Language Difficulties

[?]Ew Guinea’S Struggles With Its

Native Teachers’ Training Course :: and More “Native Scholarships”

IHERE are indications that the . basic problem of an improve ment in native welfare in Papua id New Guinea —namely, the pro sion of a medium by which the iministration can communicate adily with the natives—is receiv g increasing attention.

PIM has pointed out many times at it is absurd for high official m to talk about its various plans r advancing native welfare when Scialdom’s principal means —and some respects its only means— communicating with the people through Pidgin. Some use is ide of Motuan, in Papua, and of mmon dialects —like that of anche Bay—in New Guinea; but, * the most part, there is between e Administration and the natives e great blank wall represented by Lintless local languages.

Until very recent times, this rrier has not been properly re sed, or the nature of the problem predated. Otherwise, years ago, 3 Administration would have col >orated with the Mission organ tions to establish some system of ecting and training young natives village school teachers. It is no ; providing village schools unless ire is a supply of teachers. At jsent, the Territories have not ;n got trained personnel to train Lives to become school teachers. rOWEVER, the first steps now L are being taken. An official announcement, on March 26, d that “a special short-term icher training course is to be iducted by the Education Depart nt in 1955 to provide an addi aal 100 native teachers for lage Higher Schools.” If trainees offering, special classes in this irse will be held next year at dang, Dregerhafen, Raba u 1, vieng, Kerema, Wewak, Popen ta, Lorengau and Buin. ?he Department—very wisely—is king the co-operation of the ssions in seeking and enrolling table young natives for their inee course. t is pointed out that a number student-teachers now are under ng a 3-years’ course at Sogeri, ravat and Dregerhafen; but the nber is not stated, t is not a big scheme, and it will t produce results before 1957; at least it is a beginning in a k that is sadly overdue. ’his plan is to provide teachers Village Higher Schools. Nothing iaid about providing teachers for Village Primary Schools; and— tn the angle that the Adminis bion cannot start too soon to in

culcate a knowledge of English— the primary schools are of vital im portance.

A FEW months ago, P-NG Educa tion Department selected 19 native “scholarship holders” and sent them to Australian secondary schools for a term of years, at the public expense. It now announces that next year it will select another

20, for similar “scholarships.”

The practical value of this new system should be studied by experts before it is allowed to go any further.

The need for making all degrees of education available to natives can be admitted at once; but the wisdom of scattering those young natives (all of them under 16) among Australian secondary schools, with the idea of returning them to life in P-NG after three or four years’ intensive training during their most formative years, can be very seriously questioned.

Men who know something about education, and who really know the Territories, condemn the new system in vigorous terms. Why, they ask, should not this education and training be applied in a suitable

istitution within the Territories, here the correct relationship could e maintained between natives and uropeans? Why, indeed?

The new system carries the ear larks of certain missionary influ ice—an idealism that is completely onest, but so unrealistic that it iust be always guarded against in lis wicked world.

The P-NG Legislative Council lould insist on the Administration Bing advised, in this matter, by ime competent person outside the resent ranks of P-NG officialdom. yjEANWHILE, Pidgin is in the rj. limelight. Dr. Robert J. Hall, an American Linguistics Pro ssor, is in New Guinea gathering aterial for a book on Pidgin, bich he praises, and heartily com ends. At the same time Mr. Bruce oberts, of South Pacific Com ission, is there discussing with Rcials a plan for providing literate itives with reading matter in nple English—and not in Pidgin, bich he as heartily condemns.

No one has explained whether ■ofessor Hall is to put Pidgin into iglish form, or into the bastard Lonetic spelling which both official im and missionaries have adopted perhaps because they do not wish e Pidgin-speaking natives to be me familiar with English spelling, uther has anyone explained how r. Roberts is going to find enough itives proficient in English, he re about 1964, to make his plan o provide printed literature) )rth while.

As a Queensland commentator id: “These blokes in New Guinea e not only trying to put the cart fore the horse—they are trying put the horse in backwards!”