On Education

Is This Fine Book

A Little Premature?

GpHE first book based on the work of A the Research Council of the South Pacific Commission has been printed in Melbourne, and was published in July by the Oxford University Press. It is the result of lengthy research by Mr. R.

A. Derrick, MBE, AMISE, who is Director of Technical Training in Fiji. It is printed beautifully, illustrated by numerous charts, and well bound; and it is entitled “Vocational Training in the South Pacific”. It supplies a blue-print for the technical training of young Islanders in all the 15 Territories of the South Pacific.

It would be an impertinence for a workaday journalist to attempt to review this book by a highly skilled professional man. The qualities of a book on any kind of secondary education can be assessed only by experts in that field.

But one does get the impression that the South Pacific Commission, in pro ducing this fine volume at this time, is in some degree putting the cart before the horse. So far as publications in the field of social development are concerned, is not the Commission’s first task the study of how best to provide this multi language area with a means of acquiring primary education?

There are some 3-million people in the South Pacific area. More than 2-million of them are in the primitive Papuan- Melanesian section, where there are hundreds of local languages. Even in the Polynesian and Micronesian sections, where there is generally one language to each archipelago, the chief problem of education is that of providing the most effective medium of primary education.

In the larger and more primitive area the difficulties in the way of giving the native masses even the simplest education provide the Administrations with their biggest problem.

To the outsider, looking in, it would seem that the job of supplying the natives generally with some means of acquiring the knowledge that will almost automatically lift the standard of native welfare transcends in importance all the other tasks of the SPC.

But that is not to say that Mr.

Derrick’s book represents any wasted effort. On the contrary, it supplies at least a blue-print for the vitally im portant work that must follow the establishment of a primary education system—the training of technicians, and especially native teachers.

In his chapter, “Synoptic Survey of framing Facilities and Needs”, Mr, Derrick arranges “present and probable future training needs” in 13 groups, and the group designated to produce the tillage and primary teachers is given >nly ninth place, in apparent order of jmportance. It seems to this observer hat, in view of the present conditions n the South Pacific, the training of mtive teachers on a coordinated plan,

based on the general acceptance of the smallest possible group of common languages, should have first place. All the rest will follow, as a matter of course.

Nonetheless, the SPC is to be con gratulated on this book, tangible evidence of the solid character of the work it is doing. It is being marketed at 30/- Aus

tralian and, if only because it contains the first authoritative survey of the technical education systems in all the Territories, no educationalist can afford

to be without it.-

Rwr.

Mrs. E. A. Eves, of Lami, Fiji, celebrated her 80th birthday in early July.