Vava'u Teachers Go Back To School

Ducating Islanders

By E. A. CRANE, MA, Principal, Tonga Teachers’ Training College.

In April PIM, a member of the staff of the Western Samoa Depart ment of Education told how that Territory coped with one aspect of education there —school broad casts. This article deals with teacher training in Tonga.

r is the practice in Tonga to organise schools for teachers for a week during January at Ha’apai d Vava’u, the two island groups ng 90 and 160 miles respectively the north of the main island of ngatapu. These refresher courses ord the only opportunity for icers of the Education Depart nt to meet teachers of these lated groups and endeavour to plant in their minds new ideas, thods, or teaching techniques ich, it is hoped, will bear a west of increased efficiency. !o last January 10 the senior igan tutor of the Teachers’ lining College, J. Fusimalohi, and 3uld be seen mounting the gang r of the Tofua with an assort nt of queer-shaped parcels and s, looking more like travelling ismen than Training College urers. aside one bag were rubber balls,

beanbags, film-strips, textbooks on the teaching of nature study, social studies, English, hygiene, books of singing games and folk dances.

In a huge parcel were duplicated notes on the teaching of Speech- Training and Writing. Under one arm I carried a roll of wall-charts and posters of the British Pacific Islands, New Zealand, the teaching of Arithmetic and Sewing; under the other was a baseball bat, its long unwieldiness defying all efforts to conceal it. Truly a jumbled assortment of ammunition with which to storm the battlements of ignorance at Vava’u!

Although we were travelling on a modern tourist-cum-cargo ship, Tongans and Samoans were every where seen sitting on the decks chewing biscuits, opening tins of bully-beef, walking interestedly round the decks. We had on board a Samoan dance band, widening

their experience of the world by playing at the various ports on the Samoa - Fiji - Tonga - Niue, - Samoa round-trip. About 8 o’clock they assembled, together with a number of Tongans with a couple of guitars, at the top end of the promenade deck.

The instruments of this band con sisted of two trumpets, a trombone, and an ingenious drum. The sound box was one of those heavy iron 4gallon benzine containers, obviously a legacy of the American “invasion” during the war. Attached to a hook soldered into its side was a piece of strong string about 4 ft 6 in. long. The drummer would place the end of the stick on the edge of the tin, put his foot on the side of the tin, pressing it to the floor, and by leaning his weight outwards against the pole, would make the string very taut. Then he would pluck

the string vigorously, making a pretty fair imitation of a viola string being plucked.

For an hour first the Samoans, then the Tongans, would strike up, the rhythm of the instruments and voices being accentuated by the clapping of the hands. Then a Samoan or a Tongan girl would move on the open floor interpreting the rhythm through hands and arms, body and legs. Keeping per fect time, feet would beat or twist, arms would move backwards or forwards with wrists rolling grace fully and fingers flexing and unflex ing. The hands would sometimes clap together forward and back, some times one hand would touch lightly on the ribs, or arm, or quickly to the foot or cupped to the mouth would make a sudden, staccato coo ing noise.

Then a man would whirl on to the floor doing a counter-dance, never synchronising his movements with the woman’s, always playing a secondary role, behind or in front of the woman, as if the imperfec tion of his own performance served only to enhance that of his partner.

It was only when a Samoan an nounced: “Gentlemen, take your partners for a foxtrot” that one re alised that the soul had gone out of the evening.

BUT back to our school: For five days 79 teachers, mostly from the Free Wesleyan Church schools, Free Church and Latter Day Saints schools, met together to work and play.

To my mind it is essential for a

Tongan teacher to increase his competence in the teaching of th< English language. There are many especially in the mission schools who oppose this view, claiming tha it is futile to try to develop com petence in an alien language whicl is almost completely divorced fron

he thought, speech, and culture of he great majority of the people, think this lack of English is hav ig a braking effect on Tongan jchnical progress and cultural de slopment.

If Tongan educationalists take the isy way out by teaching only in le vernacular progress will be ultified because of an almost com pete lack of cultural, technical, )mmercial, scientific and periodical ;erature printed in Tongan. My de re at this Summer School was to y to fan some glimmer of fire into te ashes of their lukewarmness.

Most of the spadework for this rmidable task had already been me; all I could do was to give me guidance on the teaching of rtain topics for upper classes. So ?ave three lectures which included ch subjects as the use of the Con mous Tense; following directions en describing what had been done the Past Tense; the use of “this,” lat,” “these,” and “those”; the use the nominative and possessive mouns; the comparison of ad ;tives; the use of adverbs; the Js of “can” and “could”; how to : English questions.

Another two lectures were devoted Speech Training. Unless a ngan has lived in a European en onment, he finds it very hard to ablish correct habits of English munciation. This is understand e when one considers the lack of )ortunities they have for hearing 1 using correct speech, is their own language has the .al vowel sounds they find little iculty with English vowels and hthongs. But English has many sonantal sounds new to them I the errors they make with these very difficult to eradicate. The owing mispronunciations are espread : or sh for j: (“Siosi” for “George”: amp” for “jump”) ; d for th or (“fader” for “father”: “dis” for :s”: “dop” for “top”); / for th: rden lor “thirteen”) ; p for b\ “I in a pig house—one boy wrote) • » r: (“Kalaisi” for “Christ): elate for “decorate”); g for (“gaught” for “caught”: “Gate Kate ). showed correct positions of ;ue, teeth, and lips, and had ybody confidentially saying les and tongue-twisters. All very • Until later in the day when :aught some action songs. Then n emotion had taken the place ;ason these words were sung with idon: Tee blind mice! See how dev run! all after de farmers wife, le 9ut> off deir dails with de garving knife.” is hard to find a reason for the Tally poor teaching in general vledge subjects in Tongan ols, but it is all too sadly true

that pupils can go through six years of primary schools and five of secondary schools without picking up any more than a smattering of knowledge on geography, history and elementary science.

It is hard to believe, for example, that in the recent College Lower Leaving examinations two candidates actually completed a factual question on the world map with the map turned up-side-down! I think basically the reason is poverty, the teachers in the past having too little money left over after satisfymg the food and clothing needs of their dependants to have any extra to spend on essential textbooks and teaching material.

I gave, also, three lectures on geography. The first was on the British Pacific countries west of Tonga. Of those countries only Fiji was at all well-known by the teachers. Not one knew the capitals of the Solomon Islands or the New Hebrides; and only a few had heard of Port Moresby.

I have often wondered why it is that the Pacific Islanders whom I have taught, the Fijians and the Tongans, although living in sur roundings of great beauty, with leaves and flowers of many hues and colours, with fish and birds of exotic shapes and lustrous colours, appear to regard it all with complete indifference. (Continued on Page 73)

I think that the main reason for lis is that they are most completely ?norant of the miracle of life in >af and flower, in insects and birds, i animals and fishes, in rock and hell. They don’t know how plants eproduce themselves, how fishes reathe, how seeds germinate, how oral grows, how birds fly.

I tried to point the way to the lethod of taking insect studies by iving a model lesson on the mason asp. It was certainly revealing to ote the interest with which they iudied for the first time the mudests containing paralysed spiders, rgs, larvae, and cocoons of an inict which is common to almost rery tropica! building.

Perhaps the part of the school men will have most immediate feet, and certainly the part which as most enjoyed by the teachers, as the teaching of new singing imes and dances. On two afterions new songs were taught and ere then sung to the appropriate :tions. One had to lose all selfnsciousness in order to teach the eps, claps, turns, swings, pirouettes, les and actions that go to make ™coc m T? V^ °L S iu Ch si £ gil ? g Rnnr. t H he^ U T l ??i rry ’ r^ y p"r L h?’t th f Vlllage ’ The urmei m the Dell, etc. n^ ural grace and tunefulness the Tongans soon made them ept m these games, and all were

quickly mastered. Only once did they meet something that really up set them. In one game, while the class skipped round in a circle, a stout, jovial headmaster in the centre had to initiate some activity which would then be copied by the others in the second half of the song, At the same time they had to sing: “Go this way and that way, Go this way and that way, Did you ever see a laddie go this way and that?”

Well, the leader in the centre got stuck for an activity so he merely put his tongue far out! Try putting your own tongue out and singing “Go this way and that,” and you will quickly realise why the show broke up in doubled-up laughter.

The evenings were devoted to learning more new songs, a lecture on current affairs, and a Question Box evening.

Some of the questions revealed a desire of the teachers to improve their own professional and economic standing, such as “Why can’t a teacher get an advance on salarv in order to buy a bicycle as other members of the Civil Service can?”

Other questions seemed to have a Political tinge, such as: Please ex plain the policy of appeasement; the Anti-Comintern Pact; shock worker; fifth-columnist; white man’s burden; totalitarian government.” Or, “What are the reasons for the present prominence of the USA in world

affairs?”; “Would you explain fully everything about UNO.”

But these questions did not reveal so much a keen interest in current

affairs (with a decided inclination to the Left), as an astute study of previous examination papers the teachers’ annual examinations were due to begin in the following week.

A dance and a launch picnic ended the week’s activities.

I feel sure that it was worthwhile.

For a short time the hungry sheep bed looked up, and had been fed; for a week the feeling of frustration arising out of the teachers’ isolation nad been dissipated; and I believe that the teachers returned to their schools with a new spirit of en thusiasm, a little bit better equipped to cope with the tremendous problems of education that face them in the days that lie ahead.