Book Reviews

Funny-Serious Look At New Guinea

It’s not often that dust-jackets get it right, but The Wire Classroom is in truth a “funny, frank, satirical, serious, highly topical novel of New Guinea”. It may in truth be read “simply for entertainment or as an illuminating commentry on the prob lems that are now so much agitating New Guinea on its journey to inde pendence”.

It is not “a brilliant first novel” (why must all first novels be brilliant?) but it’s a dam good start.

Sydney author John Bailey, still only in his twenties, has a penetrating, compassionate eye.

The Wire Classroom (so named after the heavy wire mesh that serves £ or ) wa lls) is set in an Administration “T” school in the Papuan township of Wendi. A “T” school (for Terri tory syllabus) is a native school, and some people will no doubt feel that Wendi” has some of the characteris tics of the real-life Mendi.

But Wendi could be many places in Papua New Guinea. Bendix van Kram, the planter, Mac Morrow the missionary from Texas with his two objectionable brats, Kee Woo the Chinese trader who has never been invited inside a European home in 15 years in Wendi, the rough mob of whites who frequent the tin and fibro RSL club, Cromwell Jonathan, the “bighead” native schoolteacher— they are all recognisable territory residents.

Into this community comes young and immature Charles Cummins, fresh from a teacher-training course in Sydney, to take over the school with its 50 village kids, and two native teachers including the super sensitive Cromwell. None of the three is any hand at schoolteaching, but Cummins is probably the most incompetent, and he’s hardly arrived before he’s counting the days for his departure.

That comes soon enough when he Fails to distinguish between race and racialism to the satisfaction of the local whites.

As a novel it’s not deep, there is lo one central character or even an >ver-riding central theme, yet author Jailey can give us some bitter-sweet

little pen pictures that add up to a slice of territory life worth recording.

An example is the time when the three teachers find that they have twice as many kids wanting to go to school as there is room for them, and are then faced with the problem of selecting the chosen group. The youngsters can’t read or add up, and the school has no equipment or in structions on how to deal with this problem in a remote valley, so they solve it by giving everybody a pencil and a piece of paper and asking them to draw a car, a dog and a man.

The results are then judged on the numbers of fingers, arms, perspec tive, wheels, etc., found on the draw ings.

“Most seem to finish in a few minutes; we solemnly collect the papers and dismiss the school. I gather the staff around and we retire to score the results. It is somewhat difficult to evaluate the dog and it is not fair to judge the kids’ ability to draw a car because some have rarely seen cars and others see them every day. So the drawing of the man is to be the deciding test. Ten marks for his arms, so that’s 20 for two arms,

unless it has been drawn in profile— then we must presume that the other arm is intended. One mark for each of the fingers and likewise for the lower limbs. Twenty-five marks for genitals. But in all fairness it is agreed that we do not wish to stress sexual awareness unduly, so it is de cided that if the candidate puts pants on the figure, and it is obviously a male, then the whole amount will be given. Ears, nose, eyes and the mouth and chin; each score five, an allotment of 15 is given for perspec tive and general neatness. So we scientifically compute the results. Our future primary school entrants are settled.”

Not surprisingly there is a howl next day from those who didn’t pass the test, “the rejected pupils standing forlornly in the centre of the play ground, some clasping their bags hopelessly, others comforting the ones that cry”.

Cummins can’t bear to approach them so he sends an older boy to tell them to go away. “They all glance pleadingly at me then drag their feet to the edge of the school property.

They stand there all day hoping for

a sudden miracle. Some hang around for the rest of the week, but I ignore them, and by the next week only two or three still stand and wait.”

Cummins soon realises that the villagers see education as some form of white man’s magic that by due progression gives wealth and power, and that he himself is not likely to be of much help.

“Most of the children will leave after the primary school with little learning and volumes of confusion, and after several years back in the village they will have forgotten most of this anyway. A few may progress to secondary school, some may drift to the towns to join the ranks of the unemployed, but most will work on the plantations or just sit around Wendi in indolence. Education is spread too thin in Wendi to achieve much. Still it adds to the statistics to shut up the Russians at the United Nations.”

With time on his hands and “stubbies” of beer in regular reach, Cummins proceeds to drown his prob lems at the RSL, alternately being patronised or rejected by the local Europeans.

There is no end of amusements at the RSL; there are “chug-a-lug con tests, dirty penny competitions, long distance pissing trials, Indian wrestles, naval engagements, spitty tourna ments, whisky duels and the infamous passage-of-arms”. Saturday night is usually the big night for European entertainment. They’re a lousy lot and the Papuans emerge from this novel whiter than the whites, although no less the victims of ignorance and environment.

Author Bailey got his New Guinea experience in 1968/69 with the Ad

ministration.-

Stuart Inder.

(The Wire Classroom, By John

Bailey. Angus and Robertson, Sydney. $4.50).