Education Headaches In N

N. Guinea Promising Experiments Among Tolais

By R. W. Robson.

DESPITE various smooth Minis terial statements, issued in Canberra, I have found little evidence in a tour of Papua and New Guinea that much genuine progress is being made there in the solution of the South Pacific’s toughest administrative problem.

That problem is the creation of a system which will serve efficiently to provide the natives with the simplest form of literacy. It has been before Australia for 30 years.

As a sort of community cross section test, I tried everywhere to find natives who could (a) carry on a conversation in sunniest English and/or (b) write a letter in simplest English. I found three —two in Moresby and one in Madang. I could have found more, of course, by going to training centres and Mission schools; but I was simply testing the rank and file.

Since World War 11, Canberra has been insisting that “the native standard of life must be raised”.

But Canberra seems generally to have ignored the obvious facts that natives cannot be trained to better ways of living unless some medium is found through which they can be instructed, and that the exist ance of at least 700 separate languages among the Territories’ 1| million puts an almost insuperable f obstacle in the way of finding such a medium.

There is really a double problem -—that of finding a medium for teaching the primary or village children, and that of providing an organisation for carrying on educa tion beyond the early primary stage.

Canberra has set up in the Terri tories a Department of Education, complete with an experienced Director and a large staff of experts.

But I can find very little evidence that Canberra is providing that Departmental set-up with the authority and money necessary for a huge job, while leaving the De partment alone to get on with it.

There is evidence, however, that Canberra interferes unnecessarily with the Education programme.

For example, who made the decision— condemned by everyone who knows the Territories, and especially by those who really know natives—to send each year a score of young natives to live for at least four years among Europeans in Australia, and undergo a kind of secondary education? High official dom in Port Moresby won’t discuss or criticise that precious innova

tion: but I am satisfied that the decision was taken in Canberra under the influence of the “starry eyed dreamers” who cluster around the Top Brass there.

I have no doubt that the young natives will acquire an education and behave themselves admirably in Australia. But what becomes of them, physically and psychologic ally, when they return home?

SEARCHING among the shreds and patches of a Mission-cum- Department school system for evidence of a comprehensible, co ordinated plan of native education, I came almost by accident upon a bit of education organisation which has more commonsense and realism in it than anything emanating from

Canberra, and which is actually working—but which does not seem to be part of high officialdom’s planning. It is Mr. Frank N.

Boisen’s system of “area education”.

He is New Britain District Educa tion Officer.

Working in with the Department of Agriculture, and with native headmen in the Tolai villages (eastern end of New Britain) Mr.

Boisen started, in Vunanami, a village higher school in a building provided by the villagers, in which the educational programme ignores the usual curriculum (which is based mostly on European history and ways of life), and centres around land usage, animal hus bandry and the practical facts of village domestic life. It proved so

successful that it is being extended to all the Tolai village higher schools throughout the Gazelle Peninsula. (Native schools, in order upwards, are: Village (vernacular), Village

Higher (English); Area (English);

Central (usually boarding schools); followed by secondary education.) The village councils, with funds raised themselves by taxation, are constructing suitable buildings for these Village Higher Schools—some t© take 120 students, some 200.

The plan is that the schools shall be self-supporting the students, under guidance, learn how to grow their own foodstuffs or to grow other crops which they may sell —and thus they learn the rudiments of sound agriculture, while acquir ing a very simple education.

In some cases, the school estab lishment includes dormitories, and the students live in. In others, they are day students. But the whole system is based on self support.

It has been found that the system encourages intelligence and initiative and develops a capacity for learn ing. Other points in its favour are that the villagers, erecting their own schools with their own money, take a keen interest in their welfare.

The children also take a personal interest in the school’s activities, so that it tends to become a village cultural centre. Some of the

teachers are European, but—with the demand steadily growing—for all these native communities are hungry for simple education and technical training—more and more native teachers are coming forward.

Important points are that this system of education is allied closely with native life (in which land usage must come first); that it is based on a liaison between the two Departments primarily designed to lift native economic conditions— namely, Education and Agriculture, and that the native village councils will co-operate by providing the school buildings, and supporting the school.

Even while enthusiastic Rabaul people (especially Mr. Don Barrett, MLC) were telling me about this new system, and its possibilities, Minister Hasluck was announcing the selection of another 20 natives to go to Queensland for four years’ education. Gazelle Peninsula re

action was sharp and unfavourable.

“Why in God’s name can’t they put these selected natives into self supporting higher schools like these Tolai places?” asked one Kokopo planter. “They would learn some thing useful, and help the whole native economy. But in this Queensland training they will prob ably be ruined—they will return to New Guinea with their ways of liv ing and their outlook so completely changed that there will be a place for them in neither community.”

Fund raising is no problem to the Boy Scouts of the 2nd Papuan Troop. They pay their subscriptions in coconuts—two per week. When 400 have been collected copra is made and sold for approximately £4. The troop also raises money for uniforms, etc., by working for a local planter. In order to buy a boat costing £3O, they dived for trochus shell.