Education
pp. 63-66 · Read in the full issue
They'll Make
Relevant
By a staff writer
Students in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands may no longer have to learn how to knit a pull over and cook rissoles; and Tongan children may not have to puzzle over Maori words they can’t understand, and flowers they have never seen. That’s if all goes to plan with a SUS3i million United Nations project to build a new Islands secondary school curriculum and examina tion system in the next four years.
Tile project will give 10 Islands territories a secondary education system more relevant to their social conditions and customs and not bor rowed piecemeal from the UK or New Zealand. (The territories are contributing SUS 148,000 to the project in cash, plus $2,038,000 in housing facilities, use of existing equipment, etc. UNDP is giving $1,401,200 in cash). 8 g ™ing P a * in UNDP/ UNESCO project, one of the most R°c S ip y e^ er > T t 1 he Islands > are the BS!P, Cook Islands, Fiji, GEIC, Tonga, New Hebrides, Niue, Tokelau Islands, Western Samoa and possibly Nauru. Absent are French, Austra lian, and US territories.
The Secondary School Curriculum Development Unit, based at the University of the South Pacific, Suva Has been busy the past year making orehmmary contacts with Islands eachers and administrators, producing eachers aids for the new curriculum md holding classes to instruct Islands teachers in new teaching uethods. 6 The new curriculum is being intro luced by degrees, as experiments and rials prove its adequacy.
First change is in Form I Science.
Vlore than 120 teachers will intro luced the new science course in S°2L 1 1 0 o V ch ° ols , at the beginning )t the 1971 school year. , Th e UNDP is spending 100,000 on travel to allow UN Jcople to visit the other islands and :stabhsh the courses.
After the new materials have >een tried out in schools throughout he South Pacific, they will be
revised and rewritten in the light of feed-back.
The man in charge of the UNDP course is Dr. G. D. Bishop, chief technical adviser of the Secondary School Curriculum Development Unit. He planned to visit Vila in January to conduct the basic science course himself among school teachers in the English-speaking schools.
Material for Form I Home Econo mics looks like being next subject for launching.
The unit itself will continue after the end of the project as a permanent vehicle for keeping the curriculum and examinations up to date. It will be manned by local staff, now being trained.
Dr. G. D. Bishop is quick to dispel any thought that the UN has come into the South Pacific to tell the Islanders how to educate their young. The UN is collaborating closely with local teachers and administrators to produce what gov ernments want, he says.
Dr, Bishop envisages dropping the “external” examinations system al together for “more appropriate” local examinations run by a body such as a South Pacific Examinations Council. (A similar idea for a South Pacific Trades Certification Board was proposed by Fiji at the last South Pacific Conference, and it is being studied). He says external examina tions can be “cramping” to Islands children.
Dr. Bishop says the new curricu
lum will encourage pupils to under stand basic principles of subjects rather than learning by rote. Dr.
Bishop wants emphasis on ex perimentation and creativity rather than passivity and blind conformity.
Subject areas will be integrated as far as possible. There could well be a new subject—social studies —to encompass what is traditionally taught as geography, civics, history, socio logy, etc.
Dr. Bishop adds: “No French speaking territory is taking part in our experiment because the French system of education is a highly centralised one, and educational policy in territories such as French speaking New Hebrides is dictated from metropolitan France. Con sequently our project will only be concerned with English-speaking New
Hebrides . . . much as we would like to become involved with, and collaborate with, the French-speaking schools.
“We shall make no discrimination between church and government schools. So far, we have had nothing but the closest collaboration from both types of schools and very little to suggest there was any conflict between the two schools.
“English will be taught with English spelling. But we shall devise a more functional English course, with considerable emphasis on spoken and written English, without too much of the customary preoccupation with ‘high-falutin’ grammar.”
Late this year it’s planned to start a similar UNDP project with Islands primary education.