Education Board

Lacks Realism

Rabaul Decisions Examined

CHE teaching of English in the native primary schools of Papua and New Guinea —a matter of )me concern to the future of the territory was discussed at the jcond meeting of the P-NG ducation Advisory Board, held in abaul at the end of February, hose present were Mr. W. C. Groves Director of Education), who is lairman; Messrs. G. T. Roscoe, . N. Boisen and D. Owner, of the ducation Department; Mr. S. lliott Smith, of District Services; ad Revs. B. Roberts, Father J. wyer and M. Heist, representing nglican, Catholic and Lutheran

assions, respectively.

The official report says: “While advocating an earlier start on aching English in Primary Schools, »ard members stressed the importance native children becoming literate in e vernacular as well as in English, ley agreed that the teaching of English is essential for the general social and anomic advancement of the native ople, and should be the principal ;dium of instruction in the Primary hools. However, literacy in the ver cular was also essential to ensure re ation of their own culture and

traditions, and as a medium for the teaching: of English.”

The Board resolved that the first o years of schooling be known as

Primary—four years of Village School, and four years of Village Higher School.

In the first two years, the chil dren would be taught in the ver nacular; in the second two years they would begin to study English.

Instruction in English would con tinue through the Village Higher Schooh—that is, through the fifth to eighth years of the child’s educa tion period.

The pupil then could go on to three years at a Central School, when it is assumed that he would be “reasonably fluent and literate in English.’’

The Board “lays stress on the necessity of teaching native students to read and write in the ver nacular”; and it proposes that the period of compulsory education shall be eight years.

The Board in a three days’ session spent a considerable time on dis cussion of regulations covering registration of schools and teachers, school inspections, compulsory at tendance, district education com mittees, and so forth.

Editorial Comment.

A Lack of Realism

The official report of this meet ing emphasises, to a degree, the lack of realism in officialdom’s approach to the problem of educating the native children of New Guinea.

This could be the report of an Education Board sitting in a Western country, dealing with the system of educating the children of an old-established, civilised com munity.

There are at least 11 million native people in Papua-N. Guinea.

A small minority, who have been in contact with Europeans for a long time, might be handled as the Ad visory Board suggests. But the vast majority are primitive savages, speaking a really extraordinary number of different languages.

If the PNG Education Depart ment is going to deal with this mass of primitive jungle folk, then it must solve the problems of provid ing village school teachers, before it makes any other plans. The official report does not indicate that the Board in three days even mentioned village school teachers.

If the Department’s policy is to provide primary education only for the native communities in close contact with Europeans, then the Department is letting down the Administration, which now is com mitted irrevocably to the taming and teaching of the mass of New Guinea natives —and no uplift in native living standards is possible until some degree of literacy is in troduced among them.

The Board says that the young children should be taught first in the vernacular. Which vernacular —there are scores of them? How can they be taught in a particular

vernacular until something practical is done to supply personnel from that language group, trained to teach in the vernacular, and to bring the pupil along from ver nacular to English?

It looks as if the chief purpose of this Board’s meeting in Rabaul was to try and streamline the Mission Schools, so that they may

be integrated with a general Ad ministration plan. If so, there is no word of the general plan.

It seems absurd, at this stage, to talk of forcing the children of these primitive jungle communities to go to school for eight years. The chief problems are to make them under stand what a school is, and then to provide facilities and trained

teachers, so that they can go to school at all.

The public is satisfied that every member of that Board, including Mr. Groves himself, is a sincere and earnest educationist, eager to de vise machinery for the assistance of the natives, and of the Admin istration in its colossal task. Why, then, does the Board not get to grips with the real problems of native education, instead of wasting precious time in idealistic planning, as if it were dealing with primary education machinery in an Aus tralian State?