The present administrator, Commander