the goods

‘Cargoism’ can’t deliver the goods

Delivering The Goods: Educa tion as Cargo in Papua New Guinea by Colin Swatridge. 1985. Manchester and Mel bourne University Press. 163 pages.

This is an unusual book. It has been published by two univer sity presses and thus poses as an academic tome.

It was released in 1985 but only two references go beyond 1978. It pretends to be erudite by quoting extensively from Papua New Guinean, African and Caribbean novels as if these sources proved the au thor’s points: instead the com parisons are often fallacious.

Even more questionable is the extensive use of quotations from essays his high school students wrote for him when he was teaching in Papua New Guinea nearly a decade ago.

Many of the inferences from these are spurious as there is a serious gap between what they have written and reality (some thing Bemdt also was guilty of when he collected tales of vio lence and sexuality in the East ern Highlands soon after con tact).

Unfortunately the volume is replete with factual errors that should have been eliminated before publication.

The author has Papua New Guineans “neither knowing or using a counting system”, with languages of “hopelessly limited lexis” when there are many different indigenous counting systems in Papua New Guinea, some using base ten, and some languages are more complex than European lan guages.

He has Alkan Tololo as Minister for Education (later corrected). He calls SIL “an American mission” and blames them for promoting “cargo ism”. He calls Rabaul a town that is engulfing the Tolais of the Gazalle. He is even wrong when he claims Pangu stands for PNG Union.

He has schools for expatriate children following the Queens land system (they follow New South Wales). He has McNa mara as Director of Education.

He never was. He has students undergoing “several annual prunings” as they advance through schools and misses the reality of automatic promotion (or “push-up”).

He refers to Parliament as the House of Assembly and Mem bers of Parliament as MHAs.

He asserts primary education is universal in Port Moresby (it never was, instead has pockets with only 20 per cent enrolled).

He has the age of entry at six when it has been seven or older. He asserts the number of expatriates (the model for cargoism) doubled when it actually dropped after self-gov ernment and independence.

He leaps decades in making points and thus is guilty of promoting historical confusion.

His perceptions of Papua New Guineans smack of pure “expatriate lore” gathered in circles frequented only by non- Papua New Guineans. Papua New Guineans are freely label led as “head hunters”, as being “unmindful of the importance of land”, as seeing reading and writing as “white man’s magic”, as people not in need of more than “domestic skills” if they lived in rural areas, that stu dents were failures unless they could repay every “shilling” invested in them, that no Papua New Guinean ever made wine or beer, etc all unfortunate and untrue generalisations.

Swatridge’s book is mono thematic. But for a reductionist he could be worse. His writing, though it becomes repetitive, has a flow to it that some readers will enjoy, especially if

they agree with his outrageous assertions.

Yet he gives himself away at one point: while implying that education has become “cargo” and education has failed to “deliver the goods”, he recog nises (on page 89) that there is “nothing specifically Oceanic about his ‘education-as-invest ment’ syndrome.”

He fails to follow this through to its logical conclusion that instrumental values are univer sal and can be found in most parts of the world. If to expect a good rate of return from educa tion is cargoism, then most of the world is tarred with Swat ridge’s brush.

But he is never aware that his thesis does not apply in all parts of Papua New Guinea as in some provinces people will re turn home following successful ly completing their tertiary education without ever even looking for a job.

Though Swatridge mentions the Makasol movement in Manus he avoids any con sideration of the Kivung move ment in Pomio, East New Bri tain. This so-called “cargo movement” has over the years contributed tens of thousands of kina to the Palmalmal High School, and in 1978 they sent K4OOO to Queensland for flood relief and K6OOO to the high lands of Papua New Guinea for famine relief (one wonders with what reciprocal expectations?).

But then many companies contribute to educational deve lopment in Papua New Guinea.

What is the line between “cargoism” and a genuine com munity development move ment? The answers to these questions are not to be found in Swatridge’s book.

Swatridge ignores authorities on cargo cults like Friederich

‘His perceptions smack of pure expatriate lore’

Stinbauer ( Melanesian Cargo Cults, University of Queensland Press, 1979).

Steinbauer surveyed 184 cults in Melanesia and found no relation to formal education.

On the contrary Steinbauer concludes that the solution to cargo cults lies through educa tion.

Swatridge anticipates this argument: he claims that cargo thinking is deeply rooted in Papua New Guinea, “indeed it was the very soil”. He dismisses the idea that education can alter the situation. Instead his thesis allows him to take pleasure in such phrases as calling the university a “temple of some universal cargo cult.”

In one section he ignores the wealth generated by coffee, copra and cocoa, while in an other he calles coffee growing “the road belong cargo”.

This is reductionism carried to an absurd extreme as then all life becomes cargo. Even the latest wave of crime: “cargo activity has been the fruit of cultural confusion before; crime was its counterpart now” (page 128).

“Western Education had not delivered the goods that had been promised. It had been one more road leading to yet one more road, in what looked increasingly like an immense maze. The white man had led the native in, in quest of the cargo at the end. Now that the native has learned there is no end, there is no one but himself to lead him out again” (page 145).

Some people will be enter tained by this book, but please do not take it seriously. I find it ironic that Swatridge draws heavily on my own work and that of other educational resear chers, yet none of us have ever found “cargoism” a useful de vice to help explain what is happening in Papua New Guinea. It is simply a label which serves no purpose.

Sheldon G. Weeks