Practical!

Teach Them Something Practical!

Plea For Education Reform in Tonga

From a Special Correspondent THE imminent destruction of the Ton gan Government College is caus ing considerable interest among the population.

The establishment of a Technical and Agricultural College in its place, in so far as it may give a more useful educa tion to Tongan youth, is a desirable step. But the scope of the proposed education, although of a more technical and agricultural character, is limited, and is designed to affect approximately only one-fifth of the boys attending the various “colleges” (really secondary schools).

Of these latter there are altogether five whose purpose is to fit the young Tongan for his after-school life—or ought to be. The curriculum is wholly academic, and no account has ever been taken of the fact that 90 per cent, of the boys have to earn their livelihood on the land.

Among the Tongans, the belief is largely held that a smattering of edu cation will solve all the difficulties of existence and enable the recipient to go through life without any manual labour.

For reasons best known to themselves, this belief is encouraged by those who ought to know better—largely, perhaps, with the object of gaining adherents to their particular sect.

The colleges (or secondary schools), with the approximate number of male students, are as follow: — College. Pupils. College. Pupils .

Government .. 200 Seventh Day Wesleyan .. .. 400 Adventist .. 100 Roman Catholifc 100 Mormon .. .. 100 Realising the uselessness of the type of education given in these schools, which fits about 1 per cent, of the boys for jobs in the Civil Service, etc., the Government has had under consideration for some years a kind of education that will assist the bulk of the boys to become more useful members of the community, under the actual conditions existing.

Large numbers of these boys now leave school worsened rather than bet tered by their attendance, and the only beneficiaries are those who have col lected the fees. Their heads being turned by a false idea of the real object of education, they turn up their noses at working on the land, and in too many cases develop a useless, conceited and arrogant demeanour, with but the haziest notion of the difference between meum and tuum. The land, however, remains all there is for them.

Sectarian differences, not to say bit terness, and the desire for political power, are the forces mitigating against a proper system of education in Tonga.

In place of the remaining four mis sionary schools named above, one un sectarian institution, with the existing curriculum, and admitting not more than 100 pupils by examination from the primary schools, would cater for all the secondary education that is required in Tonga. The site and buildings of the present Government College would suit such a school admirably.

The primary schools, too, require dras tic alteration, not so much as to the subjects taught, but in respect of the behaviour of the pupils—especially in the public roads going to and coming

from schools, and out of school hours.

To hear children bawling out to each other, in public places, the filthiest epi thets, and behaving in an unruly man ner, would seem to indicate, even to the layman, a surprising lack of disci pline in the schools. The fact that the parents do not exercise greater control over their children is an indication that their own education did them little good.

Cramming the three R’s into children’s heads is, after all, only a part of what education should be. A more character forming tuition is the crying need.

There are also, in the Tongan educa tional scheme, as it at present exists, five “colleges”, or secondary schools, for young women. These are as follow, with the approximate number of pupils:— Wesleyan Girls’ College 200 Roman Catholic Convents (2) 70 Seventh Day Adventist 20 Mormon 30

Broadly speaking, the effect of these schools is bad, in that the education given has too much of a European bias, and does not take sufficiently into account its usefulness in the after school life of these young women, hav ing regard to the conditions and environ ment in which they will live. The future of the great majority of them is to be the wife of a land-owner, to assist him to wrest a living from their allot ment of 8d acres. The teaching of native crafts —such as mat-weaving and basket-making—and of plain sewing, and so forth, will equip them better to be the future mothers of the race than fancy embroidery, one fingered ragtime on the school piano, an overdose of hymn-singing, and aca demic subjects of which they will never think again, once they leave school.

The proper education of the young Tongan is of paramount importance at

this juncture. There will be no “money for nothing” in the post-war world, such as the fantastic prices for copra that Tonga has known in the past. On the contrary, economic stability may require drastic retrenchment from every section of the community. But, there is still the land.

And it remains for the leaders of the country in general, and the heads of the Government in particular, to put aside their sectarian jealousies and narrow minded bigotries, and to propound a scheme of education that will be at once more suitable and more creditable to “the last independent Kingdom in the Pacific”, Rev. E. G. Bucknill will go out to Suva from England within the next few months to join the staff of the Anglican Mission in Fiji. He was in the Colony for a time in 1935, serving at Levuka.