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Thu, 9 Sep 2010
SUVA, Fiji (RADIO AUSTRALIA) --- An education expert in Fiji feels that some traditional values need to be brought into the 21st century when it comes to education.
Joseph Veramu who is with Fiji's education department believes the Pacific needs more homegrown entrepreneurs. He also says students need to change their attitude and be taught how to acquire a better work ethic.
Mr Veramu wrote an article on the subject which analyses the conflict between formal and non-formal education.
Radio Australia’s presenter Geraldine Coutts speaks with Joseph Veramu, coordinator of the Fiji Ministry of Education's School Citizenship Education Program SCEP
VERAMU: What I saw was that there was this over-emphasis on training young people to find jobs and I felt that there was a missing link between other values - that it's not just getting a job but the values of hard work, of being punctual to work and all those important factors when our young people, especially Pacific islanders, go out to find work in the formal workplace.
COUTTS: Okay can we talk a little bit more about that, you feel that education needs to mirror these conflcts between formal and non-formal types of education, how would that work, how would you do that?
VERAMU: Well I feel that in the Pacific we still have this hangover about cultural issues. We sometimes have this romantic view of culture that's sort of deep-seated to our work when we got out to work in the workplace. And I see this is happening even to those workers who come to Australia or even New Zealand to work that they still have this sort of cultural inequity and they need to overcome them when they go out to the workplace because when we get there we really need to work for productivity and make sure that the values that we have ensures that we are equal to compete in the marketplace, the global marketplace.
COUTTS: So are you saying there should be two types of education, those who don't actually go to school five days a week and learn reading, writing and arthimetic, and another kind of education that will prepare them for life?
VERAMU: What I'm basically suggesting is a more integrated approach where they learn formal education but there's also the non-formal aspects that are sort of integrated into it. And I feel that'll be cost-effective in the school systems of the Pacific.
COUTTS: Okay so how do we go about that because you also say in your article that even though you live in sort of paradise-like environments, the reality is that many people are poor and face hardship in meeting their basic needs. And you quote a few different things like Kiribati, 30 per cent of primary school leavers go on to secondary school and 50 per cent of these drop out there. And there are other figures relating to Vanuatu as well. Why is it so high the drop-out rate?
VERAMU: Having written that article I'm now able to assess the whole issue and because I've also gone to all those countries and I feel that there's a lot of potential out there even in Kiribati in the marine agricultural sector worth billions of dollars. And it's just a matter of attitude, the right attitude, the right education for us to exploit this potential, develop our potential through education and get on with having more sustainable lives.
COUTTS: Well there's also a Professor Ken Gannicott of Woolongong University, you quote him in the article saying that the combination of rapidly growing school age population and slow growing GDP makes it impossible for children in like Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to have much qualitative progress with their education problems. Is that still the case?
VERAMU: No what I'm seeing now is that governments in the Pacific region, especially in Fiji, are introducing entrepreneurial education. There is one that is going to start in Fiji with AusAID funds, and I believe that that is going to assist the education for small and micro enterprises. The entrepreneurial education I think that is a way forward. Basically what I'm trying to say is that we Pacific islanders should stop making excuses and really look at pro-active ways of getting on and becoming more sustainable, rather than saying that we still have all these problems and that sort of thing.
COUTTS: So you're talking about sustainability, you also cite examples of that which are where canned and processed foods and medicines have become expensive to buy and people have become dependent on. People have improvised by setting up home gardens where nutritious foods and herbal medicines are planted. Is there enough of that going on though?
VERAMU: That is beginning to pick up, but I believe if that is nurtured in the school system and also in the whole sort of informal environment we should see more of that happening so that we are able to sustain ourselves through home gardens and through herbal medicines and perhaps crack down on the very, very high lifestyle diseases or non-communicable diseases that we face in the Pacific like diabetes, heart disease and all that kind.
COUTTS: Now you also feel that education has modernised the population so much that it's not possible to return to purely traditional ways of doing things anymore.
VERAMU: Well to be quite honest that's true. We're not able to move to a sort of very, very traditional kind of existence now.
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