Talks and Boasts and Does Nothing

Native Education in P-NG: Australia Talks and Boasts and Does Nothing

lISTORY has told of the earnest person who erected a steam hammer wherewith to crack nut. You can find his counter irt in the South Pacific, in the istralian Administration which is ending at least six million lunds per annum of Australian xpayers’ money in Papua-New ainea.

In Papua-New Guinea to-day ere are platoons, companies and tttalions of earnest and sincere ople (administrators, medical icials, co-operative advisers, hour inspectors, missionaries, bool teachers) very busy on a co ssal job—and wasting much of eir effort because they are mis rected, and working at the wrong d.

Here are li million native people, small minority, having been in ntact with Europeans for a few cades, have improved their man status; but the great ijority, including many who have own and observed Europeans for long time, live very close to the rth, just a few degrees above the ing standards of superior ani tls.

Fhese native people are primitive, t not unintelligent. Here is what irgaret Mead, writing in Sydney lily Telegraph on January 7, said them: As an anthropologist, the most im tant result which I will bring back m this return to New Guinea is that

we have underestimated the speed with which very simple people can grasp the important ideas of our world.

“Because their technology was so simple, because they had bones through their noses and no way of getting more than 500 people to agree on anything, we over estimated the time it would take to turn them into money-using, tax-paying, school-going, medicine-using, responsible citizens.”

But Dr. Mead has lost the chief point. How are we going to turn them from primitive savages into responsible citizens? The crux of the problem is in the answer to the next question. Europeans have been in charge of these countries for 65 years—Australia has been respon sible for them since 1914. Why, then, are the Papua-New Guinea natives, in the mass, still so ig norant and backward?

The answer is very simple. These are multiple-language countries — there is a different tongue in every valley system. Probably, nowhere in the world, in an area similar to Papua-New Guinea, is there such a Babel. Because of the absence of a common means of communica tion, it is impossible for even the best-intentioned Administration to deal with these people as a whole to instruct them in the simplest forms of good citizenship.

TO-DAY, in Papua-New Guinea, there is an Administration almost painfully eager to do something noticeable in raising the

standard of native life. But to day—after nearly 40 years of Aus tralian control—in the realm of native affairs, the Administration can accomplish little more than vast, heavy, unco-ordinated move ments, at startling cost, which ac complish very little in native ad vancement, simply because the Ad ministration cannot reach the minds of the mass of natives. There is no common tongue, except the deplorable, utilitarian Pidgin— fatally easy to use, but practically valueless as a medium of worth while instruction in technology and self-government.

If, as Minister Hasluck says (see his address to graduates of the School of Pacific Administration) Australia’s major consideration in Papua-New Guinea is the advance ment of the natives and the win ning of their loyalty and friend ship, surely the Administration’s primary job is the earliest possible establishment of a common means of communication and instruction.

These natives cannot be treated as one united people until they can talk to each other. They cannot be taught the simple rules of orderly and decent citizenship until they can talk to us. At present, after 65 years of European contact, and 40 years of Australian administra tion, they can do neither.

It would be easy to rake over the Between-Wars records, and find out why little or nothing was done then to introduce simple English to these li million primitive natives. There would be several reasons, some of them ugly. But why waste time on the errors of the

past, except to seek guidance for the future!

HOWEVER, it is reasonable to ask why so little has been done since 1945, when peace came to these Islands, to cope with the Territories’ major problem—the lack of a common tongue, for com munication and instruction. To day, one may go from one end of the Territories to the other and, unless he is facile with the bastard Pidgin, he can talk only to a few groups of semi-literate natives in the coastal towns.

The official figures on native edu cation are baffling. They say that less than 100,000 children (out of an estimated 418,000) are under some form of instruction; but from 80 to 90 per cent, of these are re ceiving simple tuition from the Christian Mission organisation— the total being taught in the schools of the Administration, which Australia subsidises to the extent of £6-7 millions per annum, is very small.

No one can have anything but praise for the Missions’ effort; but the man taking the over-all view is a little dismayed to find that, in the matter of establishing a common tongue, each Mission goes its own way—some use a native language, some instil simple Eng lish, many have officially adopted Pidgin. Missions’ education is ad ministratively of little value.

An examination of the Terri tories’ annual reports on native education is enough to bring tears to the eyes of the people who, like Dr. Mead, believe these natives are capable of a quick lift in human status, and who know that no ad vance worthy of the name can be made until the mass of natives can be reached through a common language.

We have heard that a score of native scholarship winners are to be sent each year to Australia for instruction; that impressive school buildings are going up in some of the bigger towns. Those things may have their place in the ultimate plan; but, at this stage, they indi cate faulty thinking and official

fumbling.

THE Territories’ outstanding need,

apparent for years, is a care fully-designed plan which must be persisted in with patience and confidence—under which se lected natives will be trained as teachers in sufficient numbers to allow them to go out to the village schools, and begin tuition of the children, including the inculcation of a knowledge of simple English at a very early age. Eight years have passed since 1945, and if Aus tralia had been really doing its job in Papua-New Guinea, there now would be in those Territories a number of large training schools from which hundreds and maybe thousands of young native teachers would now be going out into the

villages, to commence their impor tant task as close to the ground as possible. Instead, so far as we know, there are no such institu tions, on any worthwhile scale.

There is not even machinery for the planned training of teachers (pre sumably European) to undertake the task of training the natives to be teachers.

The Papua-New Guinea Adminis tration learned, long ago, that it cannot seek guidance in its native education problem from other South Pacific countries, like Fiji, Samoa, Tahiti. Those are one language countries. It is a simple task to train selected natives to take charge of the village schools, and to begin the inculcation of a European language as early as pos sible. But that is not necessary, anyhow. In those countries, most of the trained officials learn the native language, and can communi cate directly with the natives.

It is quite different in Papua- New Guinea. It is impossible for the officials to learn the multitude of primitive tongues. It is impos sible to train, entirely as one body, the native teachers who ultimately must go out to introduce simple English among the village children —the native teachers themselves must first be selected according to a system which will provide for each lingual district a trained teacher familiar with that language and, after that, he himself must be taught to teach simple English —a truly colossal task.

IT is sheer waste of time and exuberance for Australia to give all these public assurances about raising the standard of native life, and training the natives to be come good citizens, while the major problem of how to communicate with the natives—and especially the young natives in a formative state —has not only not been solved, but has not been seriously tackled.

Apart from the earnest, but un co-ordinated Mission work in village schools, there is no native education systefrn worthy of the name. Native scholarships, a few technical schools, the training of a couple of scores of native teachers at Sogeri and elsewhere —these may be worthy in themselves, but they can be of real value only if they supplement a broad-based scheme pf native education. Of that, there ls . *|o sign. Until there is something of the sort, there is little justifica tion for the expenditure in Papua- New Guinea of Australian subsi dies at the rate of six or seven millions per annum. tT Lieut-Colonel A. O. Baldwin, MC, a distinguished Australian Regular Army officer, has arrived in Papua- New_ Guinea to take command of the Pacific Islands Regiment, which nas been licked into good shape in the last couple of years. His wife and two children will reside in Port

Moresby.