Government and Mission Involvement in Education

120 10 Education, Medicine, and Language

10.1 Government and Mission Involvement in Education

In his study of Bougainville-Buka, Oliver gives a picture of the government’s and missions’ early involvement. He states the following: The Christian missions supplied their indigenous members with some medical aid, but most health services such as they were, were provided by the administration. Each district had its government hospital, but these were able to serve only a very small proportion of the indigenes requiring medical care. In addition, European medical officers made periodic, usually annual, tours of outlying areas, but were able to attend to only the most obvious, and current, afflictions. As for all the other maladies which shortened and made painful the lives of the Territory’s indigenes, little preventive or therapeutic measures could be underataken by an administration having so few medical or public health resources at its commmand. An even drearier picture is presented by the administration’s education programme, if it can be so dignified. Only six government-operated schools for indigenes were in operation four on New Britain, one on New Ireland, and one on the mainland, comprising in 1940-1 a total of 466 pupils of an estimated total population of 800,000. In fact, the administration, with its limited resources, seemed more than content to leave schooling in the hands of the missions—an arrangement with which the latter evidently agreed. Some 70,000 pupils were enrolled in mission schools during 1940-1, but the impressiveness of this number must be deflated somewhat, since most of these pupils were in subprimary village schools where instruction was rudimentary and casual to say the least Oliver 1973:97. The formal schooling now provided for most young Bougainvillians represents a wholly new facet of indigenous life. In pre-European days the nearest approach to such schooling took place in those tribes of northern Bougainville whose youths underwent initiation rites. During the months or years over which these rites extended, the [Upe] initiates received instruction from older men in several aspects of tribal life, including ethics and esoteric lore. Elsewhere, of course, children and young people were also educated, but more by individual precept and example than organized instruction Oliver 1973:198. The administration’s post-war efforts to improve the education of Bougainvillians began by granting subsidies to mission schools in return for some control over the curriculum and, later on, over the qualifications of teachers. It was not until the sixties that government high schools as such began to be set up, the first at Hutjena in 1964, the second at Buin Town in 1968, and the third at Arawa in 1972 Oliver 1973:149–150. The challenge of adequately educating the children of Bougainville-Buka has yet to be fully met. Today, according to Graeme Kemmelfield in a personal communication, working with the Department of Education, eleven hundred children on the average finish grade 6 each year without hope of going on to high school. Grade 8 leavers add to the numbers of those not continuing their formal education.

10.2 Education for the Rotokas People