The indigenous people provided labour, often paid for in terms of exchange of goods such as tobacco and clothes. And when nation-states acquire power and prestige, they become recognised as civilisations. How is it used in educational discourses in PNG? Also, they have an ambiguous relationship with Australia. Accordingly, the expatriates are considered by the PNG Government to be indispensable to the processes of economic and social development. The Territory of New Guinea was divided into administrative units called Districts. During the colonial period, the expatriates who were traders, farmers and miners saw their relationship with the indigenous people as purely economic. Between 1884 and 1914, New Guinea was annexed and ruled by Germany or its colonial agencies (Firth, 1986). The first European attempt at colonization was made in 1793 by Lieut. It can mean different things to different people (Larrain, 1989). Finally, it meant a failure of imagination, an inability to conceive of alternatives to those notions of development and progress prescribed by the colonisers. The decline of feudalism and the rise of capitalism made it necessary to exploit the natural resources of the regions outside Europe. They have become alienated from their land, and their people; and yet many of them have not been absorbed into the new society of the elites. There was also debate about the kind of development that was appropriate for the Territory and about the level of infrastructure investment that Australia could afford (Beazley, 1968). The paper is reprinted from the International Journal of University Adult Education 24 (2) (1987). Most Papua New Guineans are thus faced by a conflicting set of obligations: to their tribe, to the provincial authorities and to the national government. The colonised, although manipulated to some extent, are nevertheless willing partners. These are individuals who retain considerable economic interests in the country which they could be expected to protect from their positions of power. In 1962, a United Nations Visiting Team toured PNG and made an assessment on the status of the political, economic and educational development of the Territory. The system of luluai (the leader) and tultul (the messenger) was established. Stage 4 (the drive to maturity) when 10 to 20 per cent of the national income is invested, the use of consumer technology becomes widespread and an impression is made on the capitalist world economy. The PNG Government fears the creation of a dependency relationship on foreigners because they have the power of the purse: for after all, if they can control the economy of the country, it is possible they can also control the government and influence the formulation and implementation of key policy decisions. Through this system, the whole of New Guinea was, either directly or indirectly, under the control of the German colonial authorities by 1914. Much of the history of PNG has been written from the dominant European view which has assumed European civilisation to mark the highest point of human development. Recognising the ineffectiveness of the Fijian system, and fearing the designs that the Germans had on Papua, the British Government invited Sir Samuel Griffith, the then Queensland Premier, to devise a new administrative system for Papua. This attracts foreign fishing companies, often with the approval of the respective governments for whom the commercial activity represents a major financial bonus (Waugh, 1992). It was not surprising, therefore, that the missionaries sought to achieve their objectives by establishing schools. They became dependent on the state and its bureaucracy to provide both the directions of education, as well as the resources needed to deliver it to their young. For us to be completely landless is a nightmare with no dollar in the pocket, dollar in the bank with allay; we are threatened people". So while some generalisations are possible, the nature about colonisation should be treated with caution. Considerable scope therefore exists for expanding national output by bringing additional land into productive use. Those local companies that have been able to develop have done so in collaboration with multinational corporations which are often linked to major financial institutions such as the World Bank, the Asian Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The European planters, traders and other expatriates in the unified colony accused the Government of "selling out" to sectional interests within Australia which had no understanding of the Territory and its problems. 0 Reviews. By the Second World War, the administrative systems of Papua and New Guinea had become remarkably similar (Downs, 1980). However, the challenge remains, and serves to define the broader political context within which the policy of devolution has been implemented. Carrier and Carrier (1989:238) further argue: ... our study on Ponam [Manus PNG] has already demonstrated, that it is not the case that the impact of capitalist colonization shocks villages into immobility and decay. As has already been pointed out, the Papua and New Guinea Legislative and Executive Council was established in 1949, with an all-European membership, appointed by Canberra (Mair, 1970:44-45). In addition, the surplus capital was also invested to enable secondary industries to be established as part of the extension of industrial networks. What implications does this have for the attempts to institute democratic reforms in PNG educational administration? With the acquisition of land came the missionaries, planters and settlers, traders and administrators who became heavily involved in the "development" of PNG (Rowley, 1985), supposedly for the benefit of the indigenous people. The Directive does not provide any clear guidance as to the way Papua New Guineans might reconcile the diverse "PNG ways" and at the same time live with the ubiquitous western cultural pressures. Using modernisation theory, Alavi and Shanin (1982) suggest that Third World countries are thus referred to as "backward nations", while colonies remaining under Europeans are "emergent nations" upon independence and "developing countries" thereafter (cited in Spybey, 1992:21). Papua New Guinea has been subject to many anthropological studies (for example Mead, 1931; Malinowski 1932; Mead, 1970; Strathern, 1971). Education became a process controlled and administered from a centre by a group of people who had little to do with village life. Capitalism involves control over the mode of production through the manipulation of labour in the production of commodities. The Kiaps played a powerful role: as administrators, as police officers and as magistrates rolled into one position. According to Marxist thinking, capitalism provides an adequate explanation of colonialism. Theoretical analyses of these complex issues cannot, moreover, be value-neutral. Some still serve as elected politicians in the PNG parliament. Traditional colonisers such as missionaries, settlers, planters and administrators, have been replaced by international players operating at the global level rather than at the regional or national level. Jarrett, Anderson and Nguyen (1990:viii) provide a similar economic analysis: PNG has found microeconomic reforms more difficult to implement than macroeconomic reforms. So, from the point of view of this work, the key issues are: why and how have the notions of development become institutionalised in post-independence PNG? The administrative system that the Papuan colonial authorities set up was concerned solely with the issues of law and order, and owed much to the British colonial experience in the Western Pacific, especially Fiji. There is a dual salary scale for expatriates and indigenous public servants, and the expatriates are also given other privileges such as free education for their children, return airfares every two years, free rent or subsidised accommodation, and gratuities after the completion of their contracts. Indeed, immediately after political independence in 1975, the sovereign state of Papua New Guinea declared "Integral Human Development" as the fifth Directive Principle in its National Constitution. It has already created pressures on the political integrity of PNG, because the New Guinea Islands (Manus, East New Britain, West New Britain, and New Ireland) are largely sympathetic to the cause of the North Solomon Province and are also threatening to secede from the rest of PNG. The commodities are sold in the market for money which can be invested for further accumulation of capital. The World Bank regarded PNG as the 50th poorest country of the 120 it surveyed (World Bank Report, 1993). Despite their efforts to understand the cultural needs of Papua and New Guinea, their concept of progress remained highly ethnocentric, framed by cultural values which viewed development in European terms. Contact:  John Evans, by This number increased to 3,623 in 1960 (Downs, 1980). We concur with Okere, Njoku and Devisch’s (2005: 3) position that knowledge is first of all local. As has already been pointed out, this makes the provision of social services like health, education and extension support like agriculture, law and order, road networks, transport and communication by the State, not only difficult, but also very expensive. At the same time, however, they fuelled minor disputes in order to establish their own authority, and to garner economic favours. The high humidity affects the possible levels of human activity. 145 0 obj <> endobj 158 0 obj <>/Filter/FlateDecode/ID[<4D360E4B78D74E45AC12F454EDB78211><3FE61C4280D14C38A00B912D0EE851E6>]/Index[145 17]/Info 144 0 R/Length 70/Prev 1601979/Root 146 0 R/Size 162/Type/XRef/W[1 2 1]>>stream Spybey (1992:113) suggests that: The success of the European states in setting up their colonial empires gave Europeans a tremendous sense of their own superiority. People lack the capital, technology, relevant expertise and the technical know-how. The capital, manpower and technology come in the form of foreign aid either as grants or loans. The intention was to produce an educated elite for the purposes of governing the country and for providing the human resources needed for Papua and New Guinea's economic development. According to recorded history, the education system in PNG went through several successive stages of change (Watson, 1982; Weeks & Guthrie, 1984). As Spybey (1992:23-24) argues: The fundamental principle of dependency theory is that the Third World is not, as modernization theory suggests, an area ripe for development along a pathway taken previously by European countries, but instead is a subsidiary part of the Western capitalist system and has been so since the spread of colonialism. Within the terms of the grand narrative, the colonisers expect the colonised to submit to the foreign values and practices because they subscribe to a universalistic logic of progress. There were other English sailors such as Owen Stanley and John Moresby who explored the southern coasts of New Guinea in 1840 and 1849 respectively. The spread of Christianity and the conflict between its various sects during this period, were also factors in rapid colonial expansion. In political and social theory, there are few concepts as ambiguous as that of development. To disseminate otherwise or republish, requries written permission. It is significant to note, however, that the Fifth Directive is couched in terms of an aspiration that is post-colonial: the emphasis on the Papua New Guinea "ways" expresses a set of values that are defined in opposition to the colonial values into which Papua New Guineans were supposed to assimilate prior to political independence. The decision to dump up to 3,000 refugees at a time on PNG’s Manus Island tells us as much about Austraia’s neo-colonial relationship with its former dependency as it does about its racist disdain for the rights of vulnerable asylum seekers. The World Bank Report also acknowledged the important and continuing role of the European public servants in educational and agricultural development. Australia was obliged to promote this principle. This administrative arrangement was noteworthy for a number of reasons (Reed, 1983). by Akinpelu (1981) the imposition of the Western education was meant to reinforce the colonial conditions by inculcating the values of the colonial society and training individuals for the service of the colonial state. The differences in views are due not only to different ideological positions adopted by the analysts, but also to their different theoretical interests; such a range of differences often means that different aspects of the problem are studied. Yet, while they recognised the inevitability and desirability of independence, the reports were nevertheless framed within a colonial mode of thinking. It saw its role as being restricted to policing; to maintaining social conditions necessary to maintain "orderly" economic activity (West, 1966:45). Mt Wilhem, the highest peak in PNG, rises to the height of 4,500 metres. To secure profits, the German colonial authorities even made a number of unsuccessful attempts to introduce a taxation regime in the area of the traditionally-orientated village agriculture. Dependency theory seeks to address this contradiction, but is not without its own problems. The model assumes that all development takes place along a linear scale. Many Third World economies have become heavily dependent for their very survival on outside assistance. We want investors with reputations as good neighbours, fair employers and development benefactors. Prior to colonial occupation, its people did not regard PNG as a nation. The establishment of these stations enabled the missionaries to teach indigenous people how to read and write so that they could be converted to Christianity. Papua New Guineans are now living through a period of considerable stress and change. It is widely recognised, however, that currently the necessary conditions do not exist in PNG for any meaningful participation in the processes of economic development. The Report was very critical of the Australian administration and recommended a more comprehensive program of political, economic and educational development and more rapid progress towards independence (Downs, 1980:238-251). A continuing high level of financial assistance from the Australian government encourages this situation and has created quite dramatic opportunities for promotion for young Papua New Guinean graduates. 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