Afterthoughts

Education in Papua New Guinea, if we define the word to mean the preparation of the young for adult life, began some 50 000 years ago, when, if the archaeologists are to be believed, man first arrived in this part of the world.

In its narrower sense of European-style schooling, edu cation in Papua New Guinea began with the arrival of the first missionaries a hundred years ago.

The basis of this schooling, at any rate in what later be came the Australian Territory of Papua, was the teaching of vernacular literacy. Those of the missionaries who came from Protestant churches held that Christianity should be Bible-based, and that their primary task was to translate the Bible, or such parts of it as they regarded as the most important, into the languages of the people among whom they worked and to teach them to read it for themselves.

Their motives were therefore utilitarian, but most educa tionists today would probably regard the adoption of the language of the home as the primary language of the school

as being educationally sound.

In the inter-war period (1920-1940) many mission schools, with the encouragement of the government of the day, introduced a slowly increasing amount of English into their curricular, without abandoning their basis of ver nacular literacy. English was taught in varying degrees in schools where teachers were competent to teach it, and I am afraid sometimes, with the carrot of government grants in-aid dangling before them, in schools where they were not.

The mission schools of that period have sometimes been criticised for not doing more than they did in the field of education. In my opinion, perhaps a biased one, they achieved as much as could be achieved with the very limited resources, both in money and trained personnel, available to them. Furthermore, those who criticised the missions for destroying the traditional cultures overlook the fact that it was the missionaries, more than anyone else, who kept alive the use of and respect for the traditional languages, which after all lie at the heart of the traditional cultures.

Came the 1942-45 war and its aftermath. For the first time the Government, now of the whole of Papua New Guinea, established a Department of Education, and as time went on more and more government schools were established side by side with the existing mission schools.

Finally in 1970, a National Education System brought the two kinds of schools together under one umbrella and within one curriculum.

Language-wise this curriculum was based on English as the sole language of the school. There was to be no place for the traditional languages, even at the earliest stages of schooling. In framing it thus, the Education Department’s motives were as utilitarian as those of the missionaries a century earlier, though less well-based educationally. It made the system much easier to run, enabled teachers to become apostles of national unity, and on the whole it gav« the pupils and their parents what they wanted a foothold in the white man’s world. One by one recalcitrant missions were brought into line.

But even with a common language it was not possible to adopt a common curriculum for all schools. Two" types of schools emerged. There were schools which catered for the children of expatriates. They followed an Australian curriculum and so were referred to as “A” schools. Schools which followed a home-grown curriculum were known as “T” schools, “Territory” not as yet having become a dirty word.

As time went on the “A” schools tried to divest them selves of their racial overtones by enrolling a few local chil dren. The rationale was that “A” schools were for children from English-speaking homes while “T” schools were for children for whom English was a second language; which was sound enough pedagogically, though perhaps an after thought. And in practice it was perhaps dad’s ability to make a favourable impression on the head teacher rather than any other factor which secured his son’s or daughter’s admission.

Came Independence; and in education as in many other fields decolonisation took the form of giving new names to old things. “T” schools became “community schools”.

“A” schools became “international schools”, and in doing so became much more expensive, in terms of fees, for the pupils’ parents. Nevertheless, affluent nationals continued to send their children to them.

Currently, this system is being challenged. Why should some children, it is being asked, get a “better” education than others just because their parents are wealthy?

Prime Minister Somare, who has come under fire be cause one of his daughters is at school in Australia, has vigorously defended the right of parents to choose the kind of education they want for their children and the kind of school to which they will send them. Which sounds fair enough. But in practice all but a very few of Papua New Guinea’s parents have no real choice at all. All they can afford to do is to take their children along to the nearest community school and hope they’ll get in.

Of course, the use of the word “better” in this connection is question begging, and immediately provokes the question “Better for what?” Papua New Guinea parents who send their children to international schools or to schools in Aus tralia will, if they are honest, answer “better for success in the rat race for affluence and power”.

Better for what? At this point the rival voices become clamorous. Education Minister Oscar Tammur, himself a teacher, wants a school system which will compare favour ably with overseas systems and so make the continuation of international schools unnecessary, even for expatriate children. But even if everyone was agreed on this aim, it would have to be questioned whether, mediated by teachers for most of whom English is a second language, it could be achieved.

But all are not agreed. Other voices are raised. Some want “rural bias” in the curriculum to prepare children for a rural adulthood. Others want the children to be taught their “tra ditional culture”, though it is not clear what they mean by this; and while the government pays lip service to the idea it is noteworthy that when the Department of Education proposed to reinstate the traditional languages in the com munity school curriculum the proposal was vetoed by the National Executive Council.

But one thing’s for sure. There just aren’t enough hours in the school week to include in the curriculum all the things that the rival clamorers want.

So where do we go from here?