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De-Schooling And Re-Schooling

In The World's Newest Nation

Geoffrey Smith, who recently spent three years in teaching and research at the University of Papua New Guinea, begins his book on education in the world’s newest nation with a salutary reminder that education is not necessarily to be equated with schooling, and that Papua New Guinea had an education system long before it had western-style schools.

He devotes his first chapter—“ The Management of Knowledge”— to a consideration of education in pre contact Papua New Guinea.

“Knowledge was imparted when the learner needed to use it”, he says, and adds that to the people of Papua New Guinea “true knowledge was of a ritual character whether it related to the secular or the sacred categories of Western thought”. “The transmission of knowledge was efficient”, he concludes, “because it associated learning with the need to use what was learned”.

Chapter 2 gives us an account of the development of the school system in Papua New Guinea, and deals in turn with the pre-1942 era of mission operated schools, the post-war deve lopment of administration schools, and finally the emergence of a national education system in 1970.

In dealing with the pre-war period, the author quotes a comment of Camilla Wedgwood’s: “Above all, after they left school the natives had nothing to read either in English or the vernacular except the Bible and their old school books, so that they lacked the incentive and the oppor tunity to practise the skill which they had acquired in childhood”.

There is, sadly enough, a measure of truth in this, but it is perhaps not the whole truth. Literacy in the vernacular did provide the pupils of mission schools with a means of communication which they made use of in adult life. During the first four decades of this century, when the Pax Britannica and later its Austra lian counterpart had led to increased mobility, people all along the Papuan coast were writing letters in the ver nacular to friends and relatives who

were away from home, and were re ceiving letters from them in return.

These letters were generally con veyed by safe, or sometimes not so safe, hands rather than through His Majesty’s mails, but their volume was considerable, and they were a lively and valuable means of com munication.

At one period during the war, the turnover of letters written by carriers from the Gulf District to their fami lies at home became so great that a missionary with a knowledge of the Toaripi language was pressed into service to help censor them. This kind of communication was a pro duct of early mission schooling not to be sneezed at.

With the historical background established, there follows a percep tive chapter on “Relevance” and a statistics-packed one on “Efficiency”, in the course of which the author expresses reservations about the value of man-power forecasting and cost-benefit analysis to the educa tional planners.

Following a chapter on “Decen tralisation and Control”, the author winds up his study with a thought provoking one on “Alternative Futures”. These he defines as “more schooling”, “de-schooling” and “re schooling”. By “more schooling” he means the further extension of the present school structure. Fie con cludes that such expansion “will not remedy the present dysfunction be tween the education system and its environment”, but recognises that it is what the politicians are most likely to press for.

Under the heading of “de-school ing” he refers to Illich’s and Reimer’s advocacy of alternative networks for spreading knowledge in place of schools as we know them. Such net works would be, in effect, a return to the kind of education system which obtained in pre-contact Papua New Guinea. But it does not neces sarily follow that what was adequate for the Stone Age would be adequate for the Space Age, and, as Geoffrey Smith points out, the proponents of de-schooling provide little guidance on how to move towards it and how to overcome inevitable opposition.

The third alternative, and clearly that which the author himself favours, is “re-schooling”, by which he means a restructuring of the school system and its links with society. He explains in some detail how this might be done, and the pic ture is an attractive one.

However, he does not overlook the fact that re-schooling, no less than de-schooling, will have to overcome opposition. And it must be noted that those who will be shaping edu cation policies for the future will not be those who have cause to be dissatisfied with the present system but rather those for whom it has provided an affluent livelihood in air-conditioned offices.

All in all this is a mind-stretching book which I can warmly commend.

Percy Chatterton.

(Geoffrey Smith: Education in Papua New Guinea. Melbourne University Press, PO Box 278, Carlton South, Victoria 3053.

Recommended price $3.90.)