Education and Privilege in the South Pacific1
Tom Kaye
For the purposes of this article, 'South Pacific' means the Cook Islands,
Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu,
Vanuatu and Western Samoa.2 These island states, which vary in size and
population from Tokelau, three tiny atolls with about 1600 people, to
Fiji, a group of 300 islands inhabited by more than 600,000 people of
different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, emerged from colonial
dependence during the last two decades. Despite an enormous diversity
of cultural traditions, the countries have in common a formal education
system inherited from colonial days, and based on the model deemed by
the British or New Zealand administrators3 to be appropriate to the needs
of the local inhabitants and the purposes of colonial policy — not, of
course, necessarily in that order of priority.4
Colonial background
Given the complacency of the colonial administrators, it is not surprising
that that model was similar to the education found in the colonising
power at the time. Boarding schools providing for the sons (and
subsequently, the daughters) of the local elites were similar to the British
public schools; for example, Queen Victoria School in Fiji, founded in
1906 for the sons of the Fijian chiefs. Schools for the rest of the
population were left, for the most part, to the initiative of the Church
missions or, in the case of the indentured Indian labourers and their
descendants in Fiji, to local committees. This reflected the general
attitude of laisser faire and the policy of indirect rule deriving originally
from the 1925 memorandum, Education Policy in British Tropical
Africa, which served as a general policy document for all British colonial
educational development.5
In a very general way this two-tier model reflects the nineteenth and early
twentieth century education system in Britain, where the public and
independent schools and certain selected grammar schools were seen as
providing the academic-type education needed for the civil service and
the professions, and the elementary schools gave the children of the
working and lower middle classes the skills needed for manual and
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clerical work, with scholarships providing for a few bright children from
a lower class background to obtain 'white-collar' employment. At the end
of the Second World War an attempt was made to continue this selective
system in the maintained schools in a series of Government reports.
However, many working class parents were no longer willing to accept a
subservient role for their children and, perhaps more importantly, the
reduced financial circumstances of many middle class parents led them to
send their own children, to state schools — something more or less
unheard of in pre-war days. Hence, the lowest tier of the now three-tier
system, the secondary modern schools, designed to provide a practical
education suitable for manual or clerical occupations, came under
increasing parental pressure to offer an academic curriculum and to
prepare their more able pupils for examinations. Ultimately, under a
Labour Government, it became government policy to replace the selective
school system with comprehensive schools, which were intended to cater
for all children and to offer a full range of subjects: academic, technical
and vocational. Of course, the public and independent schools of Britain
still make it possible for wealthy parents to buy their children the kind of
education that will lead to white-collar employment, but increasing
numbers of school-leavers enter the civil service, the professions of
managerial posts through the state school system.
Education since independence
It is possible to see an analogy between the post-war educational scene in
Britain and the post-independence educational scene in the South Pacific.
In the last decade of colonial rule, efforts were made to overcome the
traditional inertia of educational policy. Moreover, the post-war dogma
that formal education was the best form of economic investment,
together with the funds arising from a general period of economic
expansion, led to a rapid increase in the number of schools and pupils
throughout the region. While the provision of schooling had been
enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations as a basic human right, it
was seen by both parents and older pupils of the South Pacific simply as a
means of securing a good job. It is perhaps worth emphasising this point.
Except perhaps among a tiny minority, the attitude towards schooling on
the part of the people of the South Pacific has always been largely
pragmatic. Children are sent to school in order to get the good job that
the possession of the necessary certificates, diplomas and degrees
promises. Any suggestion that the purpose of schooling is otherwise
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immediately arouses suspicion and opposition.
During the years of economic expansion, and while there were still large
numbers of expatriates in government, professional and managerial
positions throughout the countries of the South Pacific, the fact that the
curricula of the secondary schools were predominantly academic seemed
not unreasonable. School-leavers with certificates were certain of employ-
ment, and a university degree was the key to a highly paid, secure and
pensionable job in the civil service. Of course, large numbers of secondary
pupils were unsuccessful at some stage or other in the series of selective
examinations found in most countries, and were obliged to leave school,
but it was accepted that these 'drop-outs', as they were called, were a
necessary condition of ensuring a supply of well-qualified local candidates
to take over from the expatriates, and to fill the seemingly endless
vacancies in white-collar employment.6
The failures of the formal education systems
Nevertheless, during the 1970s, most governments of the region tried to
implement educational policies based on a recognition of the fact that
this situation would not continue. In some urban areas, particularly
Suva, the 'drop-outs' — or 'push-outs', as I prefer to call them — began
to constitute a social threat, as they joined the ranks of unemployed
youths. Petty crime, vandalism, prostitution and vagrancy increased.
Education officials began to realise that the academic curriculum which
was traditionally supposed to be appropriate preparation for the civil
service, was largely irrelevant to the needs of young men and women who
had no hope of white-collar employment. Schools were started with
practical curricula, intended to prepare pupils for work in the rural
sector, in which the vast majority lived.
These schools, variously called junior secondary schools (in Fiji), or
community high schools (in Kiribati), have been almost without exception
unsuccessful in their aims. In exactly the same way that the parents of
children in the secondary modern schools of Britain in the 1950s
complained that their children were not being prepared to take the
examinations needed for good jobs, so the parents of children in the
junior secondary schools of Fiji and the community high schools of
Kiribati complained that they did not send their children to school to
learn how to farm or to fish. And just as the British secondary modern
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schools increasingly modelled themselves on their prestigious secondary
grammar counterparts, so the new schools of the South Pacific began to
emphasise in their curricula the academic subjects to be found in the
government secondary schools and to play down and neglect the
vocational and practical subjects which had been their rationale.
Meanwhile, white-collar employment opportunities are decreasing.
Vacancies in the civil service and many lower managerial positions
arising from the replacement of large numbers of expatriates by locals
become much fewer once the locals have taken over. Moreover, there is a
general contraction of job opportunities from worldwide economic
stagnation. These facts can of course be seen as justifying ministry
policies for vocational schools, but, in the end, parental preferences
determine the kind of curriculum that will prevail in democracies. While
the avenue to white-collar employment remains attendance at a school
with a predominantly academic curriculum, that is the kind of school that
will be preferred, even if the chances of a given pupil's final achievement
of white-collar success are less than 10%. Indeed, even if they were less
than one in a hundred, many parents would insist on sending their
children to such schools, in the hope that their child would be that one
hundredth child.
This would be bad enough if the outcome were only that the vast majority
of school pupils failed to get the kind of employment which was seen by
both their parents and themselves as the prime reason for going to school.
But in addition, attendance at secondary school in the South Pacific
effectively disables many young people from returning to their villages
and participating in the kind of subsistence and local employment that is
the alternative. It is not simply that the academic curriculum is largely
irrelevant to rural life, though that is, of course, true. Because of the
relative scarcity of secondary schools, many pupils cannot attend while
living at home, and they are obliged either to live in hostels, or — more
commonly — to board with relatives living near the schools. In such
cases, their foster parents often have very little interest in their studies,
and are unlikely to encourage them or provide opportunities for home-
work. Indeed, they may well regard the student as an extra domestic
servant, and they are not uncommonly given a heavy load of household
chores to help pay for their board. Such students are thereby deprived,
not only of the care and support they might otherwise have received from
their parents and the other members of their own households, but also of
the normal socialisation into the customs and traditions of their societies.
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Their moral unbringing may be casual and intermittent. In any case, poor
parents —especially if they are illiterate — may well feel that once their
children have begun to attend school, the responsibility for their good
behaviour rests with the teacher, while the teachers in turn may feel that
moral education is not part of their remit. Of course, if the school is a
mission school, attention will be given to inculcating the doctrines and
precepts of the church concerned, but while that may be consonant with
the ruling morality of the student's own cultural background, it may still
result in a sense of alienation from his or her own society. This sense of
alienation is exacerbated by the material attractions of city life if the
secondary school is located in an urban area. It was, of course, to avoid
this danger that many of the older boarding schools established by
colonial administrations were set in rural areas. But however rural the
setting, the fact remains that the main purpose of an academic secondary
school is to prepare its students for urban employment. Most white-collar
workers are to be found living and working in cities and, indeed, the
attractions of city life are among the incentives which motivate secondary
school students.
Moreover, with a few notable exceptions, the schools which they attend
are not integrated into their local communities. There is little if any
provision in their curricula for the teaching of cultural traditions. Despite
the richness of Pacific societies' artistic inheritance, the place of the
expressive arts in their timetables is usually marginal. The curricula of
most secondary schools are geared towards the kind of academic
education that is felt to be appropriate for white-collar employment.7
The vast majority of secondary school children at some stage or other are
pushed out of the system. Their experience of schooling is one of a sense
of failure, of being rejected by their society, and of having failed to justify
the ambitions and hopes of their parents. Because in many cases they left
their traditional communities in order to attend school, they have become
alienated from their social roots. Frustrated, rejected, alienated, tempted
on all sides by films, magazines and pictures based on the kind of
Western materialistic permissive life they can no longer hope to attain, is
it any wonder that so many young people resort to vandalism, petty crime
and prostitution?
These hapless young people have in fact been sacrificed for the tiny
minority who are successful.
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A three-fold solution
In the last section of this paper I want to suggest how this problem might
be dealt with.8 The first point is that it should not be regarded as a
problem of youth. What we are talking about it not a problem of youth, it
is a problem of society. Young people certainly face problems, of the kind
I have outlined, but the cause of those problems is not in the youth — it is
in their societies. And the solution to that problem is not primarily an
educational solution. It is a sad fact that in all the countries of the world
in which there is a so-called problem of youth, the public looks to the
schools for a solution. The schools by themselves can do little or
nothing. The whole society is responsible for the problem and the whole
of society must co-operate in solving it. I propose three steps, any one of
which would not in itself deal with the situation but which, taken
together, would begin to overcome some of the difficulties I have
outlined.
The first step is, in theory, the easiest. I suggest that entry to the civil
service be made conditional upon passing an examination of which
practical and cultural subjects are a required part. This would be a three-
part examination, with specified passes in academic subjects, in practical
subjects and in cultural-expressive subjects. To make that requirement
would be the easiest step to take. It could be done tomorrow! And think
what an impact on the curricula of secondary schools such a requirement
would make! Overnight, practical and cultural subjects would cease to be
marginal entries on the timetable, but central elements in the curriculum.
Moreover, there would be no objection from parents to their children
taking these subjects once it was seen that they led to the goal of a
white-collar job just as surely as the academic subjects. And the outcome
of this vital change would be that on the one hand, civil servants would
have some knowledge of practical matters and their own cultural
backgrounds — in itself surely no bad thing — while on the other hand,
the majority of school children who were unsuccessful in obtaining a
white-collar job, would at least have learned something at school of
relevance to their own lives.
The second essential step is to change the examination system, which
should be localised and made more relevant to the needs of the countries
of the South Pacific. The school-leaving examinations should not only
provide for the practical and cultural subjects 1 have already mentioned
— they should also be designed to test flexibility of thinking, imagination
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and the capacity to solve problems. It should not be possible to pass
school examinations largely through rote learning, and it should therefore
not be possible to prepare students for such examinations by stuffing
them full of facts, many of which they do not understand, to be
regurgitated in the examination room. What the countries of the South
Pacific need of their culture citizens is not a head full of undigested and
often irrelevant facts, but the capacity to think for themselves, to solve
problems, to apply their imagination to new circumstances. And
examinations should foster these qualities.This is not an easy task and it
is one which will require a great deal of effort and application.
Once these two essential steps have been taken, then and only then would
it be possible for the schools to develop the kind of curriculum that is
needed, with a three-fold emphasis on academic subjects, practical
subjects and cultural-expressive subjects. As part of this development,
schools should form closer relationships with their communities than
many have at present. Again 1 realise that there are some very notable
exceptions. But I would like to see schools and communities jointly
involved in the educational enterprise in which young people are
prepared not only for entry to the civil service, professions and managerial
positions, but also to take an active and needed part in the work of their
own communities. Schools should reinforce, not undermine cultural
traditions. And society's moral values should be taught in both home and
school. Teachers should be able to take part in non-formal educational
activities leading to community development, while members of the
community should participate in their school's cultural programmes.
This argues in turn for a large-scale in-service training programme for
teachers. The Department of Education at the University of the South
Pacific, has embarked on such a programme which allows qualified
teachers to study for a B.Ed degree through extension and summer
school courses, with education specialisms in the fields of the expressive
arts or non-formal education among others.
I would like to conclude with a vision of the future. This vision is of a
teaching profession throughout the South Pacific whose members are all
graduates, both secondary and primary. In their classroom teaching, and
in their activities in their communities, these graduates encourage an
understanding of and respect for the traditions and arts of all the cultures
and subcultures of their societies, while also fostering the capacity of
flexible thinking, imagination and problem-solving upon which the
futures of these societies must depend. This vision is not an idle dream; it
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could become a reality. Imagine the effect on the morale and well-being
of the youth of the South Pacific if that vision were to come to pass.
Instead of being pushed out of an irrelevant school system and being
regarded (and worse still, regarding themselves) as failures, they would
have the o p p o r t u n i t y to participate fully in the social and economic
rejuvenation of their countries. And instead of rejecting the values and
traditions of their parents and elders, they would share them. Partici-
p a t i o n in the activities of their communities would foster a sense of
purpose and responsibility. Instead of being, as at present, h u m a n
sacrifices in an elitist selective system, they would become in time
responsible leaders in their societies. How bright their futures would
look. We might then be able to say, after Wordsworth:
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!
Notes
1. Based on a paper presented at a conference on 'Education and Privilege',
organised by the New Zealand Association for Research in Education at the
Secondary Teachers'College, Auckland, 5-8 December, 1985.
2. These countries constitute the region served by the University of the South
Pacific, which has a campus in two of them (Fiji and Western Samoa) and a
university centre in all but one of the remainder (Tokelau).
3. Vanuatu is unique in having inherited not one but two colonial education
systems, British and French. This has vastly complicated its educational
problems, but the general observations of this paper still apply.
4. The extent to which these education systems continue to reflect colonial
policy 10 years or more after independence is well brought out in Thomas,
R.M. and Postlethwaite, T.N. (1984) Schooling in the Pacific Islands.
Oxford: Pergamon Press.
5. See Whitehead (1981) Education in Fiji: Policy, Problems and Progress in
Primary and Secondary Education, 1938-1973. Canberra: Australian
National University, Pacific Research Monograph No. 6. Chapter 12
provides a good summary of the various forces at work.
6. Rates of 'drop-out' vary, and it is difficult to find precise figures. In Kiribati,
for example, there were 260 pupils altogether in From 1 of all secondary
schools in 1981. By 1982, this had become 256 in Form 2. In 1983, there were
238 in Form 3. There was then over 100% drop-out to 115 in Form 4 in 1984,
which had dropped to 89 in Form 5 in 1985. (Figures taken from Table 3.04
in Digest of Education Statistics, Tarawa, Ministry of Education, 1985.) At a
very rough estimate, less than 10% of pupils entering the primary schools of
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the South Pacific end up with a school leaving certificate. The remaining
90+% constitute the 'drop-outs' or 'push-outs'.
7. See Kaye, Tom (1985a) 'The Place of the Expressive Arts in the Schools of
the South Pacific,' in Kanbur, M.G. and Hau'ofa, E. (eds) Ray Parkinson
Memorial Lectures 1984. Suva, USP.
8. The following paragraphs are based on proposals 1 have made elsewhere; See
Kaye (1985b) 'Education for What in the South Pacific?' ibid. See also Kaye
(1985c) The Role of the Schools in Tackling the Problems of Youth Today.
Address given to Fiji Principals' Association 56th Annual Convention, Suva,
18 April 1985.
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