Aid In Education “Main Need” In Islands

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30823, 7 August 1965, Page 17

Aid In Education “Main Need” In Islands

There was a general feeling in the Pacific islands that New Zealand and Australia in giving extensive aid to Asia, were by-passing. their nearer neighbours in the South Pacific, said the Rev. E. J. Curnow, priest of the Roman Catholic parish of Sumner, who has recently returned from a missionary tour of the South Pacific. Father Curnow went to the Pacific islands to see what New Zealand could best do to aid their development, and decided that more teachers and better facilities for education were the main needs.

“There is an underlying feeling of the desire for independence in many of the islands, and the people are putting all their hopes in the schools, which are far too few,” he said. Very few islanders were capable of receiving the benefits of university education, and teachers with only fifth form education level were being received gratefully. “The main need is to bridge the gap between fourth form and university. Teachers can cope till then, but there are only a few teachers capable of carrying glasses any further,” said Father Curnow. Native teachers were being trained, and many schools worked on a pupil-teacher basis, where a pupil would teach classes below his own, while carrying on with his education. Academic education was not all that was required in the islands, however. There was a great need for education in health and hygiene, and in technical subjects such as plumbing and building, said Father Curnow. “The missions are trying to teach domestic skills in an attempt to raise the status of women, which is extremely low in some places,” he said. Father Curnow hopes to interest young people in going to the islands as lay missionaries, where their assistance in teaching, building, and other matters would prove invaluable.