What’s Wrong With Our Schools?

Since the American administration of the former United Nations Trust Territory began building schoolhouses on remote outer islands and district centers in the 1950s, the Micronesian area has adopted U.S.-style education without much thought. For sure, there have been educational reviews every 10-15 years in most islands-all of which have pointed out generally alarmingly poor results-but there's been little change for the better.

Indeed, with the rise in donor aid in the last 20 years, many education programs are increasingly developed and driven by overseas consultants and donor agencies. Longtime Palauan educator Masaaki Emesiochl says as a result, "students will end up in the margin of life because good decisions are not being made about the development of an education system that makes sense to our environment and people."

His worries were echoed by most of the educators who gathered at a three-day conference on "Rethinking Education in Micronesia" in Majuro at the end of October to take a hard look at public education.

Dr. Kabini Sanga, a Solomon Islander who is a senior lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington, told Pacific Magazine that as older Pacific educators reflect back, they see they're still dealing with the same issues as when they started their careers 30 years ago.

School children in Palau. Photo: Jason Aubuchon

"There's a feeling of hopelessness that Pacific communities haven't taken on education in the sense of owning it so they are able to improve the quality to meet educational needs of the majority of the people," he says.

"Many young people don't have feet firmly in their own culture, don't appreciate their own value system and are lost in their own world. But school is not preparing them to be in a global world," Sanga adds.

Dr. Isebong Asang of Palau asked the conference: "What is it we want our children to learn? Is it data? Facts? Culture?" This question needs to be answered, she says, to design public education systems that fit the islands.

"As a student of Palau, I learned that the goal of Palauan society was to elevate the quality of life and the standard of living for every citizen," she says. This was done through the concept of respect for people. "Relationships defined the philosophy of how learning took place."

Today's classrooms are fundamentally at odds with what people learn at home, Asang says.

"We need to incorporate things we know in our blood into the education system," she says.

While educators may want to start revamping education in the islands, the fact that education policies and budgets become political issues in small island communities was identified as a serious impediment to implementing programs. "Every two or four years, senators and the governor use this as a reason to vote for them," says Juan Flores, Guam's superintendent of education. "It's a problem. My heart bleeds for the 30,000 plus kids because someone (politicians) decided to use education money for something else, not for the classrooms."

Still, the fact that there has been so little improvement over the years can be traced, largely, to lack of community involvement.

"We're trying to push Pacific Islanders by saying, 'this is your land, your community," Sanga says. "You take care of it. Look at the challenges you face, agree on priorities for action. Find ways to resource them, distribute responsibility and run with them. This is different to donors coming in with plans."

Sanga thinks the church offers a good model. "The church in the Pacific is owned by Pacific Islanders," he says. "The biggest buildings in the Pacific are churches. People take care of them and put an amazing amount of money into them. But they won't do the same for schools. How come islanders have embraced Christianity and made it our own brand?

"We need to rethink education in a way that allows us to be in control and not always wait for someone else to do it for us."

Asang puts it another way: "We can't change our colonial history and we can't just moan that we were colonized. We need to change our minds and say, 'where do we go from here?'"

The conference established a Pacific Education Forum to continue the dialogue launched at the Majuro event. Participants hope that the forum will assist the islands to continue addressing issues of concern.

"The conference was a great opportunity to share with colleagues from other countries and learn about the things they're doing," says Marshall Islands Secretary of Education Biram Stege. "But it will all be for nothing if we don't keep this discussion and this momentum moving forward-that's why this new forum will be so important."