CO129-623-6 Education Department- annual report 1-5-1950 - 31-12-1950 — Page 51

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BRITISH SOLOMON

ORATE

This group of islands scattered south-eastwards ISLANDS PROTECT- from New Guinea has a population of about 80,000 and

of whom some 40,000 are Melanesians from the island of Malaita. The Solomons are singularly isolated and access to them has been spasmodic and slow until about 8 months ago when a fortnightly air service linked them with Australia. There has been no government education, although just before the war Mr. Groves who is now Director of Education in Papua and New Guinea and who had had experience in the Australian administered Pacific Islands had been asked to make a very full survey of the educational facilities in the Solomons provided by the five missionary bodies, i.e. the Roman Catholic, Melanesian Mission, Methodist Mission, Seventh Day Adventist, based on Australia,

and the South Seas Evangelical Mission, based on Australia. Bearing in mind first of all the isolation of the Solomons themselves and the degree of isolation between island and island and mission station and mission station, the achievements of these missions is most creditable, in spite of the fact that lack of co-ordination has meant very low standards by our modern assessing of them and no comparaule standards between district and district. The British Solomon Islands Proctectorate Government is now in the process of determining the nature of the partnership that shall be developed between Government and Mission and is preparing a draft Education Ordinance and two Government Education Officers are on the spot.

(1) The education of girls is extremely difficult because the attitude of both islanders and Europeans is reactionary. However all the more credit then is due to Sister Gwen of the Cross of the Melanesian Mission who has established on her little island of Bunana a girls' community about 50 to 60 strong which she was running, when I went to visit her, with the help of just one other Sister, a young woman who was a trained midwife. A boat may call once in six weeks or two months or three months and yet the kind of education that was being given to those girls was remarkable in its suitability to their environment and in the progressiveness of its outlook. Sister Gwen went to bush during the Japanese occupation and in the middle of all the hardships and dangers of this period proceeded to write a series of small textbooks, since published as the Pacific Library, which is meeting the educational needs of schools in the Pacific Islands.

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(2) Another fascinating and unexpected aspect of education in these islands is the discovery of all the mechanical devices that the war brought. Scrounging on the beaches, in the shallow water and in the bush has revealed bull-dozers, tractors, generators and lorries, end surplus war stores have yielded pianos, wireless sets. gramophones, printing machines. stencil machines and book binding equipment. These have all been used by the mission central schools, and not one of them having more than 80 boys in it and have enabled these youngsters to

more fortunate take for granted the use of machines that far territories have never seen, far less had the opportunity of handling. This does not mean that there is a highly developed technical education or even technical education, or some might

However this say even education in the traditional sense. meeting of Solomon Island boys with the mechanics of the modern

Hitherto the world offers an opportunity toogood to miss. exercise of ancient skills has been hedged round with a tradition and custom which has been impervious to change or to the demand

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