A Book of Thousand Words

Lasting impression from Budibudi Island, Milne bay Province of Papua New Guinea. Steven Winduo's article on the experience published in The National newspaper of September 04th 2009.

On one of the isolated islands in the Laughlan Group in Milne Bay is the atoll village of Budibudi where an experience with books and reading had an unexpected impact in my life. I was among the primarily Australian tourists on board the cruise ship Oceanic Discoverer, who visited the atoll village after we had crossed over the boarder from Gizo in the Solomon Islands. Woodlark Island is the nearest government post and administrative centre. The villagers depend on the ocean and what they can grow on the atoll, though not much to be spoken off as plentiful in the language of mainlanders.

I had walked further away from the village, along the beautiful sandy beach to see if I can walk around the entire length of the island. Coming towards me was a village youth in his twenties. He appeared to be lost in his own world, trapped, perhaps by the sheer isolation, and abandonment as it were. Nothing else mattered to him more than the book he carried with him that day. As he came nearer I noted he seemed happy being alone. The book was not the Bible, but the way he carried and displayed pride in the book showed how much the book meant to him. The book and the youth were connected, somehow, through some force beyond the likes of me.

Of all the people I had met on this trip, this Budibudi youth with the book was the most invective. The book he was reading was Dame Josephine Abaijah’s autobiography: A Thousand Coloured Dreams; the story of a young girl growing up in Papua. Obviously, the book was not just about someone from his province, but also about the experiences of growing up on isolated islands scattered in Oceania, remaining vulnerable to the geographical isolation, and exposed to natural disasters such as cyclones and Tsunami, and affected by the lack of political influence from Waigani or Alotau, and cut off from all matters of modernity sweeping through the rest of Papua New Guinea. I asked him if he has been to school and beyond his village. Woodlark was the furthest and for school, he has never been to high school.

The tourists visited Budibudi to learn about the people, their way of life, culture, and to admire the beautiful sandy beaches, marine diversity, and to understand the island life, away from the trappings of modern cities and towns. The youth with a book on Budibudi Island, in contrast, wanted to learn about the world outside of his small island village. The prized possession of A Thousand Coloured Dreams was his window of escape, the canoe to sail away across the ocean to other places, and his dreams about another world, another reality, another life. The visitors to his island were the physical link between his island and the outside world. After we left he had only the book to indulge in for all he wants.

The reason I recount this experience is to highlight the issues of books and reading. If more Papua New Guineans, regardless of education, where we are, what our socio-economic status is, or if reading is or isn’t part of our culture, can read books written by Papua New Guineans then I see this country on the way to making sense of itself. Would it hurt to reprint some of our PNG classics for every school child in the country? Would it make sense to have our leaders write their memoirs for every child in their electorates to emulate?

The kind of responsible approach to address this national challenge is to redirect our attention away from the path we have been traveling all along. Encouraging steps are being taken. The Education Department has announced during the National Book through Jacob Hevelawa, the acting director-general of the Office of Libraries, Literacy Awareness and Archives that starting next year onwards it becomes compulsory for all schools in the country to have a library. It makes sense also to consider the non-formal education sector’s need for information and reading resources to assist them to participate in the development of the country. Another sector of the population without access to books and reading materials are the ever increasing out of school population in urban centers and rural districts. Ignoring this slice of the population is not the way to go about addressing the development and acceleration of the literacy rate. Many of them are engaged in street vending, endless search for employment, and becoming the undesirable members of the society.

In November 2008, the Department of Education through the National Literacy and Awareness Secretariat released a situational analysis report on literacy initiative for empowerment in Papua New Guinea. In his message in this report the Secretary for Education Dr. Joseph Pagelio acknowledged that the growth rate of literacy is 1% per year, less than 3% per year for our population growth. It is a national dilemma and a national set back. “Political will and adequate funding from the government to support institutional strengthening of NLAS [National Literacy and Awareness Secretariat], the coordinating agency, to boost the morale of literacy stakeholders and effective collaboration network” is needed now than to wait another ten years, says Dr. Pagelio.

The issue is not about books and reading as a Western concept, but on how we deal with books and reading in our lives? What importance do we accord them? How much are we willing to spend on buying books than on other everyday items? The concern is not about print culture replacing oral culture, but about how we use print culture to broaden our perspectives of the horizon. We can go on thinking books and reading are not part of our culture, but the success of anyone’s survival in the world or any students in the education system is determined on the basis of how much one has read to broaden the knowledge base anyone needs to participate in a meaningful and productive way.

Syllabus Without Learning Resources

Steven Winduo's reaction to the PNG Department of Education's Language and Literature Upper Secondary Syllabus, published in The National newspaper of August 28th, 2009.

The Department of Education has made available an electronic version of the Language and Literature Upper Secondary Syllabus (2008) a year after publication.

The Language and Literature Upper Secondary Syllabus for grades 11 and 12 has come a long way from the days when I was part of the Syllabus Advisory Committee. In the early 1990s we changed the subject name English to Language and Literature at Jais Aben meeting. As UPNG representatives on the committee Ms. Garua Peni and I suggested the subject name change to reflect the study of language and literature at the higher levels of education. The committee agreed and thereafter all upper secondary schools teach Language and Literature, with the final imprint of the same name on grade 12 certificates.

Several observations on the new syllabus are due. First, the syllabus, a broad guideline provides the most intelligent document to guide teachers and students in their learning environment. It is simply an instruction to teachers and students about what they need to do to achieve a specific knowledge gap, what they are expected to achieve as the final outcome, (but not in finality), and the list of resources they need to enable the wheel of knowledge to work.

The Secretary for Education, Dr. Joseph Pagelio introduced it in these words: “The Upper Secondary Language and Literature Syllabus contribute to integral human development as it is based on the students’ physical environments, societies and cultures. It links to the National Education Plan’s vision, which is that secondary education enables students to achieve their individual potential to lead productive lives as members of the local, national, and international community.”

According to Dr. Pagelio students will “relate their learning to society, the local culture and the global culture; and to influences that direct the course of change in these environments. Students learn the art of effective communication and the skill of sound decision making, and accept and value views other than their own.” Such a vision is valued for its desirable outcome.

The issue that seems to pop its ugly head up, however, is that the effectiveness of the Language and Literature Syllabus is measured, eventually by its outcomes. Right away one would ask: What are the instruments for measuring the outcomes of the new syllabuses? Are there study resources and manuals to assist teachers and students achieve a measurable outcome? Are there programs to assist teachers to achieve effective delivery of the subject?

My observations are in no way a measure of the outcomes of the Language and Literature Syllabus, but indicate my concerns for the instruments and methods of delivery used in achieving outcomes. The units have a basic structure: introduction, learning outcomes, content (more like outcomes, text types and recommended texts. The syllabus says nothing about how and what to teach in each contact periods, weeks, or a term. It is too general.

The syllabus says nothing about how to plan a course, how to teach the unit, or give model lesson plans to follow. There are no directions on how to deal with pedagogical and learning issues and challenges in effective delivery of the subject.

Consider this: How will a teacher teach about Paliau Moloat when he or she doesn’t have a book on or any knowledge about the person? Are there books about Moloat and the Paliau movement? Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare’s autobiography Sana is out of print and has never been reprinted since 1975. How many schools have a copy of Sana in their libraries? About 99 per cent of recommended textbooks, films, and readings materials in the syllabus are to the best of my knowledge NOT available to teachers, students, and their schools. Many schools do not have advance information technology and internet facilities to access electronic learning resources.

The designers of the Language and Literature Syllabus should have recommended or suggested commissioning local language and literature specialists to write how to study language and literature handbooks, how to research and write literary essays, how to do book, film, essay reviews, how to teach and not teach literary texts, and using of critical study or essays about novels, poems, plays, short stories, writers, and their works. The so- called outcome based Oxford publications do not correspond to the texts listed on the recommended reading list for each unit.

Can a teacher in Buin Secondary School, for example, teach Witi Ihimaera’s The Whale Rider or show the film version, if he or she doesn’t know or have access to studies done on the novel and film by scholars and critics of the Ihimaera’s work, the Maori culture, indigenous knowledge systems, or the New Zealand society? Can a teacher in Brandi Secondary School teach the greatest Eighteenth Century British writers in the likes of Blake, Bronte, Wordsworth, Christina Rossetti, Tennyson, and to the modernist poets: T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and the Irish national poet William Butler Yeates? How many teachers know that Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart was derived from W. B Yeates’s “The Second Coming” poem? The second coming was about the fall of the great civilization of Byzantium and the vision for its rehabilitation and glorification in the modern European cultural imagination.

Apart from the major discord with the recommended list of drama books, books, films, and other resource materials I am more concerned with the impossibility of finding a film like Wokabaut bilong Tonten (1976), Billy Eliot, The Color Purple, Betelnut Bisnis or books such as Wole Soyinka’s Ake: The Years of Childhood, Malcolm X’s Autobiography of Malcolm X, Richard Branson’s Losing My Virginity, or Steven Edmund Winduo’s Hembemba: Rivers of the Forest. This is unreal and will not work.

An immediate revision of the Language and Literature Syllabus for Upper Secondary level must take place. Develop how to teach manuals or resource books for teachers to use in teaching Language and Literature courses. I also suggest running short courses or in-service workshops in conjunction with specialist academics from our universities to make the syllabus work.

Life and Literacy

Steven Winduo published this article in The National newspaper of August 21st, 2009.

In the 1990s we had done well with the concept of critical literacy and cultural awareness. The work done by various groups and institutions around the country saw our people becoming aware that learning to read and write is one thing, but understanding and accessing information to move forward was another. We knew the sense of imprisonment by illiteracy and poverty arrested our conscience as a free people.

This week the Minister for Education, Honourable James Marape opened the stakeholders consultation workshops on the implementation of the literacy development project in Papua New Guinea. UNESCO Pacific Cluster Office in Apia with support from UNESCO offices in Paris, Germany, Bangkok and the UNESCO national office in Port Moresby initiated the workshop. The lead agency coordinating this workshop is the National Literacy and Awareness Secretariat (NLAS) under the Office of Library and Archives of the Department of Education, led by Mr. Willie Jonduo, its Director.

In his opening speech Mr. Marape challenged the task force and stakeholders to rethink strategies and plans to achieve a 75 percent literacy rate in the next 10 years. Among his challenges he wants the task force to come up with an accurate literacy map complete with details of the success and failures of literacy programs in different parts of the country. The Minister also challenged the stakeholders to set out achievable tasks and identify mechanisms and instruments to accelerate literacy programs to achieve a higher score. Some of these include: having all stakeholders and developmental partners working in partnership, reorganization of programs and reinventing institutions, strengthening capacities, and providing of basic literacy services to all Papua New Guineans.

UNESCO Apia Office—Cluster Office for Pacific States Director Dr. Visesio Pongi’s challenge to all partners in literacy development to work together rather than duplicating policies and responsibilities. UNESCO stands ready to support Papua New Guinea’s efforts to accelerate literacy rate reach 75-80 percent in the next 10 years. As its commitment to PNG, UNESCO has included it on the list of countries receiving LIFE (Life Initiative for Empowerment) from UNESCO.

LIFE and UNESCO-CapEFA are two principle programs that UNESCO is flagging in its partnership with the people and government of Papua New Guinea. LIFE is a framework of collaborative action for enhancing and improving literacy efforts, a process in support of literacy which is country led and country specific, a support mechanism embedded in national policies and strategies, and an initiative for technical support services and facilitation by UNESCO in the areas of policy, advocacy, partnership, capacity-building and innovations.

The UNESCO-PNG CapEFA (Capacity-Building in Education For All) programme aims to accelerated national efforts in PNG to achieve EFA (Education For All) through LIFE. UNESCO’s success in Pakistan, Egypt, Morocco, Senegal and Niger under this program now includes Papua New Guinea. I welcome this UNESCO initiative to PNG as it will enable us to strengthen capacities for design, implementation and management of good quality literacy programmes, as well as curriculum and material development, training of senior and middle-level management, assessment, monitoring and evaluation.

The questions begging immediate answers, however, are: Have we achieved any significant changes in our efforts to eradicate literacy and enable a critically literate society? Why have we abandoned or marginalized some of the outstanding organizations and institutions in the communities, civil society, and even in the government, committed to building basic literacy and strengthening critical literacy programs in PNG? Two of these that come to mind readily are the PNG Trust Inc. and the National Literacy and Awareness Secretariat (NLAS). The later should by now have an elevated status of being an autonomous government Department.

The national government must now firm up its commitment to increase literacy rate by making NLAS become a separate department known as National Languages and Literacy Department, with wide ranging powers and sufficient funding to organize and mobilize national literacy programs in the PNG.

The lack of critical cultural and social literacy is affecting our responses to the modern global cultural, social, economic, and technological changes such as the changing social demographics and associated socio-economic activities in our urban areas, global epidemics such as HIV/AIDs, and the impacts of new communication media and technologies, patterns of unemployment, underdevelopment, and transitional tribal urban surge of cultural communities crowding our urban centres.

We are all affected by these sweeping changes. To deal with these changes we need to reinvest our efforts and resources in key programs, organizations, and institutions. We need to organize and assist our communities to give up counter-productive activities robbing their dignity, pride, and future. A nation with a high percentage of illiterates always struggles with dissent, negative responses, and stubborn refusal to abandon socially disrespectful attitudes and backward behaviours.

The need is to re-examine the yardstick of human development priorities and where we have channelled massive funding without achieving any measurable positive outcomes. How much have we achieved in the last 10 years? The surveys, carried out in the National Capital District and the New Ireland Province, by PNG Education and Advocacy Network (PEAN), a civil society organization in 2006 and 2007 reveal a troubling trend in literacy growth in Papua New Guinea: (1) A crisis in school participation with an alarmingly low participation rates among youth aged 15 and 19 years with many of them missing out on school, (2) a crisis in school quality reflected in low literacy rates for those who have completed school and (3) a crisis in literacy with pronounced low literacy rates in the community, dramatically lower than officially reported rates.

It is difficult to ignore the evidence of a systemic failure in accelerating literacy rates in PNG. In the words of Nicholas Faraclas, one time advocate of critical literacy and print literacy in PNG: “the way in which print literacy is implemented must not be counterproductive to the ultimate goal of critical literacy.” Literacy is LIFE. These words echo so loud in our ears, yet we choose to ignore them by shifting our focus elsewhere to trite and banal developmental discourses.