THE SPACES BETWEEN: AUSTRALIAN TEACHERS IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA STATE SCHOOLS

PhD Thesis Susan Gelade School of Education

University of South Australia Holbrooks Road Underdale SA 5032

19 MAY2000

CANDIDATE'S DECLARATION

Thesis Title:

The Spaces Between: Australian Teachers in Papua New Guinea State Schools

Candidate's name: SUSAN F. GELADE

I declare that this thesis is the result of my own research, that it does not incorporate without acknowledgement any material submitted for a degree or diploma in any University and that it does not contain any materials previously published, written or produced by another person except where due reference is made in the text.

Signed

Date

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/

III

Abstract THE SPACES BETWEEN: AUSTRALIAN TEACHERS IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA STATE SCHOOLS

European contact with the area now known as Papua New Guinea first

took place over a century ago. Since that time, a major factor in the eventuating cultural transmission has been the gradual but determined development of formal schooling. From the end of World War II, the Australian government has been actively assisting and encouraging this development. Consequently, Australian teachers have long had a close affiliation with what became Papua New Guinea's education system

and, as a further consequence, much is known about Australia's official involvement in its provision. Scholars have examined subjects encompassing cross-cultural educational policy development, methodological practice, and the delivery of a relevant curriculum. Little, however, has been recorded of the experiences of Australian teachers who have lived and worked in Papua New Guinea.

This thesis seeks to fill this gap by identifying some of the experiences that being an Australian expatriate teacher in Papua New Guinea engenders. Using the theme of a sense of place, the study explores the question of what spaces expatriate Australian teachers might have understood themselves as occupying in the Papua New Guinean government school system and within the various communities that make up Papua New Guinea society. Against the historical background of the formal setting up of education provision in Papua New Guinea, this thesis focuses on the lived experience of expatriate teachers. Most

particularly, given the advent of independence, I ask whether Australian teachers' sense of place became less or more secure in this transitional society.

The teachers' understandings and experiences of working in Papua New Guinea state schools form the basis of this study. The teachers'

voices are set against historical research that investigates Australia's position as a colonial power. Official records reflect the paternalistic stance inherent in this power and a similar paternalism is echoed by certain of the teachers. The thesis is presented in the form of a contemporary social history covering the period 1960 to the late 1 990s.

Data has been drawn from a variety of sources. The memories of teachers themselves, recounted to the author during interviews and lengthy questionnaires provide the major source. Commonwealth archival records are also used as a substantial resource element, particularly with respect to the period prior to Papua New Guinea's independence. In the post-independence period, official documentation provided by the Papua New Guinea Education

Department lends validation to the later teachers' memories, and to the author's own experience of living and working in a government secondary school in the highlands of Papua New Guinea during 1995. In my analysis I argue that the country has largely been shaped by a

discourse of dependency within which Papua New Guinea's needs were

constructed towards modernisation and development. Within that discourse the Australian teacher's place as an agent of colonial control for the Australian Territorial Administration can be variously identified. At the same time, teachers' work and their situation within Papua New Guinea afforded them a very particular style of interaction with the Papua New Guinea people and its society. Interviews with the teachers indicate that they shared a sense of their difference; they understood themselves as neither part of the Papua New Guinean society nor of the expatriate community involved in other forms of work in Papua New Guinea.

The thesis is set out in three parts. Part One presents the historical background and methodological approach taken by the thesis and explores the theoretical issues underpinning the argument across the study. Part Two is concerned with the experiences of Australian

teachers hired during the period 1960 up to the country's independence in 1975 when schools were administered by Australia's Territorial Administration. This section examines the school recruitment and

training schemes as well as the experiences of the teachers in Papua New Guinea during their work and social encounters. Part Three explores the contemporary situation for Australian teachers who go to work in schools now administered by the Papua New Guinean government.

The achievement of this thesis lies in its highlighting of the ways in which Australian expatriate teachers in Papua New Guinea have

occupied difficult and contradictory positions. Such positions place them between expatriate and Papua New Guinean societies, and as both part

and not part of the Papua New Guinea community. The thesis concludes that while teachers have understood the spaces they occupied in Papua New Guinea in terms of ambivalence, they have also been able to occupy spaces that allowed knowledge to be conveyed in more than one direction. In this sense, the work raises important issues about the role of teachers in the delivery of Western style education in 'developing' societies, whether they be overseas or here in Australia.

page

Contents Acknowledgements

iii.

iv.

PART ONE - Framing the Construction Framing the construction

Chapter I

Introduction

Chapter II

Constructing Memories

25

Chapter III

Constructing History

52

-

1

PART TWO - Narratives from a pre-independent Papua New Guinea. Chapter IV

Recruitment and Training

84

Chapter V

Motives and Messages

108

Chapter VI

'I sensed no animosity'.

135

PART THREE - Narratives From Contemporary Papua New Guinea 'A look at a different culture'

168

Chapter VIII Making the known unknown

191

Chapter VII

like home

218

Chapter IX

No place

Chapter X

Conclusion The Spaces Between: Australian Teachers in Papua New Guinea State Schools

246

Epilogue

Voices of Papua New Guinea.

269

Bibliography

278

Appendix I Questionnaire form

313

Acknowledgements

At the University of South Australia I would like to thank Dr Judith Gill for the support and interest of her supervision, and efforts she made to disentangle my often incoherent thoughts. I am indebted to Assoc. Prof. Jack Cross for the willingness and enthusiasm he showed in getting me started on the long journey of this thesis. My thanks also to Dr Lyn Trethewey for her time in reading and commenting on the final draft. Education librarian Anne-Marie Lynch from Underdale also deserves special mention for her consistent and cheerful interest in my project. I am especially appreciative of the peer support received from postgraduate colleagues at the Underdale Campus of the University of South Australia. Such support has been an invaluable, essential, and on-going component to my continuing with the study. I would also like to thank Dr Bill Gammage now of the Australian National University, for initially firing my imagination about Papua New Guinea during my honours year at the University of Adelaide. I am indebted to all the teachers who took part in this study. Without their time and their willingness to sit down with me or to fill in tedious questionnaires, no memories would have been collected and their stories could not have been told. My gratitude also to Judy Nandape from Mendi, both for her good will in trying to educate me about her country, and for her gathering of voices from Papua New Guinea. It is beyond doubt that this thesis would not have been finished without the support of my partner Julian Moore. thank him for being alongside me both during some difficult times we spent in Papua New Guinea and during the long process of getting this thesis to its end in South Australia. I

Finally, I wish to thank the University of South Australia for awarding me the scholarship that made this study possible in the first place.

Abbreviations Australian Archives Canberra

AAC

Australian School of Pacific Administration

ASOPA

Papua New Guinea

PNG

Papua New Guinean

PNGn

iv

PART ONE

FRAMING THE CONSTRUCTION

Chapter I

Introduction

2

This thesis is concerned with the experiences of Australian expatriate1

teachers. In particular, the thesis is about teachers who have worked within the Papua New Guinea (PNG) administration schools' system,

under either Australian or Papua New Guinean governments, from 1960 to

the present. The study asks questions about how teachers understand what place they have in PNG and about the administrative and social

structures that have engendered their perceptions of the spaces they might occupy among PNG's communities.

In the past thirty five or more

years the country has moved from colonial territory to independent nation. Over that time, Australian teachers have had an ongoing commitment to

PNG. The question arises as to whether the teachers' perceptions of their place, and the experiences that construct those perceptions, have also changed with the transition. The pre-independent, colonially-administered expatriate society was entered into and perpetuated by the earlier teachers, and I ask whether this society left either vestigial or tangible traces to address experiences of present day expatriate teachers in PNG. People from other countries have been teaching in PNG since 1873. The Christian missions brought the first Western schooling to the Papuan

people of what was then British New Guinea in that same decade. From the 1880s in German New Guinea, missions of Lutheran and Catholic

persuasions were established. The Methodist Missionary Society came from Australia and set up mission schools on the Duke of York Islands

from 1875. The earliest non-mission government school was established by German Governor HahI in 1907.

Throughout this dissertation, the term expatriate is widely used in reference to both Australian teachers and other semi-permanent residents of European origin that have made up the nonindigenous population in PNG. I use the term 'European' to signify personnel from UK, US Europe and Australia, ie Western nationals. Munro also gives Filipino contract workers in PNG the designation of expatriate. However, she makes the qualification that they, as with non-citizen chinese workers, do not fit what is considered the 'classical expatriate model. N. Munro, Expatriates in Papua New Guinea: With special references to the Filipinos, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of New South Wales, 1

1991.

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The Australian administered government school system in PNG was given little impetus until the late 1950s when the post WWll 'New Deal' commitment to PNG by the Australian Labor Government began to take effect.

Australia, however, has been leaving its official, government

sponsored mark in various ways on PNG since 1902, when the Protectorate of British New Guinea was transferred to Australia,

subsequently becoming the Territory of Papua in 1906. And in 1914 the defeat of Germany in WWI saw Australia occupy what was German New

Guinea, a move that led to Australia's 1921 control of that region as the Mandated Territory of New Guinea. It was also during the 1920s that the

Australian administration established the first, specifically government directed, school in PNG.

There are two reasons for selecting 1960 as my entry point in this study. In the first place, as outlined below, 1960 was the beginning of the most

intensive build up of expatriate teacher numbers in PNG since Europeans

had been teaching there. Secondly, and more practically, with only thirty five years since that time to the start of this study, it was likely that many people who had taught in PNG during that prior period would still be alive

and living in Australia. There would, therefore, be a pool of interviewees from the pre-independence period who could be available discuss their experiences of living and working in PNG during that time.

Originally I had intended to examine the outcomes of students who had been taught by the group of Australian expatriates referred to as the Emergency ('E') Course teachers.

In relation to that proposal, an

opportunity arose in 1995 for me to spend some months as an English teacher at a secondary school in a remote highlands region of PNG. I proposed using my spare time out of school hours to undertake preparatory fieldwork and to contact future interviewees. But it was during those months in PNG that the focus of my study changed.

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I went to PNG with the idea that, as a teacher, I would be doing something useful.

I would be both needed and appreciated while experiencing a new

and different culture in a new and very different environment. I looked forward to the opportunity to learn about and understand people from other cultures, as well as make new friends.

In discussions with other, more

experienced, expatriate teachers in PNG, I found they, too, had cherished

similar expectations and had been similarly disconcerted by somewhat

different eventualities. The informal talks also revealed that after some time in the country, many had become disillusioned and had begun to question their place, their effectiveness, their right even, to be in PNG on

the basis of their teaching status. The teachers occasionally expressed concerns that perhaps they were wasting both their time and that of their students and the people for whom they worked.

As well, a high degree of

cynicism and despondency was evident in the constructions they made of the people and the situation of education as they saw it in PNG at the time. As I observed first hand, a considerable debate occurs in PNG schools among students and local staff as to the economic efficacy of bringing in teachers from Australia and other countries and as to the intrinsic value to

PNG society of those expatriate teachers. A number of PNGn teachers, and bureaucrats, expressed quite openly to me their view that Australian expatriates, especially, disturb the fabric of school life and that they have no place within the post-colonial society that educated PNGns are attempting to build.

Following the enthusiastic Government response to

their applications for teaching positions, such ambivalent attitudes were creating considerable confusion in the expatriate teacher. It seemed to me that the mixed responses were part of the difficulties that expatriate teachers experience in their attempts at finding a place for themselves, both as teachers and as members of the society that has been expected to adopt them.

5

On returning to Australia, I had discussions with a small number of

teachers who had worked in PNG in the late 1950s and 60s. In contrast to

my contemporary colleagues, these teachers strongly believe they contributed beneficially to PNG during their time there. They had stayed for extended periods - in sharp contrast to the late 1 980s and 90s where renewal of contracts seem less likely. The teachers from the pre-

independence period I spoke with did not question where they stood in

relation to their place in PNG. At face value, they appeared quite comfortable with the constructed colonial order they had represented. Those discussions, and the impetus provided by my personal experiences and observations in PNG, have been the main factors in changing the

original approach and focus of my study to the one presented here.

There are two notable exclusions in this study.

First, as I have indicated,

the thesis is concerned with the experiences of government school teachers only. I acknowledge that many hundreds of Australian teachers have taught in mission and denominational schools in PNG over the period

under study. And, given the preponderance of mission control over Western education from the beginning of European contact, there have most likely been many more Australian expatriates involved with teaching in mission schools than in administration schools. Certainly, their contribution to education in PNG is immense and their experiences as expatriates are as equally valuable to record as those of the government teachers.

However, I contend that the differing administrative and social

systems of mission schools as they relate to both pre-independent and post colonial government educational structures are distinct enough to

warrant a separate study. The mission teachers and their schools are, therefore, excluded from these pages.

6

The second exclusion is Australian teachers who have worked in the day

attendance schools of Port Moresby, Lae, or Rabaul. The teachers in these centres are based within large expatriate communities and, in the main, have had far less contact with the wider society of PNGns than the

teachers attached to rural or more remote centres. Port Moresby teachers, for example, work at such day-attendance schools, which are in contrast to the many institutions in other regions that are required to be boarding schools with students living alongside the teachers. Teachers in

the large centres have been more likely to live away from their schools and campuses in separated houses, and live as do the general populations of larger towns and cities in other parts of the world. Their circumstance have been different to that of their more isolated and remotely situated colleagues across PNG.

This study is divided into three parts. Part One, which encompasses

Chapters I to Ill, includes this introduction. Within this chapter is a brief outline of the post-war PNGn education system, its introduction during that era in PNG, and the changes that have taken place since that time.

Such

an outline is by no means conclusive, but sets out to give an overview to

the context and educational structure of PNG that expatriate teachers have entered into over the past thirty to forty years. Part One continues into Chapter II with a discussion on the methodological

and theoretical issues that underpin the study. As I will argue in part of that chapter, even accounting for the exclusions mentioned above, this analysis of the expatriate teachers' place in PNG can be neither complete, nor objective. There will always be other stories that can be told, and

other memories and experiences that can add to what is said here. Some of the other stories may change the process and presentation of what is

told here, but whatever may be added or taken away, the end product will never be the complete picture. I suggest also that the analysis cannot be

7

objective. This is partially because I use teachers' narratives, based on their memories and constructions of former situations, from which to detail

my analysis. These are of necessity highly subjective accounts. My attention is focussed on the recurring themes. My own experiences of PNG, encountered as part of my day to day life, and my journalised observations, form part of this dissertation.

My commentary, and that of the other teachers, is clearly subjective. For,

like the teachers I interviewed, in the six months I lived in PNG I, too, made sense of my surroundings through the contextual knowledge that

was my expatriate, Australian, subjective self. Consequently, I cannot justify a position wherein I write myself out of this text, or attest to an objectivity that cannot exist either in my case, or that of the other teachers. My personal experience also provides a basis for interrogating the experiences of other teachers in similar situations.

A study of expatriate teacher experience; of working among another people's culture while that culture is being interrupted by Western ideas, of accepting the differing cultural attitudes of PNGns, about making a new place home, and of coming to terms with an identity that is 'the other' in a

non-Western society, has not been dealt with at any length, if at all, by the academic community.

Australian educational literatUre on PNG abounds

in treatises on the methodologies of teaching, on the facilitation of outcomes, on aspects of presenting Western ideas of science, technology,

and the arts, to non-Western PNGn recipients. However, apart from some fictionalised accounts of the experiences of teachers and other expatriates in PNG,2 there has been little produced about the experiences of people

who attempt, or have attempted, those educational deliveries in a different culture. 2

Michael challinger, Port Moresby Mixed Doubles, Pasa Press, Melbourne, 1992; Trevor Shearston, Something in the Blood, UQP, Brisbane, 1979 & Concertinas, Bantam Books, Sydney, 1988; John Bailey, The Wire Classroom, Angus & Roberston, Melbourne, 1972.

8

Notwithstanding the notable lack of analysis or accounting to cover

teachers' lives in PNG, the texts I discuss in Chapter III inform this study

on two levels. On one level they are examples of a positioned discourse that has consistently constructed PNG as needful of the West, in particular Australia. In representing PNG as unable, or even perhaps unwilling, to take a path modernisation and development without Australia's guidance, they set the parameters of Australia's place in PNG. On the second level, the literature supplies considerable information on Australian and PNGn administrative structures, as well as the organisation of education and its

staffing in the country. As I will argue, there are implications to be derived from both those levels because they impact on, and are inherent to, expatriate teachers' experiences, attitudes and implicit understanding of their place in PNG. Part Two of this thesis covers Chapters IV, V and VI, and is informed by

the teachers' memories of their experiences in pre-independent PNG. Chapter IV considers the differing methods of recruitment and training of these Australian teachers between 1960 and 1975. I ask whether the

Australian administrative structures of recruitment and training for preindependence government schools addressed in any way how the teachers might have understood their place in PNG. I ask what features of the recruitment and training could impact upon the constructions

teachers were to make of the country and its people and the space they would occupy among them.

In Chapter V the narratives are those of teachers' responses to the recruitment messages from the Administration,

Initially I ask what

motivated teachers to reply to the recruitment advertising. I enquire as to whether their specifically Australian cultural identities and the context of

the period could have been important factors in their responses. Later,

9

there is an examination of teacher reactions to PNG and to the requirements of their classroom practices. Here, the emphasis turns to

asking how the teachers mediated their responses to the Administration structures and the requirements on them as teachers as they began to interact with PNG.

Chapter VI is specifically focussed on pre-independence teachers as expatriates. It examines how, collectively and individually, the teachers interacted with the differing cultura' communities and societies, both local and expatriate, in which they were situated. Here I ask questions about

the influence of expatriate society, and the factor of teachers being expatriates themselves while in close contact with PNGns through school. I consider whether such diffuse elements impacted upon their understanding of their place in PNG.

Part Three of this study takes up the contemporary situation for expatriates in PNG, and is the point at which my own interaction with the subject of the text becomes most obvious.

Recruitment in this contemporary period is

on the basis of qualified staff only, as training programmes no longer exist for aspiring recruits. In Chapter VII I discuss recruitment of teachers by the PNG Department of Education and teacher experiences of the current process. In order to provide further comparison to the pre-independence period, I ask what motivates teachers to apply for positions in present day PNG. Given that the Australian media often presents contemporary PNG

as having a threatening social and political environment, I enquire about

the factors that induce Australian applicants to look for a place beyond their own country's relatively safe educational institutions. More than twenty years have elapsed since PNG's independence. Within that period of political change, I suggest it would not be unrealistic to assume that the structural and social networks available to expatriate

10

teachers have altered also. Chapter VIII examines that assumption, and I enquire as to how teachers now manage their encounters with PNG and how they experience its transaction from a colonial to an, ostensibly, postcolonial society.

As a means of providing a further comparison with

the pre-independent period of Chapters V and VI, I examine expatriate teachers' reactions to their contemporary classroom requirements and their responses to present administrative structures. Additionally, this chapter explores the concept of being an expatriate in a country that is no longer under the control of the Australian Administration. I ask how

teachers are able to make a space for themselves and how they rationalise their identity and place within this transitional society.

Chapter IX begins to draws together many of the issues highlighted in my previous discussions. I examine what traces of the colonialist preindependence model might remain to impact upon the Australian teachers'

place in current PNG.

I ask how expatriate teachers now attempt to place

themselves and make what is not home into home.

In this chapter I return

to a number of the theoretical issues that address teachers' notions of place and enquire as to how this might contribute to our understanding of expatriate identity and its difference.

Following the summary in Chapter

X, I conclude my analysis of the crucial questions regarding the expatriate

teacher's place that have arisen during the formulation of this study. This thesis is about expatriate teachers and their understanding of what place they might have within the transitional societies that make up PNG.

As such, it is their voices rather than those of PNGns that are heard.

It is

my contention, however, that given the impact of expatriate teachers on PNGn education, the views of their students deserve some attention. In a

brief epilogue I attempt to provide some space for the PNGn voice to

remark upon the teachers' place. The epilogue presents the results of a questionnaire put to first year students at the University of Papua New

11

Guinea in 1996 by one of their student peers.

All of these students had,

at some stage during their secondary schooling, been taught by expatriate teachers, and the survey canvasses their attitudes and opinions towards expatriate teachers and their high school experiences of being taught by those teachers.

Two additional points require clarification. Although Australians have been concerning themselves with PNGn affairs over some one hundred and twenty years, the involvement has not been evenly spread throughout the country.

In most of that time, people of certain coastal areas of the

mainland, as well as islands such as New Britain, have been accustomed

to contact with Australians and other Westerners. In the more remote coastal districts and especially in the highland regions, however, the history of contact with the Western world dates only from the 1 930s or

even the 1 950s. The consequence of the uneven contact has been uneven development in terms of government infrastructures and accessibility to the world beyond PNG. So too, the formation of an indigenous elite has favoured those PNGns whose contact with the outside world came earliest. Such differences significantly impact upon the PNGn peoples' attitude towards each other, towards Australia and its aid and influence, and towards expatriates themselves and what they do within the country. Hence the experiences of expatriates represented here do not necessarily conform across all areas and all people of PNG. Rather than use the referents 'Territories of Papua and New Guinea' for

the pre-independence period, and 'Papua New Guinea' for the post independence period, throughout this study, the term 'Papua New Guinea' (PNG) is used as a means of identifying the country during the time covered by this thesis. As well, the term 'Papua New Guinean' (PNGn) is used to identify the indigenous population, rather than either Papuans, or New Guineans separately. However, by naming in this way I do not mean

12

to imply that the country and its people should be viewed, or understood, in such homogenous terms.

Not only separated for thousands of years by

language and geographical barriers, PNGns also know themselves as separate from each other by their physical, cultural and political differences. Despite its recent independence, the entity known as PNG is often considerably less of a unifying force than the reality that its 1975

declaration of nationhood would imply. What follows should be read with that understanding of PNG. It is a widely diverse and complexly ordered society, whose people do not necessarily regard themselves as belonging to a single group or even to a single nation.

13

The Context of Education in PNG. At the end of the Pacific War in 1945, the Australian Government

committed the nation's taxpayers to what was, ostensibly, 'a policy of social, political and economic development in Papua and New Guinea so that the people would be able to govern themselves and choose their

future status'.3 The Australian government reasoned that a formalised, secular, western education was the major means by which the people of

PNG could be coerced and stabilised into the fabric of a suitably cohesive

nation. In working towards the implementation of their policy the Australian Administration, through the Education Ordinance of 1952, also

took control of the various mission education systems. At that time missions were still the major providers of schools for PNGns, but the

Ordinance was intended to 'bring the mission systems much more closely into line with the type of education that the Administration considered appropriate'.4

From taking up office in 1953, the Minister for Territories,

Paul Hasluck, set the Commonwealth Education Department in theTerritory the task of providing universal primary education for PNG. The policy for this task was one of considered gradualism that had to include within its first objectives a universal literacy in English.5

However, in 1960 Hasluck was prevailed upon to change his universal primary education assignment into the building of a secondary school system that would later feed into indigenous tertiary education. There is a divergence of opinion as to the main reasons for this forced change, but

Downs, Ian, The Australian Trusteeship of PNG 1945 - 1975, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1980. P. xviii. Peter Smith, Education and colonial control in Papua New Guinea 1871 -1975, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Papua New Guinea, 1986, p. 299. Hasluck's directive that all teaching should be conducted in English was put into effect in 1955. Hasluck argued that 'English (like Christianity) would be a force for "social cohesion", and necessary before any form of self-governmentcould be achieved'. Peter Smith, ibid., p. 309.

14

the consensus is that Robert Menzies was greatly influenced by external, rather than internal, pressures.6

Most pressure came from the United

Nations and its recently decolonised African states. The same push for decolonisation of territories under Commonwealth rule brought about Harold MacMIllan's 'Winds of Change' approach that in turn influenced Menzies.

Additional pressure came from a perception that, due to its

relative geographic position to PNG, Australia would be vulnerable to

Indonesian expansion in the Pacific area. The view was that should any strategic difficulty emerge from such expansion in the north west, it was necessary for PNGn5 to understand the importance of their ties with

Australia! When the 1962 United Nations Mission to PNG urged Australia to step up plans to grant self-rule to both Papua and New Guinea sooner rather than later,8 the pressure on Australia to push PNGn

development along became even stronger. The changes in educational delivery that Hasluck had to instigate, could not, as Colebatch remarks, be 'a neat switch from one clearly-defined policy to another'.9 Instead, there was a change in policy-making focus for

the Territory. The previously utopian ideal propounded by the first Director of Education, Groves, of a slow building up towards a 'perfect society' through gradualised universal primary education, had to be put

aside. The different reality espoused by Menzies was an urgent necessity to develop the country, 'in the difficult circumstances of the present day, in a way which will serve not only the interests of the native people, but also

See for example, Peter Hastings, New Guinea: Problems and Prospects, (second edition) Cheshire, Melbourne, 1975; Downs, op.cit., 1980; Smith, op.cit., 1987; J.D. waiko, A ShortHistoiyofPNG, OUP, Melbourne, 1993. See speech by Hasluck, quoted in Smith, op.cit., p. 287. A UN Mission visited PNG in 1962, under the chairmanship of Sir Hugh Foot. The 'Foot Report is pivotal to Australian policy on PNG due to its impetus in the areas of education and the disengagement of Australia's colonial role in PNG. The report in turn led to the drawing up of two other reports important for their influence on PNG's future - The World Bank Report The Economic Development of the Territory of Papua & New Guinea', 1965, and 'Report of the Commission on Higher Education ri Papua New Guinea', 1964. H.K. Colebatch, 'Educational Policy and Political Development in Australian New Guinea in R.J.W. Selleck (ed), Melbourne Studies in Education 1967, MUP, Melbourne, 1968, p. 129. 6

15

the national interests of our own'.1° Australia would have only enough time

to prepare an educated elite, one that could take over the administrative function of government when PNG achieved the self determination and independence that was so vociferously argued for by the United Nations.

Through the schools would come development, via the education of a people who had for decades been regarded by the resident European population as either primitive, apathetic, or of lower intellect than whites.11

There was some pressure, too, from the PNGns. The people were justifiably demanding the perceived benefits of modern technology that

had so potently arrived during WWll, when the Pacific arena of that war had drawn PNG into the hostilities with Japan. PNGns were more than eager to become part of the development process that had begun in their country.12 What is debatable is whether all PNGns would have also voiced demands for self determination and independence at that time had Australia not been prompted into the issue by the United Nations. However, PNGns were certainly agitating for an education that would allow them access to both the consumer world beyond their subsistence lifestyle, and the achievement of more lucrative and less menial employment than as carriers, plantation labourers or mine workers.13

Hasluck's early attempts at universal primary education had resulted in a total enrolment in recognised primary schools of nearly 77,000 indigenous students in 1960,14 although the 112,000 attending unregulated mission

schools put the number far higher. With the change in educational focus, an expansion of the almost non-existent secondary education system had 10

R.G. Menzies, Letter to Premiers of all States, 2 September 1960. CRS A452/1 60/4427 Australian Archives Canberra [hereinafter abbreviated to AAC]. Francis West, Hubert Murray the Australian Pro-Consul, OUP, Melbourne, 1968. 12 Peter Lawrence, Road Belong Cargo, MUP, Melbourne, 1964. 13 Cohn Swatridge. Delivering the Goods: Education as Cargo, MUP, Melbourne, 1986. 14 Secretary to MacArthy, Director of Territory, CRS A452/1 60/4427 AAC. Of that figure, 20,258 only were in Administration run schools. The term 'recognised' primary school includes mission schools that were accredited at the 1952 Ordinance as having the staff and curriculum standards up to those

16

also to be implemented as soon as possible. Up to that point, the completion of three or four years primary schooling was providing basic formal education that allowed PNGns access to lower level administrative work, basic employment in the expanding business and commercial sector, and local low level primary teaching positions.15

The expansion in both the primary and secondary sector led to an emphasis on the recruitment of teachers from Australia and other Commonwealth countries. It is important to explain here that English

speaking teachers being recruited to PNG prior to independence were not

only going to teach PNG students. A great many of the more experienced recruits would end up in schools that took only Australian children. In the approximately fifteen year period to 1975, expatriate numbers overall in PNG ranged from 23,870 in 1960, 54,546 in 1971 and down to 38,084 in

1975. The majority of those expatriates were Australian citizens.16 Of the overseas posting allowances they were offered, some were specifically for education and allied travel costs in sending children to school in Australia. Families could, nevertheless, choose to keep their younger children with

them. Such a choice necessitated the Administration running certain primary schools in PNG at levels and curriculum that were commensurate with schools in Australia.

Primary schools across the country, therefore, fell into two separate categories of Primary 'A' and Primary 'T' separated, officially, on the basis of curriculum. 'A' schools were for children brought up in an English

speaking background, who had the conceptual knowledge and understanding that the language encompassed. 'T' schools were specifically for PNG students whose first language was not English and designated by the Administration. Other mission schools were not considered effective enough to warrant receiving the extra funding from Administration sources. 15 K.R. Lammacraft, Education in New Guinea: Some Administrative Problems, The Journal of EducationalAdministration, Vol. 4, No. 2, Oct. 1966, pp. 81 -102 provides more information regarding the A courses for PNG teachers.

17

who had none of the prior knowledge that informed primary schooling in

the Western world. Written for the emergent nation's students, the 'T' curriculum assumed no prior Western knowledge.

At the same time,

though, as will be further explored in Chapter V, the 'T' curriculum provided a unique opportunity for the cultural transmission of a different set of values to that traditionally held by young PNGn5.

Closer to independence, the Education Department did experiment with integrating schools and with 'parallel streaming', for example at Madang,

but in the main chose to keep the two types of schools separated. It is a moot point as to whether the continuing separation was due to the funding that the Administration deemed suitable for each type of school, or to

curriculum requirements. The following 1963 budgetary extract for per capita costings 1965/66, though, clearly demonstrates Administration views regarding education funding priorities at the time. Territory children:

30 pounds per student

Expatriate children: 70 pound per student (These figures were in light of the 1965-6 estimates of an increased indigenous enrolment of 7,182 over the year and an expatriate student enrolment of 340).

Other budgetary allowances:

Books and equipment: 10 pounds p.a. per student A schools 2 pounds p.a. per student I schools Buildings and furniture: 15 pounds p.a. per student A schools T Schools

2 pounds p.a. per student

17

A number of expatriate teachers would go into Primary 'T' schools, either as principals or to teach at the classroom level and to help train indigenous 16

Downs, op.cit., p. 529.

18

teachers. But a large number of teachers were destined to teach only in 'A' schools, and the schools were, in reality, separated from the indigenous

population along de facto racial lines.18 One consequence of the separation was that a high number of expatriate teachers would work only in the 'A' schools and with mostly Australian students. Most of these teachers would have little or no experience of working with, or teaching, PNGs.19

In the secondary school environment even fewer expatriate teachers would come in contact with PNG counterparts. Until 1966 and the opening of the Goroka Teachers College, there were virtually no opportunities for PNGns to train as secondary teachers, even if they had been able to secure a high school education in the first place.

Hasluck, describing the situation in

1962, could name only three secondary schools, two of which had opened in 1960, and the other 1961, that were open to 'students of all races... the only qualification for entry being educational standard'.2° Prior to that

there had been a miniscule number of scholarships available to send PNGns to Australian high schools; many of the applicants for the

scholarships had come from mission schools and those graduates would return to mission teaching. By 1969 there were two thousand government administered primary

schools over and above many more mission primary schools. The AdministratiOn could then offer PNGn students a place at sixty high

schools that went to fourth year level as well as at the trade oriented

technical schools. There would also be the three secondary schools, known as National High Schools, that took the elite students to the NSW L.W. Johnson's estimates for World Bank Report, 1965. CRS A452/1, 65/5061 AAC R.C. Ralph, 'Education in Papua-New Guinea: Integration Whither'? in Gezi, Kalil L. (ed), Education in Comparative and International Perspectives, Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc., New York, 1971, pp. 414- 432. 19 For example, the 1969 statisitics indicate that for 442 Administration 'T' schools there were approximately 354 expatriate staff while at the same time in just 44 'A' schools there were 186 expatriate staff. 17 18

19

Higher School Certificate level, allowing them an opportunity to proceed on

to the newly established University of PNG. Yet despite the expansion outlined, in the mid 1960s, only approximately 30.1 per cent of PNG children could expect to get as far as primary or technical schools, and a much smaller percentage overall would go on to high school. The

Administration did not expect to get more than just fifty per cent of the school age population into schools at all, even by 1 Even given the above figures, in the early 1960s the Administration's

change in focus to push PNG more rapidly into the twentieth century via education of an elite resulted in an exponential rise in the number of teachers needing to be recruited.22 Apart from the Mission teaching

colleges, Australia had been slow in promoting an education system that provided local teaching personnel who had the requisite qualifications.23 As a consequence of Australia's tardiness, the decade to 1970 saw a number of recruitment programmes directed towards teachers in Australia and other English speaking Commonwealth countries. These recruitment and training programmes are explored in Chapter IV. Prior to PNG's independence, the Australian Administration had brought

down the 1970 Education (Papua New Guinea) Ordinance and Teaching Service (Temporary Provisions) Ordinance. It created what Graham Smith

describes as a 'national education system... [that] was comprehensive in the levels of education provided and [school] distribution across the country'.24 The system was centrally administered from Port Moresby and encompassed mission schools along with other Administration educational organisations.

Primary schools, including the accredited mission schools,

P. Hasluck, Draft of Speech on the Estimates, 11 October, 1962, CRS A 452/1, 62/2499 AAc. G. Currie et.al. Report of the Commission on Higher Education in PNG, Canberra, 1964, p. 31. 22 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, The Economic Development of the Territoly of Papua and New Guinea, John Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1965. 23 T.A. ODonoghue & D. Austin, 'The evolution of a national system of teacher education in the of Education, 1994, vol. 23, No. 3. pp 301 developing world: The case of Papua New Guinea, 20 21

20

were to provide up to standard level 6, as per the departmental syllabus.

At the completion of the course, student places were available in high schools for approximately 38 per cent of these standard 6 leavers.25

The Administration understood that for various cultural, economic, or

academic, reasons, not all PNGn students would be able to complete the entire secondary course. As a means of lessening the consequent failure rates that arose out of the four year course, it was broken down into two

stages; Years 7 - 8 and Years 9 - 10. Completing Year 8 graduates could then either seek employment, enter into a vocational or technical training course, or return to their villages. The remaining qualifying

students took Years 9 and 10 and on completion of those years competed

for one of the limited places at a National high school. From there the students studied Years 11 and 12 in competition for entrance into the tertiary sector.

Following independence in 1975, the newly formed PNG government decentralised the overall administration of education. Control of primary

(referred to as community schooling) and post primary education went to

the nineteen newly formed provincial governments. The administration of high schools and tertiary education remained at National government level.26

In the following five years, records indicate that, superficially,

opportunities for education in PNG rose considerably. 1980 enrolment data shows 285,000 PNG students enrolled in 2,077 administration and

accredited mission community schools. Of this figure, 66 per cent were male. There were 99 government and denominational high schools, with

an enrolment of 36,000 PNGns. That figure accounted for 18 per cent of 24

Geoffrey Smith, Education in Papua New Guinea, MUP, Melbourne, 1975, p. 41. ibid., p. 59. 26 Dorny notes that considerable alarm regarding these arrangements was expressed by the Minister for Education at the time. He wrote that the new provincial governments 'gained power over approximately 80 % of PNG teachers and about one half of the Education Budget'. His concern was understandable, given that the provinces were formed 'often where there had been no previous 25

21

available boys and 9 per cent of available girls. The 1600 students in Grades 11 and 12 at National high schools represented 0.35 per cent of boys and 0.06 per cent of girls.27

As McNamara notes, however, a deeper examination of the figures reflects the continuing situation of uneven development that has accounted for an elite domination stemming from access to schooling.

For example,

primary school enrolments in a remote highlands province, such as Enga,

account for only 42 per cent of the available population. East New Britain province having been in longer contact with the West, on the other hand, could educate virtually 100 per cent of the available student population.28

By 1989, when the first of the contemporary interviewees for this thesis

arrived in PNG, community schools had settled into an organisational pattern of Grades 1 - 6 and there were 123 provincial high schools across the country providing Grades 7 - 10 to an estimated 10 per cent of primary students able to score high enough entrance marks.29 Beyond that were the four National high schools preparing an elite cohort of students for university entrance.

By 1995 when I arrived in PNG, proposals for

expansion of the secondary system in the National Education Reform had resulted in six Provincial high schools being upgraded to secondary school status.

In addition to Years 9 - 10, these schools were able to take

students from Years 11 to 12 and prepare them for university entrance examinations in competition with the National High Schools.

The new secondary schools are not always able to meet their running costs or access the funding supplied by central government, hence structure for governmental decision making'. Sean Dorney, Papua New Guinea: People Politics and Histoiy Since 1975, Random House, Sydney, 1990, p.162. 27 McNamara, 'Papua New Guinea: System of Education' in The International Encyclopeadia of Education, vol. 7, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1985, P. 3756. 28

ibid.

29Teng Waninga, The Challenges Facing Education in Papua New Guinea Today', Building Bridges in Teacher Education, University of New England 1992, p. 514.

22

educational instability occurs in the upgraded school system.3° School

principals are forced into negotiating with their provincial government

administration through whom the funds pass. The schools are subject to whatever vagaries might occur within their particular provincial accounting

or political system and suffer frequent closures.

In spite of the problems,

competition for places remains high. Not all provinces have secondary school to Year 12, and those that do can only expect one for their entire

administrative region. The limited number of teachers available and the lack of funds to build the schools also results in rivalry between provinces who hope to gain a secondary upgrade for their own particular region. While the provincial government system remains,31 the administrative

structure provides for community/primary and provincial high schools to be administered by their own provincial governments, with responsibility for standards, curriculum and inspection remaining at the National government level. The provincial governments also provide, and are

responsible for, various levels of non-formal, vocational, and voluntary education centres.

National high schools, International schools, technical

and teachers' colleges, and universities, remain under centralised National level administration.

Despite the evolving policies and developments,

and the apparent spread of the system, PNG education has not come very far in twenty years.32

Principal to All Students, School Fees / Financial Situation, Mogol Secondary School, 10 May, 1995. This was a memo noting that 'no-one seems to have any idea what is going on within the ministry and Department of Finance', It continued with an outline that unless funding was forthcoming, while they would continue to function as a school it was only 'till the end of term two - what lies beyond is anyone's guess'. 31 In 1996 the provincial government system began to undergo structural change in an attempt to get more control back to the central government administration system. Provincial premiers were replaced by governors and funding decisions were to be made by national government. Weeks argues that the structure recommended by the 1993 National Education Forum 'reverts in part to that recommended in 1973 by the All Papua New Guinean task force chaired by Alkan Tololo: 8 years of primary followed by 2 years of high school, with the exception that it now begins with vernacular pre-schools attached to an 'elementary school', and some provincial high schools will run through to Grade 12'. Sheldon G. Weeks. 'Education in Papua New Guinea 1973-1993: the latedevelopment effect? Comparative Education, Vol. 29, No. 3 1993, p. 271.

23

Although the PNG government follows the Australian Administration's early

intention in its aim to achieve universal primary education, the increases in spending and upgrading of high schools has retarded primary education growth.

In 1982 the Education 11 Project had, as one of its objectives,

universal primary education by the end of the century. But the only reality is that, 'the proportion of the age group enrolled in primary schools is keeping pace with population growth'.33

Within the context of education in contemporary PNG, one of the factors

that impacts on attitudes towards expatriate teachers being recruited to PNG is the continuing lack of educational opportunities for young PNGns. The lack of opportunity means that in both the primary and secondary systems, the number of adequately trained graduates is not keeping up with demand.

For the primary system, despite localisation since the

early 1970s, the expansion of community schooling and rising population has continually strained teacher coverage to all regions.34 For example,

across teachers' colleges of both secular and state educational structures

now in existence, the three year primary training courses that finished in

1993 produced only 520 graduates over the country. In that same year the teacher requirement was anticipated to be

For secondary schools, the situation of not enough local trainees is just as challenging.

It is slightly more fluid, given the opportunities for the

Education Department to still bring in overseas trained teachers to boost

secondary teacher numbers. But the expense that this entails, and the consequential impact on the education aid budget, limits the hiring capacity.

Additionally, even if extra funds were available, there is no

33T. O'Donoghue, 'Education restructuring gone astray in Paradise? The Papua New Guinea experience, in Journal of Educational Administration, vol 33, No. 1, 1995, p. 80. Kazim Bacchus, does, however, imply that at one stage a surplus of primary teachers existed. A 'Conversion Course' programme was introduced, at the suggestion of the World Bank, to retrain primary teachers to become secondary school teachers in provincial high schools, 'in a situation in which there was a surplus of primary school teachers'. Educational Policy and Development Strategy in the Third World, Avebury Gower Publishing Co., Aldershot, 1987, p. 161.

24

evidence to suggest that PNG could find enough applicants from overseas to fill the positions.

The status quo for students remains, in that the 'possibilities beyond Grade 10 are limited, as National high schools select only 10% of the Grade 10 leavers'.36 The six newly upgraded provincial high schools also have a similarly limited capacity for acceptance of higher attaining students, even with the employment of expatriates. The limited number of secondary students graduating who are available, or willing, to pursue secondary teacher training, obviously limits future teacher numbers. It is

therefore unlikely that enough teachers, either local or overseas, will be available to expand the current limitations in lower or higher secondary education for PNGn students. Despite the limited opportunities they are faced with, PNGn5 continue to seek what secondary education is available. Within the twenty years of independence there has been a considerable rise in the number of

wealthy educated elite. Young people in schools, as well as their families, still view elite status as resulting from the benefits of 'education as cargo'37

and as a means of accessing the world of Western wealth.

For the

foreseeable future, expatriate teachers will be recruited to work in PNGn

schools. What place they have there will be explored in the following pages.

Weeks, op. cit., p. 270. Beatrice Avalos, Ideology, Policy and Educational change in Papua New Guinea, Comparative Education, Vol 29, No. 3, 1993. p. 284. The introduction of education has often been considered by PNGns in much the same way as any other aspect of 'the white man's magic' that is analogous with cargo cultism in the country. Several authors have explored education's conceptual value in PNG within their analyses of PNGn education. See both Cohn Swatridge, op. cit. 1985 and Peter Lawrence, op. cit. 1964. 36

Chapter II

Constructing Memories

26

In this chapter the theoretical and methodological bases underpinning the thesis are discussed. I propose reasons for my decision to term the thesis a social and contemporary history, and I outline the various methodologies used in its construction. I argue that, given the lack of previous analysis on

the experiences of teachers in PNG, the past and present range of the examination undertaken, as well as the reflective nature of my own experiences of teaching in PNG, more than one theoretical approach is necessary for this current work.

A Problematic Discourse? The process of constructing and reconstructing the past out of many memories has been given an infinite variety of labels, variously: history, the past, representation, taim bipo,1 legend, myth, lore, and a host of others. Different aspects of 'history' are as diverse, they range across social, cultural,

feminist, religious, political, educational, economic, and on scales from micro

to macro-history. These representations may come from an equally infinite number of localities, both geographical and chronological. To add to the complexity, the nature of the historian as practitioner of representations also differs widely across a whole spectrum of approaches that can include: Marxism, post-modernism, modernism, post-structuralism, and the annaliste

school and the writing of mentalities. The same diversity is true of the methodologies of data collection and analysis, which may be oral, empirical, archival, ethnographic, qualitative or quantitative.

Certain historians argue that 'the truth is out there', and that history consists of a reporting of remembered events 'the way they really were', made

possible by the collection of evidence painstakingly taken from written

sources. The outcome is merely a matter of solid work and sifting the

'the past' (tok pisin)

27

evidence to find the 'correct' version.2

Other historians3 argue that such an

undertaking is impossible, and that as many truths exist as there are people to speak and write them, and further endless ways in which these truths may be interpreted by the people who receive them.

Jenkins' advice, to change

the question, 'what is history?' to 'who is history for?',4 proves a more realistic basis for definition. His definition of history is as a shifting, problematic discourse, ostensibly about an aspect of the world, the past, that is produced by a group of present-minded workers (overwhelmingly in our culture salaried historians) who go about their work in mutually recognisable ways that are epistemologically, methodologically, ideologically and practically positioned and whose products, once in circulation, are subject to a series of uses and abuses that are logically infinite but which in actuality generally correspond to a range of power bases that exist at any given moment and which structure and distribute the meanings of history along a dominant-marginal spectrum.5

What follows is the form taken by the 'shifting problematic discourse,' of this thesis, the matter of its representation and those meanings that can be distributed.

The matter of representation. There are two dimensions to the work presented within this dissertation. The first is to construct an account of Australian teachers' experiences as they pertain to PNG government schools during the time that the country has moved through its transition from colonial outpost to post-colonial

independent nation. The account illustrates facets of the teachers'

experiences that have not been previously recorded. To plot their experiences through the transition, two intervals are contrasted in this study:

2

For example, C.R. Elton, The Practice of History, Methuen, 1962; John Vincent, An Intelligent Person's Guide to History, Duckworth, London, 1995. For example, E.H. Carr, What is History?, Penguin, London, 1961; Bernard Lewis, History Remembered Recovered Invented, Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, 1975; Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt & Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History, Norton & Co., New York, 1994. Keith Jenkins, ReThinking History, Routledge, London 1991.

ibid., p.26.

28

1960 to independence at 1975, and the contemporary period of the 1990s. Within the comparison of the two periods are examinations of the teachers'

recruitment, their motivations for going to PNG, what relationships they may have had with the PNGn people, and how they have managed and viewed their lifestyles during their times as expatriates. I also explore the question of

what it means to be an expatriate in PNG. The examinations in turn provide data wherein some analysis and understanding of the teachers' place in PNG

might be made. Such an analysis makes up the second dimension of this study, which I will discuss more fully in a later section of this chapter. It is my view that the two dimensions of account and analysis constitute a definable component of the social history of Australian teachers and their work in PNG.

Defining the Representation

The approaches taken to construct this account are wide ranging, and therefore a wide range of definitions present themselves to describe the nature of the account. For example, following LeCompte & Preissle,6 and in view of the culturally specific nature of an account of Australian teachers, the

data collected from the teachers can be termed an ethnographic or

sociological study. And as illustrated by Cohen's work,7 there are studies of what constitutes expatriate communities undertaken through a sociological discipline. Expatriates in PNG, as in many other countries, were and are,

specific societal communities.

Because I have lived and worked as both

teacher and as expatriate while observing and participating in the lives of other expatriates and teachers, my work has an an ethnographical and

sociological bias. To further confuse the issue, there is also the aspect of the study's situation in a past which, as pointed out by Jenkins, places it firmly in the realms of history. And as the study is ostensibly ethnographic or sociological in nature, it could, therefore, follow Smith's suggestion regarding

M. LeCompte & J. Preissle, Ethnography and Qualitative Design in Educational Research, edition), Academic Press Inc., San Diego, 1993. E. Cohen, Expatriate Communities, Current Sociology, vol 24, No. 3, 1977. pp. 1-133.

6

(2nd

29

'studies of the past [that] find out how societies work and change'8 and be described as a 'sociological history'.

However, I suggest that a more suitable

general frame of reference to describe the work presented here is that of 'social history'. Burke9 has made a specific examination of the values of what is commonly

termed microhistory and its 'social drama,' through the work of Le Roy Ladurie, Ginzburg, and Geertz,1° et al.

He suggests social history as a term

to describe the study of individuals or small communities - as opposed to the

political figures who control those communities. European historians, Le Roy Ladurie and Ginzburg as examples, have studied specific events that took place within small communities of the past. Geertz among others, as both anthropologist and historian, has used studies of contemporary as well as past communities to illustrate how events within a given society work to reveal their structures.

My account answers two of the main questions asked about the past: the

drama of the event, 'what happened?', as well as the structure, 'what was it like?'. At the same time it must be remembered that, as Sahlins implies, the separating of structure and event is highly problematic. The event becomes such by the meaningful integration of material circumstances: 'The event is at once produced and received by the community in which it happens and to understand its existence and modalities it is necessary to know the cognitive and symbolic system of this community'.... No event without system. The difficulty arises when separating out the events from within the system. In the case of this dissertation the separate entities of Western education,

Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1991, p. 3. Dennis Smith, The Rise of Historical Peter Burke, History and Social Theory, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1992. 10 Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, Penguin, London, 1980; carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms, (trans. John & Anne Tedeschi), Routledge Kegan Paul, London, 1980; clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge, Basic Books Inc. New York, 1983. Marshall Sahlins, 'The Return of the Event: Again', 1991. p. 43, quoting Molino, 1986, p. 264, in Aletta Biersack (ed), C/b in Oceania, Smithsonian Institute Press, Washington, 1991.

8

30

expatriate teachers, the Australian administration and the post-independent indigenous PNG administration are all modalities arising out of Australia's

desire to reconstruct PNG. That construction is, I propose, the event.

I am

not intending to describe/explore this particular event, rather I am intending

to explore a facet of the structure, or system - that of the expatriate teacher society and its experiences and understandings of place that arise out of the event. In making this exploration, the study is not searching for verifiable,

consistent, replicable, data. Nor does it intend to provide an 'indisputable facet of whatever the 'historical record' may be'.12 The study does, however, through the memories of teachers, offer an insight into the particular place they have occupied within the communities of PNG during the era of transition and change. Oral history has previously been validated as a methodological tool for developing social histories on expatriates in PNG by the work of several Australian historians.

In one example, Hank Nelson and Tim Bowden,

collaborating to produce the radio series Taim Biong Masta, used a series of oral histories and accompanying commentaries to chronicle experiences of a

wide range of Australians in PNG during the period leading up to

independence. The series, later produced in book form, is an accepted valid resource documenting aspects of the 'time, place and values'13 found in Australian IPNG relations.'4 Jan Roberts'5 and Chilla Bulbeck, 16 have also

used other people's memories in their gathering of oral histories from

Australian women who have been in PNG. These authors demonstrate, through the 'unofficial' voices, the ability of oral history to provide insight and depth to events and situations that would otherwise be subsumed by official

accounts. Bulbeck and Roberts' histories of PNG, compiled through the 12 Allyson Holbrook, Methodological Developments in Oral History: A Multi-Layered Approach', Australian Educational Researcher, Vol. 22, No. 3, December, 1995, pp. 21 - 44. 13 Hank Nelson, Taim Biong Masta, ABC Enterprises, Sydney, 1982, p. 8. 14 Taim Bilong Masta, co-incidentally, has since found its way into the PNG Secondary School system as an accepted text for both the English and the history syllabus. 15Jan Roberts, Voices from a Lost World, Millenium Books, Alexandria, 1996.

31

memories of the women, are able to demonstrate the existence of a 'circumscribed place for everyone in Papua New Guinea society, defined by both race and gender'.17

These author's histories in particular, raise many questions about the place of expatriates in PNG that are relevant to this thesis. For my work, too, provides a partial recording of several individual, lived experiences. Here the

thesis seeks to explore the place of expatriate teachers through their

personal recounting. The individual's stories become 'a vital document of the construction of consciousness, emphasising both the variety of experience in any social group, and also how each individual story draws on a common culture'.18 The teachers' memories assist the study to explore

expatriate life in schools and PNG's wider society: structures and systems that are found within the event that was the arrival of Western education in PNG.

As one example of the difference between an event, as opposed to an

exploration of the experiences within the structure, Peter Smith's extensive recording of Western education in PNG, discussed in Chapter III, provides

some explanation of 'what happened' to create the event, but it does not expand greatly into an explanation of 'what it was like'. Smith's

chronologically ordered, narrative accounting signifies his, and the sources',

interpretation of 'what happened' through the delivery of education to PNG during the period 1872 to 1975.

For example:

The expansion of primary schooling was still one of the more dramatic features of social change in the country during the 1 960s. Primary education was brought within reach of a large proportion of the population for the first time.19 16

Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, Cambridge University Press, cambridge,

1992. 17 ibid., p. 4.

Holbrook, op.cit., p. 34, quoting Samuel Thompson, 1990, p.2. Peter Smith, Education & Colonial Control 1871 - 1975, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Papua New Guinea, 1987, p. 353.

18 19

32

There is little indication within this extract, however, as to what it may have

been like for the teachers who were taking that primary education out to newly contacted areas of PNG.

But, taking Holbrook's argument that 'the

conventional documentary source is of limited use to those who want, for example, to take an historical look at classrooms, education in non-traditional

settings, transition from school to work, or to contextual/se, and generally render visible, the experiences of actors in such settings',2°

oral history

evidence provides greater understanding. Thus, In those days [1962] there was always a shortage of people fteachers in PNG]. If you did a good job, they got you out of there fixing some place which wasn't so good... When they had a problem at Jimi River, [the Administration said] 'better send you there'. They'd had a problem with one of the Australian teachers, who'd gone troppo, with drink and getting into the local girls, so he had to be shipped out.21

The study undertaken here is concerned more with the questions of what it

was like for Australian teachers in PNG than it is with asking what happened to PNG when Western educational practices were taken into the classrooms there.

The Material of the Representation Authors and practitioners in areas of social study, such as Holbrook and Nelson referred to above, bring to their work a wide range of resource tools for their research; primary source archival text, oral history interview,

ethnographic study, as well as secondary source textual and visual works. suggest that a similarly eclectic approach to the gathering of data for this thesis is justified. 20

Holbrook, op.cit. p. 23. My emphasis. Transcript # 1, p. 5. Note that quotes from interview transcripts are distinguished throughout this work by the device of italicised narrow script. 21

I

33

Apart from the works discussed in. Chapter III, the written resources for this study that supplement memories of pre-independence teacher experiences are the Australian Administration records.

These have been collected from

the Department of Territories and Department of External Territories archives lodged in the Australian Archives in Canberra. Despite, as Theobald remarks, 'the opacity of everyday life in the texts of the public world',22 it is

possible to learn a surprising amount from these records.

I have, though,

heeded Frankenberg's advice relating to colonial discourse and its integral participation in the construction of whiteness.23

On the one hand it is this archival material, albeit laced with its own subjectivities,24 that has provided the background events against which to

juxtapose the teachers' own recounting as they reflected on their place in PNG.

On the other, I am mindful that both the Australian government

records on PNG, and the 'official' histories that have come out of them, are demonstrably the 'discursive repertoires associated with the process of West European colonial exploration, appropriation and ruling'.25 Therefore, the

inquiries I make look at how Australian teachers experienced PNG while I

also ask what factors shaped those experiences. Such factors include the teachers' own Australian upbringing and resultant identity, the influences of expatriate society in PNG, and the influences of PNG itself, as well as the official structures of the teachers' immediate environment. In the initial period, this was an environment prescribed by the Australian government as

administrator and final arbiter of what was right in the Territory. In the later

22

M Theobald, Knowing Women, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, p. 173. A. Frankeriberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness, Routledge, London, 1993. 24 Margaret Peters, Children's Culture and the State: South Australia 1890s to 1930s, Unpublished PhD Thesis, 1991, makes a case for the subjectivity of archives by quoting from Foucault's Archaeology of Knowledge, (p.7) where he asserts that historians have always been complicit in the production of documents and therefore the researches that take us to the archives do not yield 'fortunate tools of history'. 25 Frankenberg, op.cit., p. 16.

23

34

period, the post-colonial PNGn bureaucracy exerts its influence over the

official structure of education. The major primary resource material informing this study is the interview data

collected from teachers who had been in PNG. The rationale for using the memories of oral interview material as valid evidence for historical research has been well argued and documented.26 I acknowledge here that, whatever

term an author chooses to call such memories, or however they are collected: oral histories, interview replies, or answers to questionnaires, all are eye-witness accounts. And these, as Tonkin has argued, are subject to a plurality of discrepancies in describing events or situations.

Each witness

may be able to agree on the fact of an event, but, given their differing background, each accounting and each perceived reason for that event may differ widely.

Yet within the discernible differences are also 'discernible

stabilities in the flux of pertormances that assist the historian to find the stable texts, permanent messages'?7

Theoreticians of oral history also acknowledge that it is through the interview,

the discussion that creates the oral history, that the tropes of lived experience are remembered, even if the listing of whatever 'facts' make up various events witnessed do not provide the same answers. To ask 'what was it like?' is clearly to ask for a metaphorical description which encapsulates and orders experience. Such metaphors, novel or tired, can then be expected to reveal much of both individual experience and of wider social institutions.26 But I am also aware that whatever is revealed can still only be a partial text. Not only are there the inherent issues of intersubjectivity, corresponding lack Holbrook, op.cit. 1995; Elizabeth Tonkin, Narrating Our Pasts, 1992, Lois Foster & Anne Seitz, Applications of Oral History in the sociology of Ethnic Relations, Journal of Intercultural Studies, vol. 5, No. 6, 1984. pp. 5— 15; John Murphy, 'The voice of Memory: History, Autobiography and Oral Memory', Historical Studies, vol. 22, No. 86, October 1986, pp. 157—175; Paul Thompson. The Voice of the Past, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1978. 27 Tonkin, op.cit. , p. 86. 28 Murphy, op.cit. p. 165. 26

35

of objectivity, and metaphorical allusions in an interview, but, as I will explain,

there is the simple matter of who has chosen to come forward for interview.

Partial Texts? During an interview with a retired District Education Officer from the first period under study, the problems of teachers who 'went troppo' in the difficult

conditions, and others who did not finish their contracts, were discussed. The attrition rate was quite high amongst the people, and those who did the two year ASOPA course. Some didn't expect what happened.... and more than a third left after two years, they got leave to Australia and didn't come back'.29 None of the teachers from this first period who came forward to be

interviewed were among those mentioned by that Education Officer as not finishing their contracts.

Certainly a number of the teachers who had lived

in the remote highlands areas mentioned anecdotally that they had indeed

heard about some who had 'gone troppo', but none actually spoke of their

own experiences in this way. The responses I received were from teachers whose stories implied strongly that their time in PNG was without the strain

that others may have experienced. They agreed too that, had 'things' (variously: crime, personal safety, government attitudes, services) not changed, they would be eager to return there to either work or visit.

Their

stories of their expatriate life in PNG indicated success, not the implied failure

that belonged to those ephemeral other teachers, the people who had gone troppo.

If evidence was based on personal stories alone, therefore, it could simply be assumed that all Australian teachers in PNG prior to independence were contented and successful.

But other evidence, from the Officer quoted

above, and from Department of Territory records of attrition rates, indicates clearly that assumptions based only on the interviews cannot be entirely 29

Transcript # 2 p. 8

36

validated. There is, of course, an alternative assumption: that teachers who had unhappy memories of their time in PNG decided against discussing that

period of their lives and consequently did not respond to the research

enquiries. There is little opportunity for me to measure this assumption, although the same question is raised by researchers in New Zealand who are involved in a project on the Native Schools System during the 1930s.3° In the meantime, the texts remain partial.

Impartial Texts? Arguments against oral history's acceptability as 'factual truth' tend to accompany the argument regarding oral history's intersubjectivity.

But if

I

acknowledge, as Peters has, that 'oral testimony does not hide the fact that the interview is a collaborative endeavour in making sense of a life-history. It is the site where two (or more) subjectivities meet',31 then arguments for its

'truth' become evidently redundant.

The very factor of my own involvement

with PNG, as a teacher, an expatriate, and a woman, brought about the object of this current, somewhat subjectively situated, study.

My

identification of a relationship with the country and with the other expatriates interviewed has had to be an inseparable facet of my approach to representing other people's lives there.

It will also be a factor in my

discussion on the teachers' place in PNG in the contemporary period. One of the consequences of my involvement, the intersubjectivity within the documented texts and the discourse of expatriate life, is that there are occasions when the development of commentary on a particular situation spills over into a self reflexive moment.

If 'ethnography builds the

subjective experiences of both participants and investigator into the research frame, thus providing a depth of understanding often lacking in other

N. Timutimu, J. Simon, K. Morris Mathews, 'Negotiating a Project in Educational History: Research on the New Zealand Native Schools System, Paper presented at the ANZHES Conference, Brisbane, 1996, pp.711 - 732. Additionally, discussions held during the two hour seminar presentation which accompanied that paper. 31 Peters, op .cit., p. 44.

37

approaches to research',32 then are my own reflexive moments and memories

any less, or more, 'truthful' than the oral histories that are the interviews conducted with other teachers?

And, by extrapolation, how does my own

experience as an expatriate teacher not intrude into the experiences that are the stories of other Australian teachers who make up the social history that I intend to tell?

This question has been dealt with from a variety of

perspectives by many writers in the fields of feminist anthropology, sociology, and history.33 Lather, among them, suggests that 'methodologically the

implications come down to what Foucault phrased 'the politics of the gaze', a focus that leads to asking such questions as, 'how does a researcher work to not see so easily in telling stories that belong to others'. As with my own

intrusion into the stories of expatriate teachers in PNG, it has to be asked, 'what is the role of autobiography here'?34

I can partially validate that relationship and role, as does Lather, through the writing of Felman and Laub. In their traumatic witnessing of stories from

holocaust victims, they refer to themselves both as participants and coowners in the traumatic event when, by knowing the language, they become, by extension, translators of the event.35

If, by understanding the language of

expatriate teachers I can claim the role of translator, I then also claim the role of witness because I listen to and take down the testimony of the teachers.

Yet I would reason that I am perhaps better described as

interpreter, because in this work I have chosen what it is that is retold of each story, rather than give each accounting a translation in its entirety. For me, then, as for Lather, 32

Lecompte & Preissle, op.cit. p. 44 For example, Hilary Lawson, Reflexivity, Hutchinson, London 1989; Patti Lather, Textual Strategies and the Politics of Interpretation in Educational Research', Australian Educational Researcher, Vol. 21, No. 1, April, 1994, pp. 41 — 62; Pat Caplan, Distanciation or Identification: What Difference Does it Make? Critique of Anthropology, vol. 14 (2), 1994, pp 99-115. Theobald, op.cit; Geraldine Pratt & Susan Hanson, 'Geography and the construction of Difference', Gender, Place and Culture, Vol.1, No. 1, 1994. pp. 5 - 29; Frankenberg, op.cit., 1993. Alison Jones, Writing Feminist Educational Research: Am 'I in the Text?, Women and Education in Aotearoa , Vol. 2 (1992), pp. 18 32.

Lather, op.cit., p. 44.

38

practice always exceeds theory's grasp... This means asking new questions out of reflexive encounters and re-encounters with our practice via a move from the dominant confessional, psychologizing approach to self-reflexivity to the micropotitical practices of representation of self and others in situated enquiries 36

The encompassing of the post-modern problem of self-reflexivity does not, however, occur without warnings that some uncertainties remain.

As Alison Jones reminds us, on the one hand feminist research has 'opened a gap for authors to legitimately reveal themselves in their work',37 and is explicit in its subjective presence. Yet on the other, the approach goes

against a hegemony of 'male-defined renditions, that still requires elucidation of the impartial, objective, scientifically, or at least quantatively, proven, 'truth'.

So while possibilities that are occurring to celebrate the 'universal

tentativeness' in feminist writing have begun to replace mainstream patriarchal certainty in analysis, problems remain in that the writing 'may very well be turned against self-conscious feminist and other critical research [thereby] weakening its impact.'38

The situation outlined by Jones has arisen in regard to one of the few recent texts available that considers the question of the expatriate worker's place in PNG today.

Baranay's Rascal Rain,39 the semi-autobiographical account of

a female Australian volunteer in the PNG highlands, has been roundly

criticised by Ash for that same self-consciousness.4° Yet Baranay's reflections do provide the often missing commentary on what the experience of being expatriate is like. In the absence of research that analyses or Shoshana Felman & Don Laub, Testimony: crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis and histoiy. Routledge, New York, 1992, p. 57. Lather, op.cit., p. 42. Jones, op.cit., p. 24. ibid., p. 28. lnez Baranay, Rascal Rain, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1994. 40 Susan Ash, 'Aid work, Travel amd Representation: lnez Baranays Rascal Rain and Alice Walker's Warrior Marks, Linq, October, 1997, pp. 44- 54.

39

comments on teacher's experiences in PNG, Rascal Rain remains an important voice adding available memory to the social study record. Baranay's input and the context of her experiences are more fully discussed in Chapter 10.

Apart from feminist research, other disciplines also indicate methodological approaches which can be adopted without the necessity for a contest between evidential authority and the subjective positioning of oral evidence.

These are demonstrated, for example, by Gammage in the field of Australian history,41 and Gage in a sociological field,42 among a myriad of

authors.43 A further question that remains though, is one that concerns the representation of the various subjectivities found throughout the thesis.

Textualising the Representation

'One of the liveliest questions on the historians' agenda,' writes Chartier in his demonstration of the historiographical framework of cultural history, 'is

about the forms that historical writing

As with gathering data by the

dual approach from oral histories and archival texts, the textualisation of this

thesis also embodies more than one style of presentation. To paraphrase Theobald, 'It is not my intention to place the theoretical writings of others like a grid over the lives of these teachers. I want to proceed on the assumption that theory and historical narrative may inform each other'.45

41

Bill Gammage, 'Oral and Written Sources, in 0. Denoon & A. Lacey, Oral Traditions in Melanesia, Pt. Moresby, 1981, PP. 115- 122. 42 N.L. Gage, The Paradigm Wars and Their Aftermath: A Historical' Sketch of Research in Teaching Since 1989', Education Researcher, vol. 18. 1989. pp 4 - 10. For example, June PhilIp, 'Traditional Historical Narrative and Action-Oriented (or Ethnographic) History', Historical Studies, Vol.2. No.3. April, 1983. pp 339 - 352; J. Murphy, op.cit. Somekawa & Smith, 'Theorizing the Writing of History or, "I can't think why it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention", Journal of Social History, Vol. 22, No. 1. 1988, pp. 149- 161; Aletta Biersack, Local Knowledge, Local History: Geertz and Beyond', in Hunt, Lynn. (ed) The New Cultural History, University of california Press, Berkley, 1989. pp. 72 - 96; Joan Burstyn, Joan N. 'Narrative versus theoretical approaches: a dilemma for historians of women', History of Education Review, Vol. 19, No. 1990, pp. 1 -7. R. Chartier, Cultural History (trans. Lydia G. cochrane), Polity Press, Cambridge, 1988, p. 61. Theobald, op.cit., p. 180.

40

Hobsbawm's argument with Lawrence Stone over the re-emergence of narrative history, 46 although now dated, is particularly relevant here.

Hobsbawm applauds on the one hand the rise of social history leading towards a history that is vastly extended into a new range of human activities that have become acceptable as a 'legitimate concern of the historian'. But likewise, he warns that the new histories may 'increase the technical difficulty

of writing history' and increasingly raise questions of 'how are these complexities to be presented?'47

In the present case, the most important

point he makes is when citing, as does Stone, the work of Ginzburg, Le Roy Ladurie, and Geertz in their use of the microscope rather than the telescope to capture a situation. For almost all of them the event, the individual, even the recapture of some mood or way of thinking of the past, are not ends in themselves, but are the means of illuminating some wider question, which goes far beyond the particular story and its characters.48

To provide demonstration as well as explanation, some sections within the chapters of this thesis are presented as historical narrative, informed through the narratives teachers give as they speak of their lives in PNG.

The constructed emplotment of this form of writing is obvious, but, as Chartier argues:

History in all its forms, even the least concerned with events or the most 'structuralist', belongs fully to the realm of narration. All truly historical writing is constructed, in point of fact, through the use of formulas it shares with narrative or with 'emplotment'. Writing is where 'various 'relay stations' or forms of transition exist to articulate the 'structures of historical knowledge.., with the work of narrative configuration', and to link, in both sorts of discourse, the conception of causality, the characterization of the actors involved 46

E. Hobsbawm, The Revival of Narrative: Some Comments, Past and Present, Number 86, 1980, pp. 3 - 8. 'In reply to Lawrence Stone, The Revival of Narrative: Reflections on a New Old History', Past & Present, No. 85, Nov. 1979. pp. 3 - 24. These papers raised arguments that continued across history and its related disciplines for several years. ibid., p. 5. ibid., p. 4.

41

and the construction of temporality'. This means that history is always narration, even when it claims to be rid of the narrative, and its mode of comprehension remains dependent on procedures and operations that assure the emplotment of the actions represented Here, questions of truth in the narrative construction come down to the

'paralyzing practice', described by Chartier, that questions the validity demanded by historians between what they write and whatever reality they

claim to be reconstructing while at the same time arriving at a comprehensible explanation.

I would therefore follow his suggestion that

'no document can be treated without being subjected to Foucault's critical and 'genealogical' questions on the conditions that made it possible and produced it and on its regularising principles and its forms of exclusion, limitation and appropriation'.50 In the first place there are the conditions that

make the teacher narrative possible, as in Australia's involvement with PNG. In the second place are the concomitant conditions by which only certain parts of that narrative are reproduced here.

While both relate to the teacher

experience I am seeking to reveal, there are particular complexities that come from the telling of what it was like, rather than what happened. Here I

must, at the same time, openly acknowledge the complicity of my own 'ethnographic authority'51 in choosing the construction of the images and

memories I present.

charter, op.cit., p. 62. (his punctuation and quoting Ricoeur). ibid., p. 65, quoting from L'Ordere du discours, pp. 62-72 Michel Foucault, (Swyer trans). The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse of Language), pp 230—7. 51 clifford, 'On Ethnographic Authority', Representations. Voll, No. 2, Spring, 1983, pp. 118 - 146. 50

42

The Distribution of Intended Meanings Analysing the narratives through theorising the meanings A second dimension within this thesis is its theoretical base which underpins

the accounting of teacher experiences. That base addresses the analysis of teachers' understandings of themselves and their place in relation to the people, the cultures and the societies they encountered in PNG.

My study

of the literature on PNG education reveals no model for any analysis of how teachers understood what space they might occupy and how that place was designated by those involved in the delivery of Western education, or by

those they taught. My thesis, therefore, does not plan to test a previously presented hypothesis, but to develop one. The evidence for where that place might be comes from two areas. The first, as outlined, is the primary source material that comprises the teacher memories and narratives as well as my

own experiences. The second is the secondary source material that makes up the literature describing the place of Australia in PNG.

I have indicated that a diverse approach to gathering data has been adopted. Similarly, in developing an understanding of the Australian teachers' place in PNG, I use a diverse theoretical base. I follow MacKinnon52 who, in a study

of women in higher education during the late

1gth

and early

20th

century in

South Australia, also used a wide range of theoretical approaches to underpin her analysis.

Here, studies of history and education, and colonial!

postcolonial and cultural studies, all assist me to demonstrate what might be

said about the place of Australian teachers in PNG.

I argue that one major

influence shaping teachers' understanding of their place can be found within

the various texts describing and defining Australia's role in PNG. These texts have been produced, largely by Australians, over the period of Australia's

52

Alison Mackinnon, Awakening Women: women, higher education and family formation in South Australia c1880-1920, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Adelaide, 1990.

43

interactions with that country.

I follow here Said's proposition regarding

'Orientalism', which he describes as the production of positioned texts about 'the other' and what is achieved in their creation.53

In substituting PNG for

'the Orient,' my argument is that the hegemonic discourse of Australian literature has rendered PNG subordinate, while at the same time privileging Australia and, by default, those who represent Australia.

It is Said's premise

that

in a quite constant way, Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positioned superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient, without ever losing him the relative upper hand.54 Such a premise underpins the argument promulgated in Chapter Ill.

For like

Said's argument that Asia has been viewed as 'belonging' to Europe, partially through Europe's representation and will, so too did the reconstruction of

PNG through the Australian literature turn 'vast geographical domains into treatable, and manageable, entities'.55 The validation of the Australian place in PNG, demonstrate, is through its construction of PNG as in need of I

Australian management. In addition to that validation of Australia's place,

Said's work is also a demonstration of how 'the nexus of knowledge and power creating 'the Oriental,'56 [PNGn in this present case] can obliterate the

humanity of that orientalised subject.

Certainly, as I will discuss in the

following chapter, much of the Australian discourse left the PNGn un-named and in a sense, therefore, dehumanised through reference to 'the natives' and repeated calls for an education that would turn 'them' into cognisant beings.

However, when using Said's approach of orientalism, certain factors must be

taken into consideration. One is suggested by Ludden, who argues that Said

56

Edward Said, Orientalism, Penguin, London, 1978. ibid., p. 7. ibid., p. 115. Ibid., p. 27.

44

appeared to 'detach his chosen texts from history, in the manner of Foucault, [and] lost sight of the politics that reproduce the epistemological authority of orientalism today'.57 Within the argument of an orientalising practice is the

acknowledgement that orientalism has been a specific ingredient of colonial knowledge and its discourse. I must, therefore, acknowledge the possibility

that I, too, am merely replicating yet another colonial discourse through the voices of expatriate teachers as they reflect upon their experiences of

interaction with PNGns. Thomas endorses my question, contending that the colonial discourses include a great variety of specialised and popular

representations from 'pluralized and dispersed fields' that are distinct on the basis of 'familiar tools for differentiating historical and cultural phenomena, such as periodization, agency, modes of production, national origin and geographic location'.58 It might be argued that what the expatriate teacher

encounters in PNG can intrude into their (our?) silent colonial discourse. This is a discourse that, as expatriate teachers, they would rather not voice, but when confronted with questions about their place, becomes apparent. At the same time, there are aspects of past colonial, and present postcolonial, discourse that impinge upon part of my discursive practice. These aspects bring into question whether the use of that discourse is an

entirely appropriate vehicle though which to approach the issues of

Australia's appropriation of PNG. For I argue that PNG, while having achieved independent status and is thus to all outward appearances post-

colonial, may not yet in practice be post-colonial. As Loomba points out, 'post' implies 'an 'aftermath' in two senses - temporal, as in coming after, and ideological, as in supplanting. It is the second implication which critics find contestable: if the inequities of colonial rule have not been erased, it is perhaps premature to proclaim the demise of colonialism'.59 David Ludden, Orientalist Empiricism: Transformations of Colonial Knowledge in Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der veer (èds.) Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament, UPP, Philadelphia, 1993, p. 250. 58 Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism's Culture, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994, pp 66 -7. Ania Loomba, Colonialism - Postcolonialism, Routledge, London, 1998, p. 7.

45

In PNG, an educated indigenous elite has replaced the previous colonial

administration to become the hierarchy. And although continuously 'orientalised' by the Australian media, among others, that hierarchy is nevertheless the controlling power, and is certainly postcolonial in terms of following after a colonial administration.

However, 'the term post-colonial

does not apply to those at the bottom end of the hierarchy.'6° Aside from the controlling elite, the average PNGn villager who continues to exist at the far

margins of economic comfort finds nothing 'post' about their colonisation especially given they have only exchanged one manner of elite control for

another. 'Dismantling of colonial rule', Loomba notes, does not automatically bring about changes - 'Colonialism' is not just something that happens from outside a country or people, not just something that operates with the collusion of forces inside, but a version of it can be duplicated from within.61 I will be arguing in this thesis that these very real dichotomies addressing the post-colonial elitism extant in PNG, impact upon the expatriate teachers'

place and their understanding of what space they might occupy.

What does place mean? Yet the very notion of place is itself contentious, its meanings embedded in

concepts of space, of time, and of location. The word is also bound within ideas of 'position', or 'positioning', which contain a multitude of subjectivities, especially in this instance in relation to the expatriate identity in PNG: whose place?, whose position? - the teacher, the white person, the perceived

dominant/subordinant culture? and so forth.

In looking for what place

teachers might occupy in PNG, I will argue that these positions can be

extrapolated further to spaces of power; places that Grossberg describes as

60 61

ibid., p. 9. ibid., p. 12.

46

'sites of investment'.62 And through this extrapolation, Grossberg's

methodologies for understanding positioning lend themselves to understanding something of the Australian expatriate teacher place and

identity in PNG. Grossberg raises the possibility of what he calls 'a territorializing machine' one that diagrams lines of mobility and placement; it defines or maps the possibilities of where and how people can stop and place themselves, Such places are temporary points of belonging and identification, or orientation and installation, of investment and empowerment... A territorializing machine attempts to map the sorts of places people can occupy and how they can occupy them.63

This work is an attempt to conceptualise a 'territorialising machine' of

Australian teachers. To find out where and how they stopped and placed themselves over time in whatever their temporary points of belonging may have been, and to discover whether there were any points of difference or identification with PNG or with other expatriate workers.

A further notion with respect to the context of sites is that, as Rutherford argues, place can be constructed from representations that are both, or either, symbolic and/or

Symbolically, place provides a frame of

reference where, within or without normative conditions, both groups and individuals can either internalise or externalise standards and make the appropriate gestures.

In its context as a real object, place, by its

associations with capital, provides position or rank. Thus there are both symbolic and real locations to be investigated where identities are made. Rutherford's argument is that identity is as much concerned with difference

as it is with where one comes from, creating an 'interchange between self

62

Laurence Grossberg, Race Identity and Representation in Education, Routledge, New York, 1993, 95. ibid., p. 100

J. Rutherford, Identity, Lawrence & wishart Limited, London, 1990.

47 and structure, a transforming process'.65

The analysis of the memories

presented within these pages is aimed at eliciting an expatriate self as it was affected by the interchange with the structure - the system within which education in PNG was embedded - and whether the teachers in the study understood their place in relation to PNG as part of that structure.

Focussing on the place of Australian teachers in Papua New Guinea

necessitates its conceptualisation on differing levels. To be an Australian teacher is to be an expatriate, a group Munro describes as 'voluntary temporary migrants (and their dependents), mostly from affluent countries, who reside abroad for one or more purposes',66 of which teachers make up a definable category. Expatriates are immediately identifiable as

strange and different, of not belonging and out of place, and especially exposed.

Exposure to strangeness and difference expands the

knowingness of our own place, albeit in terms of a knowledge that we are not in it.

Tourists and short term travellers can take their country and the

upbringing they received from it along with them as extra baggage, and use that as an involuntary means by which measurement and comment are made upon what they see and experience whilst away from home. They are also safe in the knowledge of imminent return to 'their' place and consequently enjoy a freedom of expression, action and comment. Such freedoms are not always available to expatriate workers who, due to

their circumstances, often examine the question of whether they indeed may need to find another place, a particular positioning, within whatever new

community they join for an extended length of stay. Madan Sarup has discussed the theoretical aspects of this positioning, of a sense of place -

an identity, through his allusions to home. We assume, he says, 'that a sense of place, or belonging gives a person stability - but what makes a 65

pp. 14-21 E. Munro, Expatriates in Papua New Guinea With Special Reference to the Filipinos, unpublished PhD Thesis, University of New South Wales, 1991. 66

ibid.

48

place home'?67 Sarup's reflections, encompassing objectively and

subjectively derived images, are perspectives of sites that have been

categorised by Bourdieu. Categories of 'ancestry, territory, language, religion, and economic activity' are described as the objective sites from

which we construct our perceptions of identity. The subjectivities are the 'feelings of belonging' that are 'representations through which social agents imagine the divisions'.68 Using similar categories provides the background to

intellectualising the simple experience of being comfortably 'at home' or not, and it is then possible to ask how, and whether, expatriates in PNG have constructed their place somewhere there that is home.

The Informants The data for this thesis has been collected from a range of sources, primary

and secondary. The oral history accounts are from interviews with men and women who were teachers in PNG during the times under study.

Over a

period of eight months interviews were conducted with these men and women, now mainly living in Australia, who went to PNG as teachers. There was an initial pool of thirty four interviewees, either from names supplied to

me by other teachers, or from people who responded to an article placed in the South Australian Institute of Teachers Journal, April 1996, seeking expressions of interest in the project. While the majority of teachers are

South Australian, I journeyed to Queensland and Canberra to interview four others. Two teachers are from Victoria and one is still living in PNG.

Six of

the interviewees are no longer employed as teachers, having either left the teaching service for other positions or retired.

67

Madun Sarup, Home & Identity in George Robertson, et.aI. (eds.), Travellers Tales, Routledge, London, 1994. pp. 93- 104. 68 Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1991, p. 226.

49

During initial contact the teachers were apprised of the aims and intentions of the work. At that point I established that four of the teachers had been specifically involved in missionary work and thus outside the precept of the study.

Of the remaining thirty, eight did not reply to the second round of

correspondence, and another two withdrew just prior to the interview stage. My initial presumption was that a minimum of thirty teachers would be necessary to enable a cross section of attitudes and views to be canvassed from the diverse regions of PNG, as well as from both two time periods.

Early study of the data, however, revealed that the twenty informants, twelve

men and eight women, had far less diversity of opinion and experience than I had expected. Their narratives are sufficient for the accomplishment of this thesis, albeit with one proviso.

As discussed earlier within this chapter, the teachers who took part in the interviews were those who wanted to speak of an enjoyable experience. Of

those who worked in PNG prior to independence, nearly all remarked upon

the distinctive impact their visit had given them. Even the teachers who were in PNG during the 1 990s, whose experience was somewhat different from

that of the earlier teachers, were able to find much to recommend about their stay in that country. While I was able to interview one teacher who

terminated his contract early, I could not locate other teachers who had done so, or any who had decided on arrival in PNG not to go ahead with teaching

and returned to their home country. Yet from my own time in the PNG Highlands during 1995, I was aware through frequent anecdotal evidence of

this being the case for some newly arriving teachers, both from Australia and other countries who supply expatriates. It is impossible to know whether

these teachers would have been appropriate interviewees, but I believe that their experiences, with a differing bias to those gathered here, would have added further to the valuable insights to expatriate attitudes.

50

The majority of transcripts are from extended interviews conducted with the teachers, mostly in their own homes.

One shorter interview was conducted

by telephone, another via e-mail, and four through extended open ended

questionnaire papers of twenty pages. The accounts break down to ten for the p re-independence period, eight for the post independence period and

two who were in PNG across the transition period. The earliest recounting is from a District Education Officer starting in 1959 who stayed in PNG until independence, through to teachers who were in the country during 1995.

These teachers worked in diverse areas of PNG, some in the larger townships, some in small, remote bush postings.

As discussed in Chapter I,

the diversity between the highlands of PNG and the coastal areas extends not only geographically, but culturally, traditionally, environmentally, attitudinally, and in length of European contact.

Approximately half the

interviewees worked in the coastal regions, the other half in various areas of

the highlands. The same equation is true for those who worked in remoter regions and those who were based in or close to, town rather than village locations.

A number of the informants, while amenable to taking part in the study, preferred that their names not be published, while others had no preference or concern either way in this regard. I have, in an effort to simplify the

matter, given anonymity to all the informants, and, therefore, for footnoting purposes, all the transcripts are numbered.

Finally It is not my intention to be dismissive of the previous historians who

constructed PNG as needful of the West and what its culture could and did offer.

I would preferably 'no longer feel better or more knowledgeable than

my predecessors, just differently organised by a different historical configuration, a different frame of reference,'69 which, I am succinctly

69

Paul Hamilton, Historicism, Routledge, London, 1996, p. 145.

51

reminded, is precisely the methodology chosen by Foucault in his discourse

on power. 'Power is never a positive entity in Foucault's descriptions; it resides in the difference between different discourses, differences which give

these discourses their meanings in contrast to each other and place them in a hierarchy'.7° This, Hamilton argues, Foucault has not really expounded,

but has instead relied on his writing of history to demonstrate. My account is one among a layering of accounts and their memories, not definitive, but one that I have pulled out and proceeded to examine.

70

ibid.

CHAPTER III

Constructing His tory

53

The previous chapter outlined the theoretical and methodological elements of this thesis. Within that outline, and following Said's argument on

orientalising practices, I suggested that a similarly hegemonic discourse has arisen out of the colonisation and subordination of PNG. In a discussion of better known works on Australia's involvement in PNG since the 1 960s, this chapter explores that idea of a PNG appropriated through

the construction of a representational and positioned discourse. In arguing that the situated philosophies constituted within the literature address Australia's appropriation of PNG, at the same time I acknowledge that the literature provides the context of the Australian teachers' place in that appropriation.

In their explanation of Australia's place in PNG, the works discussed below provide a multi-layered reflection of differing attitudes towards PNG's expatriate society and the bureaucratic structures that set rules, regulations and patterns by which past and present expatriates have lived

and worked. But, despite its contextual basis, the literature does not yield a specific analysis of how teachers, as a separate and definable group among expatriate workers, might have experienced and understood their place in PNG.

Constructing a Papua New Guinea Few political, historical or social commentaries on PNG/Australia until

thel 990s are anything but accounts of the European development of PNG against the apparent odds of a difficult terrain and recalcitrant indigenes. Consequently, most views expressed in the literature indicate how Australians saw their own specific problems of bringing PNG into the

twentieth century, rather than PNGn views of the impact of the Australian

54

presence.1 The history of contact in PNG2 is a case in point.

Not

immediately apparent as relevant to a thesis dealing with expatriate

teacher experiences from the 1960s onwards, contact nevertheless impacts upon several of the areas under discussion.

First, because the

nature of contact and the effects upon the peoples of PNG has been written from specifically positioned, European viewpoints.

And second,

because the resultant reports and their commentary had influence within,

and upon, Australia's administrative planning and policy making in PNG. That policy making included the provision of education.

The earlier explorers had few relationships with the explored peoples

beyond seeing them as a curiosity, somewhat akin to any other exotic species that, when encountered, were catalogued and named as part of the spoils of a variety of expeditions. Only the dangerous unpredictability

of their responses may have put the humans slightly apart.3 PNGns were given their name by European navigators and sailors who could do little

more than liken the coastal people to whatever or whoever else they may

have contacted elsewhere. Thus Papuans were named by the Portugese George de Meneses in 1526 from a Malay word that described their frizzy hair, and New Guineans were given that name because they seemed akin

to people from parts of Africa. An Englishman, William Dampier, 'discovered' the island he named New Britain in 1700, and the French appropriated another that they named Bougainville in 1768. In the late 1 800s German missionaries gave names to Finschhafen on the coast and

later to settlements such as Banz and Minz in the highlands. Even the new nation's capital retains the name of Port Moresby, after Captain John Moresby who 'found' the harbour in 1873. Contact, then, has other acknowledge that the extensive anthropological work undertaken in PNG since the beginning of the 35 year time span of this study attempts to address the gap between white history and the PNGn's own telling of their lives prior to European settlement. However, the studies do not help in developing a picture of expatriate teachers in PNG, and will not be used here. Contact is the term generally used to indicate first, or early meetings between PNGns and people from beyond the country.

55

meanings, not the least being appropriation, for the 'power which

organises space confirms itself by defining the passages across the boundaries it draws'.4

By the 1 930s the accessible coastal regions had been settled by European

occupation, and the local inhabitants put to what were considered efficient

labours. The then administration of the Mandated Territory of Australian New Guinea believed that the high mountains inland were virtually

uninhabited, viewing the area as useful for plantation land, or potentially rich in mineral resources.

As a result, the first Europeans to contact

many of the tribespeople of the interior were neither missionaries, nor

admininstrators, but gold prospectors. One of the earliest contacts in that area was made by the Leahy brothers,5 a journey re-documented by Connolly and Anderson through film and text.6 The authors suggest from

their perusal of Michael Leahy's diary that there were two items of modernity that made the contact between the two peoples memorable,

possible, and successful for the explorers. One was 'a lightweight, reliable German camera', and the other the gun, 'a superlative killing instrument'.7 Contact in the highlands between PNGn and Westerner

began as it was to continue, by appropriation and subjugation.

In 1935, from the other side of the ranges, the Papuan administration of Hubert Murray was also investigating the highlands, through an expedition

led by patrol officers Jack Hides and Jim O'Malfey. Other equally informative expeditions were conducted, for example that of 1936 by Ivor

Champion and C. Adamson, and between 1938 and 1939 by Jim Taylor and John Black.

But it was Hides own book of his expedition, 'Papuan

L.M. D'Albertis, New Guinea: What I Did and What! Saw (2 vols.), Sampson Low, London, 1880. J.K. Noyes, Colonial Space, Harwood Academic Publishers, chur, 1992, p. 242. Michael Leahy originally wrote his own version of the expeditions and discoveries of the vast populations in the highland interiors. Michael Leahy and Maurice Crair,, The Land That Time Forgot, Funk and Wagnals Company. New York, 1937. Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson, First Contact, Viking Penguin Inc., New York, 1987.

56

Wonderland,8 that allowed for what Schiefflen and Crittenden have termed

the mythologising of Jack Hides patrol officer, into 'Jack Hides, Hero of the

Quest', and provided a highly influential context for 'the issues of power and knowledge in the encounter between Papuans and Europeans'.9 Hides' book indicated to his impressionable readers abroad, and those in

the safe haven of Port Moresby, that investigation and takeover of the exotic areas of PNG was entirely possible and worthwhile, as long as the

local inhabitants could be shown the power and might of the colonial enterprise.

The mistakes in planning the expedition, the violence that took place along the way, and the rigours of the country faced by Hides and O'Malley with their carriers and police protectors were subsumed into a specific construction of contact that has continued throughout much of the literature on PNG.

Hides called members of the Papuan Armed

Constabulary, 'savages in serge'.1° Yet these 'savages' had been instrumental in organising the carriers and making initial contact along

many month's way of the expedition. Without their help, protection, guidance, and probable immense patience, it is unlikely that Hides would have survived his actions.

But this 'against the odds' literature had to

both reflect and approbate the European social mores. It also needed to justify and verify colonial status and place, as well as the changes that were to be made to the lives of the local populations. Hides expressed the

view that anything decent that came from a 'native' was the result of Australia's good 'administration of a subject

race'.11

ibid., pp 95-6. Hides, Papuan Wonderland, Blackie & Son, Glasgow, 1936. Edward Schieffelinn & Robert Crittenden, Like People You See in a Dream, Stanford University Press, california, 1991, p. 251. Hides, op. cit., p. 2. ibid., p. 124.

57

In the space of little more than a quarter of a century, the greater number of the peoples of this country have been lifted from a state of savagery to a life very much more tranquil, they have been set upon a foundation of livelihood that cannot be shaken.12 Thus the appropriation, not only of the subject race, but of a 'proprietory

vision', covered itself by being transformed 'into the response to a putative appeal on the part of the colonized land and people... that calls out for restoration of order'.13

Hides' version of the journey and its contact is important for its impact on the widely held views that would be demonstrated and upheld by expatriates in PNG even beyond the fact of the country's independence. It is therefore pertinent to contrast that account with a contemporary reading of a similarly fraught and dangerous expedition undertaken by Taylor and Black.14

In his account of that patrol, written from diaries,

archival sources and personal contact with participants, Gammage explores the issue of contact from both the PNGn and the Australian point

of view. His work is singular because unlike the majority of patrol interpretations, PNGns are given voice and identity alongside the European. Gammage shows from interviews with PNGns involved with the expedition how the Australian understanding and interpretation of events taking place, diverged markedly from the PNGn understanding.

Gammage does not assert that either view is incorrect, but he suggests that, given the differing cultural attitudes and upbringing of each participant, each point of view is valid. Of relevance to this thesis is

Gammage's contention that the patrol officers were bound by an identity and background that, despite their intense involvement and awakening awareness of PNGn ways of seeing, prevented them viewing PNGns as anything but 'the other'. It was an issue impacting equally on PNGn 12

ibid., p. 4. David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire, Duke University Press, Durham, 1993, P. 28. Bill Gammage, The Sky Travellers, Journeys in New Guinea 1938-1939, Melbourne University

58

attitudes towards the patrol officers. I will return to the conundrum presented by Gammage's contemporary interpretation in later chapters.

Hides' pre World War II Australian understanding of the space that could be occupied by the West in PNG is echoed by the later postwar literature that often comes under the heading of biographical. The books are

frequently the result of retired kiaps (patrol officers) writing of their patrol administration in the highlands, and, often replete with eurocentrism, mirror

most expatriate attitudes of their time and certainly do not differ markedly from Hides' accounting of his earlier patrol.15 Written by a score or more of patrol officers, the kiap stories came onto the market from the late 1 950s to the early 1 970s.'6

I find it salutary that some of the books

appear, from my view, to differ only slightly from Randolph Stow's fictionalised account of patrol officers in PNG.17 But,while Stow's Australian characters openly demonstrate a variety of deeply human frailties: insecurity, lust, fear, and alcohol dependency, the non-fiction accounts of patrol officers do not.

What is common to all the authors is that they view what they are doing as 'the right thing for the native's sake', a sentiment echoed by the

Administration. Much of the literature reflects its time and the then acceptable paternalistic ideology, although some, it should be noted, go beyond such excuses.18 I acknowledge that these books do not provide

scholarly debate, but they give insights into Australia's understanding of its place through their tenor, their gaze, their binary constructions, and their

Press, Melbourne, 1998. 15 There is a long tradition of these Up the Orinoco' stories, for example the Ripping Yarns and Boys Own Paper. They exemplify a trial by ordeal aspect of empire building that includes the man vs everything else aspect, that is evidenced in such classic takes as 'Robinson Crusoe'. Of many, there are: J.K McCarthy, Patrol into Yesterday: My New Guinea Years, Melbourne, 1963, J.P. Sinclair, Behind the Ranges, Melbourne, 1966, and Martin D. Kerr, New Guinea Patrol, 1973.

Randolph Stow, Visitants, Martin Secker & warburge Ltd., London, 1979 Martin Kerr's New Guinea Patrol (Hale, London, 1973) is a case in point. Derogatory of PNGns, especially women, the book is the epitomy of discomfort. The writing here stands out more as an apparent monument to the author's chauvinistic masochistic male psyche, than to any colonial epoch. 18

59

paternalistic sentiment.

Alt of which, I contend, have ultimately impacted

upon the attitudes of expatriate teachers, especially those of the pre-

independence period. The works, therefore, are worthy of mention on two levels.

In the first place, the books provide an indication of how the colonial administration justified its stance in relation to these newly contacted people and the perceived changes that their traditional way of life would warrant.

Second, the books addressed their times in such a way as to

distinguish the essentialised Australian identity that patrol officers and field

administrators were part of. The Anzac legend and the mythologised centralised powerful white male are paramount.

At the same time there

is a privileging of this white intruder through the curious egalitarianism Australia likes to believe it has; one in which the 'fair go' ethic can justify the destruction of old ways in order to bring the modern, better ways to the perceived primitive.

Such attitudes, it will be seen throughout this thesis,

find their echo within teacher experiences across the periods of their interaction with PNG.

Beyond the popularised accounts of exploration and contact are the politically addressed studies of Australia in PNG and its resulting political

history. Two of the most influential works that define Australia's place and point of view in the construction of PNG are Paul Hasluck's A Time for Building,19 and Ian Downs' The Australian Trusteeship Papua New Guinea 1945 -

7520

Although Hasluck relinquished his post as Minister

for Territories in 1963, his autobiographical work, written some years after his retirement from PNG affairs, clearly situates Australia's position of power and control over PNG as it was understood during his time of

colonial governance. That this has been a highly influential book can be Paul Hasluck, A Time for Building, MUP, Melbourne, 1976. Ian Downs, The Australian Trusteeship Papua New Guinea 1945 - 75, Government Publishing Service, canberra, 1980.

60

demonstrated by the frequency of its use as a reference by writers on PNG even into this decade.21 The constructions made by Hasluck and his contemporaries as to the state of PNG prior to European. intervention, and

what PNG could and should become with Australian guidance, have become accepted as history - the way it really was.

I suggest that such

constructions have greatly influenced expatriate, and therefore teachers', attitudes towards their place in PNG.

Hasluck's discussions on Australia's role in PNG reflect attitudes widely held during the period: of a PNG divided and dependent, with no political,

cultural or economic base worth preserving. Although critical of his own Government's apparent lack of commitment to the changes spelled out for PNG, of entrenched colonial privilege, and even occasionally self critical, Hasluck's work nevertheless reverberates with the unashamed paternalism he admitted he practised.

They were the first of the bright new generation trained at a higher standard to serve their people and their country. Students, staff and distinguished visitors had morning tea together. I felt a fatherly pride in all the students. When we had started out health services, we had done the best we could with illiterate people from the villages... Now, ten years later, these eager and well qualified graduates were starting a new Hasluck is considered a 'gifted, hardworking' minister who, 'rejected existing notions of colonialism',23 and as one of the few Australian Ministers

with any depth of understanding for the perceived problems within PNG at

the time and in the future. Yet during his period in office Hasluck made relatively few visits to PNG, instead running his portfolio from his desk in Canberra.

Much of the construction he has made of PNG and its people,

therefore, originates via official documents and inter-office memoranda, of 21

For example: Ian Downs, op.cit., 1980; Peter Smith, op cit., 1986; Sean Domy, Papua New Guinea, 1990; John Dademo Waiko, A Short Histoly of Papua New Guinea, 1993. Hasluck, op. cit., p. 375.

61

which there must have been many. And despite Hasluck's revulsion regarding British colonial modes and manners adopted by some Australians in the Australian Government,24 his views on PNG must have

reflected the views of that controlling regime of bureaucrats and peacekeepers who answered to him.

Hasluck's speeches on PNG in his term of office offer both reflection and

justification of resident expatriate thinking of that period. The modernising rationale is used to justify attempts at turning PNG from a subsistence to market economy.

The coming of the Europeans is turning the people into a community and is transforming them into a state of economic dependence... Two major trends have to be kept in mind. One is the trend towards higher standards of living. The other is the trend towards self government. Both will mean that the demands made by the community on the economy will increase rapidly... up to date the major efforts of the colonial power have been directed towards meeting any need as soon as it appears and even in many cases creating new needs of its own volition. The supplying of the demand is influenced by considerations that are not economic. Whatever they want it is their right as a dependent people to have. Whatever we think will be good for them we must give them.25

In signifying the conditions of dependency in PNG, Hasluck and other writers who reflect his sentiments26 render PNGns as childlike and passive

recipients of Western largesse, while at the same time creating a clear

space for Australia to take up the role of mentor. These attitudes are similarly repeated in the period prior to independence,27 portraying PNG in 23

B. Jinks, P. Biskup & H. Nelson (eds.), Readings in New Guinea Histoiy, Angus & Robertson Publishers Pty. Ltd., Sydney, 1973. P. 347. Hasluck, op. cit. 25 P. Hasluck, The Economic Development of Papua & New Guinea, 1962, p. 5 26 e.g. Graham Smith, Mendi Memories, Nelson Ltd., Melbourne, 1974; L.P. Mair, Australia in New Guinea, MUP, Melbourne, 1968; E.K.Fisk, (ed) New Guinea on the Threshhold, AUP, Canberra, 1966 27 e.g. Penelope Hope 'An Australian Family in Papua', Journal of the Papua and New Guinea Society, Vol.1, No.2, 1967, pp. 47-50; D.G. Bettinson, 'Racial Tensions in Papua-New Guinea', Educating for Tomorrow, F.W. Cheshire, Melbourne, 1963, pp.54—67; Pat McCahey, 'A Job to do in Papua and New Guinea', Australlan External Territories, vol. 8, No.5, Oct. 1968. pp. 33-36.

62

principally Eurocentrically based binary terms that privilege Western values over PNGn values.

That expatriates adapt any of their methods to suit

the country they invade through their development programmes is not

considered. The section of Hasluck's speech 'Changes in habits and outlook of the people', defines instead a total rethinking of PNGn cultural ideology.

from sharing one's wealth within the village and family to the life of individual enterprise and individual saving and spending; from the security and protection of the group to a competitive, unpredictable world of rising and falling prices and fluctuating employment. In hindsight it is obvious that the passage of the past thirty five years has proven such a suggestion inadequate. But the liberal historians and commentators, who, 'intent on promoting a set of beliefs',29 took on the

task of telling 'the natives' what they needed to do for their own future good needed to ratify the present and very Western world they and Hasluck came from.

Also highly significant for its influence in defining Australia's place in PNG is Ian Downs,' Australian Trusteeship of PNG 1945 -

Described as

the 'official historian' of Australia's involvement with PNG.3' Downs' text, along with that of Hasluck, is an Australian voice that justifies the radical policies of enforced change while it similarly justifies the appropriation of PNG.

Superficially, the Downs' account provides a straight forward

narrative political history. It describes the intricate detail of government, as experienced by Downs, that led to PNG's independence — a decision

made by Australia on behalf of the PNG people. The work offers neither theoretical argument for, nor questioning of, Australia's ideological stance.

:: Hasluck, 1962, OP. cit., p. 15. Vincent, An Intelligent Person's Guide to History, Duckworth, London, 1995, p. 57. 31

Downs, op. cit. P. Smith, op. cit., p. 332.

63

Downs' work is arguably the most detailed political history of Australia's involvement with PNG to date, and speaks of an in-depth knowledge of

government machinations. The author was personally involved with PNG, firstly as an Australian Government employed kiap, then as a planter, and also as Acting Assistant Director of Native Affairs during the early 1 950s.

His involvement in the economic development of PNG was hardly of a

disinterested nature, yet it is not mentioned either in the preface or the introduction to the book.

This context of Downs' involvement in PNG has

since been questioned and commented upon by Edward Wolfers,32 and, similarly, I regard Down's lack of acknowledgement as implying an

objectivity that is clearly false. Such an attempt at distancing himself from his complicity places Downs in the same category as the disinterested politicians who appeared unaware of the impact and effect of their policies on the disparate peoples of PNG living beyond the provincial centres.

Such administrators were, perhaps, more likely to have common ground with the Australians described by Hank Nelson as those who 'accept internal peace, political stability and economic prosperity as normal'.33

Nelson argues that peaceful populations in PNG were unusual and, I suggest, this is one of the inherent, and continuing, flaws in relations and understanding between Australia and PNG.

In the past Australia, as well

as the United Nations, imposed their European values to create a nation out of tribally grouped PNGns, some of whom might not possibly even

conceive of internal peace as normality. The ramifications of the imposition are still to be resolved, and, for Australian teachers working in that country, remain an important aspect of their day to day lives and

continue to affect their experiences and understanding of what place they have in PNG. 32

Edward P. wolfers, For the First Generation...with no Personal Recollection of Australian Rule: Reflection on the Impact of Colonial Rule in Papua New Guinea, in Latukefu, Sione (ed) Papua New Guinea: A Cent uiy of Colonial Impact 1884-1984. The National Research Institute, Boroko, 1989, pp.

417-445. 33

Hank Nelson, Papua New Guinea, Black Unity or Black Chaos? Penguin, Middlesex, 1972, p. 230.

64

Commenting on Hasluck's push for universal primary education, Downs writes that 'there was a great hunger for education by the people on behalf of their children'.

While such a hunger is still evident in PNG today, the

question arises as to how and why that hunger had been engendered in

the first place. With regards to what the Administration saw fit to teach these primary children:

the Education Department had responsibility for informing the people regarding the principles of trusteeship and the work of the United Nations. The syllabus for social studies in all schools included information on the work and purpose of the United Nation and the trusteeship system.35 Even for the comparative few able to access a Western education, the Administration constructed a discourse of dependency and lack of choice. Indeed, as Colebatch argued in 1968 in his critique of Administration policy and economic performance, education is of 'critical importance because it indicates the general objectives of colonial policy ... the role that the native people are intended to play can be seen in the training the colonial power thinks fit to give them.'36 Colebatch, at least, was prepared to spell out quite

clearly what space the expatriate teacher would occupy in PNG, In a similar vein to that of Hasluck and Downs, Gavin Souter's New

Guinea, The Last Unknown37 views Australia's place in PNG as essentially necessary, and benign. The work looks back over the earliest European arrivals in PNG to the Australian situation of the sixties, ranging across the impact of the patrols into the highlands, to the UN intervention in Australia's colonial affairs. At the same time as he is arguing for

: Downs, op. cit., p. 100. ibid., p. 128. 36 H.K. colebatch. Educational Policy and Political Development in Australian New Guinea, in RJW Selleck (ed), Melbourne Studies in Education 1967, Melbourne, 1968, p. 102. Gavin Souter, New Guinea The Last Unknown, Angus & Robertson, London, 1964.

65

independence over the long term however, Souter indicates that PNG had

not lost its strategic value to Australia. With Indonesia's takeover of the former West New Guinea from the Dutch, he pursues the line that PNG should be readied for independence as soon as possible because Australia, 'now had to acknowledge that West Irian was closer to Darwin than was P-NG'.38 In this argument, Souter underpins the perceived

necessity of a place for Australian expatriate teachers in PNG by justifying

much of the Australian policy on preparation of an educated elite. Yet whilst acknowledging that PNGns were merely pawns in the political expediency of the time, he suggests the people were not ready for what Australia might be offering.

Viewed from the hindsight of the 1990s, Souter's work is replete with curious ambiguities arising from Australia's appropriation of PNG, as is

evidenced by the policies Australia makes for its future. For example, in 1946 Australia had been bound by the Trusteeship Agreement for New

Guinea, as approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in December that year. Souter quotes part of that agreement, Section d., which states that Australia would

Guarantee to the inhabitants of the Territory, subject only to the requirements of public order, freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, and of petition, freedom of conscience and worship, and freedom of religious teaching.39 He then describes how Hasluck, coming to his Territories Ministry in 1951, 'could not be said to have lacked either interest in the Territory or sympathy with its native inhabitants'.

40

At the same time, the interests

of the native inhabitants had to subordinate themselves to Australia's eurocentric principles and ideologies.

38

39 40

ibid., p. 260. ibid., p. 244. ibid., p. 246.

Flagrantly ignoring the UN

66

Agreement directive, Hasluck instructs his administration to attain objectives that include the replacement of 'paganism by the acceptance of the Christian faith, and the ritual of primitive life by the practice of religion'

41

The Australian government was comfortable, too, in imposing an

Australian judicial system that ignored and denigrated tribal sorcery,

traditional methods of justice, and clan belief systems. The imposition reflects the government's explicit understanding of colonial control and

its application. Australian government ambiguity accommodated freedom of conscience, worship, and religious teaching while simultaneously sponsoring and encouraging Christianising missions.

Similarly, it was comfortable in building up a government school system that included syllabi emphasising the tenets of Christian religious instruction.

Although authors such as Hasluck, Downs and Souter have regarded their construction of PNG, and Australia's place in it, as benign, their defining Western histories of PNG's formation can be read as a

destructive activity that denies a PNGn volition and agency. But not all the pre-independence commentary allows Australian appropriation of PNG to go unnoticed. C.D. Rowley in his retrospective view of 42

Australia s involvement with PNG was writing after the end of Hasluck's 'reign' over PNG as Minister, and during the 'benign confusion'43 that marked the administration of C.E. Barnes. Rowley's

work on the country's political and cultural pain of change endures as an incisive, and often acerbic, Marxist commentary on the state of PNG, before and during a great deal of outside interference.

Its

41

42

ibid., p. 247. C.D. Rowley, The New Guinea Villager, A Retrospective from 1964, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1965.

James Griffin, et ai, Papua New Guinea A Political History, Heinemann Educational Australia, Richmond, 1979, p. 142. This was one of the kinder remarks made about the Barnes administration.

67

commentary provides stark contrast to the often smug attitude of Rowley's contemporaries.

In the first place, unlike many writers of his era, Rowley brings the reader's attention to Australia's place in PNG as one that should be

viewed against a background of other influences in that country. The coastal people, for example, were not thrust suddenly into the twentieth

century by priests, planters, or profiteers only from Europe. Some Papuans were only too well aware of the problems they faced from

imposed rules from outside. Slavers, Malayan and European, had been appropriating bodies long before the appropriation of the people's

labour, beliefs, and strategic value by Australia. His view of the relationship between PNGns and their various visitors also furnishes an indication of how Australians in PNG often saw themselves. The most intense and personal involvements of intruder, whether Malay or European, with New Guineans, and one which has been basic in determining attitudes on both sides, has continued to be that of master to servant... Much of the quality of the initial relationship has remained - of owner to chattel, or of the 'unit of labour' in practice as distinct from legal theory, purchased for the period of the contract from a Rowley's work is more a critical survey of the changing situation of PNG than a clinical narrative of events chosen to justify Australia's place in the

country. The author's view of the structures imposed by Australia demonstrates an almost visionary ability to see the end results. His commentary on the dangers of uneven development is written at a time

when few writers had grappled with what continues to the present as a vexatious issue, both politically and socially.

Rowley's visionary

performance is repeated on the inherent anomalies of an unequal pay system foisted on the newly trained PNG public servants, ramifications of

which are still being experienced in the 1990s. 'New Guineans in the

68

service will hardly accept with equanimity higher pay for Australians on similar grades'.45 Conflict arises, says Rowley, when PNGns see doctrinal disagreements as well as government attitudes that, on the one hand

profess 'equality and brotherhood', but on the other, don't actually do it. Rowley argues that in the contemporary political arena, double standards manifest as bureaucratic bribery and corruption, and are understood as

endemic. The results are massive inefficiencies in both long and short term aid programs that are designed to help the average villager, but which make their funds disappear into the higher and middle levels of PNG

bureaucracy. Few benefits accrue to people for whom the aid was originally intended.46 The manifestation of the conflicts Rowley foresaw,

most especially in unequal pay rates,are factors that continually affect the expatriate teacher experience. They are referred to at greater length in later chapters.

As the colony was shepherded towards independence, another open

criticism of Australia's place in PNG was being made. W.J. Hudson caustically and defiantly acknowledges that the space Australia took up in ,47

PNG was an imposed alien authority of the ordinary colonialist kind.

Hudson's view accords with the changing and perhaps sceptical vein

initiated by Rowley that became more common and open in the 1 970s. By then Australians were arguing vociferously about involvement in the

Vietnam War, had elected a Labor Government and, had begun to change policy and constituent views on White Australia and on Aboriginal rights. Given the new directions, the paternalistic nature of literature regarding

Australia's place in PNG was beginning, perhaps not to give way, but at least to allow for a changing tenor that could question the rights that 44 45 6

ibid., p. 60. ibid., p. 22 Biyth, 'Through a Giass Darkiy, IPA Review, vol. 44, No.3. Autumn, 1991, PP. 37- 38. W.J. Hudson, New Guinea Empire, Thomas Neison Austraiia Ltd., Melbourne, 1974, p. vii.

69

colonialism saw fit to take in PNG. Hudson's views on Hasluck's term as Minister emphasise what he considers the 'real' reason for Australia in

PNG, reified by the quotation of P.C. Spender's remarks in 1950 about Australian security 'demanding happy and loyal natives in the territory; therefore there must be development'.48

Hudson's examination of official commentary on Australia's place in PNG illustrates how, juxtaposed with the insistent and constant reference and rhetoric from the Administration that 'no racial conflict'

existed, was the

emphasis that PNGns could not advance without European (Australian),

influence. This same argument was crafted later by L.W. Johnson in Johnson's hindsight view of Australia's place in PNG on the eve

of independence discusses some of the problems ahead for PNG. But in the main, it sets down a record of the governmental occurrences as they affected and were effected by powerful Australians in Port Moresby and

Canberra. Johnson's view is one that virtually disregards any political influence that PNGns might have wanted, or had, within their country. The view emphasises Australia's implicit appropriation of the country PNG and underlines the explicit inequalities that marked relations between colonised and coloniser as PNG took on the role bestowed upon it by outside influences.

The Constructed PNG Since the 1970s, Professor Wolfers has made a continuing study of race relations that have arisen from the very real inequalities that were built

between PNGns and Australians. His works have a direct bearing on this thesis. In his 1975 Race Relations and Colonial Rule,51 Wolfers 48

ibid., p. 51. ibid., p. 54 cPD, HR 13 p 1441, October 1956.

L.W. Johnson, Colonial Sunset, UQ Press, Brisbane, 1983. Edward P. Wolfers, Race Relations and Colonial Rule in PNG, Australia and New Zealand Book co., Sydney, 1975. 51

70

examines both the overt and covert racism he argues is indelibly ingrained in relations between Australians and PNGns. The importance of this

study is in the connections that Wolfers makes between the racism engendered by the colonial mastas prior to 1975, and the resultant situation in PNG at independence which is, arguably, still in existence today.

Not only does Wolf ers' work point out areas of racist conflict within

white and black relations, but it shows how PNG's educated elite has inherited an ability to ignore many of the two-tiered standards that resulted from colonial administrative practices within that country.

Wolfers sees in

the self governed PNG of 1975 applications of standards so inappropriate, that although they replace racism, achieve much the same effect between elite and non-elite PNGns.

The induced racial tensions between expatriate and PNGn are also covered at length by Wolfers in the third volume of a study on racism in Australia that deals almost exclusively with the effects of colonialism in PNG.52 Expatriates, argues Wolfers, took until independence to realise

how their indifference to PNGn life and attitudes has been understood and remembered by their colonised servants.53 In a chapter on 'The

Citizenship Debates in the PNG Parliament',54 Wolfers illustrates how

parliamentary debates during the early 1970s were not only setting out a

pattern for PNG citizenship, but were providing 'important insights into the state of race relations during the terminal stages of Australian rule in PNG'.55

Interviewees for this study who were in PNG during the transition

period recall similar debates that were taking place in staffrooms across the country. Such debates were to impact markedly upon the lives and experiences of expatriate teachers, for many chose to leave the country at 52

F.S. Stevens and Edward P. Wolfers (eds.), Racism: The Australian Experience, Vol. 3. (second editions) Colonialism and After, Australia & New Zealand Book co., Sydney, 1977. Hastings, op. cit., had put indifference as the major factor influencing expatriate attitudes - he divided expatriate views into three categories: A minority of active ill will. A larger minority of active good will. And a great majority which is mostly indifferent to them'. p. 115. Stevens & Wolfers, op. cit., pp. 301 - 397.

71

that time. For PNGns, a further, and vital, facet of the race debates were that they brought into the open issues of identity, culture, citizenship and, importantly, gave an airing to years of pent up anger and frustration. In a much later work Wolfers poses the important question of why it is that PNGns seem to be little concerned by the improprieties and self interest of their various prior colonial administrations - German, British or Australian.

His suggestion is that the answers can be found in the telling of colonial PNGn history. He cites works such as those on Sir Hubert Murray's earlier

administration prior to WWll, by Hasluck about his ministry, and by Downs and others, as:

unrivalled accounts of particular periods or aspects of colonial rule [that] have often shared important assumptions, particularly of the propriety and long-term benefits to PNGns of colonial rule. Academic historians have frequently depended on them for information and, lacking alternative interpretations, have come to accept their views.56

It is here, perhaps, that Wolfers' telling commentary regarding the constructions of Australian rule, and its making of a PNG and its people

find their greatest visibility, and why those constructions have, in the majority of cases, been accepted by Australian teachers as well as their PNG students.

One of the few contemporary histories to come out of indigenous PNG is a palpable demonstration of that acceptance of the Australian construction.

John Dademo Waiko, the first PNGn recipient of a Doctorate in Social

Sciences from the ANU, presents A Short Histoiy of PNG.57 It is, ostensibly, a PNGn history. Waiko begins his account with geological and archaeological evidence, and portrays village life in his own tribal area

before the coming of white men and their steel axes. He describes the 55 56

ibid., p.301. ibid., p. 428.

72

missions and the labour recruitment, both legal and illegal, that took place across the coastal regions and how the two territories of Papua and New

Guinea changed hands from British and German to Australian. He leads the reader through the effects of WWll and the transitions that took place beyond and up to independence, along with a discussion on Australia's views on the strategic value of the Territory.

As with virtually all other major histories on PNG, the first PNGn Prime Minister Michael Somare, secessionist issues, and social and economic change are emphasised. But, unlike earlier accounts of foreign policy

from an Australian point of view, Waiko discusses the relations PNG now has with both its Pacific neighbours and the rest of the world, intimating that PNG is beginning to write its own policies for diplomatic relations and

change. Whether Waiko views the various policies he outlines as worthwhile, valid, important, sensible or merely policies that allow for the continuation of much needed aid support, is not voiced.

But there are

certainly contemporary contrasts to Waiko's view. Sean Dorney, for example,58 an Australian who has lived in the country for more than twenty

years, provides a litany of PNG's woes. These, he argues, are mainly due

to Australia's legacy: its Westminster system of government, a top heavy bureaucracy, and an immense lack of understanding on Australia's part of the embedded family system of PNG. It is a system that underpins all relationships in that country - social, political, economic and democratic.

Throughout Waiko's book, though, there is little that provides the Western reader with any particularly PNGn point of view on the history of his country, or how, as a PNGn he views the influence Australia has had in creating it. This is, to all intents and purposes, a narrative colonial

commentary similar to that of Downs. Of one hundred and nineteen John Dademo Waiko, A Short History of Papua New Guinea, OUP, Oxford, 1993. Sean Dorney, Papua New Guinea: People Politics and History Since 1975. Random House, Sydney, 1990.

73

bibliographic entries, apart from his own seven papers, Waiko cites only seventeen that it is possible to identifiy as works of PNGn authors. Waiko appears to have reconstructed PNG, and Australia's place in its history, using the building blocks given to him by the white colonial intruders and the teachers they brought with them.59 I cannot but view Waiko's work as anything less than a hegemonically informed reproduction, one which

makes the author very much 'an apologist for the men in power'.6° The period prior to independence and beyond its fact has provided a multilayered and occasionally diverse commentary. Authors go over similar ground concerning the advent of Australian control, the administrative issues, and the need for rapid social and economic development - the insistence on making PNG more like 'us'. Many provide final chapters that argue over the rise of first Prime Minister Michael Somare; his new Ministers, his handling of the early years of independence,61 the beginnings of decentralised, provincial government, and the associated problems of secessionist movements.62 The discussions engender questions as to

whether PNG was indeed ready for self government and, more to the point, how long Australia will need to bolster that economy with massive injections of aid.

Griffin et al suggest that Australia's colonial legacy has produced in PNG a society whose complexity is of almost Byzantine dimensions. This, the

authors argue, is due in part to the factor that

59

Waiko was a student at UPNG. Dr Bill Gammage, who set up the history course at that institution, suggested to me in 1994 that the work closely followed what he had taught during the late 60s and early 70s, (personal comment). Vincent, op. cit., p. 61. 61 Within Australia and PNG, another debate continues as to who can claim responsibility for the actual bringing about of PNG's act of independence. Hank Nelson defines this continuing argument in 'The Talk and the Timing: reputations and reality, and the granting of self-government to Papua New Guinea' in Donald Denoon (ed), Emerging From Empire? Decolonisation in the Pacific, Proceedings of a Workshop atrthe Australian National University, December, 1997. For example: Griffin et al. op. cit.; W.J. Hudson (ed), Australia's New Guinea Question, Thomas Nelson (Aust), Ltd., Melbourne, 1975; Don Woolford, Papua New Guinea: Initiation and Independence, UQ Press, Hong Kong, 1976.

74

PNG was not in 1972 a blank page on which new laws could simply be written but a table still inscribed with immemorial customs which sanctioned individual acquisitiveness as well as endorsing communal responsibility. Far from erasing these, Australia has only written over them, albeit indelibly, with the effects and, in the case of graffiti of her material missionaries, spiritual aspirations. Apart from missionaries, expatriate teachers in particular have shared that major responsibility for the writing over of PNG by Australia.

Despite the

minimal attention paid to the attitudes and experiences of these people,

it

is through much of their influence in the classrooms that the PNG of today has been constructed out of past Australian and United Nations policies.

The Education of the Constructed Papua New Guinean Although written some time prior to the opening years under study in this

thesis, W.C. Groves' 1936 Native Education and Culture Contact in New Guinea

64

nevertheless provides a relevant starting point from which to

briefly examine Australia's view of its place in the construction of the educated PNGn.

Groves' attitudes and beliefs about the measure of

Western education in the development of PNG impacted markedly on the pace of education delivery in the post war years to the 1960s. Prior to that

time, as the first Director of Education in PNG, the directives for his department between 1946 and 1951 were based on the four main principles of importance he laid out in this 1936 work:

Education must be employed as an agent of natural growth and evolution. That is to say, educational machinery must be part of the new native society and inseparable from it; it must find a natural place within the community organization and life.

Griffin et al. op. cit., p. 269. W.C. Groves, Native Education and Culture Contact in New Guinea, MUP, Melbourne, 1936.

75

Education must aim to serve the mass of natives rather than a select few; improving and developing them in their individual and their community life. Education must be founded upon native life and institutions; and to that extent be an agent of cultural preservation. Education must pursue, where desirable and necessary, a process of adaptation of native life and institutions in conformity with modern ideas and requirements.65 Groves criticises the mission approach to education as being too specialized and limited; it was predominantly for teaching their students to read and write in order to promote the missions' religious work. The alternatives offered by Groves for PNG were based on his appreciation of a Mexican educational organisation for the American Indian where, he says, the school

exists only incidentally as a school; it is rather the promotion centre of a multitude of community activities. And the teacher is essentially a cultural missionary, a community leader succeeding or failing in the measure of the community action which he (sic) is able to engender and partake in.66

In dismissing Groves from his post in 1951, Hasluck laid the blame for what he saw as the parlous state of education in PNG directly with Groves and his gradualised approach to change.67 Yet later directors, G.T.

Roscoe for example, would adopt many of Groves' ideas in their plans for

the indigenous student population. And while none of these plans so clearly set out what place a teacher might occupy within the PNG community, teachers would nevertheless be expected to have similar attributes that sustained missionaries in cross cultural contacts. Because of Hasluck's early intentions for a universal primary education for all PNGns, Groves' rural bias with an unhurried rate of change had to be :: Groves, op. cit., p 65. (his emphasis) Groves, op. cit., p. 78. 67 ibid., p. 285.

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abandoned. Hasluck was less concerned with the place of the teacher within the community than with problems of teacher numbers and building

more schools. PNG students were to become re-invented Australians who would speak English and understand the methods by which modern development processes could occur.

Despite Administration attempts to ignore the traditional lifestyles that were

to be supplanted by modernity, Geoffrey Smith in his 1975 study of education in

acknowledges the extent of traditional education within

tribal society. Unlike many other authors of the era, he writes of what he terms the indigenous management of knowledge as being, 'efficient because it associated learning with the need to use what was learned', and 'appropriate to the age group and related to local circumstance'.69

As

both description and critique of Australia's place in PNGn education, Smith gives a view that the impact of a Western education on PNGn society is not necessarily as efficient, appropriate or related to PNG's circumstance as it first seems.

But Smith's work neither examines nor analyses expatriate teacher experiences of their place beyond the PNG classroom and it sets a precedent followed throughout most PNG educational literature. However, Smith's concern regarding uneven development factors that tend to favour geographical population sectors in PNG is relevant to the expatriate teacher experience. It is here, too, that Smith points to other

discrepancies in funding, factors which, I will argue, have impacted upon

teachers' experiences and understanding of their place in PNG. As I have already shown, the differences between funding for 'A' schools with mostly Australian students, and 'T' schools with PNGn students and a territory based curriculum, were vast.

::

My argument will be that such

Geoffrey Smith, Education in Papua New Guinea, MUP, Melbourne, 1975. ibid., p. 4.

77

differentiations were a divisive element that spoke to expatriates about their place in PNG in two ways.

First, the Administration intimated through

their privileging of expatriate students that such children were more deserving of a better funded education than the indigenous children expatriates often taught. And, secondly, the differences in funding had a

profound influence on the experiences of teachers sent to remote and comparatively under-funded 'T' schools. In the most extensive work yet produced as a history of Western education

in PNG, Peter Smith's 1986 thesis7° examines the rationale behind the delivery of that education.

His work covers the provision of formal

education from the arrival of the missions at the coastal areas in 1872 up

to independence in 1975. As well as accessing a variety of Mission documents, archives and histories, the work makes extensive use of Commonwealth Government archival sources, PNG National Archives documents and the Territory of Papua & New Guinea Annual Reports to the United Nations.71 Smith's work is invaluable for its careful attention to

detail and background in the build up of an education system in PNG. He takes the reader through the establishment of schools by the missions and the various government bodies, and the reasons suggested for the recruitment and training of teachers as the various levels of schooling were established. And, although written from an obviously Australian point of

view, as a doctoral candidate with the University of Papua New Guinea, Smith was able to observe first hand many of the effects of Western education on a people from vastly different cultural backgrounds.

70

Peter Smith, Education and Colonial Control in Papua New Guinea 1871 - 1975, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Papua New Guinea, 1986. These last cited publications contain much information regarding the structures of government and supply of Australian personnel to PNG. But are not used in this thesis as they lack commentary. In the very enlightening.., we had to words of an interviewee involved in gathering their material, they are compile them [for the UNI and we were told to keep out anything individual. We had to keep them purely and simply statistical' (pers. comment, Kevin Smith).

78

Within his thesis Smith argues that there was little altruism involved in the rationale for education in PNG. Rather, he states, the overlay of Western political, economic, and cultural factors of education were instigated to benefit those with somewhat more pragmatic interests in PNG. Hasluck's determination in 1955 ... to spread elementary education in order to create a healthy, self-reliant people unified by English literacy and Christianity was motivated by strategic thinking ... The role of the education system therefore was to create an elite to inherit political and administrative control which would remain well disposed towards Australia72

Smith's ultimate argument is that education in PNG has been a means and

process of colonial control. He states the main focus of his study as being the place of educational provision in the colonial political and economic structure.

But Smith does not address at any length within his thesis the

case that the teachers' place must, by default or not, indeed be as agents of that control. He only briefly refers the reader to his earlier study on

indigenous mission teachers before the Pacific War, whom he characterised at the time as 'agents of imperialism'.73 Smith's thesis of colonial control and the consequent place of education does, however,

expand the context to the teacher place. His work is especially relevant when viewed against the political histories of Australia's involvement in

PNG. It also poses a pertinent question which I will return to throughout this thesis, that of whether, through their work and the curriculum they were required to deliver, expatriate teachers themselves viewed their place in PNG specifically as agents of colonial control.

Smith's work also raises vexed questions regarding the effects and

relevance of curriculum for PNG students. The questions continue into the present, although an answer suiting all interested parties has yet to be

found. The predicament, authors such as Mel and Weeks suggest, is in 72

Smith, op. cit., pp. 412 - 422.

79

balancing the constructed requirement of formal education as an almost magical entry into the world of paid employment, with the reality of a very narrow employment base in PNG.74 Coupled with such a predicament are

the social and cultural expectations that engender disincentives for students to return to their villages if they do not find employment, and the very real problems of unrest in PNG that have resulted.

The relevance of the curriculum is not only part of the argument for secondary schooling, but is also an integral part of the context of contemporary education that affects the experience of expatriate teachers

in PNG and all other PNG communities. On the one hand, a Westernbased, academically- informed curriculum attracts parents. It prepares their children for employment or higher education and tertiary study, and thence what appears to be guaranteed employment.

The PNG elite

demonstrate their promotion of such an ideal by sending their own children to high fee International schools, from where they are more likely to go on to academia and jobs, thereby perpetuating their own elite status. Yet on the other hand, the same elite promotes the idea of a more 'relevant education' for PNGns that is aimed at the underprivileged sectors of the

community. Such attitudes reflect Clignet's dilemmas of colonizercolonized relations which result in institutional frameworks that are derived from past colonial situations but continue to engender inequalities in the post-colonial present.75 Similarly, Crossley and Weeks contend that the

politics at work in 'relevance based' curricula tends to divide students into

academic and non academic streams, or achievement possibilities. These

73

ibid., p.5. Sheldon Weeks, 'Education in Papua New Guinea 1973 - 1993: the later development effect', Comparative Education, Vol. 29, No. 3. 1993, pp. 261 -273; Michael Mel, Mbir. A Culturally Meaningful Framework for Education in Papua New Guinea, Prospects, vol. XXV, no. 4, Dec. 1995, pp. 683 - 694. These and other authors have written extensively on the problematic situation of relevance in PNG's curriculum and the not so good results thereof. 75 Remi Clignet, 'Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't: The Dilemmas of Colonizer-Colonized Relations', in Aitbach, Philip G. & Kelly, Gail P. (eds.), Education and Colonialism, New York, 1978, 74

pp. 122- 144.

80

divisions 'can be perceived as restricting, rather than creating opportunities for upward social mobility'.76

Parents in the villages see the dichotomy in curriculum relevance just as clearly. They are aware that the elite groups, through the benefits of their

education, can access wealth and consumerables beyond the means of the village economy. They therefore reject what is promoted as a 'relevant education', in technical and vocational studies, or agriculture, seeing it as either second best or irrelevant to the improvement of their current lifestyle.

Similarly, expatriate teachers question the relevance of teaching

agriculture to village students whose communities have been successfully

involved a subsistence economy for some 10,000 years. Teachers likewise question the idea of adding nuclear physics to an already overcrowded curriculum in a country that has no nuclear energy nor intentions

to engage in nuclear warfare.77 It has also been argued that relevance of education is a major reason for the 'wastage factor' problems of student drop outs that are encountered by schools across the entire system.78 Students frequently drop out as a result of neither they nor their parents being able to understand, or agree with, the relevance of an education that teaches them how to stay in their home village when their aim is to access to the modern monetary economy far from the village.79

It continues to be the case, as Mel has pointed out, that 'the search for a national ideology of education seems to have been enveloped in the myths

76

Michael Crossley & Sheldon Weeks, 'Curriculum as an International commodity: Dilemmas of Relevance and Change', Education as an International Commodity, vol. II, 1986, P. 422.

Transcript 21, p.16. K. Gannicott, Education in Papua New Guinea: A Case Study in Wasted Resources, National Centre for Development Studies, ANU. 1987. Margaret Gibson & Wan lamo, Community School Relations and the Teacher, National Research Institute Discussion Paper Number 65, NRI Boroko, 1992.

79

Crossley and Weeks (op. cit. 1986) argue that the Secondary Schools Community Extension Project (SSCEP) stemmed some of the drop out tide. The scheme allowed for practical and academic work to be integrated into schools, offering a chance for students to pass examinations through productive work. But they also conclude that curriculum change is difficult to effect when poitical issues are part of the equation.

81

spun by the dominant powers.'8° Yet such myths continue to be

promulgated through the power of political expediency, despite the 1986 Matane Report81 and its concept of Integral Human Development.

This,

Mel describes, is 'a concept [that] provides the main-frame for the goals and strategies of a meaningful education system' and has resulted in

'much discussion of the need to make education more culturally relevant'.82

Whatever the discussions that resulted from the Report, my understanding of the curriculum presently used for secondary education in PNG was that it differed only superficially from that of secondary schools

throughout Australia. As I will demonstrate in a later section, similarity in curriculum is an anomaly that affects attitudes and experiences of

expatriate teachers. That they raise questions regarding the relevance of what they teach, often stems from their being required to deliver much the same material as they would in their home schools, to students who they come to know as having vastly differing needs from those at home.

The education literature from the more contemporary period that will be referred to throughout this thesis, as with Peter Smith's work, neither analyses or enquires to any degree into the place of the teacher within the

school community or in the wider society of PNG. Rather, teachers' experiences are subsumed by questions that, for example, Avalos has examined in educational policy and ideology.83 Other factors more

generally explored in the contemporary literature are those relating to the sorts of issues inherent in transferring knowledge across cultural contexts, such as O'Donoghue has identif led.84

Michael Mel, op.cit., p. 687. P. Matane, A philosophy of education for Papua New Guinea, PNG National Department of Education, Port Moresby, 1986, (The Matane Report). 83

Mel, op. cit., p. 685. Beatrice Avalos, 'Ideology, Policy and EducationalChange in Papua New Guinea, Comparative

Education, vol. 29, No. 3, 1993, pp. 275 - 292. Thomas O'Dorioghue, 'Transnational Knowledge Transfer and the Need to Take cognisance of Contextual Realities: a Papua New Guinea case study', Educational Review, vol. 46, No. 1, 1994, pp. 73 - 88.

82

The extensive impact of the pre-independence Administration and its Department of Education set a structural base that the present PNG

Department of Education seems unable to dismantle. As will be seen throughout the narratives that follow, the difficulty for many expatriate teachers over the period under study lies in coming to terms with a set of educational parameters they view as either not relevant to the PNG

situation, or culturally inadequate for the task. The dilemmas these teachers face in addressing the needs of the students, the parents and

their own employers, are built into their attempts at understanding their place within the disparate structures of PNG.

PNG during the time of the earlier 'histories' was not only home to the subaltern,85 but was subaltern itself.

and to by those who could.

Unable to speak, it was spoken for

In a classically orientalist manner, much of

the colonial discourse of PNG provides a litany of representations whereby writers seek to explain on their own terms all that is missing and all that is inherently problematic with the country and its people.

In explaining what

the processes might be whereby the apparent problems encountered

could be rectified, the works have had a twofold purpose. On the one hand, the explanations are the means by which PNG having been captured, could be controlled, and, once controlled, could be shaped into

the preferred guise of the modernity that was observed as lacking. The works thus contain an 'ideology of modernisation' that Spurr suggests has replaced an earlier ideology of the civilized, this newer system of value performs essentially the same function of classifying human societies according to Western standards of technological and political advancement.86 85

I use the term subaltern as expressed by G.C. spivak in her various discussions regarding marginality, especially in a third world context. For example, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, Methuen, New York, 1987. 86 David spurr, op. cit., p. 69.

83

The concomitant purpose of the rhetoric in the literature is its justification of the colonial administration's work in PNG and its place as purveyor of

correct knowledge. The knowledge has resulted in not inconsiderable social, political and economic upheaval for the people being colonised. The literature, in fact, gives both a raison d'etre for the expatriate teacher to be in PNG and rationalises their recruitment and, in some cases training, for work in that country.

However, as I have indicated, neither

literature from the pre-independence period, nor that of education in its contemporary setting, identifies or analyses expatriate teacher experiences of the space they would occupy in PNG.

Whether Western education functions inevitably in terms of the teachers' place being one of colonial control or not, and whether it remains so is

unclear. But there is a lack of knowledge regarding how Australian

expatriate teachers identify themselves within PNG society. What teachers understand as their place, how they experience that situation, and what they make of it during their time is explored in the remainder of this thesis.

PART TWO

NARRATIVES FROM A PRE- INDEPENDENT PNG

CHAPTER IV

Recruitment and Training

85

This chapter overviews the recruitment and training of expatriate teachers

for pre-independent admininstration schools in PNG. During that period, the education system was undergoing an intense structural formation by

the Australian Administration. In this chapter I explore the notion that recruitment and training could set conditions through which teachers might be given an understanding of the place they would occupy in PNG. And,

in asking if recruitment and training could embody the structures in which

teachers lived and worked, I am asking whether it could also construct them as agents of colonial control within PNG's development process.

Recruitment At the beginning of the 1 960s' recruitment programmes not all advertising

yielded the successes initially hoped for by the Administration.

Poor Response to Drive For Teachers

The number of trained teachers who had applied for positions in the Territory was disappointing, the Director of Education, Mr. G.T. Roscoe said yesterday. ... What we are looking for is the pioneer type. This is pioneer country. We can say to a young man, if you want an interesting job, a job that will give you a great experience and at the same time a job that will help the native people, come to the Territory. The disappointing thing about these trained teachers is the high percentage of women.... Women are no good for this job. The department can use them to teach in the main centres, but it must be remembered that an area education officer is in much the same class as a patrol officer. The officer has to get out and work among the natives, he has in fact to go on patrol. For this type of work we really need young single men.

Married men are somewhat of a liability as they prefer, of course, to be with their wives. South Pacific Post, 29.1.1960

G.T. Roscoe had received only twenty suitable male applicants for nearly one hundred trained teacher positions. needing to be filled by expatriates.

86

Adding to his difficulties was the factor that he wanted men, not women, for those vacancies. It is a curious sidelight on the period that despite Roscoe's requirement, large numbers of trained female teachers applied for all categories of the

positions available. One reason was that women accounted for a much higher percentage of primary teachers in the overall teaching service than did men.1 Yet in PNG at the time of the South Pacific Post article cited

above, white women continued to be considered somewhat of a liability in

most areas of the country. The White Women's Protection Ordinance 1934 had been repealed only two years previously in 1958, stopping the official penalities against PNGns for even looking the 'wrong' way at a white woman.2

Until that change in Australian attitudes towards 'their'

women, virtually all single white women in PNG needed to be connected to missions or health services. Otherwise, 'while there were some

occupations suitable for women in colonial society, the most suitable was that of wife and mother'.3

On the evidence available, it would seem that the very acute shortage of teachers in the Territory was the most likely reason for the change in the Administration's cursory and negative attitude towards female teachers. Despite an apparent concurrence with the colonial view that white women were the ruin of the (male) empire,4 the Administration took ample advantage of wives and mothers during the period of school growth. 'In South Australia alone, in 1960, women made up 70.6 per cent of the primary teaching force. Peter Karmel (chair), Report of the Committee of Enquiry into Education in South Australia 1969 - 1970 Report), Adelaide, 1971, p. 108. Prior to the Act, PNG men could be subjected to penalities of prison or beating, were white men or women to allege, even without proof, that a PNG male had paid unwelcome attention to a white woman. Rape by a PNGn of a white woman carried the death penalty. Jan Stoppard recalls: 'I had one incident where my light caught fire in the kitchen and I came screaming for the police line, but he wouldn't step in the house, in case he was accused of taking advantage'. Transcript # 11, p. 2. Chilla Bülbeck, 'Staying in Line or Getting out of Place: The Experiences of Expatriate women in PNG 1920-1 960. Issues of Race and Gender', Working Papers in Australian Studies, No. 35. London, 1991. p.6.

87

Among Australian women interviewed for this project were three who had arrived in PNG as wives rather than specifically as teachers, but soon found themselves co-opted into the education system. / was teaching and had trained in Victoria. We met through friends of the family, on one of his leaves. He'd done two stints up there [the Sepik]. We got engaged, he was going to do two years and finish. But he said 'come up Christmas' and five months later we got married. And then, because there was a school there, / was coopted and I taught, a year and a half virtually, with the Australian Administration at a Primary 'T' school.

Similar situations to that of this patrol officer's wife in a remote area occurred for the wives of businessmen and government or mission workers in the main towns.

The tenor of the Administrative correspondence between PNG and Canberra shows a distinct change in attitude towards the white female

teacher's place in PNG over the period 1960 to 1975. At the outset, the Administration's advertising asked for only a small number, usually two,

female teachers at a time, specifically for home economics. The very high number of responses from trained women forced the Administration into altering its policy, and in 1961 some twenty women were accepted into

wider primary school positions. The Admininstration justified its stance with the view that, due to the urgency for education in PNG, 'even if we only get two years' service out of most of them that is something'.6 By the end of the 1 960s there were over four hundred women teachers across both the primary and secondary areas in PNG.7 although, as with

female teachers in Australia, most were employed on a temporary basis if This issue has been examined by a number of feminist writers. Chilla Bulbeck brings them together in her discussion on making spaces for women in colonial in New Guinea in Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, 1992. Transcript #11, p. 1. 6 Assistant Secretary to Minister 9.5.61 CRS A452/1 60/3462 AAC The actual figure was four hundred and thirty six. Hay to Secretary, canberra, Statistical appendices 7.6.69, CRS A/452, 69/1 849, AAC.

88

married. Roscoe's concerns regarding the ability of women to teach, and

their safety in the country, do not appear to have manifested. The archival records reveal no reports of women either not being able to do

their work because of their gender, or of rape and violence perpetuated against them by local inhabitants.

But it must be pointed out that, for the

most part, single women in pre-independent PNG were based in towns or larger centres and all were kept under a fairly strict regime. As a married woman, / had no position in the school hierarchy. This galled me as attitudes were very sexist - feminism was a new movement in Australia... pretty rare in PNG.8

The rising number of female teachers did, nevertheless, create other concerns towards the end of the pre-independence period. One of those 'problems' was that with the influx of women attracted to PNG, which was,

'an interesting part of the world - where women were scarce!° the rate of

marriages among teachers grew. Newly-wed teacher husbands either requested transfers out of the remote areas to take up positions in the towns, or the general shortage of married quarters similarly necessitated a move.

As a consequence, a corresponding shortage of expatriate

teachers occurred on a continuing basis in the rural and remote schools.

I return now to the situation of expatriate teacher recruitment in general.

The Australian Administration's advertising campaigns that followed the South Pacific Post article ml 960 encompassed three differing areas of

teacher recruitment for PNG. One was to attract a greater number of trained and experienced teachers, either through open advertising or as part of the contracted secondment scheme from State education departments.

On another front, the Commonweath Department of

Education expanded the cadet teacher traineeships at the Australian

Transcript # 9, p. 17. ibid., p. 5

89

School of Pacific Administration (ASOPA) for both primary and junior secondary positions. In the third area, the Administration introduced a six

month training scheme, the 'E Course'. That course was specifically aimed at attracting aspiring primary teachers who, with minimal

qualifications, would be prepared to take up positions in rural and remote 'T' schools.

Trained Teachers 1960 was the middle of the post war boom, a time when Australian state

school enrolments for the entire 1945 - 1973 expansion period rose 155.9 per cent across the board,1° creating a shortage of qualified teachers in

virtually all schools in Australia.

The Territories Government was aware

that the difficulties faced by Departments of Education in attracting enough teachers into the safe employment of an Australian school were doubled in regards to PNG with its remote location and the expressed preference for male teachers.11

In South Australia, the point of origin for the majority of the teachers

interviewed for this study, demand for staff was such that the idea of teaching was often viewed as a 'last resort' profession by matriculating and university graduates.12 The Karmel Report into education in South

Australia records that, at the same time as student enrolments were increasing, considerable teacher loss factors were experienced by all

schools. Male teachers were moving: either out to better paid, more attractive positions away from education, or into administrative posts within the Department. Since women were forced to resign from the permanent

teaching service as soon as they were married, far fewer of them were at a stage of being able to take advantage of promotions prior to that policy changing in 1966. Promotion was often based on being able to take up 10 11

Cohn Thiele, Grains of Mustard Seed, Griffin Press, Adelaide, 1975. p. 216. McArthy to Minister, undated, cRS A452/1 65/5061 AAC

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country postings, resulting in many female teachers simply moving out of the service when family commitments made such postings problematic. So while Roscoe complained of the difficulty in attracting enough teachers

to PNG, the Karmel Report indicates that Australian education departments at home were fighting to keep their teachers in schools. In

dealing with the problem of falling retention rates, the Report mentions the losses as following a 'period of reduced promotion prospects',13 and

recommends that additional teaching posts with higher status ratings should be made available to lure qualified teachers to stay within the

department. The Report notes an awareness that promotion depended upon a period of country service, and consequently, location and 'geographical desirability'14 were built into appointment prospects in South Australia.

But the Administration's Department of Education in PNG

would also push a geographic desirability, inasmuch as teachers 'could anticipate accelerated promotion't5 during their contract in PNG and were

assured of returning to Australia with increased departmental ratings. Other inducements offered by the Admininstration signified to the teachers that there would be considerable status attaching to the overseas staff

postings. The inducements included an expatriate allowance, retirement payments at a contract's end, generous separation allowances for a spouse who remained in Australia, or a children's education allowance

should a family accompany the teacher. Additional incentives came through a significantly reduced tax rate and minimal housing costs at the PNG posting.

12

Trevor Urlwin, ex teacher and TAFE principal who trained during this era, made this personal comment. 13 Karmel Report, op. cit., p. 128. 14 ibid., p. 127. 15 Comonwealth Department of Education, Teaching in Papua and New Guinea, Port Moresby, 1966, p.21

91

In addition to open recruitment of permanent trained staff, in 1960 a secondment scheme was negotiated between the states and the Territory Department of Education.

It was intended that a minimum of fifteen

teachers per year be supplied to schools in PNG. The period of secondment from Australian schools would initially be for two years, with a

further two available but only up to the maximum of six years. The scheme was vociferously argued against by the sorely pressed state education ministers,16 but eventually the combined recruitment drive and

secondment scheme resulted in nearly fifty teachers from the total states for the 1960/1961 PNG programme. Two hundred and fifty male, and one hundred and twenty female teachers responded to the August 1960 advertisements for a secondment of teachers who were 'urgently required to extend the benefits of education to the native and other people of Papua and New Guinea.17 Given the incentives offered by the Territory administration, it is not surprising that

many more than the initial 75, foreseen as required for 1961,18 applied for secondment positions. Government records reveal that there were also

teachers who applied for secondment and were accepted by the PNG office, but were later denied the leave by their state department. In the

cases mentioned in the records, the teachers resigned from their state departments in order to accept positions in PNG.

Teachers taking up the many permanent or contract appointments available directly with the Territory was a matter of confrontation for the

various state departments of education. And if state departments were not enthusiastic about seconding their trained teachers to PNG, they were even less impressed about suffering permanent losses to the Administration in PNG. This was especially the case when the

16

CRS A452/1, 60/4427, AAC.

17

CR5 A452/1, 60/3462, MC.

18

Menzies to State Premiers, 2.9.60, CRS A452/1, 40/4427, AAC.

92

departments discovered that the PNG admininstration was advising

teachers of their home state's refusal to let them go.

The states

consequently insisted that the Administration stop the practice of giving

reasons to the teachers for their not gaining secondments.19

The South Australian Education Department fought as hard as any state office did to keep their teachers at home. Already committed to sending

more than one hundred new teachers a year to work in the Northern Territory, it did not feel obliged to make an additional contribution to

PNG's schools. The South Australian Education Department eventually agreed to a very small number of secondees per year, but by 1968 were clearly becoming highly concerned at the increasing number of teachers applying for the secondments: So / came to Adelaide and had an inter/jew. There were two men in the room - and it wasn't until the meeting had finished that I was told that one of them was an Inspector from South Australia. I was not amused, and I said so. They wanted to know why so many teachers were leaving, there were eight from Pt Lincoln at the time. They a/I went overseas - or to Alice Springs or Daiwin - but mainly overseas.20

Barcan, too, notes that the period from 1967 onwards saw a particular drop in morale across Australian state schools. This, he suggests, was

due to 'pressures of teaching, constant changes in school curriculum and school organization, and growing discipline problems'.21 Teachers who

applied for secondment postings were no doubt hoping that pressures would not be the case in PNG.

Training for seconded teachers amounted to a short induction course on

arrival in PNG. Ostensibly, the course would give them the new skills 19

Department of Education Queensland to Department of Territories, 6.12.63, CRS A452/1, 62/2526,

AAC. 20

Transcript # 10, p. 1. Alan Barcan, 'The Decline of Teaching in Australian Teachers, A.D. Spaull (ed), MacMillan Company, Melbourne, 1977, p.157.

21

93

required to work among people whose culture and traditions differed vastly

from those they were used to. Yet the course programme reads more as a manual of administrative functions and use of administrative control than as a means whereby a cross-cultural understanding could be

accommodated. For the 1963 induction course the programme lists ninety five lectures, one seminar, four 'educational visits', and five film/slide showings over the four week period. Of the entire programme, only

eleven sessions relate specifically to the peoples and cultures of the country. Lectures in educational administration take precedence over

either introducing the teachers to a world view very different from their

own, or, to the disparate cultures they would work among. Teachers being sent as principals to 'T' schools were to work with students who in the main had no prior knowledge of English, and over the four week course, eighteen 'English as a Foreign Language' preparatory classes

were given. Yet when compared to the sixteen lectures in 'Government and Allied Topics', the number of preparatory classes appears less than adequate.

The Administration's philosophy of control over the dissemination of education and allied facilities is signified by the first four lectures of the course: 'The Structure of the Department of Education', 'Administrative Procedures', 'The Australian Approach to the Administration of Papua and

New Guinea', and 'The Department of Education'. At only one session of the course were teachers introduced to 'an indigenous lecturer, Mr R. Kumina of the Reserve Bank', who was 'extremely well received and his address needs special commendation'.22

In 1965, although a shorter two week course was being offered, the conveners had added a seminar on race relations as well as a lecture on 22

Madderri to Public Service commissioner, 19.2.63, CRS A452/1, 63/1252, AAC.

94

'The Village Community and the Schools' provided by an indigenous participants. Yet orientation was still heavily skewed in favour of

administrative procedures over provision of cultural material. Overall, therefore, rather than the courses being a means of acculturation training, they were vehicles for the Administration to emphasise their operations in the Territory. I suggest that it is possible to see from such an emphasis

where the Administration considered teachers were situated within their

operations. The newly seconded recruits were to perpetuate structures of control set up by the Administration.

Emphasis on the teacher's place in education as an agent of colonial control was not overt, but the evidence from the induction programme is

quite unequivocal as to that purpose in the teachers place. At the same time as meeting the criteria for preparation towards independence as set down by the United Nations, the Administration continued to exert a form of control over PNG that would extend through its structures to beyond the fact of independence. Whatever lack of. enculturation occurred in regards to these teachers and

their introduction to PNG, External Territories records indicate that despite

resignations or 'wastage factors', due variously to disenchantment with PNG life, the perils of cultural isolation, and often stressful teaching

conditions, there were seconded teachers who attempted to stay for longer periods than the six year limit that was set.

It was a factor greatly

annoying to state departments who needed their experienced teachers back in Australian schools.23 As far as can be ascertained from the often

contradictory records, the number of state secondments per annum was as follows:

23

Some state Education Departments were particularly unfeeling towards those teachers who desired to stay longer. A comment has been made that teachers were treated very badly, the Departments simply didn't care as long as their numbers met the guidelines'. (Reg Skelly, personal comment, December, 1998).

95

Teachers seconded

Year

Teachers seconded

1961

48

1962

44

1967

20

1963

n/a

1968

22

1964

27

1969

58

1965

27

1970

n/a

1966

44

1971

19

24

Departmental statistics show there were still one hundred and twenty seven seconded teachers in PNG schools by 1969. Of these, the majority had been there less than two years and only thirteen more than five years.25

It is particularly noteworthy that all the seconded teachers interviewed for this study were sent initially to 'A' schools or to principal positions in large

'T' schools that had an adjacent small 'A' school. The teachers' secondment gave them an immediate incremental status few would have enjoyed so quickly had they stayed in their Australian classrooms. And seconded teachers' qualifications overall, as O'Donoghue and Austin

record, often took them from the 'A' or 'T' school classroom and into teacher training or other areas of educational administration.26 Beyond efforts to attract qualified, but apparently disenchanted, personnel from Australian schools, the Administration offered paid teacher

traineeships. The two schemes outlined below attracted applicants who participated in the interviews for this project, and who, from those traineeships, have continued in the teaching profession until the present.

By 1972, statistical records for seconded expatriate teachers and indigenous teachers were not supplied as separate figures, hence information on this group was not available for after 1971. 25 D.O. Hay to Secretary, Canberra, 7 June 1969, CRS A 452/1, 69/1849, AAC. 26 ODonoghue & Austin, op. cit., p. 309.

24

96

Teacher Cadetships. Cadetships for teacher training were available to eligible Australian or

British subjects and were offered at several levels and over differing periods of study. Applicants for ASOPA courses who had university

degrees could take a one year Diploma in Education course, generally

with the University of Sydney. Until 1964 all education cadets were training specifically for primary schools. From 1965, 'all new intakes of cadets were for secondary schools' in PNG.27 Hasluck's forced change in

policy from universal primary education to the education of an elite also

affected subsequent teacher recruitment and training. For matriculants training either as primary or lower secondary teachers, the ASOPA courses were over two years and ran in association with the NSW

Teachers' Training College. The cultural training students received encompassed situations not normally associated with an Australian classroom. I guess we did work, lots of subjects, 15 or 16 subjects. In the two years we did for instance ESL, it was much abbreviated I guess. It was very much like translating high school curriculum into a tertiay environment. We did things like Education in Undeveloped Countries, we did Anthroplogy, Sociology, three or four English warned the subjects, History, PE. Biology - our teacher in women about what was appropriate to wear and what was not, and about the dangers of white patrol officers, and you've got to watch out for them because all they want to do is bring young women down.28

After training, and at the end of three years' teaching experience in PNG, the cadets were eligible to receive the NSW Trained Teachers' Certificate. Additionally, the Department of Territories attempted to make the traineeships more attractive to applicants by suggesting to the state education departments that they might consider guaranteeing employment

27 28

Dept. of Territories, 25 Years of ASOPA, 1972, p. 7. # 7. p. 2.

97

to former Territory cadets after a six year service period, as well as crediting them with six years seniority.29

The remuneration structure offered by the Administration had certain appeal to prospective cadets, and is another indication of the level of investment the Administration was prepared to make in order to fulfil its requirements to the United Nations. There was this ad [sic] suggesting that they would train for two years, on full pay, which was very attractive, because teachers' colleges in those days were like five pounds a week or month or something ridiculous, no way could I go on those conditions. So this was to go to ASOPA.... It just sounded good to me, so I applied.30

That training salary ranged from £631 per annum for under 18 year olds, to £1,360 per annum for a married person over 21. As Education Officers, Grade One, they would receive salaries ranging from £1,320 to £2,130

per annum. The amounts also included various expatriate and living allowances while in PNG.

The two year cadetships for junior secondary teachers ran until 1970, by which time the NSW teaching colleges were progressively switching to

three year training courses. Because their services were so desperately needed, the Department in PNG suggested an external option for completion of the extra final year during the changeover period. It was preferred not to keep trainees in Australia any longer than was deemed absolutely necessary.31 During this time also, it was of growing concern to

administrators of the scheme that the teachers coming out of ASOPA suffered from a 'lack of experience and the meagre training of two year trained cadets'.32 They were putting at risk the quality of teaching in the

29

Assistant Secretary to Minister, 18.8.60, cRs A452/1, 60/4427, AAC.

30 Transcript # 15, p. 1. 31

32

Page to Minister, 3.7.69, CRS A452/1, 69/1849, AAC. Hay to Secretary, 7.6.69, CRS A452/1, 69/1849, AAC.

98

Territory's schools. Realisation came only later in the decade that more mature teachers, preferably graduates, were needed to correct the inbalance of inexperience among staff in key areas of rural secondary schooling.

Early expectations were that a high number of cadets would flow on from the 1961 intake.

However, the following figures from archival and

statistical records33 indicate a considerable number of resignations in the early years of placement.

Year

2 Yr Cadets Graduate Cadets Intake

Finished Course

Intake

Resignations from that year

Finished Course

2 Yr Cadets

1 Yr Grad

17

2

1961

58

42

5

2

1962

49

42

4

3

15

3

1963

28

25

3

2

6

2

1964

33

28

19

16

5

6

1965

61

57

10

7

5

5

1966

84

73

26

21

6

4

1967

40

39

27

23

2

-

1968

41

36

15

13

n/a

n/a

1969

45

n/a

15

n/a

n/a

n/a

1970

36

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

17

As is often the case with official records, there is no background reasoning

given for, nor discussion of, the numbers who resigned, beyond mention

of 'wastage factors'. The three teachers interviewed for this project who began as ASOPA cadets have all continued on as teachers in Australia,

with further qualifications gained since their initial training. They could not comment regarding teachers who had not stayed for the required periods

of service after training. The records do, however, indicate a higher percentage of resignations among graduates than among matriculant

trainees. This suggests that trainees who stayed on longer in PNG did so

ibid.

99

in order to acquire the necessary teaching qualifications for Australian schools.

Superficially, the ASOPA cadet courses offered a two year teacher training that would result in them being competent to teach in diverse regions of

PNG, with students whose attitudes, background, and lifestyle were based on assumptions distinct from those of young Australians. But I question whether the outcomes for graduates did indeed take account of

this difference. ASOPA cadets trained similarly to teachers for Australian schools; their curriculum differed little apart from ESL training, lectures in

Anthropology, land use and administration. And in the early years of the course, the ESL training underwent some changes. The entire course of ASOPA had to go to the teaching centres, places like Redfern and Gronulla and listen to ordinary chalkies who worked in the evenings with this second language programme with the immigration department. Not realising the people in New Guinea weren't literate. Most of the migrants to Australia are literate, they did have another tongue, but a literate one. And they tried to transfer these teachings of English to PNG as if the people were literate too. That's where Ken McKinnon had great influence, he was versed in educational philosophy and realised you can't teach a

second [written] language to a person who isn't literate in the first language.

The official view appears to be that being prepared for, and taking account

of, the PNG people's difference was not an issue. While the training at the ASOPA Balmain college had been developed to 'provide some sort of "Territory content" in the course of training', it was not deemed 'strictly

necessary since a well-trained teacher should be able to adjust his (sic)

training and methods to the requirements of native teaching'. And in case the teachers needed to be any more aware of the cultural factors of where they were going, it was suggested that 'as good teachers, the necessary "Territory content" could be developed at the end of their training in various 34Transcript # 2, p. 4.

100

ways'.35 The 'various ways' are not spelled out in the documents, although

the course did include a practice teaching component in PNG schools towards the end of each traineeship.

One reason I can find for the lack of acculturation of the teachers was simply an inherent lack of knowledge of PNG on the part of some teacher

trainers themselves. Much of the training was being conducted through the auspices of State teachers' colleges coupled with administrative input from ASOPA officers.

Few lecturers had experience of teaching in PNG,

which was an aspect that induced one lecturer to request leave of absence

in order to gain that knowledge first hand. In his view, Cadet Education Officers, with few exceptions have had no experience of the Territory or with native peoples before training, or during the training period of two years. They require detailed and concrete examples of the responsibilities they will be expected to discharge and the difficulties they will meet in their professional work in both technical and human relationship aspects.36

It would be inaccurate to suggest that trainers and lecturers at ASOPA were not aware that diverse cultural expectations and the differing world views of both teachers and students had to be accounted for, or that such differences might create difficulties for both parties in their learning processes.

But the expectations of Australian Administrators in PNG

were that accounting for cultural difference was only necessary insofar as it facilitated the processes of change on the part of the PNGn people. Hasluck was emphatic in pointing out that, in his view, the people of PNG could only advance when they were given the advantages of education, and that the advancement would be 'as the result of changes that take place in the people themselves'.37 That view was a basic premise in

accord with any colonial philosophy, secular or spiritual. It is one that, as

36

McCarthy to Minister, 22.8.60, CRS A452/1, 60/3462, AAC. Pearse to Rowley, 28.5.59, CRS A452/1, 59/2253, AAC.

101

Bulbeck has suggested in regards to the missions, will 'disrupt local social relations and customs'.38

Despite protestations of unwillingness to undermine a traditional way of

life, the dilemmas presented within the context of colonially-forced change can be met by compensatory justifications of development and its advancement of the people. I argue that the ASOPA courses, through a

somewhat de facto methodology like that of the induction programmes for seconded teachers, point to Australia's use of teachers as agents of a continuing colonial control. If the place of the teacher was to instigate change, then because of the very specificity of their training for PNG, ASOPA cadets were such agents of change.

The E Course

As with seconded teachers, ASOPA cadets were not all destined to teach PNG students, especially given the lack of secondary opportunities for indigenous children.

At the same time, primary education needs for

PNGns continued to rise in all areas and, as the contacted areas increased, so too did the number of, and need for, primary 'T' schools in

the highlands and remote coastal regions. The United Nations Observations in the 1960 annual report on education advancement suggested that Australia was not doing enough with respect to educational

opportunities for PNG children. In its draft reply to these observations, the Administration outlined its most recently created recruitment campaign, which planned

To recruit from Australia suitably qualified persons who will be trained at a new teachers college to be opened at Rabaul in October 1960. It is hoped to obtain annually for the Territory of Papua and New Guinea by these means at least two hundred extra expatriate teachers, a large proportion of Paul Hasluck, Speech on the Estimates, 11.10.62, CRS A452/1, 6/2499, MC. Chilla Bulbeck, 1992, op. cit., p. 179.

102

whom will be posted to the Trust Territory, in general to Primary 'T' schools, and should do much to improve the standard of teaching at the primary level.39 This teacher training was to last only six months. Designated the 'E' (Emergency) Course, it was specifically designed to supply expatriate

primary teachers to Primary 'T' schools, especially in remote areas, without a full two year training period. With the UN breathing down their

necks, the Australian Administration had neither the time, the personnel, nor the funding to go through the established channels of teacher supply for those schools.

The Administration set about looking for 'young men

who have something of a missionary spirit about helping people, they should be willing to be field officers living in native material houses'.4°

The advertising sought male applicants between the age of 18 and 55 who had achieved a minimum Intermediate Certificate or equivalent

qualification. They were offered a new opportunity to 'take part in the Nationally important task of teaching in native primary schools after [a] short training course'.41 And you'd have a fellow who'd been a bus driver or sometimes a worker in David Jones or Myers in Melbourne or somewhere on the counter for jumpers or anything. And they'd always wanted to be a teacher and they'd never had the opportunity - the depression, their parents couldn't afford it.42

Trainees were offered between £766 and £1,310 per annum during

training, depending upon their age and marital status. On completion of training their rates went up to the standard Education Officer, Grade One

salary. Trainees rarely came straight from school. Rather: 'All the 'E' Course teachers had a variety of experiences since leaving school and this

McArthy to Minister undated, cAs A452/1, 60/4427, AAc. 40Ass. Secretary to Minister, 13.11.59, CRS A452/1, 59/2253, AAC. 41 CRS A452/1 60/4427 AAC 42 Transcript from Harry Jackmann, Retired co-operative Officer. Recorded during May1994, for an earlier project on PNG Education.

103

had tended to give them a very mature approach to teaching... The

average age at the commencement of training was The first course of nearly sixty trainees started in November 1960 at

Malaguna Technical High School near Rabaul. Of the fifty five who sat the thirteen examinable subjects, only three failed their final examinations.44 In all, nine course were conducted between November 1960 and

December 1964, seven at Malaguna, one in Port Moresby and one in

Madang, the three courses running concurrently at all three centres. It was a NSW two year teaching course in 6 months where they cut out a lot of the philosophy and things and it was an extremely practical pragmatic sort of course. And I remember the person who was in charge of the course, he took us for English, but / never remember having any of the English lessons. It was always 'now if you're in the bush and this sort of thing happens, what would you do in that situation?45

On completion the graduates were qualified to teach only in PNG, but could seek further qualifications through entry examinations to the Second

Division. Such entry could be gained by external study or by taking courses in Australia on completion of the first three year contract. The first round of recruitment for the E Course netted 1,600 applicants by September 1960. It was planned that one hundred and twenty of these

would be ready for allocation to primary schools by the end of 1961 and subsequently a further one hundred and twenty per annum could be sent to PNG.

From what little information has been written about the the E

Course, Parr estimates that during 1965 there were 'probably about 300 E

Course teachers in the field which meant they comprised almost a quarter of the entire T School teaching force'.46 However, as a percentage of

46

Peter Lemon, in Papua & New Guinea Education Gazette, vol. 3, No. 9, October 1969, p. 149. Trevor Parr, The E Course, unpublished paper, (nd). Transcript # 1, p. 3. Parr, op. cit., p.9.

104

trainees for the courses were from mission schools or members of a religious order, Administration records which indicate approximately one

hundred and eighty E Course graduates in Administration schools during

1965 may be nearer the correct figure. Administration teachers numbered 344 over the four years, of which, despite the Administration being singularly unenthusiastic about employing women, there were 143

successful female graduates. Of these, 34 were Administration employees and the remainder were for mission schools. Unlike in the records for ASOPA and seconded teachers, the ubiquitous 'wastage

factors' accounting for any resignations among E Course teachers are not to be found in the Administration's archive files. Despite the urgent necessity for teachers in PNG, the structures set up by the Administration in PNG and the Government in Canberra applied standards for their applicants that went beyond those of educational qualifications.

In 1961 three applicants for the E Course warranted

special examination by the Department of Territories after referral from the

Public Service Commissioner. While all three had passed the selection requirements for education and ability, questions were raised as to their

suitability to the Administration on racial grounds. Although two were classified as permanent residents of Australia and the third an Australian citizen, the Department could not agree that they 'looked European enough' to warrant being accepted as Australian expatriates. Their acceptance as teachers in the programme was questioned. It was mooted that 'locally trained native and mixed race teachers, including any who received secondary education in Australia',47 might attempt to use these

teachers' cases to argue for salaries equitable with those received by expatriate Australians.

Ass. Secretary, Administration, to Minister, 10.4.61, GAS A45211 , 65/5061, AAC.

105

Such a censure placed on applicants by reference to their appearance has, I suggest, less to do with teachers' salaries than with the White Australia Policy continuing to influence what the Australian Government

viewed as the expatriate teachers' place in PNG. The nexus at which the expatriate teachers were placed was between their PNG students and the Administration.

The space allotted the teachers was based on race and

had a concomitant expectation that the teachers would position

themselves in a situation of status and control within and adjacent to the society in PNG.

Little else can be made of the censure, given how the

Administration was hard pressed to accept as expatriate teachers the three whom they described variously as 'Malay-Chinese' looking, of 'mixed-

race appearance', and of 'Jewish-Indian origin appearance'.48 The government accepted teachers who were white and therefore could be in positions of power and privilege. It was not prepared to accept those

teacher trainees who did not have the appearance of superiority to be in positions of power - despite what qualities and attributes as potential teachers they may have had, and despite how well received E teachers were in PNG.

E Course provides a cadre of experienced teachers with longer service expectations than seconded teachers. This reduces staff turnover and increases stability. E Course teachers have taught successfully and made substantial contributions to primary education. E Course teachers trained directly for Territory situation [and] better understand local teachers' problems and are better able to asisst than seconded teachers. Value of successful E Course teacher accumulates whereas value of seconded teacher with experience is lost to the Department on leaving the Territory.49

The Hon. C.E. Barnes, addressing the 1969 final assembly at ASOPA as Minister of Territories, said that Australia was recruiting and training 48

ibid.

106

personnel whose educational aims must lie in facing those most difficult problems of 'building up in the indigenous people the skills and knowledge,

the attitudes and energies, on which any State must rest if it is to be stable and independent'.50

Despite Barnes' assertion that 'the people of Papua

and New Guinea may have independence if and when they want it', the reality was that Australia was forced into pushing PNG's development

along as fast as possible. The United Nations' demands became stronger each session.

In 1965, the General Assembly, in Resolution 2112,

'called upon Australia to fix an early date for [PNG's] independence.

Australia was chastised for not taking sufficient steps towards full

implementation of the Trusteeship Agreement for New Guinea'. By the twenty-first session in 1966, the General Assembly 'deplored the failure of Australia to implement a previous resolution concerning Papua and the Trust Territory of New Guinea'.51

It was necessary, therefore, that the

Administration continued to recruit as many teachers as was feasible. The United Nations demands were for independence sooner rather than later, not if and when the Papua New Guinean people might see themselves as ready.

That the Australian government was prepared to fund two intensive recruitment and training schemes indicates both the seriousness of their

intentions for PNG and the pressures from the United Nations. At the same time, of the differing ways in which these intentions can be viewed -

development, advancement of nationhood, or political independence, none

suggest any particular altruism on the part of Australia. But they do, as Colebatch argues, indicate some of the panic that resulted from Australia's

Hay to Minister, 3.7.69, CRS A452/1, 69/1849, AAC. 50The Hon. C.E. Barnes,A.S.O.P.A. Finaly Assemby, 1969, in Australian External Territories, vol. b, No. 1, February, 1970, pp. 20 - 22. 51 Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Aftairs and Defence, United Nations Involvement with Australia's Territories, Canberra, 1975, pp. 370 - 372.

107

'unusual colonial policy' and inability to 'start any serious planning until the late 1 940s'52 with respect to education.

The recruitment and training of the teachers is indicative, also, of what the

Administration saw as the teachers' place in PNG. And within the

functional and educational administrative training, there is a further discourse. The administrative structures spoke of a space the teachers would occupy as one of status, allocation of privilege through expatriate benefits, and a certain degree of distance from the local population based on the teachers' race that was concomitant with their status. Yet whatever the ultimate focus and requirements set into the recruitment and training, the Australians whom Hasluck, and later Barnes, attracted into PNG schools came to their teaching qualifications from a diversity of starting points. During this period Australia's economic situation was such that unemployment never rose above three percent.53 More, it was a time

when schools across Australia were just as desperate as those in PNG to fill teaching positions.

Consequently, other.factors beyond the obvious

ones of salary and living allowances, and implied privileged status would

seem to have provided the impetus for Australians to apply for PNGn jobs. In the following chapter some of the elements implicit in the teachers applications will be explored.

I will also ask how teacher attitudes might

have been shaped by the administrative requirements on them, and by their initial contact with PNG and the classrooms they encountered.

52

H.K. Colebatch, 'Educational Policy and Political Development in Australian New Guinea' in RJW Selleck (ed), Melbourne Studies in Education 1967, MUP, Melbourne, 1968, p. 144. Craig McGregor, Profile of Australia, Penguin, Middlesex, 1966, p. 323.

Chapter V

Motives and Messages

109

This chapter explores the differing messages teachers received about what their place might be in pre-independent PNG.

I ask what might be

in the teachers' particularly Australian identity and background that would

have influenced them to apply for positions in PNG. And I enquire as to whether it is possible to define another message being conveyed to teachers - one that spoke about the limits of their place in PNG.

As a

part of this theme that investigates the expatriate experience through their sense of place, the second section of this chapter explores the teachers' initial encounters with the Administration schools and their classrooms in PNG. I ask whether those particular experiences either reinforced or

conflicted with the Administration rhetoric. Here I ask how far teachers were prepared to facilitate Administration structures, and whether they questioned any aspects of their future role as agents of colonial control.

110

Messages

A Job to Do in Papua and New Guinea To people who meet the qualifications for working in the Territory, good conditions are a comforting afterthought to their own goal of personal satisfaction. Australians spend amounts like $110 million a year to help New Guinea grow, but without the personal contribution of human skill and Australians are understanding this money will fall on sterile ground. already deeply conscious of this fact. During the Second World War, the people of the Territory answered Australia's call for help. Now it is the Territory which is calling. Papuans and New Guineans want to share the kind of life we enjoy, give their children the same opportunities, rise to meet the rest of the world with the same sense of confidence as we do. We can help them achieve these things. Not by money alone but through generous personal help. If everyone who read a newspaper made a conscious effort to be receptive of New Guinea's needs, aware of her shortages, then the staffing problem for one, would not be so acute, for staffing is an area where help is most sorely needed. In this world of increasing demand for knowledge, there may not be enough skills to go round all of the time, but if more people with skills necessary to New Guinea heeded her call for service just once in a lifetime, then there would be enough skills to go round some of the time. At least for long enough to pass on the necessary know-how. Next time you hear New Guinea calling, why not listen? Australia External Territories, Oct. 1968. p. 33.

Amarshi, et alt have suggested that whatever Australia might have been spending 'to help New Guinea grow', at least half the funding allocations in all departments in the Territory were swallowed up by the generous

salaries, benefits and post-service gratuities available to Australians themselves.

It is a view borne out by both archival records and the

interviewees in this study. Records of termination payments for teachers

indicate that on returning to Australia, those expatriates would have enjoyed a higher economic status than their colleagues who had not left

Amarshi, Aseem, Good, Kenneth and Mortimer, Rex, Development and Dependency, OUP, Melbourne, 1979.

111

Australian classrooms.2 An interviewee recalls that just prior to independence the arbitrator employed by the then Minister, Andrew Peacock,

negotiated the terms for permanent [expatriate] PNG public seivants to be retrenched. He arranged the generous golden handshake for four and a half times their super contributions, plus up to five years; pay.... You were paid one lump sum and al/your leave entitlements, and most people up there who were working, had enormous leave entitlements because in most cases you didn't take your long service leave, and you couldn't take your furlough. Your long service leave was three months in every two calender years and furlough additional six months after six years. So we had people up there with three years accumulated leave.3

Notwithstanding the generous payments, economic factors do not seem to have been acknowledged by teachers as the main inspiration for them to answer the Department's call. Certainly many teachers listening to that

call were less concerned with the needs and aspirations of PNG than with

personal priorities, but the priorities were not necessarily related to money. I used to come out day after day and see the jets overhead, all the time there were these jet streams overhead and I thought 'where are they going to - what's out there - what are other people doing'? And I think it was a for ten years, sense of adventure, perhaps a thing that I'd been doing am I going to be doing it for the next forty?4

Others sought to challenge the structures governing their positions in Australia. It was one of those transition periods when you could get jobs in lots of places and South Australia's system was very narrow. The inspectors were driving us crazy, they would come in [to inspect] and your chances would

2

Public Service Commissioner to (various) personnel, CRS A457/1, 69/418, AAC. It is not the place of this thesis to list in detail names and payments made to the various personnel involved in teaching during the period.

#2, p.2. Transcript #13, p. 2.

112

rise and fall over whether your class could recite a poem that they approved of.5

These memories come from teachers who shared in the culture of the 1960s, when, Alomes and Jones argue, Australians were taking part in an era of social and cultural transition, one that took them beyond the narrow

confines of the post-war era and 'stimulated a new and different nationalism'.6 They had just begun to challenge long held traditions

embodied by the Anzac legend. Less prejudiced, more creative Australian values were arising that looked beyond the popularised concept of a

particularly stable 'Australian Way of Life'.

But it was a postwar concept,

White suggests, that still 'denied the possibility that the cultural traditions of migrants might enrich Australian life, [and] also denied the existence of different 'ways of life' among Australians themselves'.7

The teachers of the period were yet to grapple with concepts of 'diversity', 'multiculturalism', 'ethnicity', and 'multi-denominationality' within their popular jargon. Yet the images of Australians were being newly created to encompass Australia 'as a sophisticated, urban, industrialised, consumer society',8 that was populated by more than just people of British

background. The children of post-war immigrants were entering Australian classrooms, and 'processes of structural assimilation and policies of cultural assimilation'9 were in place within educational planning. Perhaps it was the challenge of this migrant influx that added to the already mythologised 'Australian egalitarian ideaF1° that was promulgated

through Australian External Territories articles like the one above. Such literature encouraged applicants to subscribe to the belief that it was a part

Transcript # 8, p. 2. Stephen Alomes & Catherine Jones, Australian Nationalism, Sydney, 1991, p. 332. Richard White, Inventing Australia, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1981, p. 160. 8

ibid., p. 161. Geoffrey Sherington, 'Australian Immigration, ethnicity and education', Histoly of Education Review, vol. 23, No. 1, 1991, p. 68. 10 Craig. McGregor, Profile of Australia, Penguin, Middlesex, 1966. p. 368.

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of their Australian cultural psyche, and by allusion their national identity, to give PNGs the opportunities ostensibly available to all Australians. It is worth noting that at the same time as egalitarianism in relation to PNG's indigenes was being promoted, its practice was barely extending

towards Australia's own indigenous population. Although the government was being forced into examining the White Australia Policy, as well as

acknowledging the Aboriginal right to suffrage, the dominant policy of assimilation continued to be firmly entrenched in the Anglo-centred traditions that Aboriginal people were expected to adopt.

If an egalitarian

ideal could sit easily within the confines of a rigidly class, race, and sex

structured educational system of the time, it was only because assimilation was seen as justifiable and diversity unthinkable at the time. Such a view

would account for both an implied nationalism and an open paternalism that fed on the fertile ground of a PNG poised to be constructed out of the colonial ethos. / hadn't been a teacher before, so / went up there and did the E Course.

/

went up there full of the European, particularly English, idealism that related to wanting to help some other people. / suppose it was a racist attitude - I think we were extremely racist when we first went there. Any group, any colonial power is racist, in that they assume that the way civilisation should be is the way that they interpreted civilisation. And so I went up with these ideals of things like democracy, freedom, being able to make your own way in life, all those sort of things. Of course, behind that too was the idea that I would be able to contribute to helping the people to deal with Western civilisation.

Democracy and freedom as the idealistic provinces of the British had long been imposed on schools in Australia which, by and large in the 1960s,

were still extensions of the Empire.'2 Despite new found cosmopolitan identities, the majority of white Australians continued to perceive themselves as products of a distant England, and the motivations 1

Transcript # 1, p. 1. Donald Home, The Lucky Country Revisited, Dent, Melbourne, 1987, p. 182.

114

expressed by the young teacher applicants reflect that production. Their

appropriation of PNG by a construction of its needs reiterated the Administration dialogue. That dialogue itself reiterated the positioned and representational discourse found in the European discourse of the time and was used as 'a major tool in the colonising process'13 that could capture territory from a society constructed as unable, or still unwilling, to speak for itself. The teachers' assumptions reflect the constructions of PNG made by historians and writers of that period; that PNG and her

people were lacking in democracy, freedom and acceptable values. They could not, therefore, develop themselves into a nation with any sort of political or socially acceptable culture without the application of a civilising dose of liberal western education to make up the deficit. At the same time as they sought to change PNGns, teachers were themselves reflecting the ill-defined image of what might constitute Australian-ness during the period, and they were dealing with themselves, too, as occupants of a space whose own traditions were beginning to shift. In those days if you [a girl] came from a traditional Australian white/anglo family, you didn't move away from home, it was just unheard of. And I guess! wanted to move away from home, and if there was one way of doing it, it was perhaps having or finding something that would give me the experience. When I saw that [teaching position in PNG] advertised, I thought that would be the way....My brother had been packed off to Vietnam as a conscript... I told my motherJ wanted to leave home, she said I couldn't do that.... / could have gone to Uni and gone overseas, but this was a different challenge, even when I was growing up I felt different in

lots of ways.... / guess there was part of that notion that I was doing something to 'better' the lives of the less privileged. They 'needed' to have what our culture had, 'our' way of life. I don't think I ever had the headset that they were savages... just improving their lives, giving them white 14

man's education.

13

James Duncan, 'Sites of Representation in Duncan, James & Ley, Douglas (eds.), P!ace/Cu!ture/RepreSefltatiOfl. Routledge, London, 1993, P. 43. Transcript # 9, p. 2.

115

There is a continuing dichotomy expressed here, one that questions the mores of a customary background while at the same time promoting those

ideals as a traditionalism worthwhile to be passed on to another culture. The views are by no means confined to one teacher; in varying degrees

they span all the interviews collected for this period. The views reflect what were considered by the teachers to be culturally altruistic ideals. And

they were ideals embedded within a political context in which it was possible to be white, right and democratic all at the same time.15

Despite rationalisations that address attitudes and issues with reference to

their particular time frame, it is not always possible to assume that 'the colonial framework through which history has been produced can be transcended in a straightforward manner'.16 Present discomforts can still raise a perspective of doubt.

Reflecting on their motivations, the teachers

face that present doubt, and in some cases attempt a justification of their past attitudes. They suggest that they were perhaps encouraged into their overt paternalism through an overriding quest for adventure. / think / was definitely paternalistic but! wanted to be a first white person to make contact with some other people... A fairly naive reason. I'm sure that Australian attitudes in giving everyone a fair go has something to do with it.

Similarly, when asked to reflect upon their teaching, the methodologies,

the curriculum followed in the schools, and the promulgation of Western

cultural and social attributes into the students, the teachers questioned whether their altruism went beyond the superficialities of idealism and development that had initiated their original applications for work in PNG. We didn't think, we thought that some of them at least needed a white man's culture to succeed in the world, but they didn't... We wouldn't allow 15

John Kane, Racialism and Democracy: The Legacy of White Australia', in Stokes, Geoffrey (ed), The Politics of Identity in Australia, cup, cambridge, 1997, pp. 117 -131, Nicholas Thomas, 'Partial Texts' in Journal of Pacific History, Vol. 25, 2 December, 1990, p. 139.

17

Transcript#1, p.2.

116

the students to speak their own language at school. They were punished, and that's absolutely disgusting... I've taught at schools [in Australia] where I love to hear people talking their own language and it's easier to explain problems. We stopped our kids from doing that and it's appalling. We actually took away a lot of kids' personal dignity too, when / think about it. We went through kid's things, personal stuff. We insisted that the girls use deodorant, use soap, to meet our standards. We made kids use septic toilets without explanations, because we didn't bother to teach about coconut husks not being any good for [septic] systems. I hope now that I find a right model, which I didn't do in those days.18

But at the time there was a common acceptance that PNG's indigenous culture, by definition, was inferior,19 and that granting access to Australia's

culture and its language would empower PNGns. Such attitudes were similar to those being imposed on newly arrived immigrants who were

being inculcated into the Australian Way of Life at home.

20

There was no

need, then, for teachers to question whether their motivations were

altruistic, paternalistic or even monetary.

But in viewing what had

resulted from the colonial experience in a more holistic manner, and from the comfortable distance of time and geographical location, the same

teachers now voice their doubts as to the veracity and, perhaps, justice of their original motivations.

In which ever way they might be given some justification, the teachers' motivations can be directly attributed to the continuing colonial order that

existed in PNG. The order contrived a particular PNG to be in tune with the needs of the young Australians whose aspirations took them beyond the parameters of home, but not beyond the aegis of an identifiable context.

I was 22 years old, looking for something different and have a bit of adventure... My big thought was that I'd go for two years and teach in Transcript # 7, p. 9. Franz Fanon, Black Skins, White Masks (charles Lam Markmann, trans.), Mcgebhen & Kel, London, 1968. 20 Richard White Inventing Australia, Alien & Unwin, Sydney, 1981, p. 160.

117

PNG, get some adventure, see the jungle, then I'd go overseas, around the world.21

PNG did not even represent the wider world of 'overseas'; that was a term

reserved for the cities of England or Europe. Visits there, young Australians hoped, might strengthen some of the cosmopolitan

sophistication they had just begun to experience in Australia. What the recruitment campaigns did offer was the impetus for young Australians to turn their backs on the still humdrum structures of home. They looked towards an opportunity that offered adventure in the workplace, but not too distant from home and hence without appreciable loss of safety or familiarity.

Alternatively, or perhaps concurrently, it may be, as Donald Home

suggests, that this was a period in Australian high schools when there was 'no worship of rugged self-reliance nor acceptance of the ideology of free

enterprise'. Rather, says Home, most teachers' main active belief 'was hatred of 'the department', that employed them'.22

If this was indeed the

case, then the recruitment campaigns spoke seductively to the teachers. Should they consider themselves 'independent, tolerant and hardworking,'23 they could, by teaching in PNG, look forward to the satisfaction

of knowing that their contribution was vital to the development of the country and would produce an observable difference. In some ways you will find that teaching in the Territory is more demanding than teaching in Australia. It takes adaptability to become accustomed to changes in living conditions, food and clothing, teaching techniques, emphases and professional attitudes, and this adaptation is not easy. To be really effective in his [sicj work the teacher must know the cultural background of his students. It takes patience and determination to penetrate the

:: Transcript # 15. p. 1. Donald Home, op. cit., p. 182. 23 Teaching in Papua and New Guinea, Department of Education, Pt. Moresby, and Department of External Territories, canberra, 1969, p. 3.

118

surface differences you will find in Papua and New Guinea. Those who do will find the effort well worth while.24 In the drive to attract applicants from as wide an area as possible, the

Administration messages were purposefully ambiguous. On one level they emphasised a teacher's creativity and adaptability, pointing towards the

teaching of students who were different from those encountered in an

Australian classroom. The messages evoked aspirations of exploration, as well as evangelism. They were messages that offered applicants the opportunity to practise, on their own terms, some of the awakening ideals of democracy and nationalism that were forging identities within Australia.

On another level, the messages gave indications of a lifestyle not so far removed from that of Australia.

The largest section of the expatriate population is in the 20 -30 age group, and life is geared accordingly. Good facilities exist for nearly every sport including such less known sports as polocross and horseshoe throwing. Golf and yacht clubs will welcome you as a new member. Amateur dramatic societies are found in the main towns. Each town has its variety of clubs or hotels which are 25 popular meeting places. The Administration created a space for teachers that spoke in terms of new, alien and adventurous surroundings. But at the same time, the

advertising emphasised the safety, familiarity and privilege teachers would encounter in a structured expatriate society.

In his study of Australia's role in PNG education, Peter Smith26 argues that the introduction of Western education into PNG was a means of colonial control. Smith does not specifically name Australian expatriate teachers as

being, by default, the active agents of that colonialism or the subsequent

24 25

ibid.

ibid., p. 14. Peter Smith, Education and Colonial Control in Papua New Guinea 1871 - 1975, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Papua New Guinea, 1986. 26

119

channels through which PNG could be transformed to serve the purposes of Australia's own ends.

In practice, however, and as Carnoy's seminal

argument on education as a form of cultural imperialism shows,27 given the

syllabus requirements set by the Australian-controlled Department of Education, it would have been difficult for teachers to be anything but agents of a self-serving Australian colonialism.

Yet throughout the

interviews conducted for this study it has not been entirely possible to apply such a reductive equation to either the expatriate teachers' motivations when applying for the positions, or to any major part of a Rather, they

teacher's conscious reasoning in regards to their work.

view their paternalistic motivations at a much more personal level. They were going for the sake of the PNGns and appeasing their own desires for

adventure. At the same time, they could break out of a proscriptive educational structure at home.

It is therefore pertinent to enquire how teachers came to equate the Administration ideology with the actuality of teaching in PNG, and the outcomes they expected from their classroom practice.

In asking what

teacher reactions were to their new school surroundings and the syllabus requirements they were given, it is possible that some definition of their role as active agents of the Administration's colonialism may arise.

How

the Territory government further clarified the expatriate teachers' place in PNG, and how the teachers began to understand their experiences of PNG as expatriates within educational structures of the administrative system are discussed in this next section.

A New Environment Indications from the interview data are that most teachers who applied for posts in PNG knew very little more on arrival than the most basic of facts 27

Martin carnoy, Education as Cultural Imperialism, Longman, New York, 1974.

120

about the country. The prevalent level of knowledge of PNG, its culture, society and political situation was that, 'it was up the top of Australia and there were black people there, and we [Australia] looked after

— a view that sat well

with Administration ethos. Port Moresby was the first point of entry from Australia. Its expanding

population and uncomfortable climate intensified the teachers' general lack of awareness of the country as a whole, and made any choice of posting entirely arbitrary. / hadn't thought about it, but no one wanted to stay in Port Moresby. So when it came time to nominate a 'District of Preferred Appointment', / picked one far away.29

As previously noted, from 1963 fully trained and seconded teachers

attended induction courses on arrival in PNG. The teacher interviewees who experienced those courses remember them as a time of being more

concerned as to which school and area they would be sent to, rather than of learning about the country and its people. The consensus was that whatever information they gained came more through their immediate experiences than from the seminars and lectures they had to attend.

The arrival in Port Moresby on a January day... It was hot, it was humid, I remember I'd been there about 24 hours and thinking, 'What have I done!' They asked inane questions like, 'where would you like to go?' Of course, we didn't know anything about anything. I just said, 'The Highlands sound very nice, would it be possible to get a posting

I have argued that the induction courses for seconded teachers were an

Administration vehicle for extending its control. The teacher's place, while

28

Transcript # 7, p. 2. It is interesting also to note that in the 1990s, knowledge of PNG seems little improved. As an example, The ABC and even SBS world News consistently refers to either New Zealand or Indonesia as being 'Australia's nearest neighbour', apparently ignoring PNG's geographical location, or existence for that matter. :: Transcript # 9, p. 7. Transcript # 13, p. 1.

121

not overtly identified as that of an agent of colonial control, was nevertheless spelled out as one that had specifically administrative functions.

By 1970 the Department had reduced the inductions to what is

described only as a 'short orientation course'. Whether the reduction in course length resulted from its apparent lack of impact on teachers is a

moot point, but certainly one teacher who arrived in PNG during that year could recall little of his course. They just sort of took us around Moresby, showed us what trade stores were. It was really open ended. They just said, 'Oh, you've got that place, or this place'. The guides, or whatever they were said, 'Oh, we've

had about 19 teachers there [Western Highlands] in about 5 years'. So / wasn't very hopeful.31

The induction courses included familiarisation visits to schools in the Port

Moresby area, but the agenda did not always include familiarisation with local students as well. As one Course Manager's report notes, 'regret was expressed by some' that they could not see the schools operating because the visits were made during the holiday period.32

For the ASOPA cadets, attempts were made during training to provide an introduction to PNGn society through basic lectures on the cultural attitudes they would encounter. One or two lecturers with some PNG teaching experience tried to point this [cultural difference] out to us, for example the need to avoid shame in the classroom, the risks of amorous dalilances from the locals' family, not to show scepticism when students and parents talk of magic in regards to death, illness, cures, and so

But as this same interviewee pointed out, few of the lecturers themselves

had much field experience of PNG. Their knowledge, too, was based on information and assumptions passed on by other Europeans. For the Transcript # 8, p. 3. Madden to Public Service commissioner, 19.2.63, CRS A452/1, 63/1252, AAC. 33

Transcript 19, p. 6.

122

secondary ASOPA trainees, the initiation into a PNG classroom and the experience of being an expatriate came on being sent out on practice teaching assignments at the National high schools near Rabaul and Port Moresby.

I actually did my practice teaching at Sogeri, and while we were there we actually had that experience of teaching in a classroom that was PNGn and helping superiise the dormitories, and that in itself was a culture shock. These boys, no girls there, and here were we women, they weren't boys, they were young men, these were the people selected from their villages, it was the same when we were teaching.34

But by the 1 970s the education department was at least becoming aware

that there was a need to temper the culture shock by giving Australians the

opportunity to know PNG better. This same teacher recalls that in the holidays the young teachers were expected to go and stay briefly in their student's villages 'as part of getting to know where our students came from'.35

In the case of E Course teachers, their programmes were conducted in PNG, so trainees were gaining an early awareness of the country and its people from their six months of instruction. It should, though, be noted

that the majority of their training was conducted by lecturers from Australia, whose familiarity was with the NSW teaching syllabus, not with the culture

of PNG or with survival in the bush. The graduating E Course teachers soon understood that emphasis on survival, as they were invariably posted

to the most outlying and remote Primary '1' schools. Having contractually agreed to accept whatever posting came up, they had little choice in the matter.

:5Transcript #7, p.3. ibid., p. 15.

123

On the coast and outlying islands as well as in the highlands, the teachers were faced with a situation where the only means of transporting large or heavy equipment was by boat or air, so the E course teachers could easily arrive at a school location that had little in the way of facilities, equipment

or even housing to start with. Teachers' first encounters with their schools were tempered by the realities of the tasks they would face. / fell in love with the appearance of my first school when I saw it on a hillside from a bend in the road about four kilometres before reaching it. When I arrived / found the classrooms had wall and chalkboards, dirt floors and almost no desks.... So I had to get busy.... get some offcuts and make

Even the blackboard, I had an old one, and to get one for another class, I had a friend at another school some miles away, he had a big one, and cut his in half. An eight by four became a four by four for each of us. At one stage I worked out how to make chalk, because we didn't get any....

Official departmental information and booklets are illustrated with

photographs of neat timber school buildings, showing within them rows of desks occupied by smiling students holding books and pencils at the The photographs may have been true for a number of town 'T' schools, and certainly 'A' school students were always well accommodated. 'T' schools out of those main centres, especially in the

newly contacted highland areas, were different, and teachers who arrived at their location to be met with the need to firstly organise the actual building of their classroom knew otherwise.

Although none of the group of

teachers interviewed for this study were faced with that particular situation, there are both written and anecdotal records of such difficulties.39 Other E

Course teachers were fortunate in reaching their destination at the same time as their school buildings. 36

Transcript #19, P. 7. Transcript # 1, p. 4. 38 Teaching in Papua & New Guinea - Department of Education, Port Moresby, 1966; Encylopaedia of Papua New Guinea, 39 Hank Nelson, With its Hat About its Ears, ABC Enterprises, Sydney, 1989, pp. 190- 195.

124

One of the things the E Course [co-ordinators] did was say 'OK we put a person every so many kiometres, we'll put down a house and an E Course person in it'. This was a little aluminium donga which was virtually two small rooms, they could bring it in a helicopter or plane and assemble it there and get out again, that's what they did [for me].4°

The 'dongas' were two-roomed open-ended framed steel buildings,

originally intended for use by indigenous staff as both living quarters and 'T' classrooms until 'native material' classrooms could be built.

One

hundred and twenty seven of these steel buildings were constructed and supplied by Multi Span Pty. Ltd. during 1963, but invariably became E Course teacher housing because 'accommodation and classroom building was not keeping up with the graduation ceremonies'.41

Seconded teachers, on the other hand, were provided with standard Administrative housing, as were ASOPA cadets posted to larger settlements and towns. It was fibro, really nice, three bedrooms, lounge, kitchen — modern for those days. We did have to pump up the overhead tank. Later they had pumps. / ended sharing with two other girls.42

Whatever the structures resulting from the differing classifications of recruits and their postings, expatriate teachers could always expect to ultimately acquire accommodation and living assistance that was of higher standard than that given to local staff. 'There was European housing and native

housing' and if problems did occur, expatriate teachers were 'put up at the pub or the Club'.43 This factor alone indicated clearly to the newly arrived

expatriate that their space carried more privilege than that of their host

counterpart. For, despite often being far from their own homes or

1, p.2. Cleland to Minister, 29.4.63, CAS A452/1, 60/4427, AAC. Transcript # 7, p. 3. Transcript # 2, p. 5.

125

language groups, National teachers were not accorded the same

treatment as expatriates. Instead they were given a standard of accommodation much closer to that of the local people in the area.

Classrooms for 'T' schools in the highlands areas, out of the towns of Mt

Hagen and Goroka, were generally built of local materials. They were in the style of the kunai grass huts that provided living accommodation for many different tribespeople across the mountain ranges.44

Our head teacher, like to many E teachers at the time, he was always building, he'd do that more than anything else. Unless you had the infrastructure you had nothing, no facilities, so he'd get the classrooms built.45

On the coast in the hotter and exceedingly humid climate, most classrooms were (and often still are) built with half walls and an open top area to catch any breezes. This style of classroom was intrinsic to certain

teachers' first contact with PNGns beyond their students. Interested

parents might stay for the day, leaning on the walls watching their children learn English. It was a skill they understood to be at the core of the white

man's magic that would lead to the acquisition of similar living standards and access to the apparent wealth that all white people possessed.46 Only one teacher interviewed found instructing under these circumstances difficult, commenting that 'they were forever at the school, sticky beaking about what was going on'.47

I am assuming that most teachers, however, would find the

attention welcome: the presence of villagers was a positive means of

44

There are many classrooms still built like this today in the Southern Highlands. The huts are extremely comfortable, warm, and weatherproof enough to withstand the cool mountain air and the torrential rain. A weeks work by village builders and a classroom holding forty five or more students is ready. But with only a few side openings and a low doorway, they are extremely dark and students at the back have great difficulty in reading the blackboard (if there is one) while teachers have almost as great a difficulty in identifying their students. 46

Transcript#13, p.6.

Cohn Swatridge, Delivering the Goods: Education as Cargo in Papua New Guinea. MUP, Melbourne, 1985, p. 19. 47

Transcript# 15, p. 15.

126

involving them with school activities and the ever-present requirements of fund raising. We always needed to push our own barrow, there was never enough of anything to go around, even if there were things in Mt Hagen, we always had limited resources [at Wapenamanda School]. If you asked for 100

books you might get

10....48

The improvisations that were necessary to find additional student facilities and resources constituted but one of many differences between the experiences of the teachers working in established settlements and 'A'

schools and those of teachers sent to 'T' schools in remote and later

contacted areas. The question of whether such differences affected teacher attitudes towards their place in PNG among the tiered and complexly ordered indigenous and expatriate societies, will be discussed in a later chapter.

The teachers' early encounters with PNG gave them messages that were often at odds with what they had expected from the Administration training

rhetoric. The actuality of PNG, and the logistics of education delivery in the remote circumstances, brought about a change in attitude in the

teachers. Once at their postings they were left very much on their own to get by with very little assistance. Consequently, the teachers who accepted that 'Melanesians had many more skills or were adapted and could do things

in half the time and at minimal cost,'49 were very much more successful than

those teachers who depended entirely on Administration resources and their supply.

In the following section I ask how such experiences of teaching in PNGn classrooms could give differing messages to teachers that would conflict

48

Transcript# 13, p.6. Transcript # 2, p. 7.

127

with, or reinforce, the place set out for them by Australian policy for education in PNG.

It should be noted here that the following discussion does not intend to initiate critical analysis of curriculum content, classroom practice or methodological pedagogy in PNG from an educational perspective.

Such

analysis and discussion is certainly pertinent to teachers' work in both the

pre-independence and contemporary period in PNG, but is not within the parameters of this current study.5° There are, however, issues relating to

the relevance of a Western based curriculum for non-Western students that impacted upon the experiences of the interviewed teachers, and these will be addressed within their context.

The Classroom Expatriate teachers were well aware of how much practical change they were expected to make in PNG.

The changes would not only affect the

country's indigenous people and their future, but the future of the expatriate population as well.

If their work was successful, eventually

expatriate teachers, administrators and numerous technical and

professional workers would no longer be needed in PNG. So, in discussing what they understood to be the Administration's purpose in

sending them in to work in PNG schools, all the teachers from across the pre-independence period echoed Administration rhetoric.

During training,

whether E Course, ASOPA cadetship or the short induction for the

qualified teacher, the message from the Australian government had been the same.

50

An overview of these issues can be found in Australian College of Education, Educational Perspectives in Papua New Guinea, Papers from the Fifteenth Annual Conference of the ACE, 1974; P. Matane, A philosophy of education for Papua New Guinea, Port Moresby, Dept. of Education, 1986; S.A. Weeks, 'Education in Papua New Guinea 1973- 1993: the late-development effect, in Comparative Education, VoL 29, no. 3, pp. 261 -273.

128

It was spelled out very clearly that before too long we would be going for independence and our job was to make certain that there was a pretty solid system of education that the country could cope with when it actually achieved independence.5'

The information given to me was that here was an opportunity to pioneer education in New Guinea by teaching Western values and English language to unite the people and bring them towards self government as quickly as possible.52

The Foot Report and the impact of the UN Mission's 1962 visit was central

to teachers' work.

Primarily they were concerned with the creation of an

educated PNGn elite able to adopt the reins of government when Australia returned control to the PNG people.

Within that consideration were the

issues of bringing about social cohesion and awareness of nationhood, and the adoption of a Western economy that was expected to take the

country out of its traditional tribalism and subsistence base. While long term white residents bemoaned their fate in the event of independence, the teachers, especially those in the latter 1 960s to early 1 970s period,

acknowledged their time in PNG as finite. Their premise was that they would bring about their own redundancy by ensuring a cadre of indigenous teachers for the future.

However, the redundancy was to be brought about on Australian rather

than PNGn terms, and the 'Syllabus for Primary 'T' Schools' Revised 1962 edition reflects Australian government purpose in its construction of PNG during this period. As distinct from classes in the NSW-based Primary 'A' schools for Australian children, the 'T' school lessons were necessarily

patterned to 'develop the social background, civilised patterns of behaviour and hygenic habits which this syllabus describes'.53

In all its

Transcript # 15, p. 1.

Transcript # 1, Appendix of Transcript # 1, p. 1. Territory of Papua and New Guinea, Syllabus for Primay T Schools, Revised Edition, Department of Education, Port Moresby, December 1962, p. 1.

129

facets the syllabus was keyed to the acquisition of English language, so that

Primary School children of the Territory of Papua and New Guinea should be able to use English as a means of communication both spoken and written. Specifically this aim means sufficient command of English to converse naturally with other Natives and with Europeans, and understand the language used in normal speech. It means the ability to use this type of English, with understanding, at speed, and the ability to communicate with others in writing at this level.54 Acknowledging that in the Primary 'T' school all English had to be taught as a foreign language, the syllabus emphasised that in a//aspects of the

classroom, the instruction was to be built around the use of that foreign language.

Although the new syllabus was an entirely Australian

production, it was written in PNG for PNGn students. Some of the English language components were tried and tested before being added to the curriculum.

They placed me in the Grade 2, which was interesting because / had students from the age of 6 to 16 all in the one class. And it was the stage that Frank Johnson was writing the English series. He used to hand write them, bring them to me in the morning, / used to teach them during the day, make notations, anything that wasn't right - there was never any word that my notations were taken any note of.55

Concomitant with the acquisition of English was to come the acquisition of new attitudes and behaviours through the Social Studies curriculum. Through this subject, the students were given a new, and different, emphasis on right and wrong, good and bad, old and new ways, as prescribed by 'Western civilised culture - living in a nation, instead of a village, using money, Western ways of behaving'.56

54

ibid., p. 3.

:: Transcript # 15, p. 1. ibid., p.11.

130

In all, the syllabus covered seven standards, from Preparatory to Standard

VI, encompassing as separate subjects: English, Arithmetic, Social

Studies, Health, Natural Science, Music and Singing, Physical Eduction, Art and Craft, and Religious Instruction and Ethics and Morals. As the student progressed through primary school, the teacher was required to

replace the basic non-denominational Religious Instruction, as taught in Administration schools, with an 'Ethics and Morals' section giving significance to Western cultural mores over village or tribal traditions.

Whether or not the vilification of practices and behaviours that ran counter

to traditional views was an issue for the curriculum writers is not clear. But it is clear that a Western imperialist process was attempting to transform local culture through education.

Teachers, however, who were awakening to an understanding of the cultural backgrounds of their students, did begin to question whether or not the ideals they promulgated in their pedagogical practice were ethical, or ultimately, even practical. / got together a story, talking about economics, and it was that 'there were two people who lived in the village andthey were brothers. White people came there and the Didiman came, and said "OK, here are seeds - for

cash crops, you grow them. I'll give you tools, spades, etc." Two brothers got the same amount, same amount of/and. One brother sowed land, ploughed, got things, sold for cash, brought a truck - made lots of money.. [the) other produced stuff, sold it, gave to his wantoks, had a great time. After a year one had a business, one had got rid of it'. I asked [the students] who was the better brother. It was definitely felt it was the one who gave everything to his wantoks. Well, this was not the way to describe Western economics. I think then I realised then that this was the way things were going to be. And I had examples of that even after / left. Things get interpreted in their own particular ways that suits the country.57

It was their close interaction with the students and an acknowledgement of students' cultural perceptions that brought about a challenge to the

131

teachers' previously held assumptions. There were conceptual factors that needed explanation and demonstration and the teacher's previous world could no longer be taken for granted. Sometimes we'd show them things, like, you'd try and in form them about

what was going on in the outside world. We had one thing about temperature - they didn't know what cold felt like. So / took them all home and one by one put their hand in the freezer - much to their amazement. They had no idea of what cold was like. There were too many things that the local people didn't know about or where things came from.58

In commenting on the 'many things local people did not know about', this teacher, among others, points to deficiencies encountered in their trying to

adapt to a societal outlook that had not been accounted for by the syllabus writers.

The 'T' school syllabus was used by both local and expatriate teachers. For those with less experience and training, and in the expatriate sector this was E course trainees, the syllabus set out a day to day, week to week

programme. It included parameters categorised as 'prescribed, recommended and, suggested' courses and methods to follow.

But

teachers, both the more experienced and the E course, were finding areas within the syllabus which they viewed as inappropriate for local conditions, so they attempted to make adaptations to the teaching programme. / was so amazed when I got to a T School, because you just turned the page and actually spoke the words printed there. Particularly what the English language curriculum was. I think they wanted to make sure that there was not the slightest chance that the kids would not get a straight out official education while they were on the school grounds. Whereas I tried to stories, I use a lot of their stuff and I got them to translate. I wanted said you can't write about something you don't know about, I want all your traditional stuff. I told lots of fairy stories and traditional stories from other

:: Transcript # 1, p.9.

Transcript #11, p.6.

132

countries and / said 'Now your job is to write, telling me, about your stories, because I don't know them'.59

Teachers in pre-independent PNG were working around issues that still

continue to vex Western educators in developing countries.60 Then, the expatriates were attempting to adopt curriculum and pedagogical proposal eminently suitable for their country of origin'61 but one which they

questioned as being appropriate for their PNGn students.

The Department purported to understand the needs of the students, recommending that teachers made allowances within their lessons 'for local adaptation of the syllabus particularly in Health and Social Studies'.62

But virtually all the teachers could recall how the actual day to day reality of the PNG classroom brought home to them the need to bring more relevance to what their students were learning.

They commented on how

their newly acquired knowledge of the students' differing cultures and ideologies made them account for, and acknowledge, locality and relevance both within their classes and in their dealings beyond.

it did worry me van,' much that / only had two girls in my T School class.... I didn't push it because you were lucky to keep even some of the boys there... we were on the edge of where two veiy strong clan lines met, on the middle of our schooL.. I had to mediate there, between the children who were friends with each other from different lines ... I learnt from the word go how strong the pay back was and about the [clan] lines.... I had to drive one kid to school every day for two weeks, because of payback. One kid had put his finger in a coffee grinder and told his friend from another line to turn the handle, of course, crushed the finger. / had to sit down with both sides every day for a week. After that I had to take him to Hagen Hospital every day fortwo weeks to make sure he was Transcript # 8, p. 6. Thomas O'Donoghue, 'Transnational Knowledge Transfer and the Need to Take cognisance of Contextual Realities: a Papua New Guinea case study', Educational Review, Vol. 46, No. 1, 1994, pp. 73 - 88. 61 ibid., p. 74. 62 Territory of Papua and New Guinea, Syllabus, op. cit., p. 2. The Department graded contacted peoples into four groups depending upon what was perceived as their level of sophistication in the European sense: Primitive, Rural, Semi-urban and Urban. 63 Transcript # 9, p. 5

133

The learning was unfolding as a two way process, for in confronting that there was validity in the concepts held by their PNG students, teachers were accepting a need to adjust their own approach to local situations.

From the evidence it would seem that while teachers were following

Administration requirements and inculcating Western knowledges and

ideals of nationhood, many did attempt to accommodate local attitudes and traditions at the same time. It is impossible to refute that teachers

were agents of Australian colonial control, but there is, nevertheless, an indication that these primary school teachers were questioning aspects of

their role. They were not prepared to accept, either passively or completely, the place designated for them by the Administration. Right from the beginning. I was wondering about it. I just consoled myself with thinking that / tried to give them a view that they're not the only country in the world ... Different commodities and mechanisms for manufacturing. 'You make this by hand, others have machines to make similar things'. 'Lots of cars, roads'. And then say to them 'You people, children, are going to be making decisions when you grow up, as to how your country will develop, what your country is going to become, Are you going to stay hidden or what are you going to alter?' We used to have discussions like that. 'If one group of people gets smarter than you, you're going to be at a disadvantage, how do you ensure it's al/going to turn out fair?' We discussed that a lot.

Those teachers posted to the few pre-independent secondary schools who were interviewed for this study remember different encounters with the culture of their PNGn students.

By secondary school the students were

relatively proficient in English language usage and had been inculcated into the structures and systems of Western knowledge acquisition.

Such

students were members of an elite minority able to access the relatively

scant places available in the Administration secondary system. All 64

Transcript # 11, p. 7.

134

expected that they would, without fail, move into the paid workforce, eventually replacing the expatriate population in teaching, administrative and business positions.

Indeed, in the early part of the period under

review, such was the case for many who had only a completed primary education as a I suggest that it may be because of the comparatively sophisticated

outlook of the secondary students and their acquisition of language skills, that expatriate secondary teachers appeared to be less questioning than their primary colleagues were of the curriculum they presented to the students.

It is only in light of the present, and the questions raised with

them, that these expatriate teachers interrogate the system they were expected to uphold. / had a book, an exercise book I'd kept, from a girl who came from the It had New Zealand wool economy, nothing to do with back of where she came from, her village or the economy of PNG. In retrospect when you look back at what mining companies have done, to PNG, then we should have been teaching them about what mining companies get up to, and how they need to protect themselves and their environment from

mining companies. In the area around Tabubil where they've just one of the subjects / always had to teach was destroyed things agriculture, you know, we used to teach them the white man's ways, we never asked them about their way of doing things. The interesting thing was, we'd get tins of seeds, and we'd grow sweet corn, and things, and the kids would always make sure that they kept some of the seeds and they would go back to their village or corners, their relations. They were consummate gardeners and here we were teaching them

The evidence certainly indicates that teachers were the means by which the imperialism within Australia's actions regarding PNG could be

addressed, reproduced and entrenched. But in acknowledging some disquiet with the Administration's ideology of change and the over-writing

65

This situation did not last, 'the white man's education', even to a good matriculation, can no longer paid employment in PNG. Transcript # 7, p. 5

135

of indigenous culture that was expected of them, teachers show they were not complacent about their role and that they were prepared to question their place in the cultural transmission process they were engendering. There were, however, facets of the Australian colony's administrative structure that went beyond schools and classroom interactions with

students. Whether teachers questioned the expatriate status they enjoyed within that structure is the subject of the next chapter.

CHAPTER VI

'I sensed no animosity'

136

This chapter explores the ways in which teachers in the pre-independent

period negotiated their place among various PNGn communities. In looking beyond the school to teachers' relations with the broader expatriate society, I first examine how that society was constituted, and

whether it could influence teachers' perceptions of their place in PNG.

I

then return to the site of the school to inquire into relations in the staff room between expatriate and local colleagues.

In asking about the different

modes of interaction that teachers experienced, the question arises as to whether teachers' encounters, and the spaces they made for themselves by those encounters, were congruent with the place created for them by the Australian Administration.

An Expatriate's Place? In the 1960s, expatriate teachers arrived to a PNG that was still virtually an outpost of empire. Australian rather than British, the country nevertheless evinced all the trappings of an imperial posting,1 where

predictions for PNG's independent future were contained within antigovernment and often discriminatory rhetoric.

D.G. Bettinson, Racial Tensions in Papua-New Guinea in Fisk, E. .K. (ed), Educating for Tomorrow, F.W. Cheshire, Melbourne, 1963.

137

Fifty Years Not Enough Says Retiring D.C. There is little chance of Territory natives taking over and running their own affairs, "even in the next fifty years", retiring District Commissioner for the Central District, Mr. F.A. Champion, said when he left Port Moresby this week. Mr. Champion said .. .."There will be a lot of progress during the years to come but I just can't see the natives taking over from the Europeans completely - not even in the next fifty years".... Mr. C.P. W. Kirke, Chairman of the Port Moresby Town Advisory Council, said, "... As far as one can derive any information from the Federal Government's policy as regards this country and the native people and the immigrants, [expatriates] it would seem to be the Government's firm intention to hand over the country to the natives. "I cannot agree that this is a wise policy or a necessary one." South Pacific Post, 29 January, 1960.

It has frequently been remarked that the war in PNG completely

changed expatriate attitudes towards the indigenous people, and that the event was 'a watershed in the history of Papua and New Guinea.' Bulbeck, citing this description, suggests rather, that 'the war, in its

disruption to traditional lifestyles and authority relations, encouraged

alternative visions of the future'.2 Those alternative visions pressured Australia to prepare PNG for independence, a policy dismaying the long-established expatriate planters and business people who feared a loss of their profits, as well as a loss of their

status. They considered that their contribution to the country had done more than any government department to bring PNG into any economically viable position.3

That economic benefits were accruing mainly to those private, mostly

European or Chinese, individuals and not to the local population was not 2

Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea: Colonial Passages 1920 -1960, CUP, Cambridge, 1992, p. 160.

138

discussed in the South Pacific Post, although other voices from Australia were soon to discuss the situation more critically.4 As well as

discrimination in economic terms, up to the introduction of The Discriminatory Practices Ordinance (1963) discriminatory practices towards PNGns at all levels were legally acceptable.

It had been common

practice until then to refer to the indigenous population as 'the natives', in order to set them apart from any expatriate.5

The Ordinance ostensibly

changed that practice, making it illegal to separately govern what 'the natives' could do, where they could go, and even what they could wear. Nevertheless, discrimination, whether overt, covert, or unrealised, remained.6

As will be explored below, relationships between expatriate teachers and other social and cultural communities of PNG continued to be regulated by

established expatriate norms rather than those of the host country. This chapter, however, is mostly concerned with teachers' understanding of themselves as expatriates and their subsequent relationships with other sectors of PNG's communities. It is pertinent at this point, therefore, to

discuss briefly the question of what constituted an expatriate during the period under discussion.

'Expatriate' in a modern human resource terminology, alludes to personnel from a foreign country who are providing skills and expertise

otherwise not available in the host country. Contemporary expatriates are

3

Don Hogg, 'The Australians', New Guinea andAustralia, the Pacific and South-East Asia, Vol. 4, September/October, 1969, PP. 12 - 17. eg. Peter Hastings, New Guinea, Problems and Prospects (Second edition), Cheshire, Melbourne, 1975. 5

It is a comment on changes that occur to what is considered acceptable language usage that during interviews with the teachers, those who were in PNG prior to independence often, and unhesitatingly, referred to PNGns as the natives. The teachers who have worked in PNG during the contemporary period, myself included, never, either in conversation or in interview, use the term, always referring rather to 'locals', 'Nationals, or 'Papua New Guineans'.

Hank Nelson, Taim Biong Masta (2nd edition), 1990, Chapter 20, 'Across the Barriers', provides a telling example of the ambiguities of white attitudes versus accepted law during this changeover period.

139

widely described as part of a privileged visitor sector of the workforce,

generally receiving higher salaries and living in better conditions than host

country workers.7 So, unlike the exile, refugee or immigrant, the expatriate has not, as the word might suggest, been ex-patriated. 'Expatriates voluntarily live in an alien country, usually for personal or social reasons, and while they may share in the solitude and estrangement of exile, they do not suffer under its rigid proscriptions.'8

The current literature on expatriatism is primarily commercial in orientation,

and centres around expatriate management and personnel, generally from Western or Westernised countries such as the United States, Europe, Australia and Japan.9 The studies are of today's Australian expatriate workers, and focus narrowly on the methodologies and strategies of human resource management and the provision of the Australian manager as expert.1°

Being expatriate, as experienced by earlier Australian teachers under PNG's Australian Administration, does not come under the aegis of the

above literature. The discussion here is better served by the wider parameters of Cohen's authoritative 1977 monograph, 'Expatriate Communities'.'1 His analysis of expatriatism as a phenomenon sets out to

'conceptualize expatriates and expatriate communities as generic types of

7

N. Munro, Expatriates in Papua New Guinea With Special Reference to the Filipinos. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of New South wales, 1991. Edward Said, Reflections on Exile' in Russell Ferguson, et al (eds.), Out There: Marginalization and Contemporaty Cultures, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1990, p. 362. For example, Brian Sheehan, The Expatriate Executive Overseas - Adjusting to New Cultural Experiences. Occasional Paper No. 24, School of Business, Phillip Institute of Technology, Coburg, 1992; Mendenhall & Oddou, The Dimensions of Expatriate Acculturation: A Review, Academy of Management Review, vol. 10, No. 1, 1985, pp. 39-47; Stenning & Mitchell, Cultural Baggage and the Adaptation of Expatriate American and Japanese Managers', Management International Review, vol. 32, No. 1, 1992, pp. 77-89. Barbara Anderson, 'Expatriate Management in Australia', Paper at Australia & New Zealand International Business Academy Conference, 1998, University of Melbourne. E. Cohen, 'Expatriate Communities', Current Sociology, vol. 24, No. 3, 1977, pp. 1-133.

140

migrant minorities and minority communities'.12 Although dated, Cohen's

analysis documents a set of common characteristics to which, even current literature still suggests, all expatriate communities might claim

some identification. The expatriates who have lived and worked in PNG over the years since 1960 to independence in 1975 are no exception.

Cohen's conclusions, summarised below, supply markers to assist an interrogation of the teachers' place during that period.

Firstly, Cohen argues, expatriates are more likely to be representatives of government or government agencies, and their organisational attachments are a major influence on their behaviour.

Second, as expatriate

communities they 'carve out for themselves an ecological sub-system of

their own' which, though not necessarily a geographically separate area, serves to segregate the expatriate community from the host society.

Thirdly, Cohen suggests that the segregated communities develop, or are endowed with, an institutional system of their own, and they tend to exist in an 'environmental bubble' that provides familiarity within the strangeness of the host society. Within the 'bubble' they have autonomous and

interdependent relations between work, family, and consumption services. The expatriate community is consequently socially closed and exclusive, because any other of their interactions are mainly across national boundaries with other expatriates or, in rare cases, with local elites. Informal social interaction with non-elite natives are rare.

The fourth point Cohen makes is that because of their history and high status, and generally higher than local pay, expatriates often engender

resentment from younger, radical (educated) elite members. The final point he makes is that because they are so transient, expatriates have

12

ibid., p. 76.

141

little incentive to establish relations with host members or to adapt to the host country's cultures.13

Being Expatriate Teachers Teachers' experiences and interrelations with PNG prior to 1975 were mediated to a very great degree by their organisational attachment to the structures that comprised the Australian Administration and its comparatively large expatriate community.

The greater the number of

expatriates, the more the spatial segregation is exacerbated.

For the

expatriates of pre-independent PNG, their numbers both allowed and encouraged expatriates to enjoy an existence within a 'bubble' that provided familiarity within the strangeness of their, host country.

During

that period, despite Australia's long standing involvement with PNG, the country still functioned on the basis of two well defined societies.14 The

demarcation extended from domestic and administration salary scales and working conditions through to the availability of goods and services that

were beyond the reach of ordinary PNGns. The recruitment and training of teachers had emphasised that

demarcation. As has been pointed out in Chapter IV, teachers were more carefully schooled in administrative structures and the means of

perpetuating their conditions than they were in breaking down or crossing over any barriers between cultures.

It would seem that the most

particularly defined, and ambiguously defended, function within the artifice of the environmental bubble in PNG has been that of the social system. Prior to PNG's independence, nowhere was this more evident than at The Club.

ibid., pp. 77-8 As has been previously acknowledged, within PNG several hundred well defined societies have existed for many centuries. The remark here was intended to define the two separated black and white communities, rather than the many and varied language based traditional societies of PNG. 14

142

Friday night was a tradition, everybody went to whatever the premium club was in that particular town, whether RSL, the Golf Club, or whatever. Friday night everybody met at the club and you ended up at a restaurant, or somebody's house. There was this wonderful feeling of camaraderie, you were all great friends together, even though as individuals, you were so different. But you were forced there to live and mix together, if you didn't

you had a very boring

life.15

'The Club', with its almost total exclusion of non-whites, echoed the days of the British Empire in India. It served to increase the separation of the two cultures through its apparatus of protection against the implicit dangers of PNG's strangeness.

In PNG there was a club in every town

and every settlement where there were expatriates.

Non-local teachers

were quickly integrated into this place of connection with their homeland where few, if any, PNGn5 were ever welcome.

For the many single

teachers who lived alone or did not enjoy the same standard of housing as married staff, or did not have another expatriate to share their home with,

that cultural isolation was a palpable reality. The club constituted a major point of contact and protection against the perceived rigours of cultural isolation.

Yet even in the club's segregated, particularly expatriate, place there existed a range of attitudes towards the host country that acted to separate individuals.

Within the confines of that environmental bubble they divided

themselves off into accepted and acceptable stratifications, for it was still a time when 'the social structure was clearly defined' in expatriate society.16

Those teachers who had more contact with PNGn students and their families tended to have more difficulty in coming to terms with the personification of the social structure.

15, p.4. Hogg, op. cit. p. 15.

143

I made sure / didn't mix, because I know, particularly at the Banz Club, there were people / didn't want to know, and I'm sure they were very racist. And / did hear stories about people, English from India, who treated their workers atrociously, and most didn't approve at all.17

Sheehan's study of urban expatriate attitudes in PNG in the 1960s18 suggests that a higher concentration of expatriates tended to exacerbate their segregating and discriminatory practices. Race relations are worst in towns like Port Moresby where insoluble problems of urban and emergent New Guinea are concentrated.... the discrimination practised by expatriates may be infrequent and by a small sector, but the damage is such that the more sympathetic expatriates cannot hope to repair it.19

Teachers in other areas of higher expatriate population beyond even Port Moresby were caught between the demands of two well defined structures.

On the one hand was their educational organisation and teachers' understanding of the purposes of education and its philosophies, such as opportunity and potential for achievement.20 Such structures demanded of

teachers that their practice was inclusive and egalitarian and that they offer their students and the parents all the opportunities available within

the educational structure they represented. The other structure was that defined by expatriate social norms and was a closed society that spoke

explicitly of exclusion and privileged status. But crucially for the teachers, expatriate society also implied a measure of 'social support that directly related to increased well-being.'21 The support and interaction found

among their own kind was integral to the lessening of culture shock

invariably experienced by expatriates in their new environment. Teachers had to balance the dilemmas posed by the demands of both structures, 17Transcript#8,p. 7. E. Sheehan, A Social Survey of the Expatriate Community in Lae, Unpublished BA Hons Thesis, University of Adelaide, 1972. ibid., p. 44. Peter Karmel (chair), Report of the Committee of Enquiry into Education in South Australia 1969 1970 (Karmel Report), Adelaide, 1971, pp. 25—44. Adrian Furnham & Stephen Bochner, Culture Shock, Methuen, London, 1986, p. 185.

20

144

and each was offering a component of their understanding of what place they occupied in PNG.

So beyond Port Moresby, too, expatriates constituted town populations who by force of numbers enjoyed a separated and privileged position within their environmental bubble.

Whether teachers, planters, business

people or administrative public servants, in the period 1960 to 1975 there was an abundance of expatriates.22 The numbers also meant that at the same time as they enjoyed their social self-sufficiency, as Cohen's

summary notes, the sub-system could be further solidified through a supply of special consumption services. These were services commensurate with their Australian 'home' and offered a known and contextual familiarity in an often alien surrounding.

In their separated communities, teachers would shop with other

expatriates at Burns Philp stores run by more expatriates. They could buy merchandise stocked primarily for them as 'expatriate state employees and European settlers.'23 There were familiar products from home like Sao

biscuits and Kraft cheese in tins. The Administration Supply Service also catered for their needs with fresh meat flown in weekly from Australia.

In

the closed communities, teachers, as with other expatriates, could further obviate contact with the wider local population by giving instructions to

their haus boito bring their fresh vegetables back from the local market. Expatriates had their vehicles serviced at Australian run garages, saw Australian doctors in Australian-run hospitals and met only expatriate friends at 'The Club'.

22

In 1960 the non-indigenous population numbered 23,870; in 1971 the census showed 54,526. (Bureau of Statistics, Port Moresby, 1978, quoted in Downs, op. cit., p. 529) This figure decreased as independence neared: estimates range from 5,000 to 10,000 expatriates leaving just prior to the changeover. 23 Scott MacWilliams, 'Australian Companies and the Challenge of Decolonisation: Burns Philp' in Donald Denoon (ed) Emerging From Empire? Decolonisation in the Pacific, Proceedings of a Workshop at the Australian National University, Dec. 1996, ANU, 1997, p. 134.

145

At Madang for example, one teacher described his situation as 'isolated', cut off by lack of road from the rest of the mainland. 'It was a time capsule' The only way in or out was by boat or plane'.24

But the expatriates' access to boat

or plane travel infers a status not regularly available to similarly isolated locals.

Madang was where another teacher described her 'A' school

pupils as being from 'wealthy two-car families' and whose expatriate teachers enjoyed six weeks paid leave in Australia each year to reestablish any lost Australian identity. In other similarly large towns teachers could be housed further away from

their students and the local villages than were teachers in remote areas. In such areas of longer white settlement the large expatriate populations generated a need for a greater number of expatriate teachers than did the remote 'T' schools.

The higher expatriate numbers also accounted for

the Department's willingness to accept single women in such regions. And the women who chose to stay single rather than join the list of the 'impending marriages' column in the South Pacific Post enjoyed a particularly hectic social life in these areas. I was single, men outnumbered us ten to one. Life was just wonderfull It was just wonderful. Social life! I started off in Moresby and of course the ball season went from May to August of the year and a ball every night, and every single girl went to every ball because you had to with ten fellas to every girL You had to spread yourself around. So you'd go to school every day with your eyeballs bouncing off your chin you were so tired. It was a wonderful social life. Then out in the missions and the small areas, Rabaul, KarKar, Madang, life was wonderful. If there was a dinner party on or anything, you were invited. It really was a wonderful life. Extra special I think was that you mixed with a great cross section of people. It wouldn't matter what type of person you were, you were invited out to mix. It was a wonderful learning experience about people.25

The 'cross section of people' did not include PNGns — they were described

by this teacher as 'keeping themselves very much apart'. The social life as 24

Transcript # 14, p. 5.

146

recollected here was within a closed society, of a cross-section only concerned with white people.

Teachers in the areas of higher expatriate settlement appear to have taken very much for granted the benefits of a European lifestyle: domestic servants to clean their houses and iron their clothes, and the availability of shops stocked with familiar items.

At the same time, the people doing

their domestic chores lived in grass huts with no running water, or power. Their low rates of pay meant little or no access to Western/modern

consumer items. None of the teachers interviewed had expectations that they would live like their PNGn students' families while in PNG. Rather, they accepted their positions of difference that were supported by the superiority of their amenities and their entry to and from all aspects of the outside world.

The teachers enjoying the greatest amount of shelter under the environmental bubble were also those whose attitudes towards PNGns were mostly ambivalent, seemingly because they had the least contact

with them. A most telling comment came from a teacher describing the camaraderie and concern that she recalled as being a mark of the expatriate community's attitudes towards each other. But everyone cared for everyone. If someone was away on leave, you'd keep an eye out for their cat, or dog, or haus boi or whatever.26

Yet at the same time as teachers in these areas could relegate their house staff to the same level as someone's pet or guard dog, they also assumed that eventually the benefits of development from education would overtake the economic level of the village. Given their work in the schools, they

expected that the lifestyles and values of the next generation of students

:: Transcript # 15. p. 4. Transcript # 12. p. 5.

147

would be different.

It has to be questioned, therefore, whether the

teachers' assumptions of that ultimate transformation might have overcome their need or desire to form any lasting or deep relationships with the parents and villagers who were still viewed as in a subjugated status.

Curiously, one factor inherent in the accumulation of status among expatriates in general did allow high school and 'A' school teachers some level of interaction with their host society beyond the classroom.

During

that period it was accepted that the majority of the expatriate community would employ local house servants.

So, although a contact based

primarily on the master/servant relationship, and often tenuous in its relationship, it was nevertheless the haus boi or the haus men who

became the focal point of interaction for many an expatriate teacher. My recollection is that we lived separate lives from the PNG community, visits to the villages were more to see a sing-sing... I expect the opportunities were there but I didn't take them up. / think there was a 'them and us' feeling in the town schools that would not have been the case in village schools.... I had a friendship with a 'haus girl' who used to come with me to Mothers and Babies. when we both had babies, [but] by then I was no longer employed as a teacher.27 We had a girl... she'd come in to do jobs, the washing, the ironing, stuff like that. I had never done that. / didn't iron before I went to NG, my Mum did it, she stayed at home to do that. That's what Mums did. We had a wood stove. Now on the weekends we used to throw metho in it and hope we didn't blow ourselves up. We didn't know how to light it, but we needed the hot water, things like that. So we really relied on them to do the jobs.... We paid them three dollars a week ... we didn't have any conscience 28 about that, that's what we were told you paid people.

These were distant relationships, but were normal in this period. They serve to emphasise the lack of connection between these town-based

:: Transcript # 9, p. 11. Transcript # 7, p. 6.

148

teachers and the PNG people.

But it is a lack of connection that raises

several questions.

One question concerns the lack of preparedness on behalf of the teachers to relate to a people whose lives they had come to change.

Most

teachers interviewed for this time period reflect now that 'if! was doing it again, / would make more effort to meet PNG people outside the school setting'.29

So did the

lack of connection at the time mean they regarded the adult villagers in a

different manner to their students? Were the teachers aware of the exploitation that occurred? And if so, was this lack of concern because they were influenced more by the tenets of the expatriate society than those of their host society?

If the teachers went to PNG with the

knowledge that they were to implement far reaching changes in their

student's society and culture, what then of the parents whom they assumed to be amenable to washing their dirty clothes and scrubbing floors for the equivalent of three dollars a week?

Coupled with expatriate

acceptance of differing salary scales for expatriate and local teaching staff, the evidence points to a segregation of the societies that also institutionalised the way in which labor was valued.

Yet there is a further way of viewing the lack of connection between expatriate and local. The segregation also served, superficially at least, to

suppress any suggestion of expatriate reliance on the abilities and knowledges of the local people.

In the urban areas this would

encompass such apparently mundane issues as procuring fresh vegetable produce, language interpretation between groups and as mentioned, the availability of cheap labour to do the jobs expatriates did not, or could not, do themselves.

I would argue that the mundane aspect of these issues

served to conceal the integral importance of local knowledge and local support. It was a support that undoubtedly made the day to day existence

149

of expatriates much less arduous.

But expatriates, on the whole, denied

any reliance on PNG by a continuing disconnection with local people.

Although that lack of connection with PNG appears to have been the normative condition for expatriate communities, not all teachers were posted to areas of high expatriate population. Along with patrol officers, a

number of medical personnel and the didiman, agricultural officer, a number of teachers were required to make a place for themselves among remote villages way from urban centres. It is pertinent, therefore, to ask

what it was like for teachers in those areas and whether such teachers were likely to be as disconnected from PNG as were their town or urbanised counterparts.

Remote Locations Away from the urban centres,3° there were the varying aspects of life for

teachers that accompanied 'roughing it in the bush'. But when compared to their indigenous counterparts and local villagers, teachers were still in a privileged position. Their organisational attachments to administrative

services allowed them access to many of the perceived necessities of an Australian lifestyle. All our supplies came from Wewak [by air], from Burns Phi/p - butter and powdered milk, soap. I used to buy it by the load, and I had no idea. / was just married and / just ordered... One time I was after butter, and they were out so Ijust sent back order after back order, and then it all arrived at once, a butter mountain.31

Unlike the local populations, these teachers were able to access the segregated services offered by the administration's distant, but still

effective, 'environmental bubble'. At the same time, teachers posted to

:: Transcript # 9, p. 19 Munro, op.cit. p. 92, describes an 'urbam area as having 'a minimum of 500 persons, and about 195 per square kilometre'. Transcript #11, p. 5.

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remoter regions were nevertheless more connected to the local people than were their town colleagues.

In the first place, teacher housing was

located on school grounds, or in an area surrounded by the local villages from where children went to school.

The environmental bubble did not

extend to all facilities and infrastructures, so in their locations were many good natured, albeit extrinsic, interactions which resulted from the necessity to share at the village level.

We'd see them in the store, and say 'hello', they'd say 'hello.' We'd maybe shake hands and whatnot. We were church goers and we'd always go to church on Sunday morning and it was always smiles all around.32

Such meetings did not constitute efforts on the part of expatriates to enter into PNG village life, although in these more remote communities

opportunities were available to meet with their students' families and other village people because of the shared church, trade store, and local village

market. The walking tracks to and from meeting areas were the common ground where everyone would exchange pleasantries. Hand touching or

shaking in the highlands has long been customary, and teachers walking along a track were, and are, expected to touch hands with all and everyone who offers.

But the communication couldn't go beyond that, except those that had English, or had pidgin, in which case there could be a conversation about the weather or what have It was the language barriers that invariably made exchanges beyond the

pleasantries problematic. Whereas the necessity to work with the adult population and to communicate Administration instructions required an

expatriate kiap or didiman to be better versed in tok pisin or a local tok pies (if they could not rely on an interpreter), the reverse has always been true for the majority of expatriate teachers. In the pre-independence :: Transcript # 13, p. 5. ibid.

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period, English acquisition was one of the major reasons behind

campaigns to get expatriate teachers into schools. Even if their practical

teaching skills were not well defined, as in the case of the E course trainees, a teacher's knowledge and usage of English as a basic tool was considered more important. Administration records of dissatisfaction with

levels of English proficiency among PNG teachers testify to the disquiet in using local personnel until more of them graduated out of the expatriate controlled system.

Hasluck and others believed that tokpisin, referred to

as pidgin, did not have a complexity that was adequate to cover all aspects of Western education.34

For the 'T' school teacher, then, there was no requirement for them to acquire a local language.

The onus was on the other to initiate that

acquisition. And that expectation carried through to the village level; that communication be initiated in the teachers' language, not that of the people they came to instruct. Most interaction was inevitably, therefore,

via the students, inasmuch as they had learned to speak the language of their teachers. I suggest that this was a situation that compounded

entrenched attitudes of paternalism towards the PNGns.

If teachers

talked mainly to their students, who were generally children, then all the views they obtained were young views and all the discussions they had were with the young.

Further, in order to deal in abstract concepts that

might conceivably have led to a more complex cultural understanding beyond the level of school instruction, a similarly complex language

understanding was necessary. But it was always that PNGns, rather than expatriates, were expected to acquire the complexity of another's culture. Expatriate teachers, in both the pre-independence and contemporary

periods, acquire a basic knowledge of tokpisin to gain access to trade store and market commerce. Some, more rarely, manage a 34

Hasluck to Estimates Comittee, 11.10. 62, CRS A452/1, 62/2499, AAc.

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conversational level, and from anecdotal evidence there were also a number of E Course teachers in the '1' schools who learnt the local .tok pies.35

In the case of social interaction, for the majority of the teachers,

the overall lack of incentive to learn a PNG language kept contacts on a very shallow basis. What would / talk about ? Taro gardens? I'd talk to the student parents, because / was talking about their children. But generally speaking I didn't know what the women talked about because / couldn't speak pidgin well enough, and I just didn't have any conversations with them.36

The exceptions to this generalisation were the E Course teachers, who were much more likely to learn their hosts' language and who stayed longer in PNG than the contractees and seconded teachers.

Additionally,

the experiences of the E teachers and others posted to remote 'T' schools show that they needed the good offices of villagers more than did their

seconded counterparts in the comparatively sheltered 'A' school system. You had the radio... [but] some of the schools that were established for the E course teachers were out of contact, or only by foot, again you had to have the local people on side. If anything happened a message could be

sent down very quickly. A couple died while I was there..

As well as in times of emergency, communications with the villagers were integral to the successful establishment of a school community in a remote location.

Building student accommodation and classrooms, clearing

areas, growing food and general maintenance were ongoing necessities of the remote schools which could not be managed by the teachers alone. And, more implicit to the successful functioning of a school, no child would attend that school without the compliance of the village. Expatriate teachers here were well aware of their reliance on local knowledge and expertise.

::

personal comments, Bill Gammage and Kevin Smith. Transcript # 11, p. 8. Transcript #2, p. 8.

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The interviewees from these remote schools spoke of adjustments they made from conservatism and idealism to the realities and pragmatism of communicating via the mores of the village, rather than as given by the Administration lecturers.

The first [change] was how to deal with people, and the values. Unless you were strong, you weren't respected. Although there was another one there - especially among the Enga people - if you were a good talker you could get your message across there. So you had to be both strong physically, and a good talker - a few words had to come into at least an hour if I wanted to talk to a group of Engans.38

With most remote 'T' schools, whether on the coast or in the highlands, their distance apart and the scarcity of teachers meant that students would

have come from villages many hours or even days distant walk, and a great majority of often quite young children were required to board at the

schools. The situation required the teacher to understand that their

responsibilities went beyond classroom hours. Teachers who went out on patrol and brought back students from villages were under obligation to

return the students home safely at the end of each term. They would also have had to persuade villages to allow those chosen few to be away from home for the length of the term. In areas of recent contact, teachers

would need to convince the village that the benefits of an education outweighed the value of keeping a child at home to fulfil whatever duties were required as part of a tribal community.

Remote schools were seven day a week workplaces, and expatriates had responsibilities that required a degree of initiative far beyond that of their Australian-based peers. The only things I got help with boarding [from the Administration] was we got a small tin of meat per week for the kids and a bag of salt. So I traded 38

Transcript #1, p. 4.

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with salt to buy sweet potatoes. But that didn't get us any money. In those days you had to live off the land. ... Then / had to think what was worth while, so I cut down the actual classes, so school started at dawn, they worked in the gardens - we got those going to supply ourselves, and to get a bit of money we started growing peanuts, because we could sell them. The government paid for these to improve the diet of the kids.39

The boarding situation did, however, give teachers an opportunity to learn

from their students about the society in which they were working. One seconded teacher who taught at both an 'A' school and in the adjacent 'T' school, enjoyed the opportunities presented to relate to students from both schools. I used to take the kids out a lot. On weekends we'd go hiking and I'd get out in the gardens. We'd pick orchids and ferns from the landslips for the school garden. If! was with Australian kids they'd bring their native children friends, or one of the haus bois who were often quite young. We'd go off and eat whatever we had, sweet potato, taro or sandwiches, we'd share it all. I'd mix a lot with the kids at weekends.4°

Coping with the rigours of cultural isolation and loneliness necessitated going beyond the simple formula of 'mixing with the kids at weekends', although coping with isolation was perceived as part of the commitment to their position. As long as the Administration preferred their remotely

located teachers to be single, ostensibly

married quarters were

costly to establish, the teachers would have the opportunity, as well as the inclination, to interact with the local people, although perhaps not always on the Administration's terms.

The E Course teachers had been subjected to a selection criteria that placed an emphasis on their perceived abilities to cope with a survival lifestyle in remote bush settings where there would be little assistance from

the Administration. There were two main aspects of survival that the district administration officers generally discussed with the teachers: their Transcript #1, p. 4. Transcript # 8, p. 8.

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ability to use what limited resources were available, both materials and personnel, and the aspect of being isolated.

The isolation was one of the major reasons behind the Administration's

choosing mainly male E Course teachers. And it was in order to combat some of the problems brought about because of their isolation that the Administration ensured remotely posted teachers came once a year to

Port Moresby. The visits were ostensibly for in-service training, but as one administrative officer commented, 'we had to make sure they weren't going troppo'.41

'Going troppo' was code for those teachers who found

certain of the 'standards' set by the Department somewhat problematic.

During training, E course teachers, especially, were advised to stay away

from the drink and the local women. At graduation they were told that they should be 'working on the simple basis that the people you will teach are human beings, requiring human understanding'.42 Human

understanding was, however, not to extend to personal relationships.

There were teachers, though, whose local conditions made such standards difficult, if not irrelevant. Cross-cultural personal relationships

did occur among particularly vulnerable single teachers who had little recourse to the company of other expatriates.

Another was taken out, interfering with native women, a bloke about twenty years old, on the Fly River - a case which should never have come up. The Education Department normally won't talk about that - but he'd appealed for them to take him out, said he was going troppo, the girls were becoming whiter all the time. He was convicted of improperly assaulting an under-age girl. He went to gaol for about six months. Well, he didn't seive the six months, he was just taken back to Australia, no names, no pack drill.43

41

personal comment Kevin Smith. South Pacific Post, 14 November 1961, Speech by D.M. Cleland. Transcript # 2, p. 8.

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Surviving the isolation of PNG did not mean being on one's own, it meant knowing what your place was when there were no other white people

around you. Teachers experiencing such isolation were not able to shelter under more than just the shadow of the environmental bubble that encompassed their more protected colleagues in the autonomous expatriate communities of urbanised PNG.

The teachers viewed their

cultural isolation as a distinct disadvantage, but it would seem that without

the very factor of isolation, few connections would have been made.

It is,

I argue, a disadvantage that created bridges across the cultural divide between PNGn and expatriate.

Between 1960 and 1975 many thousands of Australians went to PNG, both with private enterprise and as Australian public servants,44 and whether isolated or not, the influences and pressures of the Administration

and its wider expatriate community nevertheless impacted on all the regions. As with other categories of bureaucracy staff, it was the teacher numbers in the larger populated centres that influenced their ability to mould their particular environment,

It is not surprising, therefore, that

teachers, either unintentionally or by design, could exploit their expatriate status wherever the situation made it possible.

In the case of teachers,

the impact of their influential expatriate position was most obvious when working alongside PNG school staff.

The Staifroom Whether in urban or remote locations, the relationships between expatriate teachers and their PNG counterparts in this period are not clear cut. Teachers interviewed in the study were, on the whole, reticent about explaining the lack of social interaction between colleagues of differing

race. What is apparent is that interactions between expatriate and loca! 44

Teacher numbers varied from year to year. As an indication, in 1962, statistics show an estimate of 525 Australians teaching in a variety of schools across PNG. The 1971 Bureau of Statistics show the

157

staff were affected by both geographical location, and the type of school that teachers were allocated. In Administration high schools prior to the opening of the Goroka Teachers

College, there were virtually no PNGn secondary staff. Few teachers from that period could comment upon opportunities to work alongside local counterparts.

By 1969, however, a minority of PNGns were entering that

previous expatriate enclave. Expatriate teacher attitudes towards that rise in status for the educated PNGn and the resultant relations in the staff room provide further evidence of the space expatriate teachers might have occupied in this pre-independence period.

There was very much a them and us. We had two PNGns on our staff and one of them was quite friendly, but the other was very resentful - they were tech studies teachers - / guess he wasn't treated as an equal. The other man was very friendly, / always had a conversation with him. / didn't have a colonial headset, I don't think I did. But one man looked as though he was very bitter.45

This comment is a clear reflection of Cohen's point regarding the likelihood of resentment among educated elite members of the host country. At the same time, it also reflects the inability of expatriates to regard their local

counterparts on an equal footing. They are sentiments endorsed by the majority of interviewed teachers involved in both levels of schooling. There is little evidence that cross-cultural friendships were being engendered by staff room acquaintance, even though opportunities were available.

In the case of 'T' schools there was the likelihood of a mixed-

race staff until close to independence. With the decision to localise primary 'T' schools towards independence in the 1 970s, that avenue for connection did become less common.

For 'A' schools, there is no

number totalling 1363. This is against the previously noted 1960 non-indigenous population of 23,870 and the 1971 census showing a 54,526 non-indigenous population. Transcript #7, p. 4.

158

evidence of PNGn teachers employed in the system, and that being the

case, Australian teachers seconded to the 'A' system would have had limited experience of working with local teachers.

However, there are

cases where 'T' and 'A' schools were adjacent, so a number of expatriate

teachers were employed as principal of both, but taught only in the 'A' system classroom.

At Madang, for example, an integrated system was trialled in the early 1 970s, with some team and parallel teaching taking place across 'A' and

'T' schools. There, though, as in other settlements and towns, it would seem that any relationships were on expatriate, rather than PNGn, terms. The PNG staff were very shy, yet very respectful and eager to be friends. / sensed no animosity about being in their country, in fact! was very friendly with my PNG counterpart, who taught the lower grades. I feel we had a good working relationship. We shared the same staifroom - although the PNG male teachers went home for lunch. We mixed and we talked as any

staff would do, but the PNG teachers were more reserved and didn't initiate much conversation. Natural shyness was quite noticable. A couple of occasions I had an afternoon tea or a BBQ where I mixed the groups, but the PNGns were very ill at ease, and their wives in particular, were very out of place, and just for the sake of trying to put on a performance of having this group, it wasn't what one would call successful. They were very conservative, reserved. They didn't know how to open up and perhaps they didn't care to. They thought they weren't good enough or well educated enough or whatever. It wasn't workable.46

Such equivocating reasons that expatriates have given as to why PNGn staff were rarely invited to their homes or included in social gatherings also extends to a lack of understanding as to why they in turn would be unlikely

to be invited to a PNG teacher's home. The necessary knowledge or understanding of what PNGn attitudes regarding reciprocal relations might entail do not appear to have been included in the teacher acculturation programme.

Instead, despite the prior years of entrenched colonialism

that had engendered social and economic inequality, expatriate teachers 46

Transcript # 12, p. 14.

159

appear to have expected their PNGn counterparts to immediately acquire

and practise behaviours based only on their own 'acceptable' Western mores.

Teachers from both remote and urban areas also spoke of their perceptions that PNG teachers lacked the same commitment to their work

as did expatriate teachers. The interviewees were of the opinion that expatriates put more time and effort into both their classes and the extracurricular activities of their students. It is not the aim of this study to investigate comparisons between local and expatriate teacher work ethics, however, there is a factor arising out of expatriate teachers' isolated and isolating conditions that may have given rise to such a construction on their behalf.

In remote areas the expatriates had little else to commit themselves to other than the school and its students.

Consequently, they totally involved

themselves in their school environment, its culture and the work that resulted from that involvement. The PNGn teachers, on the other hand, although at times isolated from their own clans and language groupings, were better situated to become involved in local village life. Through

language, cultural awareness and the likelihood of acceptance at the village level, they were better equipped to expand their horizons beyond

the school. Their need for an engrossing commitment would therefore have been correspondingly less than the expatriate's and the appearance of their commitment correspondingly lessened.

Expatriate teachers'

attitudes towards local teachers may have been brought about more by the

Australian's isolation from their own cultural context, than from any particular lack on the part of the PNGn teachers.

Yet at the same time as they made the criticisms, expatriate teachers acknowledged the vital contribution to student learning made by their local

counterparts. In remote 'T' school situations especially, expatriates had an

160

opportunity to view first hand the importance of understanding the world

view of their PNG students. They saw clearly the part played by PNG teachers in the successful delivery of Western education. I'd had a few problems because of communication and getting 60 kids. Then this [local] teacher came in...l'd just introduced new maths which meant the kids working in small groups of 6 or so, I'd have 10 or 12 groups all working on things and rotating, it was very complicated. This teacher took over and there was never a murmur, perfect behaviour. And since this was a pilot project, we had people coming from Australia to see the these kids working. 60 little five or six year olds working perfectly, always doing whatever they were told.... It all came down to the teacher. He said 'Oh, it was easy, I just put a pun-pun on them. I said "when you go home, the spirits are everywhere, good and bad, and the spirit in the trees, if you misbehave, on the way home the spirit will get you". So they all behave'. I

heard that and thought that would be nice to do.47

This particular 'T' school incident illustrates the cross-cultural possibilities that arise when expatriates are embedded within a societal and cultural situation that returns control to PNGns. At the same time, it must again be questioned whether such occasions were mediated specifically by the expatriate teachers' isolation from their own cultural environment, or, whether teachers themselves believed that PNGns had knowledge that should not be subsumed under the banners of development and change. The locals' knowledge could be for both good and bad in the same way ours could. Early in PNG I had incidents in which I was treated for medical problems by a local "doctor" using traditional treatments because there were not Western [doctors] available, and they worked well. There was diagnosis not much different from a Western doctor's and treatment. I think [when] we worked closely with the local people, particularly in areas where contact and influence had been small, we realised we each had knowledge that would be useful to the other and each had answers to problems. Our problem was our arrogance, or if we were not particularly arrogant, the powers that be in government above were arrogant. Then ... we forgot or didn't give sufficient time and effort to analysing the worth of knowledge of the local people until it was too late.

Opportunities for teachers to discover what they could regard as valuable aspects of PNG society were available to those teachers not bounded by 47

Transcript # 1, p. 6.

161

the 'autonomous and interdependent relations' of wider expatriate society. It is also the case here that whatever acceptance of the PNG society

resulted, it continued to be due to the factor of expatriate cultural isolation creating the need. Without a need, acknowledgement did not occur.

A prime example of the disinclination to acknowledge local worth can be seen in local teachers' pay rates and conditions. Little account of PNGn value within the education system was emanating from the Canberracontrolled Australian Administration. The rates of pay were chalk and cheese, I don't know the details. They did a similar job though. They didn't talk to me about it, just say, 'well, you get big money, you're an Australian.49

The size and strength of the Australian government's Territory Administration were major factors in the allocation of expatriate teachers' status and privilege as compared to the difficulties faced by local teachers

in the field. And until the advent of their teacher union organisations, these teachers had very little assistance from the Administration. [the] PNGns, when they went on leave they might have been posted to a new area, their pay was stopped until they actually reported from the new area. It took about six weeks for word to get back to Port Moresby from the District Education Office. It could be twelve weeks stopped... New teachers just didn't get paid as they moved from one district to another. They normally had only one admin. person with anything up to two hundred to three hundred [teaching] staff. The teachers were trapped, the PNG ones.

The differentiated pay scales and conditions of service between local and expatriate teachers were issues that impacted heavily on staff relations.

Appendix to Transcript # 1, letter, March 1965. Transcript # 4, p. 4. Transcript #2, p. 2.

162

The Australian Administration in PNG brought in the two-tier salary scale in accordance with the Public Service Ordinance, 1963. It was argued that not only would PNG not be able to fund high public service salaries when

independent, but that the Administration did not consider they should pay Australian rates to indigenous workers who had neither the background education nor the experience of their expatriate counterparts.

I agree

with Wolfers, however, that they were more 'special regulations made to legalise racial salary differentials' than any policy 'being articulated in terms of economic rationality'.51

The formation of the PNG Teacher's

Association in 1970 did little to alleviate the rancour felt by National staff, partially because the uneven rates of pay persisted.

Within PNG, the expatriate teachers were part of a society that was in turn part of an 'ecological sub-system.' In both the urban and remote areas the system was conducted through the reciprocal alliances and the organisational attachments of the Administration that excluded most PNGn school staff.

I consider this point to be one of the factors contributing to

the way the teachers understood their place in PNG.

On one level, the

sub-system was made possible through obvious economic differences between staff from the two cultures. Expatriates were 'rewarded' for their

expatriatism through the benefits that the attachments and sub-systems accrued. The money that we were on when we first went up there was significantly better that in Australia. And very little tax, and houses and accommodation was subsidised, so you only paid something like fifteen dollars a fortnight.52

Additional rewards came in the form of extra benefits such as generous overseas allowances, baggage/removal costs, education funding, high

quality, low cost housing, vehicles, or paid overseas holiday breaks. 51

E.P. Wolfers and F.S. Stevens, Race & Racism: the Australian Experience, Vol. 3. (second edition), Australia & New Zealand Book co. Sydney, 1977, p.44 Transcript # 15, p.10

163

Authors in the field of overseas management and expatriate placement policy

have argued that such rewards have always been necessary in

order to attract foreign experts to less developed situations. I would argue,

however, that on another level the necessity for rewards, while explicitly speaking of inequality of resources, also implicitly constructs attitudes of

negativity towards local staff. Rewards have been deemed necessary to make the expatriate stay on in an apparently unwholesome, difficult, or even dangerous, situation. This furthers a construction of 'the other' who, by their apparent ability to accept lower standard conditions not

commensurate with expatriate expectations, is demonstrated to be less civilised.

Expatriate difference is amplified through the implicit suggestion that one culture's needs are greater than another - because better conditions are necessary in order to make living bearable - while the local is able/content

to live at lower standards. That argument was certainly the case in the p re-independence period, with such attitudes borne out by the teachers'

justifications for differences in salaries and conditions for PNGn staff. While expatriate teachers were aware of the poor conditions for PNGn

staff, some argued that the rancour was unjust and that PNG itself was to blame for the situation. Doing the same jobs in the sense of classroom teachers, sure, I'm not suggesting that I was a superior teacher to any of them, there was some great teachers. But the point is we went up there, supposedly to do a certain job, from a different economic background to what they have. / mean, it was explained to the indigenous teachers on a number of occasions that the country couldn't afford the kind of salaries that were

53

Nancy Munro, Expatriates in Papua New Guinea With Special Reference to the Filipinos. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of New South wales, 1992; Brian Seehan, The Expatriate Executive Overseas - Adjusting to New Cultural Experiences. Occasional Paper No. 24, School of Business, Phillip Institute of Technology, coburg, 1992: I. Torbiom, Living Abroad: Personal Adjustment and Personnel Policy in the Overseas Setting, John Wiley, Chichester, 1982: 0. Young, 'Fair Compensation for Expatriate', Haivard Business Review, July-August, pp. 117 - 126.

164

being paid to us. The counti'y So we were invited guests if you like.

us the salaries, Australia was.

These expressions of concern indicate a certain ambivalence in the way

expatriate teachers viewed their counterparts. On the one hand the expatriates expressed themselves in terms of guilt and found difficulty in

coming to terms with the differing pay scales and conditions. Yet they could not always understand why their high rates and conditions were resented by local staff members.

Resentment towards the injustice of the

system is a sore that continues to fester into the present and will be referred to again in a later section of this thesis.

The extra status conferred on expatriates through the benefits that accrue from an overseas posting also supports an expatriate community in its assumptions about itself and its segregated state.

Quoting Useem et al,

Munro's argument on this point is that 'the relatively privileged status of [being] expatriates', as opposed to the normal status they are used to in

their home country, 'becomes an expression of power, prestige, resources and aims of the collectivity'.55

In a wider sense, this collectivity of the

expatriate finds its expression in Cohen's environmental bubble, within which most expatriate communities operate.

While knowledge and worth were consistently judged on the basis of Western values, and expatriates both in and out of schools continued to

expect PNGns to behave like expatriates, other forms of social relations between the two societies in pre-independent PNG seemed an unlikely outcome.

Despite this, there were a number of mixed marriages

between staff, more often between white males and PNGn females than between white females and PNGn males.

::Transcript # 14, p. 3. Munro, op. cit., p. 29.

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One expatriate teacher at an 'A' School on Bougainville before and during

independence had an expatriate teacher friend in a mixed marriage. He reflected upon his local expatriate society's outlook on the marriage, and on the uncertainties that this and other partnerships encountered. The relationships were fraught with challenges. When a woman decided to forgo her expatriate culture for a PNGn culture, the expats found that hard to take and understand. Her friendships were far more Bougainvillean than expat after that. It was viewed differently if it was white man and Bougainvillean woman, the white woman and PNG man was very rare. There were a few relationships in the army that were terribly frowned upon - Australian women attracted to particularly athletic officers. But that was far harder to accept than the expat man with the PNGn wife or woman. I found some of those harder to accept because a lot of those men, it was based on need and not long endearing friendships and the children from those relationships were often in no peoples land and when the contract was over the men pissed [sic] off and left the women there. Some worked

really hard at it and either brought their women back to Australia or stayed in PNG, but there were a lot of temporary relationships.56

It needs to be remembered that the situations described took place little more than a decade after the repeal of the 'White Woman's Ordinance'. Expatriate attitudes towards the white female/black male marriage contrived to bring forth similar terrors as described by Inglis and reflect a

white, male coloniality and superiority. The apparently lesser 'crime' of white male/black female partnerships was more acceptable.57 Attitudes

did not change with the advent of independence. The situation of expatriate teachers and any inter-cultural sexual relations or marriages in the two periods examined in this thesis is not explored in this study, as only two of the teachers interviewed, one in this period and one in the

later, spoke of their own mixed marriages. The aspect of black/white

Transcript # 4, p. 4. Whether this was because such relationships did not challenge the paternalised status quo, or because they echoed colonialisms longing to subjugate the other in this manner are two possibilities. They are issues for teachers that will not be explored further in this thesis. See Thomas, Nicholas, Colonialism's Culture, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994 and Andrew W. Lind, 'Inter-ethnic Marriages', New Guinea Research Bulletin, No. 31, 1969.

166

sexual relations in PNG has been examined at length by Amirah Inglis, and more recently, in Chilla Bulbeck's study of Australian women in PNG.58 In the main, interviewees for this study had what can only be described as

exemplary attitudes towards the function they were to perform as teachers

in PNG. Few spoke of attempts to engender relationships with PNG counterpart staff that extended beyond the structures of their workplace. In the period prior to independence, apart from two teachers, none recollected, nor remarked on, anything more than what amounted to a superficial working relationship between themselves and adult PNGns.

Those few recollections are of friendships formed in the highlands, and

involving coastal PNGn professionals, people who were in a place where they, too, were expatriated from their homeland.

The Australian teachers agreed that, by and large, they knew little of the realities of personal lives and attitudes of the people whose country they lived in. Their lack of involvement with National colleagues added to the

disconnection.

Mention was made of visits to villages, 'to see how the

families of our students lived', but the seeing provided only casual encounters. At the same time, teachers agreed that they had made

commitments to spiritual and developmental change for PNG people. So their choice to enclose themselves within a restrictive and exclusive society that was a particularly bounded expatriate space is difficult to explain, unless the influences of administrative and expatriate structures are taken into account.

But even given the regulated place created for them by Administration preconditioning, expatriate teachers were also influenced by what contact they did have with PNG. 58

It would seem that some attempted to cross

Amirah Inglis, Not a White Woman Safe: Sexual Anxiety and Politics in Port Moresby, 1920 - 1934, ANU Press, canberra, 1974; Hoe, Susanna. White Women in the Colonies: were they responsible for setting up racial barriers?, Bikmaus, No.5, June 1984, pp. 80 - 84; Bulbeck, op. cit.

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boundaries, or at least provided the means by which boundaries could be

crossed. Those teachers who were prepared to participate in a dialectic exchange, one that included learning from people they had come to teach, created a different structure to that put in place by the colonising power. They attempted to lay the foundations of a bridge between the two cultures.

In Part Three that follows, I explore what traces of those structures might remain to influence how Australian teachers view their place within communities of present day PNG.

PART THREE

NARRATIVES FROM CONTEMPORARY PAPUA NEW GUINEA

CHAPTER VII

'A look at a different culture'

169

This first chapter of Part Three begins an exploration of Australian teachers in PNG during the contemporary period. In the initial section I

ask about the recruitment of expatriate teachers to the PNG Department of Education. Also in this chapter I explore what motivations there are in the 1 990s to encourage teachers to apply for positions away from Australia.

I

ask whether there are inherent structural processes applying to PNG

educational administration that arise out of PNG's history of colonial administration.

It is in Part Three that my own experiences and

observations of PNG join the memories of teachers interviewed for this project who worked in PNG during the post independence period.

Teachers who have been interviewed for Part Three are positive and supportive towards PNG as it strives for educational development. They have a unanimously high regard for their students and the attitudes they

bring to the classroom. Teachers enthuse about the opportunities they have been given to explore PNG's immense landscape, and, at the same time, gain new and diverse cultural and environmental knowledge.

However, within their interviews, the teachers espouse highly negative views on many other aspects of their stay. They are hostile towards the PNGn bureaucracy in general, and their local education administrative sector in particular, and the negativity often includes local school staff.

Much of Part Three, therefore, may appear to be couched in terms of a

critique of PNG. That is not the intention.

Recruitment in the contemporary period. The localisation of primary school staff during the 1970s concentrated overseas teachers in high school posts and further education in PNG.

Following independence and the departure of the Australian Administration, training courses designed specifically for expatriate teacher

cadets to PNG were no longer offered. Positions that are now available to

170

Australians through the PNG government secondary school system are generally for fully qualified teachers, or, in the case of TAFE type vocational institutions, for experienced tradespeople.

Under the

Secretary's Instruction No. 14/78 of 1995,1 certain minimum qualifications for secondary teachers, both local and international, are required: a) A three year trained teacher with Diploma in teaching or in Education b) Bachelor of Education

c) Two year Primary trained with successful completion of Secondary Conversion Course. d) Bachelor of Arts with Teacher Certificate or Diploma in Education. e) A tertiary qualification which in the opinion of the Secretary is acceptable and fulfils teacher registration requirements.

The PNG Education Department advertises on an annual basis for similarly qualified overseas staff for their secondary, technical and tertiary institutions.

All overseas teachers need to be competent enough in English to teach in

that language, but in their first years of control over recruitment, the PNG Education Department began to look beyond the confines of the primarily English-speaking nations for their secondary teachers.

Figures for

expatriate employees in both the public and private sectors in 1988, for example, show that while Australia was still supplying the greatest number of workers per single country, their numbers were by then less than half of the total of all workers from overseas.2 It should be noted here that

beginning in 1998, the PNG Department of Education contracted part of the recruitment process for Australian teachers out to the Melbourne office of the Overseas Services Bureau (OSB). All the teachers interviewed for

this study, however, were part of the recruitment that took place prior to the changeover to OSB. Secretary for Education, Circulars for use in Provincial High Schools, Papua New Guinea Department of Education, Port Moresby, 1990, p. 9.

171

Since 1978, expatriate teachers from all countries have been subject to the same recruitment contract conditions in PNG as any other overseas public

officers. Munro argues that PNG became progressively less attractive to Australians and more attractive to workers from other countries from the time these expatriate employee conditions were standardised by the government.3

One reason for this is that while expatriate teacher

salaries in PNG are still much higher than local rates, they no longer compare as favourably with those of teachers in Australian schools, or in

comparison to Australian Administration employees prior to independence.

The stated qualifications and experience expected for the National High Schools (Years 11 to 12) and the upgraded Secondary Schools are 'an

appropriate University Degree with a minimum of three (3) years teaching experience'.4 Similar qualifications, but with two years' experience, are required for the Provincial High Schools (Years 7 to 10). The National high schools are where the majority of experienced Australian contractees

are posted as class teachers. The upgraded secondary schools generally place their expatriate staff among the Year 11 and 12 classes and as subject heads. The provincial high schools, which take students only to Year 10, have a higher National to expatriate staff ratio, but in some cases have Australian principals and deputy principal teachers.

Precise figures

for the distribution of local to expatriate staff have not been obtained, mainly as these would vary greatly from year to year due to transfers, availability of personnel, and attrition rates.

Of the teachers interviewed

for this period, two have been in principal positions, another worked for an Australian principal, and the remainder were working for PNGn senior 2

N. Munro, Expatriates in Papua New Guinea With Special Reference to the Filipinos. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of New South Wales, 1991. Table 3.2 p. 65. As well as PNGns, Australians now often work alongside teachers from Indian, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, The Philippines, and Africa. Munro, op. cit., p. 26.

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staff.

In all cases but one, there were other expatriate teachers from

various countries on the staff of their schools.

Until 1998, assessment of Australian applicants for contract teaching was on the basis of a four page application form requiring a listing of

qualifications and the names of referees, and one interview. As far as all the teachers who were interviewed for this study could ascertain, none of the referees they cited were contacted at any time prior to their acceptance

for a position. The interviews for the positions are conducted by members of the PNG Department of Education who visit Australia. The teachers

found it difficult to establish whether any selection criteria applied to their

applications. None that I interviewed were furnished with an indication of necessary criteria beyond that of their professional qualifications. / don't think there was much of a selection criteria, although they did say that they were taking people. They'd got a lot of Asian applicants from Australia and they weren't keen on people of Asian background.... They didn't mention teaching abilities.... We talked a bit about the place I was going to... but not about the conditions or anything... He did talk a bit about their expectations for a teacher. A teacher would not become involved with the students, the students would be wanting to become involved but a certain distance had to be kept. That was about it They gave me this Canberra number to ring. And the response was - 'yes, we want you, please come to interview'. They were so keen, / guess that's what prompted me, they were so keen. / thought 'oh well, I'll go to the interview'. And when I went they were equally keen if not more

PNG's 'urgent need for trained manpower in all technical fields'7 overflows into teacher supply, especially with regard to the senior sector of school staffing. That urgent need is the most likely reason for what Australian

applicants view, in retrospect, as a serious lack of either a formal selection 4

The Australian, 20 June, 1997. : Transcript # 3, p. 1. Transcript # 6. p. 2.

173

process, or of any written criteria being supplied to the applicants. At the

same time, the applicants' major impressions from their recruitment interviews were that the contribution they were preparing to make in PNG

would be highly welcomed. So despite their retrospective and somewhat jaundiced attitudes regarding the recruitment process, at the time, teachers were optimistic about their future work. They left the interview with a positive outlook towards PNG education and had expectations of finding a valued place within the PNG community. Notwithstanding the teachers' views on the selection process, by reading between the lines of PNG administration publications, it is possible to

ascertain that there are criteria by which applicants may be assessed. At

their application interview, contemporary teachers are provided with a handbook, Teaching in Papua New Guinea Secondaty Schools.8 The publication offers a very brief overview of PNG, the conditions of employment in the teaching service, the housing generally available on school campus, and an outline of various cost of living expenses likely to be incurred.9

The information booklet for prospective Australian

employees to the post-colonial independency of PNG has an opening

preface, 'A Message, from the Secretary, Dept. of Education', with J. Tetaga (OBE) suggesting that the teaching positions in PNG are

rewarding, provided that teachers can be, 'adaptable, enthusiastic and hard-working.' Such teachers are those who can cope with demands placed on their 'tolerance.. perseverance initiative.., flexibility and problem solvi?ig skills'.

As a rider to his message, Tetaga warns that

'many of our schools have limited teaching facilities, equipment, resources, 7

John Momis, Partnership from a Pacific Perspective', in vandeloo, T. (ed), Global Partnership in Development, Melbourne, 1989, P. 15. Department of Education, Papua New Guinea, Teaching in Papua New Guinea Secondaiy Schools, 1994.

9

An introduction to the high schools where teachers are likely to be sent is also provided in the handbook. My personal experience is that a great deal of poetic licence is evident in this particular section - and may be the result of principals wishing to make their schools sound as salubrious as possible in order to attract teachers into applying for their region.

174

etc.'. A veiled hint of certain criteria are found in Tetaga's indication that 'If you thrive on challenges, Papua New Guinea may just be the place for you'.10

The 1994 handbook is remarkably similar to the Australian Administration booklet published twenty five years previously: Teaching in Papua New

Guinea,11 which was prefaced by Ken McKinnon's' Message from the

Director of Education'. There the introductory statement suggests that teaching in the Territory offers rewards to those who are 'adaptable, keen

and hard-working. Such attributes were needed then because applicants would likely encounter 'frustrations and minor irritations' that 'demand tolerance, initiative and self dependence, both physical and mental.

Those who felt they could fulfil the crucial requirements, and were therefore able to 'penetrate the surface differences', would find their efforts worthwhile. As with Tetaga's 1994 message, in 1969 McKinnon gives veiled hints of certain essential criteria teachers need to have, in

that: 'We are competing for money, manpower, buildings, supplies and communications which can prove inadequate for the size Of the task.... Those of you who seek to join us will need to meet challenges'.12 It is apparent from the curiously similar recruitment rhetoric of the past twenty five years that the selection criteria set for teachers by each bureaucracy has remained essentially the same. Apart from their formal qualifications, teachers need to be motivated, adaptable, flexible, and

tolerant. The messages suggest that the situations teachers will encounter have hardly changed in the course of time and that they will

meet only the minor frustrations that are part of any competent teacher's working life.

McKinnon's 1969 message presents the teachers' need for

Department of Education, 1994, op. cit., p.3. Department of Education, Port Moresby & Dept. of External Territories, Canberra, Teaching in Papua and New Guinea,1 969, p.3. ibid.

175

tolerance as an attribute, where cultural differences demand

understanding and an effort to look beyond what might appear superficial irritations. His suggestions are that teaching in PNG demands

'adaptability.

In 1994, Tetaga uses the term 'personal adjustment, but

this is in the context of classroom teachers coping with limit teaching facilities.

The information supplied in these messages sets out the

preferable attributes required in teachers, and therefore can be viewed as criteria for applicants.

However, given the lack of emphasis placed on

establishing the criteria in the minds of applicants, it must be questioned whether today's bureaucracy considers cultural differences in the classroom to have any more bearing on the context of teaching and learning than did the prior administration. / think the PNG Dept did indicate / would also be involved in training teachers at the schooL I wasn't given any indication of cultural differences, nor other difficulties that might arise. They talked a fair bit about the size of the schools and about the students I would teach, and / was given some

time to ask questions at the end. We didn't talk about the curriculum. I think he [the Department representative] indicated that PNGn students would have a different lifestyle to Australian students, but that was about

The recruitment messages span a period of twenty five years, encompassing vast changes in governance from a colonial to post-colonial

administration. The lack of change in the messages highlights a systematic inertia inherent in PNG education and its administration which Mosha14 has established as also part of educational policy-making and

implementation in other parts of the developing world.

In Nigeria, for

example, such inertia is the result of colonial structures set in place by previous administrations and which require 'systematic education and reeducation, adequate planning and preparation'15 in order to be dismantled.

Transcript # 3, p. 2. H.J. Mosha, 'Twenty Years After Education for Self-Reliance: a critical review, International Journal of Educational Development, vol. 10, No. 1, 1990, pp. 59 - 67. ibid., p. 67.

176

In PNG little dismantling of previous systems has taken place. Whether

the contemporary PNG bureaucracy is unable to modify its strategies because of the monolithic system within which it has become embedded,

is one possibility. Another may be that it has chosen to mimic its former administrators in order to perpetuate a niche for the elite who then enjoy

the benefits of their concomitant status. Whatever possibility may be the actual case, the results provide issues that impact upon the experiences

of expatriate teachers in PNG. A critical examination of such issues would need to be made from the point of view of PNGn administrative personnel, which I suggest is beyond the scope of this thesis.

I will,

however, return in later discussions to these various issues as they arise in relation to expatriate teacher experiences.

At this point, it is sufficient

to note that the apparent lack of adaptation to the current situation is reflected in the way the recruitment process comes across as meaningless to those interviewed. No requests or questions re bone fide for jobs, we filled out a standard application form... They just didn't seem remotely interested in the recruitment programme whatsoever .... The fact that they had to inteiview was the only thing that motivated them into actually inteiviewing. The actual structure of the inteiview though might not have achieved the appropriate outcome in terms of the right person for the right job, or what they might be interested in.'6

At the time of their applications for work in PNG, none of the teachers had any great awareness that the country suffered recruitment problems; nor

were they aware that they would be likely to secure a post merely by applying for one.'7 It is instructive, then, that among the teachers'

reflections on their selection process there are indications of a particular 6Transcript # 21, p. 2. My own post was secured after I arrived in PNG, and was therefore offered at local rates. Only after some weeks in PNG did I become aware of the staffing situation and gain the knowledge that I could have acquired a post from Australia. This would have been at expatriate rates had I wanted it, as my qualifications (BA Honours and Certificate in TESOL) were deemed adequate for a PNG high school position.

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construction of the PNG recruitment situation based on their retrospective knowledge, rather than on knowledge possessed at the time of the event

under discussion. The interview process was a joke - selection criteria were not spelled out and the whole process was a token gesture.18 At the time I applied for the position Gust after the Bougainville CRA closure) there was not a lot of interest from Australia. I guess you could say that the main criteria [sic] was a willingness to go there.19

There is little evidence from the teachers that they had thought very much about the process prior to my discussion with them. Their retrospective views, instead, are indicative of Holbrook's 'interpretative pitfalls,'2° wherein the interviewer must account for an aspect of recollection that is

informed by present knowledge. The teachers' understanding of PNG's eagerness to recruit them, while not part of their previous knowledge, has nevertheless become part of their past which does not exist 'in any concrete form or record, but with contemporary memory'.21 Indeed, such contemporary memory is demonstrated in these pages frequently, and is acknowledged here as the difference between the teacher reflections during interviews, and their knowledge at the time of particular experiences. I acknowledge also that my own reflections are bounded by

a contemporary memory that must subsequently impact on the interpretation within these pages.

Beyond indicating that selection criteria exists for teacher applicants, the

booklet supplied to Australian applicants at their interviews also has to serve teachers as their entire preparation for the acculturation process to Transcript # 5, p. 2.

p.1. A Holbrook, 'Methodological Developments in Oral Histroy: A Multi-Layered Approach, Australian Educational Researcher, Vol. 22, No. 3, December, 1995, p. 33. 21 John Murphy, The voice of Memory: History, Autobiography and Oral Memory, Historical Studies, October 1986, p. 167.

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PNG.22 The teachers unanimously deplored their lack of preparation,

suggesting, once again in retrospective analysis, that their experiences of PNG were affected specifically by the PNG department's disregard for any acculturation process. Although / was given [the] literature to read, / was not given any advice as to what to expect about living and working in PNG. In retrospect / think any amount of advice would be insufficient in preparing people for what was in front of them!23

As expatriate teachers became more familiar with their school situations

they noted how a lack of preparation affected other newly arrived teachers' views and interactions with local people.

Some of them, there was a lot of superiority, a lot of really considering PNGns as primitive, ignorant and uneducated, and all this sort ot thing. Also a real lack of awareness of cross cultural issues. No real recognition even, that even when you're talking to somebody, the way you move your body can cause misunderstanding. There was no recognition of that sort of thing at all.24

As was the case with my own journey to PNG, some teachers found

individual ways of preparing themselves for the new experiences they were to face.

I spoke to someone who advised me, they said, 'look, the Lutheran people have got missions in New Guinea, why don't you contact the Lutheran Seminary at North Adelaide' . . . So I went and got on to a pastor who was a very nice chap, he'd spent a lot of time in New Guinea and I went and spoke to him. He gave me some impressions, but he was very guarded. I think in retrospect he was obviously guarded because he didn't want to give me anything negative. But what he did give me, he gave me a teach yourself manual and two cassettes to learn pidgin.25

22

In PNG, Australian school teachers in government schools commonly referred to the handbook as The Blue Book of Lies. Transcript # 21, p. 1. Transcript # 18, p. 6. 25 Transcript # 6, p. 3.

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I indicated in Chapter IV that expatriate teachers in the pre-independence

period were given basic, although not entirely adequate, preparation

towards the acculturation process in PNG. The preparation currently offered to the Australian expatriate teacher is only couched in terms of a warning - that they need to be adaptable and hard-working.

The basic

literature presented to contemporary recruits gives a false impression that acculturation preparation is unnecessary.

It is much more the reality that

the expatriate teacher's need for preparation is one that goes beyond their

interactions with the differing cultures of the classroom. What impact this lack of preparation has in the contemporary period will be expanded in Chapter VIII.

Once advised that they have a job, airline tickets to Port Moresby are issued to the expatriate teacher, If they are married, the PNG government will also pay the spouse's fare. This is the only assistance the teacher

receives and the onus is then on them to arrange and pay for all other

costs. Teachers are expected to facilitate the visa application, which is not granted until a passport is provided to the consulate, along with medical

tests results, X-ray results, negative AIDS tests results, a police record clearance, and, in the case of couples, proof of marriage.

And although

the PNG Education Department gives no advice with regard to health

concerns, most contractees decide to undertake a wide range of vaccinations and to purchase anti-malaria cover. The time and costs of these requirements is considerable, and, coupled with transportation costs

of personal effects, becomes a concern for young teachers, some having been unemployed prior to their PNG positions.26

All contemporary interviewees remarked at length upon the difficulties presented by the bureaucratic and logistical requirements they faced in

26

Despite the recruitment advertising that asks for certain minimum experience, the number of newly graduated teachers I met in PNO suggests a differing criteria.

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getting to PNG. Yet in comparison to local teachers, the PNG Department of Education offers conditions of employment which, while not matching pay of teachers in Australia, are extremely generous.27 In the attempt to recruit overseas teachers, expatriates are offered rent-free housing, a boarding school allowance for their children, six weeks annual leave with fare paid after two years' service, sickness benefits, and full pay for all declared public holidays. In addition, the Department pays a gratuity rising up to forty percent of annual income for each year of the contract completed.

It is instructive that the salary for PNGn teachers is one third to one quarter that of an expatriate teacher, and, although many are posted to distant provinces linked only by air to Port Moresby, the indigenous teachers must pay their own fares to schools. They also pay rent for often poor quality campus housing, and do not receive any gratuities.28 The

inequities, coupled with heavy work loads, delays in salary payments and

frequent transfers, are cited as the main reasons for the high rates of attrition among local staff.29

The frustrations experienced by the local

teachers has had an affect on the wider school leaver attitudes to teacher

training programmes. As Bacchus reports, difficulties occur with attracting enough high school graduates as candidates to teaching courses, and university degree holders to graduate diploma courses.3° Until they settle into a school, it is unlikely that expatriate teachers would have a full knowledge of the inequities in salary and conditions that exist between

themselves and their indigenous counterparts.

27

In 1997, the expatriate salary range was: Class Two Education Officer, K16,399 pa to Class Ten K33,987 pa. The exchange rate then was Ki .00 = A$.9745. Despite the disparities between PNG and Australian salaries, Gannicott argues that PNG pays its national teachers salaries that are too high, and are adding to the waste of resources in PNG education delivery. K. Gannicott, Education in Papua New Guinea: A case study in wasted resources, Islands/Australia Working Paper No. 87/9, National Centre for Development Studies, Canberra 1987.

Kazim M. Bacchus, Educational Policy and Development Strategy in the Third World. Avebury Gower Publishing Co. Aldershot, 1987, pp. 166 -178 ibid.

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I have established that recruitment campaigns in the contemporary period echo the rhetoric of the Australian administration's campaigns prior to PNG's independence. I contend, however, that the messages found in

the recruitment campaigns are founded on inaccurately based assumptions of teachers' understandings of the cross cultural situation. Consequently, the PNG Educational administration lacks a cohesive and meaningful structure for assessing and preparing teachers for work in PNG.

At the same time, what is offered in those messages indicates to

teachers that it is their different cultural and educational background that allows them to occupy an important space in the structure of PNGn education.

As will be examined further in Chapter VIII, the recruitment

process forms part of the construction teachers make of PNG, and

contributes to the disquiet teachers experience in understanding what their place is within the cultures present at their PNG schools.

There is no evidence available to indicate how many approved applicants

decide against continuing to pursue a position in PNG. However, given the lack of information they receive or preparation with regard to the new culture they will meet, as well as the problematic situation faced in getting to PNG, it is instructive that new recruits from Australia do continue to take up posts in PNG government schools.

To provide some understanding of

why these applications continue, in the following section I explore a range

of factors that motivate today's applicants. I ask whether or not the issues are similar to those for teachers in the pre-independence period.

Motivating Contemporary Australians In Chapter IV I described Australian teachers in pre-independent PNG as being motivated by a paternalistic altruism that they partially vindicated

through an acknowledgment of their own fortunate situation. The expected reward of adventure in an exotic setting was also a prime factor

182

in their applications. From teachers in the 1 990s there is a discernibly similar, yet somewhat different, response. It is one that, while encompassing the need for adventure, change and challenge, also reflects changes to the social and economic environment within Australia. As will be seen, teachers echo the young Australians of the 1960s who despaired of their obdurate, narrow education bureaucracy. But now

there is also an element of anger and frustration with what the wider social situation has brought to them via the classrooms.

At one level, interviewees voice a concern common among teachers in all states in Australia who are facing the effects of budgetary cuts to the education sector.

Expected to cope with greater levels of administrative

paperwork, larger classes and fewer support staff to assist them, they decry the extra responsibilities. Well, I'd had enough of the Education Department in SA, I'd been with them for twenty years, and I was becoming increasingly frustrated with my position within the schools. The Education Department / thought was right off course.... / thought! was being pushed against a brick wall. ... Continually being frustrated by red tape, the legal responsibilities and what have you.... The people who were trying to do the job, we felt we were cariying a lot of others, and being kicked from above at the same time.... It wasn't the financial thing. I hardiy worried about the salaty... I was being thwarted by 1

bureaucratic bullshit.

All interviewees were similarly anxious, one citing 'the destructive attitude towards education of the new Victorian government!2

Their views encompass

some of McLean's 1991 analysis of data on teachers' perceptions of recent changes in their careers, in that 'their main dissatisfactions related to more professional criteria, such as the size of classes, pressures of

work and the extent of extra curricular

Transcript # 6, p .2. Transcript #17, p. 3.

183

Coupled with the frustrations teachers feel about lack of opportunity, are their very real concerns with the declining status of teachers within the

wider community. The recent Senate Committee Report that investigated this question,34 found that staff were increasingly having to deal with a

confusing and contradictory situation which eroded their morale. On the one hand, they believe their work is important and they value teaching excellence in colleagues and strive for it themselves. On the other hand, they believe their skills are neither understood nor valued in the community which accords them low 35 status. The Report noted that teachers still believe strongly in the intrinsic value and rewards of their work, but are frustrated by an apparently hostile media that supplied only 'negative reporting and stereotyping'36 rather than

reporting on the positive side of teachers' work and contribution to society in general.

Apart from issues of self-esteem, the lack of employment prospects for teaching across Australia in the first half of the 1 990s was a major factor contributing to applications for work in PNG.

37

Teachers at the time were

disheartened that, having spent three or four years in tertiary education, their degrees offered no guarantee of school employment.

In South

Australia, for example, 'in 1992 more than 4000 employable teachers had applied to undertake permanent, contract or temporary relieving work. Yet, as of 3 February 1992 there had been only 242 permanent and 170

33

Rupert MacLean, Career behaviour and perceptions of promoted teachers', in Rupert McLean & Philiip Mckenzie (eds.), Australian Teachers'Careers, ACER Ltd., Melbourne, 1991, p. 243. Senate Employment, Education and Training References Committee, A Class Act: Inquiiy into the Status of the Teaching Pro fression, Canberra, Commonwealth of Australia, 1998.

35

36

ibid., p.71.

ibid., p. 42. What was personaily disheartening for me in their views was that none mentioned the lack of employment in any relation whatsoever to dwindling opportunities for the education outlook of young people in Australian schools.

37

184

contract appointments into South Australian State schools (SAED 1 Gaining a permanent school position in any category became less likely, graduates instead competing for contracts and daily relief teaching, or were forced into other occupations. / felt that as a teacher I was wasted baby-sitting classes at local high schools... Some sort of job satisfaction [was missing in Australian schools].39

In the period prior to 1997 few permanent positions were made available to teachers,4° and the pragmatic approach to prospects for employment in

Australia initiated interest in the PNG positions.

Applicants who were

interviewed in this study are indicative of teachers in the wider educational

employment market who have faced 'the logic of the new economic policy that permeates current education policy in its funding objectives and management'.41 The general consensus from applicants was that 'a job was on offer when I did not have one at the time!2

Such prosaic reasoning from these contemporary teachers is indicative of an attitudinal change to that of the culture of the 1960s. In the previous

period the teachers voiced their belief that it was both right, and in some cases obligatory, to teach in PNG in order that their prospective students had an opportunity to enjoy the 'fair go' they believed the less fortunate deserved.

Conversely, in the mid 1 990s, the teachers I interviewed in

Australia, as well as others I met in PNG, viewed their PNG teaching jobs as access to the 'fair go' not currently available in their own teaching

culture. The secure and accepted teacher's place in the Australian 38

Christine Inglis & Reg Philps, Teachers in the Sun: The impact of Immigrant Teachers on the Labour Force, Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research, Canberra, 1995, p. 84. Transcript 5, p. 2. It is salutory that since the mass retrenchments and 'downsizing' of teacher numbers across State education departments during the mid 1990s, certain subject areas and age groups are now in urgent need of trained teachers. How much the up-turn in teacher requirements in Australia over the next few rears will affect recruitment to PNG will be a worthwhile issue to follow up. Burke, Gerald, 'Teachers and economic policy' in Rupert McLean & Phillip Mckenzie, op. cit., p.104 42

Transcript # 20, p. 6.

185

education system has become a rarer commodity for which they must

compete. What Home terms the 'charmed circle' of full employment has broken, and it is no longer likely that teachers, as with other workers in

capitalist societies, 'can go back to the days of full employment and low inflation.... Increasingly the new employment is insecure, much of it parttime, so that we now have junk jobs as well as junk foods'.43 Of the group interviewed from the 1 960s, none of the applicants were

without employment prior to their PNG postings; several applied for

secondment from teaching in Australian schools, while others changed their employment to take up teacher training.

In stark contrast, the

interviewees for the contemporary period were all either unemployed at the

time of application, or could not obtain permanent teaching positions in Australian schools.

It is a moot point whether aspects of self interest may

have been considered unacceptable to voice in the 1 960s, but such views

are patently less problematic now to bring into open discussion, at least with respect to those seeking PNG teaching positions. I'd always wanted to work overseas and I'd always been interested in developing countries and working there and I wanted to get out of Australia. It was partly the economic situation. I'd been doing contract work for a long time. It was also I wanted a change, and also I'd heard that the students were a lot better to here, and / was a bit sick of the students in Australia - I'd taught a lot of schools which were difficult, like Port Augusta, New South Wales, and a lot of students - it was always a bit of a battle

teaching, sort of low socio-economic and racial problems. So I wanted to experience more pleasant teaching. ... / didn't go over with plans to help the people, it was more that I was interested and there was stuff / was going to get out of it as well.44

Driven by economic strictures, the current teachers show little of the paternalism or missionary zeal that was evident in the motivations of the

earlier group. While they understand in a roundabout manner that 43 44

Home, D. The Public Culture, Pluto Press, London, 1986, p. 220. Transcript # 3, p. 1.

186

development issues within education are the major reason for expatriate positions being available,45 none of the teachers from the contemporary era give any indication that they believed PNGns were 'less fortunate' or

needed the benefits that 'civilisation' could bring them from Australia. Rather, their motivations have been more attuned to what benefits they could derive from going to PNG.

The teachers' apparent lack of interest in PNGn development may be more a sign of their ignorance than of their lack of altruism.

Those

applying for posts in PNG today know as little about PNG as their counterparts did in the 1960s. Of the applicants interviewed, one had some knowledge through her parents' stories of being missionaries in the

sixties, and most teachers knew geographical and statistical information about the country.

It would seem that for teachers, as well as other

sectors of the community, any knowledge they have is through the somewhat dubious channels of the various media. Since independence in 1975, Australia's day to day involvement with PNG, other than its aid

development, has lessened considerably. PNG, despite being Australia's nearest neighbour, is largely ignored. The small amount of information that is generated results from a mixture of media hype and media indifference. In 1994 / didn't know a great deal about the country. I tried to get in formation and talked to a guy who had been over there... and he told me a little about it, mainly general stuff. He did mention about the violence that was going on and stuff in the newspaper, so I had heard a little about how the culture had changed and had become more violent. I found it really hard to get specific

At the time of writing, the Australian Broadcasting Commission was using a

permanent correspondent based in Port Moresby, and the newspaper

PNG Department of Education, 1994, op. cit., p. 11. Transcript #3, p.1.

187

The Australian has a correspondent based in the Solomon Islands, at Honiaria.

Unless deemed likely to impact upon Australian policies for the

region,47 or an incident of horrendous human loss,48 few minor, let alone

major, stories have come out of PNG.

Consequently, any general

knowledge applicants can bring to their decisions regarding posts available is informed less by empirical evidence than by the media's narrow coverage of law and order uprisings and economic corruption within the

government. Such media emphasis may account for the reason why, beyond the economic strictures of cuts to the education budget, there remains a similar motivating factor to that of the 1 960s: the lure of adventure. What was starting to develop., was the Grand Adventure this is a new frontier, and here would be the opportunity to do something and really get involved ... and I had visions of the jungle, the bush.49 There was, / suppose, a misplaced spirit of adventure implicit in my application ... a different lifestyle for a limited period of time and a look at another culture.5°

Adventure provides an attractive illusion which is as powerful a motivating factor as the social and economic forces controlling teachers' lives. It is interesting to note that similarly ephemeral constituents of adventure and economic necessity are to be found in arguments about what constitutes 47

When initially writing this chapter, (March, 1997), PNG was making front page news in both Australia and other parts of the world, due to its government hiring a force of mercenaries to oppose the revolutionary army in Bougainville. The mercenaries were hired by the PM, Sir Julius Chan, to train, equip and take PNGDF into Bougainville to crush the BRA. It resulted in chan stepping down from office while a constiutional enquiry took place. The Bougainville Crisis ostensibly stems from the 9 year CRA mine and ownership of land claims dispute on Bougainville. However, secessionism goes far further back, to PNG's independence and Bougainville's call for its own independence in 1975. As with many PNG people, the Bougainvilleans have little in common, culturally, linguisitically or traditionally with other PNG language groupings. For further information on this situation see: Sean Dorney, The Sand/me Affair, ABC Books, Sydney, 1998; James Griffin, '"Logic is a White Man's Trick", The Bougainville Rebellion' in Anderson, David (ed), The Papua New Guinea —Australia Relationship: Problems and Prospects, Pacific Security Research Institute, Canbera, 1990; Douglas Oliver, Black/slanders: A Personal Perspective of Bougainville, 1937— 1991, Hyland House, Melbourne, 1991. 48 The drought in the PNG highlands in January 1998 or the tidal wave that devastated part of northern PNG in July that same year. Transcript # 6, p 5.

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our national identity and 'being Australian'.51 They are arguments relevant to this present discussion in that they answer why recruitment campaigns

for teachers continue to produce positive results. One particular case in point is Archer's recent discussion on Australian identity in the 1990s,52 where he reveals that arguments surrounding what it means to be Australian can still focus on an intrinsically bush legend mythology addressed by the centrality of a shared Britishness.

At the same time,

Archer notes that in modernist terms, there are intellectual values evident in national identity that point to a conception of ourselves very much in keeping with the characteristic foci of economics, globalisation and multiculturalism.

Seemingly at odds, both sets of identificatory values are

founded on a series of 'invented traditions' and both can be seen in the

teacher's motivations for going to PNG in this era. These are found in the examples of teachers who express the desires to experience adventure in exotic surroundings while learning about and interacting with a different culture.

The 1960s recruitment campaign message demanded responses from

teachers who considered themselves independent, tolerant, hard-working

and seeking challenges. The message evoked certain pull factors to PNG. Opportunities for exploration, evangelism, and the practice of democracy and nationalism were all facets of that era's emerging

Australian culture. The ideals espoused gave impetus to those young

teachers to turn their backs on the safe, but certain sameness, of Australian schools.

In the earlier part of the 1990s, teachers' responses

to recruitment messages were given impetus by push factors that send

them away from Australia. These include a lack of suitable jobs, a measure of uncertainty in the education sector, and a general malaise that

Transcript # 5, p. 2 Jeff Archer, National identity in theory and practice in Stokes, Geoffrey (ed), The Politics of Identity in Australia, CUP, Cambridge, 1997. pp. 23— 36. ibid.

189

spills over from challenges to their own worth and into that of the teaching profession and its status.

Teachers are now taking up the adventurous challenge of PNG as a means of asserting their Australian identity and practising what is left of

their independence, tolerance, and ability to work hard. The teachers interviewed for this period do not identify with the paternalism of a

colonialist British regime that was evident for the earlier group. Rather, their identity has been forged by what Home describes as knowing that 'Australia these days is more Strictly Ballroom and Muriel's Wedding than Dad and Dave and Forty Thousand Horsemen'.53 These are Australians whose attitudes towards their self identity have come from new influences on Australia's understanding of its place within the geographical region:

the debacle of the Vietnam War, a pluralist, multicultural society, the knowledge that the notion of terra nullius was a colonial myth, and a government that is paying little attention to them and a great deal of attention to economic rationalism and corporate power.54 And although at 'different places and times, in relation to different social interests, the

(re)presentations of Australianness have been, and will continue to be reformulated',55 it is doubtful whether many of the teachers currently

wanting employment with the PNG government apply with the 1 960s' notions of evangelism and nationalistic fervour.

It is important to point out here some of the difficulties I have faced in

attempting quantify and describe the teachers' motivations for this period, especially in light of the ambivalence I experienced in my own preparations for going to PNG.

Like them, I wanted to experience the adventure of the

new, and, I needed to go for research preparation. But I was also 53

Donald Home, The Australian, 25 April, 1996. Gareth Evans & Bruce Grant, Australia's Foreign Relations in the World of the 1990s, MUP, Melbourne, 1991, 331. 54

190

uncertain about my ability to cope with the alien surroundings.

For the

teachers I interviewed, there is the same pull of the unknown providing impetus similar to that experienced by teachers in the pre-independence period.

It is also clear that the teachers' approach to their employment

now points to pragmatic, rather than paternalistic, motivations.

Yet for

the Australian contract teacher today, the difficulties I described earlier in this chapter that they encounter in getting to PNG are far greater than those of the pre-independence group, who were assisted in their move by services of the Australian Administration. I therefore remain curious as to

the reasons why teachers have continued to attempt, and ultimately

surmount, the uncertainties they face. Indeed, it would seem that the tenacity with which they pursue their applications reflects a degree of enthusiasm and persistance that belies the pragmatism in their stated reasoning for applying.

In the next chapter I will examine how, in light of those enthusiasms and pragmatisms, the teachers negotiated the 'challenges' of PNG classrooms.

I ask what spaces they were able to make for themselves in their newfound school positions and what constructions they subsequently made of PNG from their encounters with that society.

55

Michael Garbutcheon Sirigh, 'Cultural Identity: the Representation of Australianness, paper from the Intercultural Communication Skills Conference, James Cook University, 1-3 July, 1990, p. 115.

Chapter VIII

Making the known unknown

192

This chapter continues the exploration of expatriate encounters with contemporary PNG through the recollections of Australian teachers.

In

order to clarify certain parameters of the teachers' place in PNG, I first discuss expatriatism as experienced in the wider context of

contemporary PNG. The discussion is a means of.asking whether there are ways in which teachers might have different experiences of

their surroundings than do other expatriates. The following section examines the teachers' first contacts with their new environment and their responses to the structures they encounter. Within this

investigation I question whether the lack of preparation for teachers during the recruitment phase might hamper their approaches to contact with PNG's different culture in this period and whether this affects the teachers' experience of finding a place in PNG

The Expatriate Today In Chapter VI, I outlined the ways in which expatriates in the pre-

independence period, including teachers, accessed what Cohen terms an 'environmental bubble'1 that mediated their contacts with the wider community of PNGns.

In that period, organisational attachments for

expatriates were generally to the Australian government administration based in PNG, and encompassed the expatriate teaching staff in government schools. Leaving aside contemporary expatriate teachers

in PNG government schools for the moment, I want to suggest that for the majority of approximately 5000 Australian expatriates who work in 2

•

present day PNG, an environmental bubble continues to order much of their social and physical experience of the country. The protective environment still exists despite indications that personnel employed in overseas situations, including PNG, are more likely now to find their

'E. Cohen, Expatriate Communities, in Current Sociology, 24 (3) 1977. pp. 1-133. Australian High Commission. July, 1998. Estimated figure includes dependents.

1

protective attachments emanating from their offshore-based institutions.3

These expatriates are able to remain in close contact with their offshore links through rapid air transport facilities and communication technology.

For the majority of Australians in PNG, their organisational

attachments are to either Australian government or non-government aid

agencies, defence forces, mining companies, international education

agencies, business ventures and other commercial organisations. To a lesser degree, the numerous missionaries of various denominations4

and even volunteers from non-Australian aid groups, are also able to access some of the benefits that accrue between offshore-based

organisational attachments of work and available commercial consumer services.5 Specifically because these expatriates are linked to organisations outside the country, they are able to access the type of

facilities and services beyond the means of most PNGns. This access is a factor that continues to privilege their day to day lived experience apart from those PNGn5, and as I will argue, that factor exacerbates the divide between cultures.

However, despite their privileged positions, one difference between contemporary expatriates and those of the pre-independence period is that they no longer hold a monopoly on all training, management and technological expertise. The advent of better educational opportunities for PNGns has broken down what was the previous mono-cultural working environment of highly trained expatriates in high level positions. The professional workplace has become a cross-cultural working

environment. And, within programmes to increase that localisation of 3

Sheehan, Brian. The Expatnate Executive Overseas - Adjusting to New Cultural Experiences. Occasional Paper No. 24, School of Business, Phillip Institute of Technology, Coburg, 1992; Baggage and the Adaptation of Expatriate American and Japanese Stenning & Mitchell, Managers, in Management International Review, vol 32 No. 1. 1992, pp. 77-89.

The Guardian Weekly, 9 August 1998, p. 13 (reprinted from Le Monde), has suggested that PNG plays host to the largest number of missionaries per head of population than any other country. Recent estimates are of one missionary for every two thousand PNGns. Although various volunteers (OSB, Peace Corps, vSO), are paid local salaries, and frequently live in villages or on school campuses, they are watched over by their agencies and have constant contact with supervisory staff from their home countries.

194

management and expertise, overseas trained staff are expected to exchange ideas and knowledge with their local counterparts, many of whom would have been taught by expatriate teachers prior to PNG's independence.

Yet importantly, as Munro and, even more recently, Wolfers, have noted, socialisation between the differing cultures of expatriate and National, has not tended to grow at the same rate as the joint participation in professional and skilled occupations.6

Munro

suggests that, looking from the PNGn working elite point of view, an apparent lack of interest in engendering interaction beyond the

workplace may be partially due to the PNGn's inability to command the salaries and benefits enjoyed by expatriate 'experts'.7 Such a suggestion is not only valid, but is a reminder that the inequities

established by the Australian Administration in pre-independent PNG

leave more than just a trace of the colonial structure that is yet to be countered.

In the 1990s a great deal of expatriates' work is intrinsically involved in

the delivery of aid, income, or services to PNG. Frequent collaboration occurs in work-based projects with both the educated elite and local village communities. Yet, 'there are few in Australia who know or

understand PNG well'.8 Of greater concern to these commentators is that 'the relationship between Australia and PNG has weakened over time, especially at the individual level'.9

6

E. Munro, Expatriates in Papua New Guinea With Special Reference to the Filipinos, unpublished PhD Thesis, University of New South Wales, 1991. And in a recent interview on ABC Radio, Ted Wolfers suggested that the gap between expatriates and Nationals in PNG is in fact widening. 'Whatever mingling used to take place, now it seems that gatherings are on a divided basis'. Background Briefing, ABC Radio National, 10 May 1997. Munro, op. cit. Teachers' salaries as previously noted are one example, however the disparities extend into virtually all areas of administration where expatriates have been brought into the country. It is particularly frustrating for those PNGns who have gained high educational qualifications and positions, but who are 'assisted' by expatriate expertise brought in at salaries considerably higher than their PNG supervisors, (personal comment, Bill Nouairi). Garrett, Jemima. 'A change in relations, but for the best'? Pacific Islands Monthly, February,

1992. p.22 Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Australia's Relations With Papua New Guinea, Canberra, 1991, p. 77.

195

One aspect of expatriate diffidence in regards to their attempts to know or understand PNGns well, has come about through media constructions of the country. Rascals .. A nation wasted by corruption and greed. PNG is trapped by its own lackadaisical Melanesian ways. The veneer of Western democracy, hurriedly put in place by Australia in the 1 960s and early '705, remains just that. The

result is social schizophrenia. Struggling to meet the demands of a modem high-tech world, PNG society lapses back into

traditional values and ways. Along the way much is perverted. The wantok system of looking after neighbours required people

to share, but today that which is shared is too often dubiously Politics is a bruising cargo cult. Government is acquired. one of PNG's few pockets of power and money and in the absence of party philosophy or unity, both are abused by a greedy and isolated elite. The most obvious symptom is the collapse of law and order. People risk their lives simply by moving around the country in which they live - an Australian telecommunications man who drove to his Mount Hagen home on a November evening was murdered for his car; women in a mourning party taking the body of a relative home for a village burial last month were raped on the roadside

Sydney Morning Herald, 14 January, 1995.

The numerous practitioners who are brought into the country to advise in such diverse areas as communications, mining, educational

curriculum, economic development and political relations are attached to organisations whose attitude towards PNG in general arises out of

such representations. The media's construction of a PNG overcome by high crime rates, civil unrest, and endemic political corruption, is unquestionably based on some actual incidents.10 But it must be

stressed that the situations described do not encompass the whole country.

Nevertheless, such representations are seen from afar to be

comprehensive. In part they discourage the sort of cultural exchange

that might come from tourism or other exchange-based investments in 10

-

This particular event was especially real to expatriate staff at our school given that the victim had been working on the installation of desperately-needed lines in our immediate region at the time. Although there were many local versions of the event that differed from the SMH's - one being that the expatriate worker had been killed for payback reasons after sacking two local tribespeople - it was not a media beat up. Whatever the 'real' reason for the tragedy, it was to greatly affect the well-being of the expatriate staff: all later enquiries to PNG Telekom about the possibility of finishing the telephone connection would bring reference to 'the difficulties and dangers of line

196

social development.11

It should be noted here that there are certainly

cases where close interactions between local and Australian families or

individuals do occur in larger towns and Port Moresby. More often, however, as Goiski's recently published account of her two years in the Western Highlands indicates,12 such interactions occur in isolated and

isolating situations where expatriates are dependent on PNGn facilities. The sensationalisation of events in PNG, even though they might be superficial descriptions of what are often complex social issues for PNGns, engenders a protective attitude on the part of overseas

organisations towards their high salaried personnel in the country. This is especially the case if the personnel are, unlike teachers, not expected to have a high level of interaction with local village populations. Coupled with official warnings that 'the serious law and

order situation has a detrimental impact on freedom of movement, social activities and attitudes to PNG [and that] the police force is undermanned, inadequately trained and ill-equipped',13 media coverage

is likely to be a factor in the continuing and discouraging lack of social interaction that exists between expatriate and PNG communities. Aside from apprehensions incurred through official and media

representations, other explanations remain to account for the separation between the wider expatriate and PNG communities. In virtually all the mainland population centres, social mixing between communities continues to be mediated by the influences of colonialism that are expressed in superimposed expatriate norms. Rather than adopting the manner of, or taking part in, customary PNGn gatherings, expatriates instead gather at each others' homes for dinner parties and

barbeques. They meet in clubs and bars, and the few cafes of Port Moresby and Rabaul, all of which are areas of interaction addressed by

installation' in that area. contact with 'the outside world' of relatives and friends was an unresolved issue of paramount importance to all the expatriates. Committee, op. cit., p. 72. 12 Kathy Golski, Watched by Ancestors, Sceptre, Sydney, 1998. 13 Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Post Report: Port Moresby, Parliament House, canberra, 1993, p.10.

197

particularly expatriate modes of behaviour. In these familiarly

Westernised localities, expatriates seek each other out to provide a frame of reference in which to define their identity and speak of a

distant home. As relatively short-term residents they have no need to face up to the 'hazards of displacements, interaction and translation'14 that beset migrants or those forced into refugee status in a strange country.

Expatriates might attend a locally organised sing-sing or compensation

ceremony, but it is debatable whether the purpose of their presence at such ceremonies is known to the casual visitor.15 They go rather as

tourists, using the opportunity to take photographs and 'soak up some local colour'.

Even if only partially aware of the meanings inherent in

the event they witness, or participate in, the expatriates may be quite

indifferent to those meanings. They take little interest in proceedings beyond their desire to record the event as some sort of exotic trophy.

Finney's argument, that expatriates in the pre-independence era were generally unaware of PNGn attitudes and perceptions of them, and that

expatriates were not interested in finding out about the aspirations of PNGns,16 would seem to be echoed in contemporary PNG. That lack

of interest in or knowledge of PNG society compounds the existence of an expatriate location as one that is superficial to, and superimposed on, PNG.

14

Trinh T. Minh-ha, 'Other than myself/my other self', in George Robertson et al (eds) Travellers Tales: Narratives of home and displacement, Routledge, London, 1994. p. 10. Invited to a compensation ceremony by a Year 12 student, John Sipendi, the son of a local Big Man in a Southern Highlands village, I asked whether it would be correct for me, as an outsider not connected to either of the villages involved, to attend. John informed that there was a reason for inviting many people to witness the proceedings. In his explanation, he described the witnesses as participants who would legitimise the proceedings by what they saw and remembered. Without the explanation, which was facilitated by my position as one of John's teachers, I would have been as unaware as any casual expatriate observer of what meanings were inherent in my attendance or the ceremony. R.S. Finney, 'Europeans do not know what is happening in the mind of the people, in Marion W. Ward (ed), The Politics of Melanesia, Fourth Waigani Seminar, Research School of Pacific Studies, ANU, 1970.

198

The social exclusiveness of expatriates is exacerbated by their being housed in particularly separated areas in Urbanised17 localities, rather

than them being scattered among members of the host population who are able to afford town living, or whose work takes them from their home regions, Albeit that separation often occurs for reasons of

security and delivery of special services, the somewhat inversely

applied ghetto factor adds to the perpetuation of exclusiveness and a lack of interest in contact by expatriates.

Housed behind purpose-built, securely-fenced compounds or in similarly secured hotels, the highly paid and organisationally connected

expatriates I have been describing do not need to consider what their place might be within PNG's society.

In their relatively brief visits to

the country these personnel are located physically and socially apart

from PNGns. These expatriates inhabit a separated space that, to use Jonathan Rutherford's analysis,18 can be explained as a place that

encompasses both symbolic and real terms. Symbolically, the

separated space provides a frame of reference where expatriates can both internalise and externalise their familiar standards and make

appropriately understood, and self-referential gestures. The symbolic place confirms and confers identity as separate from that of the host nation.

The expatriate place is also a symbolic continuity of colonial

superiority, one that sees PNG's former political dependency changed to dependence on continuing relations with Australia. Such dependency manifests itself not only in

the provision of financial and technical assistance, trade and financial relations, but also in more subtle forms like the structure and language of government, educational curricula, sources of private sector investment, the cultural orientation of

17

An previously noted, an 'urban area' in PNG is described by Munro as having 'a minimum of 500 persons, and about 195 persons per square kilometre'. In her thesis, she estimates that in 1980, 74% of expatriates lived in eight major towns, the rest in rural areas. Munro, op. cit., p. 92. Jonathan Rutherford, A Place Called Home: Identity and the Cultural Politics of Difference', in Rutherford, Jonathan (ed), Identity, Lawrence & Wishart Ltd., London, 1990.

199

all that is not indigenous, and even the predominance of certain 19 brands of vehicles, appliances and consumer products. These provisions, MacDonald argues, 'represent an imperial presence no less potent than formal colonial rule'.2° That presence symbolises the expatriate place.

In its context as a real object, the expatriate place is that of a secure compound or international standard hotel from which the provision of dependency relations are transacted.

The place is concrete evidence

of position or rank from where the influences that accrue to political,

economic and cultural capital can be exercised and used. Such a place is clear evidence to PNGns that expatriates start out from a level that begins far beyond their subsistence based economy.

Expatriate

place in both contexts, therefore, becomes what Rutherford terms a logocentrism: a 'claim to its own universal truth' which 'conceals the power structures that preserve the hierarchical relations of difference'.21

I now turn to an exploration of those expatriates who are teachers in contemporary PNGn government schools.

In looking across their

various experiences of interacting with PNG, I ask over the next chapters whether teachers, too, might occupy a space that can be understood as a separated place in both symbolic and real terms.

First Contact Interviews in Australia for contemporary teaching positions in PNG are conducted by an articulate and urbane PNGn staffing officer who has

travelled to Australia for that purpose. From the interview, that is generally their first meeting with a PNGn, teachers assume that the rest of PNG will present a similarly Westernised aspect.

19

Instead, in

Barrie MacDonald, 'Decolonisation and 'Good' Governance: Precedents and continuities', in Donald Denoon (ed), Emerging from Empire? Decolonisation in the Proceedings of a Workshop at the Australian National University, ANU, 1997, P. 1. Ibid. 21

ibid., p.21.

200

coming face to face with the far from urbane reality of Port Moresby's

airport, teachers unexpectedly discover that the developing world has far more tangible, and for them unpleasant, aspects than any they had previously understood through news items and television documentaries.

We had expectations, and certainly my wife had expectations, that PNG would at least meet Australia half way, being a previous colony we knew nothing about the place.... We were confronted at the airport with these women with umbrellas.., to walk across the tarmac to the terminaL... Then we had to line up for about two or three hours to go through immigration and customs... so after through customs the other impression was of all these red blotches [betel nut] on the side of everything and in the open, and there was a guy waiting for us with a pick up truck... we were sitting in the back of this truck bouncing along and I was thinking, 'what am I getting myself into12

The presence of armed security guards in combat uniform, the less than pristine and apparently chaotic arrival area, provide unexpectedly

traumatic experiences. Teachers ask, as did their predecessors, 'why would anyone want to live here? When are we going to leave

Their

expectations of this new world, constructed from the development

priorities of Australia, are based on teachers' prior assumptions of the known.

But now the teachers are not in the same position as the very

early expatriates whose exploratory patrols burst into PNG with their guns, cameras and trade goods, intent on 'making the unknown known'.24 Instead, they are the ones disarmed by surprise and

unexpected situations that do not fit in with conditioned responses. They must face the challenge of a society that has moved on to have its 'own purpose, routine and expected end'25 and in doing so makes the

teachers' known an unknown.

In Chapter IV, I demonstrated how, under the previous Australian

Administration, seconded trained teachers were given basic induction to Transcript#21, p.1. 24

# 16. p. 5. Bill Gammage, The Sky Travellers, MUP, Melbourne, 1998, p. 78.

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PNGn school situations through short courses held on arrival in PNG. ASOPA and E Course trainees, too, were supplied with an understanding of the PNG education system and administrative procedures, as well as a modicum of knowledge about the country's

cultural aspects. Australian teaching recruits for PNG government schools today can no longer access such arrangements.

The only preparation was five minute talk by a superintendent in Port Moresby about some of the government's aspirations for education. Cultural differences were glossed over as unimportant.26

As I indicated in the previous chapter, today's Australian teachers become highly critical of the lack of induction only after they begin to

experience, and thereby acknowledge, the reality of a difference that exists between educational structures in Australia and PNG. Likewise, it is only after teachers begin to accept that there are differences between the normality of their lives, and the normality of PNGn lives,

that they realise the necessity for some sort of enculturation process.

On arrival, teachers are met by officials from the Department of Education. They are then required to wait for a varying number of days

prior to being given clearances to proceed to their posting. The delay serves as an initial induction into daily life as experienced by expatriates in a PNGn city. The security aspect of day to day living in the national capital is a salutary lesson for the' newly-arrived Australian

who, despite media reports of crime and danger, nevertheless expects

a slow-paced open society befitting the tropical climate. Teachers learn of the particularly enclosed nature of today's expatriate society, where all accommodation, including the motels and hotels in the city, is situated behind eight foot high fences topped with razor wire.

Most

public buildings, apartment blocks and multiple housing compounds are

25 26

Ibid. p.77.

Transcript # 5, p. 3.

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additionally protected by armed security personnel and guard dogs. Shops, offices and motor vehicles are guarded as well.27

The expatriate patterns of daily life teachers glean from first

impressions of PNG, are, I suggest, a factor that is integral to how later contacts between expatriate and PNGn transpire. In following Robins, who argues that the West has its 'own particular logic of development as the only possibility; its inability..., to imagine modernity on the basis

of any other sense of universalism',28 it can be demonstrated that

expatriate interactions with contemporary PNG are affected by their initial, and unexpected, impressions.

Given their initial impressions of

PNG's development not measuring up to preconceived expectations, expatriates then succumb to fears and anxieties, which can lead them into becoming 'restricted by cultural arrogance, denying the possibilities

inherent in others, and producing feelingsof indifference or resentment towards them'.29

My question here is whether, in such circumstances,

the space for dialogue between the cultures has the potential to close down before it has opened.

In his introduction to 'Teaching in Papua New Guinea Secondary Schools', Director Tetaga warned that the new society will demand some 'personal adjustment'3° on the part of teachers. From the start of

the teachers' interactions with PNG, the necessity for adjustment becomes clearer as they experience the anxieties produced by the differing cultural logics of PNG.

In the waiting period for clearance, for

example, teachers encounter notions of time that in PNG run quite counter to their own culturally learned assumptions.

It is a differing

27

During my first stay in Port Moresby the car in which I was driven around the city by Education Office staff always had another person in it. This man was employed to stay with the car at all times, just so the vehicle would never be left alone. 28 Kevin Robins, 'Interrupting Identities: Turkey/Europe' in Hall, Stuart & du Gay, Paul (eds.) Questions of Cultural Identity, Sage Publications, London, 1996, p. 67. ibid., p. 80. Department of Education Papua New Guinea, Teaching in Papua New Guinea Secondary Schools, 1994, p.3.

30

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logic, where whatever needs to happen or get done, does so within the time it takes, not the time allowed.

Vulliamy describes this logic as 'inexact,' but 'more flexible' than the Western notion of time.31 The notion is a circumstance vastly dissimilar

to that practised in the world expatriate teachers have left. And while it is, superficially, a simple matter, the circumstance is a difference that the teachers find perplexing.

As Harvey notes, in the capitalist world,

time has become a representable commodity, bringing' about the condition in Western society that underscores the intense valuing of time.

Further, apprehension of time provides 'a sense of security in a

world where the great thrust of progress appears to be ever onwards and upwards'.32 For the teachers, the lack of immediacy, and the

concomitant devaluation of time as apparently being of any essence,

are a major factor in the 'frustrations and minor irritations'

they must

adjust to from the outset of their relationship with PNG.

/ got to Madang and was met by a national guy who took me to the hotel . . . that night the bigwigs from the Education Office came down I asked where I was going, and they and met me in the lounge bar said '7ust across the sea there". They didn't know where it was, or that it had 500 kids or anything. Anyway, I asked when I was going and was told probably tomorrow or the next day, all vague.... Anyway, I sat there and cooled my heels for eight days and in that time, on about day seven, the then deputy came out by boat and found me, to take me back on the eighth day. So it wasn't organised by the Education Office34.

Punctuality was one of the many demands made by the hegemonic 'discourse of Australia's previous educational administration.

Such a

demand has, however, been continually slowed by an apparent natural preference on the part of PNG to adhere to its own traditional attitudes to time. I will return at a later point to how other examples of teachers'

31

G. Vulliamy, 'Socio-cultural considerations in the reform of colonial schooling: a case study from Papua New Guinea in Race, Class and Education, Groom Helm, London, 1983, p. 97. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodemity, Blackwell, Cambridge, 1989. p. 202. Dept. of Education, op. cit., Transcript # 6, p. 4.

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differing perceptions of time's importance impact upon their attitudes and experiences of PNG.

The teacher's account, of waiting for eight days for his new posting exemplifies how differing parameters can produce anxieties. But the extended waiting period is also a manifestation of other circumstances

extant in PNG. These, taken out of context by expatriates, easily give rise to a cultural arrogance on the part of these personnel.

In this

case, the wait for clearance highlights the disjunctive dialogue existing between PNG's central administration, the provincial government, and their school organisations. Unaware of the devolved nature of the

separate provincial and centralised government instrumentalities,35 teachers arrive in PNG assuming that, having been employed and allocated a school by the central educational authority that hired them, the schools would have been advised of the teachers' impending arrival

and appropriate arrangements made. The opposite can be the case.

Incomplete telephone systems, with some schools not connected to the grid nor having access to nearby telephones, and an irregular postal service which entails picking up mail from a fairly distant centre, can delay information.36 Another delay occurs in the administrative system which, constructed to enable the continued 'employment of a large number of people,37 has a convoluted chain of command between

central office and the provincial education offices. Finally, the combative nature of some factions within the society and its historical lack of tribal interaction can still impede communication between central administrative and provincial administrative staff who belong to diverse 35

This devolution occurred after PNG independence, when power and authority for a great deal of PNGs infrastructure went to the provincial administrations which in turn were based on the previous Administration's district boundaries. These were boundaries of convenience, taking little account of tribal, language or clan divisions. Provincial government was abandoned perse in 1996. Central government is now assumed to control spending, although the system of provincial governors, and the provision of slush funds for parliamentary members does not appear to have stemmed the corruption charges consistently laid at politicians feet. A further problem exists for schools in that their budget is allocated each year to the charge of the principal. How that budget becomes administered and used depends entirely on the ability and honesty of the said principal. What does work with great efficiency in PNG is toksawe', a form of bush telegraph in the Highlands that gets information circulated at what seemed to be quite magical efficiency.

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tribes or language groups.38 Such unexpected impediments to the

smooth running of bureaucracies are taken into account as the

everyday known in parts of PNG. They are everyday occurrences and therefore part of the normal process. But the newly arrived expatriate teacher has no prior expectation of those impediments. When I first went out to Margarima / got taken out by a couple of people... my first impressions were that there wasn't anyone there. It was a day of a school strike by parents, there were a lot of people on the road with bush knives, axes and bows and arrows and stuff. A lot of people were painted up. But when / got to the school the principal wasn't there, and none of the teachers. They were going to break into a house so that I could stay there for the night. That wasn't really what I wanted so we went back. Then I went out about a week after.39

For the ill-informed expatriate teacher lacking in cultural preparation

and expecting modernity to operate on the basis of their own Australian

sense of universalism, the result is an arrogant assumption that the PNG administrative systems are in complete disarray, when they are not.

Beyond their first contact with the unknown of PNG comes their first contact with the schools and campus life. It is in these often remote

and isolated situations that teachers discover what it is like to account for other unknowns that go beyond the normality of their prior experience.

First School Contact When the teachers finally arrive at their schools it is, for most, the first time they have met so many non-white faces, and they are frequently surprised by the emotive nature of their reactions. For the first time in

:8 Desh Gupta, 'current Economic Trends', Pacific Bulletin, Vol. 10, No 1, July 1995. p. 3. Teng Waninga, 'The challenges Facing Education in Papua New Guinea Today' in Building Bridges in Teacher Education, Proceedings of the 12" Annual International Seminar for Teacher too experienced the sometimes Education, University of New England, April 1992, p. 515. acrimonious relations between offices on a first hand basis. An official in POM described to me some difficulties in communication as being the fault of 'those highlands savages who don't know what they're doing'. Transcript #3, p. 2. I

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their experience, they realise that 'whiteness is no longer the "unmarked" cultural category'4° that permeates their inherent

assumptions of identity.

From the outset, the Australian teachers,

along with other European expatriates, stand out from the local

population. The neutral anonymity enjoyed by white Australians as they blend in to their community at home cannot be commanded in PNGn schools, and the stares that acknowledge an expatriate presence provide the first concrete understanding of what it is to be 'the Other'.

In the case of teachers posted to more remote areas where uneven

development has slowed contact, the effect of the difference they bring with them, despite the twenty years since independence, continues to be especially marked. I think it's particularly a problem [for us] in the Highlands, because they get very little contact with white people. As / understand it, it's not such a problem in the coastal regions.... Because they've had more contact with white people and so can automatically, just over a period of time, realise that 'these people aren't really any different than we are'. To the Highlanders it's just such a rare thing. / mean, I saw it in the village people in that village who could not stop staring, ever. And a lot of the old women would come up and hug my legs, and stroke the hair on my legs... That was so different, they'd never seen anybody who had so much hair on their legs. It was most bizarre.4'

Adding to the salutory experience of coming face to face with themselves in their new identity as 'other', is the physical isolation of

secondary schools in PNG. Compared to the majority of country high schools in Australia, the PNGn schools seem cut off from the outside

world, and is a factor that adds to the expatriate teachers' immediate sense of alienation.

Other than the high schools in the provincial capitals and Port Moresby taking day students, and where staft may live away from the campus, high schools, secondary upgraded schools and National high schools 40

Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness, Routledge, London, 1993, p. 194.

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on the mainland are in relatively isolated localities away from the main town centres. Even the long-established Sogeri National High School, taking Year 11 and 12 student boarders, is situated some forty

kilometres from Port Moresby. Mogol Secondary School where I was based, as another example, is the only institution in Southern Highlands Province to cater for Years 11 and 12. It is twenty kilometres outside

the provincial capital, Mendi, and because the roads are in a consistently unstable condition, any journey into the capital for access to telephones, shops, or medical help can take up to an hour.

The

physical isolation is manifestly demonstrated to teachers when viewed

against their deeply entrenched attitudes towards the duty of care they

have for their students. Australian teachers are used to accessible amenities. Facing a long and dangerous journey to the nearest hospital with what might be a delirious, malaria-affected student, is an incident

for which they have no prior experience. And teachers have to take specifically PNGns factors into account when their school's isolation exacerbates such medical problems. In boarding schools in the 1980s and 90s there are worries that I suspect are greater than in Australia! Especially the concern that there will be a serious accident to a student and the possibility of compensation and payback actions.42

Enquiries made to the Provincial Education Administrator for our area as to the reasons for the apparent isolation of our school in particular,

and others in general, elicited the following explanations. A major factor is that the PNGn land ownership system cannot easily accommodate a freeholding situation that would allow for the acquisition of suitable sites in more populated areas.43 In addition, any

available sites have to be in an area agreeable to all tribal groups who

Transcript #10, p. 7. Transcript #19, p.12. Sean Dorney, Papua New Guinea: People Politics and Historj Since 1975, Random House,Sydney, 1990. Dorney discusses the situation of land-ownership in PNG particularly as it relates to tribal disputes and to the approximately three percent of land alienated by colonialism. He also notes that 'even land devoted to such publiô benefit purposes as schools' is subject to claims for compensation from government. p. 18.

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are concerned with the school, and where members from all the groups are willing to go without fear of retribution. As most schools have a Board of Governors drawn from local Big Men of surrounding villages, this point is especially important.

The second reason for isolating schools is that it aids the provision of security.

Safety for both staff and students is more readily supervised

if schools are situated away from population centres. Having staff live on campus provides for constant care of the majority of students who

are boarders. Teachers do not have to surround their personal living

area with razor wire or hire security guards to ward off intruders. And isolating the schools has the concomitant effect of lessening the temptation of students to get involved in organised raskol activity.

Other temptations, too, are removed. For example, the monitoring of local alcohol outlets that supply to both staff and students has become a necessity for school administration.44

One advantage for teachers isolated on campuses located away from highly populated areas is that they do not have to compete for the very

costly rental accommodation of urban regions. Teacher housing is provided by the PNG government, and in what appears to be an

attempt at minimising grievances over the physically separated nature of schools, the Education Department pays some attention to spelling out, prior to their departure, the housing conditions for expatriates on campuses.

As the teaching booklet emphasises, '... over the years

recruits have not been adequately prepared for the type of housing

available to them. Do not, quite frankly, expect a mansion. ... In some cases the house or flat will have been cleaned'.45 The housing has recently been built by the army, but it had deteriorated a lot. When I first got there, no electricity was on, and there was just a wood stove and water had to be pumped up. Inside it 44

Teaching Service Commission Direction No. 1/83, G. Mamis, Commissioner, Circulars for the use of Provincial High Schools, Department of Education, PNG, 1990, p. 25. Department of Education, 1994, op. cit., p. 12.

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was soot all over the walls When / first walked in I was staying with a [National] family and three kids, and / didn't really assess the house, it was more, 'when am / going to get some privacy'? The conditions were pretty bad. There wasn't any mattress or anything, no cushions, then I got a mattress and it had bugs.46

In describing the living conditions encountered on her arrival, this teacher was, nevertheless, relatively calm and sanguine about them. Her attitude was similar to that of other teachers I have spoken with.

Certainly I, too, reacted more philosophically to the state of our house than to other situations I encountered.

It would seem that Australian

teachers are less concerned than they might be with regard to the condition of the housing they find at their schools because of the quite specific information they are supplied with prior to their departure. Teachers give very definite and negative views on other aspects of their

life in PNG, but they remain largely uninterested in their housing conditions.

More noteworthy is that the supply and style of housing continues to reflect much of the two-tiered standard dividing expatriate and local that was put in place by the previous Australian administration.

Apart from

the example above, on all the campuses I visited both administrators and school principals were allocating the 'best' houses to expatriates. Local teachers were left to compete for often run down and inadequate accommodation.47 The double standard raises the question of whether it is a reflection of the current administration's views on what expatriates

will accept, or is an attempt by the school principals to ensure that expatriates, having taken up employment, will endure the conditions and stay.

Whatever the case may be, the impact of a two-tiered

housing system is that it puts a strain on relations between expatriate

Transcript # 3, p. 2 My understanding of the situation is reflected in comments made in personal journals of indigenous staff. The journals formed part of a paper examining teacher education in PNG. That the teachers felt the need to remark upon their difficulties with housing highlights their situation. A. Guy, 'Participatory Research in Practice: Disclosing Difference', Occasional Paper, UPNG,

1992, p.8.

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teachers and local staff. Further explorations into such relations will be followed up in the next chapter. The final reason I was given for isolating schools is that it takes students away from their villages and at the same time mixes language groups. The central administration aims to create a cohesive school society crossing tribal affiliations.48 In this way, the PNG administration hopes to engender a cohesive society in a wider community sense.

The government policy at the time with National high schools was to bring them from different regions of PNG, to make a diverse mix of students was their philosophy. So we had students from all over the place, students from the coast, students from the highlands, from Port Moresby. And for them as well [as us] it was quite a cultural experience to meet people from different parts of PNG.49

The information supplied to expatriate teachers on this policy echoes the ethos of the pre-independence era, when schools were the vehicles

that promoted the values of the culture brought in by the Australian administration. Now, as in the previous period, the imposition of

political order by the drawing of boundaries, and a definition of nationhood through superficial interaction fails to account for the historically

and accepted order that most PNGns live by.

Hence, the opportunities teachers are given to work among the diverse student population provide early lessons in thedifficulty of imposing

cohesion on a country so culturally separated in its nature. And it is a separation that teachers must account for if they are to accept the incidents occurring on a daily basis that are a direct result of the artificial homegeneity. There were students from the mainland and the highlands. They had huge problems, there were rape incidents there as well, highland males and coastal females... One student came to me complaining... 'These girls, they're wearing shorts, it gets my hormones up, if this keeps going on I'm So the blame was laid squarely on inappropriate going to have to rape

Personal commentary, G. Bani, Secretary for Education, Southern Highlands Province.

Transcript #21, p. 3.

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behaviour... And / guess from a tribal perspective, that could be justified. Tribal law would demand that if you don't adhere to customs you're finished..50

My own lesson in diversity came from accompanying students to

various sports meetings around the country. When I took the students to the nearby provincial capital Mendi, I observed that while each

student acknowledged their affiliation to their school, they first identified themselves through which linguisitic tribe or local clan they belonged to. Not long after that sports meeting we travelled out of the province in a group made up from several schools across the province. On that occasion all the students identified themselves as Southern Highlanders, and all were prepared to co-operate along those provincial

lines while far from home and interacting with students from other provinces. Shortly after returning to classes, I discussed issues of

identity with the same students. One question I asked of them was how they would describe themselves if we had visited an overseas country.

The consensus from the students was that they would identify themselves just as PNGns.

The students described their identity to me, in both a symbolic and a real sense, as stemming from their place within relationships: familial,

bureaucratical, political, and economical that are attached to a linguisically-based home. It forms the basis of what is by and large

loosely known as the wantok system. Wantok means literally, one talk, or language - same talk, but refers specifically to the local language of

tribe, clan or discrete area. A wantok is someone who speaks that same language, and is therefore of the same tribe or clan, and so

comes from the same place. Home is where people speak the same local language and where kinship relationships are established. In PNG, with perhaps more than seven hundred and twenty discreet

Austronesian or Melanesian languages, the relationship is of vital

importance. Difference comes on a linguistically based scale: different language, different set of wantoks - perhaps even 'the other'. English 50

Ibid., p.11.

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and the more widely used tokpisin do not accrete into this tradition. Within the system, wantoks are those people to whom first allegiance is

owed, but additionally, denotes their place within the family/clan/tribal group, and which to a great extent can control what must be done and

how it is done. Whether prime minister, local villager, or clerk at the airport 'goods inwards' department, wantoks and their place are of extreme importance.

Because Papua New Guineans in virtually all areas of that country order their lives this way,51 it is very difficult as a visitor to escape either

the expectation that they too are part of such a system somewhere else, or that they also order their lives similarly. Yet such a system is

not available for the newly arrived Australian teachers who, in the state schools of contemporary PNG, are largely deprived of the

environmental bubble that connects other expatriates to home. They must generate their own organisational attachments, as well as their own means of self identification in the making of what is not home,

home. Apart from staff allocated to schools in large centres such as Port Moresby and Lae, teachers are in physically and culturally isolated school environments among PNGn staff, local villages, and the

provincial government-controlled education bureaucracy. As such, school staff are distinct from other short term expatriates, or indeed

from most Australian teachers of the pre-independence period other than the bush 'T' school teachers. The teachers employed by the PNGn government today are attached to

its central bureaucracy, but it is one that considers the expatriate teachers part of the wider privileged expatriate community and

therefore pays little attention to their expatriate teachers' needs. At the

51

Deborah Gewertz & Frederick Errington, Twisted histories, altered contexts, CUP, Cambridge,

1991.

213

same time, the teachers are largely ignored by their oWn Australian High Commission.52

Consequently, the teachers, unlike expatriates attached to off-shore organisations, cannot ignore their otherness through a retreat to the security of their razor-wired compound or the foyer of their hotel. Apart from being provided with housing, teaOhers must facilitate their own answers to whatever needs arise within their day to day lives. You could never rely on the government in cases of emergency - nor did we have any contact at all with the Australian government. ... We had an incident where rascals attacked our canteen and cut up our canteen manager and he would have died. Now that time I rang town to tty and get a helicopter out, and then sent others off in both directions to try and get a speed boat. It was amazing luck because the helicopter was about to take off for a telecom thing check somewhere and the chap just said he'd come out and get him.53

Such necessity to be self-reliant, nonetheless, allows for a much wider interaction across cultures than that experienced by the visiting consultant expatriate.

Contact with PNGn health care is an example of this wider interaction. While the majority of expatriates find themselves another expatriate doctor, teachers have a closer relationship with their nearest PNG-run hospital because of the need to take their students there, either for

malaria or injury treatments. The teachers become acquainted with the provincial hospital on a basis rarely known by the wider expatriate

community. They are required to wait for their students to be treated alongside other PNGns and are able to observe first hand the comparatively basic medical services available to the ordinary PNGn as opposed to that available to expatriate workers. 52

Hospitals also

Some four months after my arrival in PNG, Australian High Commission forms arrived at our school. They were being sent as part of a yearly round up' of Australian expatriate numbers. Other than that, my research leads me to understand that the High Commission is unaware of numbers or locations of many Australian teachers in PNG. The previously mentioned figure of approximately 5000 came from enquiries made to assess the number of Australians in PNG, as well as teachers in government schools. The whole of the reply was that 1800 Australians are registered at the High Commission, but we estimate that approximately 5000 are resident in PNG, including dependents. Numbers of teachers are unknown'. Personal comment from Australian High Commission, Port Moresby. Transcript # 5, p. 6.

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provide teachers with a wider experience of the formalities in PNGn lives. For example, the Mendi hospital has a large notice at the front gate listing the cost of various medical procedures available to the local

population. The procedures list comprises treatment for axe wounds, spear wounds, arrow removals, and a variety of other conflict injuries, all of which are on a per kina, per patient charge basis.

However, as I encountered, within the health care experience is a

factor that relates specifically to the expatriate place in PNG. On each visit I or another expatriate teacher from our school made to the hospital with a student, it was always the case that our students would

be seen by the doctor or sister in charge of out-patients before all others who were waiting.

Whether seeking health care, using transport, doing weekly shopping, renewing contact with the 'outside world' that is Australia, or dealing

with the Education Department head office to ensure their pay cheque arrives, teachers' negotiations are on both PNGn and expatriate terms. It is a situation different to that of the consultant expatriate whose negotiations are through the facilities of their offshore organisation. For as well as with staff, students, and the parents, teachers'

interactions, although marginal, do extend into the local village or town. I had some contact... some of the local people around the place, in the local drinking establishments. We had a couple of grog vans too. It actually helps quite a bit if you make yourself known around the villages with the local people, and have a few drinks with them. They know who you are and then if you come across any problems will be OK. We used to go to the SIL [Summer Institute of Linguistics] market as welL.. when the market was held in the morning, everyone would have to stand in front of their wares and say grace to God before the throng was unleashed to buy what they were looking for. Unbelievable.54

Teachers thus attempt coming to terms with the ways in which they must engage with the local hospital, the post office, the trade store and market, the PMV (bus) driver and his passengers, and the local drinking

place. As they negotiate access to their simple, and more

215

sophisticated, needs they discover that they are differently and uniquely positioned between the expatriate and PNGn cultures. Because of their closer association with PNGn structures, however,

teachers encounter their sense of difference, of being 'other', with a more palpable awareness than the general expatriate worker. The division was there because you're always an expat. you've got white skin. It was more noticeable to my friend that I worked with who was born there, because he speaks pisin, plus a couple of local tok pies, he found the division intolerable, because from his point of view he was local. But still with his language ability he was never accepted as being part of PNG society... To the local people you were just a white person, a masta - not a term of reference to superiority, it just means you're a white person. It's hard to come to grips with though, it places images of overlords with the whip.55

Within their heightened contacts across cultures, and even though they can see clearly that they have been treated on a different basis to that

of local people, the teachers interviewed for the contemporary section of the study, are all uncomfortable with the term masta, as indeed I was

with being addressed as missus. It is a name given to white people every day in the Highlands, although it is not so obvious in the regions of longer contact, the bigger towns and the city. But when driving down the bumpy road to the provincial capital the litany, 'missus!,

missus!' followed my vehicle all the way. And it forced me to examine what I felt about the new and discomforting identity I had been given.

I

would ask myself whether it was because no National women in that region drive; were the villagers surprised at seeing a woman drive?

Or,

I had to consider, were they surprised at seeing a white woman? The nearest I had contact with was twenty kilometres away in Mendi. Or were they saying 'look at this woman who dares to flaunt her wealth, prestige and status when we can have none of that during our hard life'?

:: Transcript # 21, p. 9 Transcript # 19, p. 9.

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Unpleasant as the term might be for most Australians, it is necessary

to ask if the particular practice of naming us masta and missus is part of an underlying PNGn discourse. The question is whether the discourse

is telling us about what we have made, and still make, of ourselves as

a separated group. Thomas has suggested that 'the colonial discourse, in whatever form, has at times been projected back at Europeans, in all manner of intentions, either serious or parodic'.56 Following Thomas, I propose there is an argument that, while the terms

masta and missus might be a way of speaking, they also throw light on the paradoxical meanings that often constitute the structures of power and their ordering of contemporary relationships in PNG.

Expatriate teachers prefer to deny PNGns the use of the terms because they bring us face to face with the burden of a collective cultural guilt, as well as the very obvious inequalities between expatriate and PNGn. Such inequalities may also be posited as part of the reason why expatriate teachers rarely make lasting friendships with PNGns that can

be honestly described as on an equal footing. Whether with educated elite members of the community, or the local villagers and parents and friends of their students, expatriates appear disinclined to learn their host's language and accept their mode of life for what it is.

Australia, as an aid donor, and teachers as deliverers of that aid, perpetuate through their presence many binaries that collect around the implied master/servant relationship that expatriate groups have with PNG.

Brought in as educational experts, all strata of local PNG

society acknowledges the difference that expatriate identity confers on all levels.

Expatriates are highly qualified, PNGns are less so.

Overseas teachers are paid four times the salary and are comparatively rich, while the well educated PNGn teacher remains relatively poor. Expatriates have knowledge and access to the technological world outside, PNG must keep waiting. Virtually all whites are served first in 56

Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism's Culture, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994, p. 58.

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shops and hospitals while PNGns must queue outside in the rain. The inequities of expatriate/PNG relations are brought into a teacher's focus in all aspects of their contact with everyday PNGn life.

CHAPTER IX

No place - like home

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In this chapter I continue to ask what it has been like for expatriate

teachers in PNG, and here canvass their responses to contact with the differing groups across the cultures they encounter. I explore

expatriate teacher interactions with PNGn staff at the schools where they are posted. I then turn to a discussion of the relations teachers

have with their PNGn students, and what responses teachers have to

the context of a PNGn classroom. Finally, I ask about the teachers' relations with expatriates in the wider community beyond their school

campus. In looking at teachers' interactions with others throughout the contemporary period, I raise a number of theoretical issues that

address the teachers' notions of place.

Contact in the Staifroom Connections between expatriate and indigenous staff in contemporary PNG are no longer assumed to be on the master/servant basis1

demanded by the prior administration and which was generally accepted by the pre-independence expatriate teachers as well. It would seem, however, that certain factors are at work in secondary schools that tend to engender an uncomfortably similar circumstance. These factors include the pay and condition anomalies between

expatriate and indigenous teachers, the generally higher educational qualifications of expatriate teachers,2 and an Australian teacher's

inevitably stronger command of English as the language of instruction.

Indigenous staff at PNG high schools are members of the educated

elite of PNG. As described in Chapter VI, it is this sub-cultural group who are most likely to hold different views from that of the wider

C.D. Rowley, The New Guinea Villager, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1965. 2Thomas A. ODonoghue & David Austin, 'The evolution of a national system of teacher education in the developing world: The case of Papua New Guinea, History of Education, Vol 23, No.3, p.315.

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population on PNG's subordinated relationship with Australia. Together with PNG's continuing dependency paradigm, described by Vulliamy as resulting from 'the inheritance of a Western model of schooling',3 it is

not surprising that PNGn school staff, in one way or another, show resentment at the implicit status of their expatriate counterparts.

/ was not made welcome, / was rather brusquely accommodated personally and professionally by a principal and some staff who seemed to distrust me as a white contract teacher.... The staff as a whole were almost actively antipathetic to my presence. Resentment like this is pretty hard to take...! guess from there my working relationship with a few of them varied from poor to non-existent, a few I simply ignored because of my professional arrogance! As a whole they actively resented contract expats 'cos of the extra money that we

earned. They were, or at least seemed unwilling to rationalise PNG's need against what they saw as an unfair advantage.

Clearly, a major question accompanying the expatriate assumption of resentment is that it is an assumption only and I acknowledge that having interviewed exclusively Australian teachers, I cannot use their

interpretations to represent attitudes of PNGn school staff. Nevertheless, Australian teachers are surprised by what they understand to be that resentment, and on a personal basis I, too, became aware of feelings that I could only interpret as resentful on the part of PNG staff.

Those feelings are especially difficult to cope with

when coupled with both a very high expectation of expatriate expertise, and a willingness to allow expatriates to take on a heavier burden of duties.

But, as all teachers noted in one way or another, 'it's vety hard to

argue that you shouldn't take more of an equitable load of the work share if you get paid four times as much'.5

Whether complex or simple in nature, tensions between cultures arise

in the staffroom. The necessity to deal with educational structures and student demands, however, results in an insubstantial alliance among G. Vulliamy, 'Socio-cultural Consideration in the Reform of Colonial Schooling: A case study from Papua New Guinea' in Len Barton & Stephen Walker (eds.), Race, Class and Education, Groom Helm, London, 1983, p. 81. Transcript 5, p. 4.

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staff. Such dealings are factors contributing to the expatriate teachers

having an ambivalent understanding of their place within the community. At my school, for example, even staff room seating

arrangements during meeting and recess times would cause tension. Expatriate and National teachers would frequently sit in segregated

groups that exacerbated a 'them and us' state of affairs when disagreements arose over school matters.

However, given often

diametrically opposing views based on cultural backgrounds, the tensions were perhaps inevitable.

Other tensions for expatriates within their contact situation arise over

the previously mentioned differing notions of time. Despite the preindependence primary school curriculum demanding of teachers that by Standard II, their students should be taught to recognise time by their

classroom clocks,6 today, in both primary and secondary schools, individual indigenous teachers have a variety of attitudes towards the

rigidity of keeping timetables. As Fife has pointed out, this results in

its own lesson to students, who may learn over several years and several teachers that 'time' is, after all, much more flexible than the overt lessons about seconds, minutes, hours, weeks, months, and years would suggest. A notion of flexible time is more in keeping with the various cultural traditions in the country.7

Within their workplace, expatriate teachers must choose whether to put aside 'the cultural conditioning of perceptions'8 that keeps them rigidly

following the clock. They must either adjust to their host country timetable, or account for the objections that occur when insisting on

their own regime. One teacher outlined an agreement he came to with students regarding access to classes after a set time had expired. By Transcript # 21, p. 4. 6 Territory of Papua & New Guinea, Syllabus for Primary T Schools, Revised ediction, Department of Education, Port Moresby, 1962. Wayne Fife, 'Crossing Boundaries: dissolution as a secondary message of education in Papua New Guinea, International Journal of Educational Development, vol. 12, No 2, 1993, p. 217.

222

making a cut off limit, he ensured his students were always on time.

But their compliance to his rules, he believed, was more a reflection of the widely accepted social consequences of examination failure at school9 than a subversion of his students' normally accepted conduct.

More complex in nature are tensions that result from disagreements

between staff cultures over student behaviours and elements of discipline.

In that first year, when they weren't happy with me being there, initially because / was replacing a National chap, who they liked. And there were a couple, two or three amongst that who were vetij anti Australian, 'why should this chap be here running the show when we've got competent (in their eyes) Nationals to do the job'. It surfaced occasionally if! had to take somebody to task about something.1°

In Australian, or indeed other Anglo-centred school structures, both Clandinin and Connelly in Canada11 and Rizvi in Australia12 have shown

how wider aspects of cultural politics impact upon teachers and their relationships with other teachers and teaching.

While Western

influences on PNGn styles of education delivery are relatively long

standing, and certainly profound, PNGn teachers' relationships with their students, other staff, and the wider community beyond the classroom, are embedded at a socio-cultural level not experienced in the Australian context.

And although differing in intensity from coastal

to highland areas, interactions among PNGns in PNGn schools, whether over aspects of discipline, control or learning, are similar to

A. Wyatt, Understanding Unfamiliar Personnel Problems in Cross-Cultural Work Encounters', Asia Pacific Human Resource Management, Vol. 27, No. 4, Nov. 1989, p. 5. Teng Wanginga, 'The Challenges Facing Education in Papua New Guinea today, in Building Bridges in Teacher Education, Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Seminar for Teacher Education, University of New England, April 1992, p. 515. Transcript # 6, p. 7. "D.Jean Clandinin & F. Michael Connelley, Teachers' Professional Knowledge Landscapes, Teachers College Press, New York, 1995. 12 Fazal Rizvi, 'Racism, Multiculuralism and the Cultural Politics of Teaching in L. Logan & N. Dempster (eds.), Teachers in Austalian Schoolsç Australian College of Education, 1992, pp. 69—

8

85.

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most other aspects of PNG society. The same cultural politics that order affiliation and kinship requirements13 order school relations.

An example of this intrinsically and deeply ingrained social effect was demonstrated during a staff room discussion on class discipline at our school.

Indigenous staff were voicing their concern at not being able to

command the same levels of control of their classes as did expatriates, and were frustrated in their efforts to determine the best method of demanding that discipline. The indigenous teachers explained that

many avenues of educational practice they might have chosen were

blocked by tribal relationship considerations. On the one hand affiliations with certain students who were wantoks meant that not only

did their students expect, but the staff felt constrained, to give their wantoks preferential treatment. On the other hand, because of historically based conflict associations with certain students from other

language! tribal groups, there were issues of discipline that were perceived as prejudice, and these could result in a payback dispute if

the tribes in question were in conflict mode. Other predicaments arise when complicated by non-affiliated students perceive themselves to be missing out on attention because they have no strings to pull.

But expatriates are able to deal with disciplinary situations without fear or concern for repercussions.

In a sense, the teachers take on the

role formerly occupied by the Australian kiap as representative of the

pre-independence Administration. Then they made decisions and kept government order, and, more importantly, were integral to dispute resolution between PNGns; mainly on the basis of their not being affiliated to any party in dispute.

One result of this 'neo-kiapism' in

today's classroom is a rise in status of expatriate teachers in the eyes of students.

However, in the particular example I mentioned, another

result was that the expatriate teachers became a focus of blame and

13 See for example, Louise Morauta (ed), Law and Order in a Changing Society, Department of Political and Social change, Research School of Pacific Studies, ANU, Canberra, 1986.

224

further envy in the eyes of the national teachers simply because of their lack of affiliation and their consequent impartiality.

Such an

ambivalently addressed situation for expatriates in the school system is not an isolated case, and is often exploited to solve similarly intractable problems. The National teachers in general, perhaps it's not fair to say weren't interested, [in disciplining students] but weren't inclined to get involved. Possibly that's a cultural thing that comes from the pay-back situation and its principles. Because teachers themselves had certain allegiances with different students from different regions and formed little cliques and it's not uncommon for teachers to find wrecked cars, slashed tyres, son or daughter getting bashed apparently indiscriminately. So it was usually that problems were resolved by expatriates. I think it goes back to the kiap principle, the expatriate was someone who was removed from the cultural even/day happenings of society and was the one you could rely on to provide an impartial solution to the problems.14

It is interesting to note how the notion of contemporary expatriate teacher as kiap is echoed in Banks and Ballard's recent suggestion that the Australian kiap has re-appreared in PNG as the 'visible face of the

mineral resource industry. Former kiaps (and other ex-colonial officers) now fill most of the expatriate positions within mining companies which are concerned with Community Affairs/Relations/Development.'15

Perhaps, therefore, the conciliatory role that expatriate teachers take should not surprise them.

Relevant here are the comments Bacchus makes regarding attitudes towards personal and professional considerations in the PNG school decision making processes.

Administrative practices in [Western] societies aim to be 'impersonal' if they are to be efficient. But in societies like PNG Transcript #21, p. 4. Glenn Banks and chris Ballard, 'The Return of the Kiap: recolonising rural Papua New Guinea' in Donald Denoon (ed), Emerging From Empire? Decolonisation in the Pacific, Proceedings of a Workshop at the Australian National University, ANU, Canberra, 1997, p. 160. 15

225

where relationships between individuals tend to be 'primary' or less 'impersonal' in nature, the separations of personal or nonprofessional from professional relationships is more difficult to achieve. In fact, the "individualistic orientation" and functionally specific relationships which it is said dominate western institutions and organisations often contrasts starkly with the "collective philosophy which pervades village life" in PNG, where most of the local administrators experienced their early socialisation.16

Although the differences in societal structures are acknowledged in the literature, Australian teachers arrive in PNG generally unaware of how

their different approach to various practices will affect their working relationships with PNGn staff and administrators.

Expatriates'

assumptions of working harmoniously in the PNGn system arise out of

the misconceptions promulgated by the recruitment system: that if a teacher is capable of managing an Australian school situation, then their qualifications will adequately prepare them to manage all PNGn situations. Certainly teachers arriving at PNG high schools encounter

structural conditions that superficially resemble those of Australia.

It is

questionable, however, whether those underlying societal structures in PNG have a greater impact upon teachers' ability to find a place within

the school or wider community than is generally understood. The basically misleading premise that cultural training is unnecessary

appears more to exacerbate misunderstandings and an already established rancour among indigenous teachers towards expatriate teachers.

There was never any sort of open reference, but certainly discussions. At Aiyura we had an activist who was vety much against the PNG government putting expatriates in at alL He organised student opposition to expatriates in the school... Student protests out the front, with a petition to the Education Minister, saying that expatriates should go. Starting with the policy of localisation that should be accelerated and all expatriates should be removed from PNG - by, I think, 1996.17

16 M. Kazim Bacchus, Educational Policy making and Development Strategy in the Third World, Avebury Gower Publishing Co., Aldershot, 1987, P. 185. 17 Transcript # 21, p. 4.

226

The difficulties that expatriates discuss in their relationships with local staff centre around the apparent inability of indigenous counterparts to treat them the same as they would each other.

Despite a superficial

cordiality between the groups, it would seem that the structural inequities expatriates perpetuate, simply by their presence in PNG,

make it problematic for relations to be enjoyed in an environment of mutual respect and appreciation.

It is a dilemma similar to that produced by what Young has called 'a lack of alternative to Orientalism,' that still identifies with, and as,

colonial discourse. The dilemmas continue to occur, he suggests, despite attempts on the part of deconstructionists, such as Bhabha and Spivak, 'towards an inversion of the dominant structures of knowledge and power without simply reproducing them'.18

Put more

bluntly, expatriates often dominate situations in schools through their assumptions that the knowledge they bring and their 'knowing better' is acceptable because it is part of the emancipation process for PNG. There are grounds here to claim that little has changed in the perpetuation of a separated place for staff since the Australiancontrolled period. Then, expatriate teachers were complacent about

the differentiated pay scales because they expected indigenous staff

to be grateful that Australians were willing to teach in PNG. Today, while most contemporary expatriates are confused and disappointed when they are not effusively welcomed by indigenous counterparts, some continue to believe that their expertise and their willingness to forego a comfortable lifestyle while living in comparative isolation should be rewarded by salary scales over and above those of local teachers.

Within this argument I contend that the factors contributing to the isolating and isolation of schools are themselves part of the expatriate 18 Robert Young, White Mythologies, Routledge, New York, 1990. p. 173.

227

experiences that structure an ambivalent relationship with their National

colleagues. The making of a separated expatriate space is compounded by the teachers needing to work within the parameters of those elements that engender the need to isolate schools.

For

example, the placement of schools in a comparatively isolated village environment with few other expatriates in residence immerses teachers in a context that requires them to understand themselves immediately

as Other. The sights, sounds and smells of village life encountered at a

trade store or local market are alien to expatriates, but formalities of the context. Such normalities do not have the usual referents of the

expatriates' prior learned experiences of home. One consequence is that teachers seek the security of school and its emphasis on the day to day conventions to normalise what is an otherwise abnormal existence for them.

If the expatriates then experience resentment in the

staff room, or are dissatisfied with the way the school is ordered, they

draw further away from their indigenous counterparts. What they then seek is the company of other expatriates so that they might establish

links with some place they can call home. The links that Australian teachers' attempt to make with other expatriates will be explored later in this chapter.

With few exceptions, contemporary expatriate teachers in this study echo their pre-independent colleagues in indicating that they found

contact with local staff became difficult when they attempted to take it

beyond the acquaintanceships of the workplace. What is more problematic to assess now, is whether the lack of friendships result from the initial resentment expatriates experience, or whether it is because expatriates are still disinclined in the first place to include indigenous staff in activities outside of school hours. There was vety little contact [between expat and local staff on a social basis] ... we used to go out in the Headmaster's boat, and he was an expat. and all the expats, well, the young staff, from Hoskins would out

228 there fairly often, like on a weekend, and the local staff were never invited along.19

It would seem that, on the one hand expatriate teachers expect and demand that spaces are made for them within the educational

culture they visit. Yet on the other, it is clear that these same teachers can restrict the spaces they are prepared to offer their indigenous counterparts. In doing so, they reinforce the ambivalence of their place within the community.

And, as I will

explore below, while interactions with students are on a more positive basis, there continues to be an ambivalent side to this relationship that can exert an influence on their experiences of PNG.

Classroom relations 'Coming to terms with classroom cultural differences, adjustments to teacher-student relations and the comparative lack of extra-school support systems,' are summarised by Inglis and Philps as 'typical elements that mark out the teaching careers of overseas trained people who came to Australia'.20 The PNG context, where Australians take on

the classification of overseas trained people, also requires that teacher responses to the cross-cultural contact are adjusted. Although in

certain cases there are highly extrinsic elements to the adjustment. / shall never forget during my first week of teaching, walking into my 12C classroom and being faced by one of the students dressed in his full 'bilas' - traditional war costume - feathers, face paint, shells, the lot. He'd come from a tribal confrontation taking place on the outskirts of the school campus. With no time to change, he arrived directly from his war, and I was expected to conduct a lesson in English grammar. This young man of about 25 had probably been involved in the killing

p. 5.

'° Catherine Inglis & Reg Philps, Teachers in the Sun: The Impact of Immigrant Teachers on the Labour Force, Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research, Canberra, 1995, p. 86.

229 of his enemies in other wars, and here was!, expected to teach him about verbs and nouns.21

For the expatriate, it is a time, as Geertz describes of cross cultural

interactions, 'when ordinary expectations fail to hold'.22 Such abrupt introductions to another culture are not uncommon occurrences in the experiences of expatriate teachers. However, the evidence from the

teacher memories is that despite the culturally differing elements

teachers confront, they are able to make adjustments to the classroom and their students more rapidly than to other areas of their PNG experience.

I would posit that their more rapid adjustment results from the accustomed structural factors of everyday classroom requirements.

Those tasks which necessitate teachers facilitating set outcomes from their students can be unequivocally systemised as part of what

teachers see as normal classroom activities. The cross-cultural similarities of practice provide a sense of normality and familiarity in a situation unexpectedly out of the teachers' usual area of understanding.

Despite the superficial differences in standards of furnishing, buildings, texts or resources from Australia, the classroom provides familiar, nonthreatening surroundings in which teachers are able to get on with their work.

Undertaking familiar activities associated with day to day

teaching gives back a perception of control and known identity to teachers who, at times in their consciousness of being an alien other, lose it.

Within the familiar activities they find a sense of place more

concrete and identifiable than any other area of the expatriate experience in PNG.

As well as the re-establishment of identity within the classroom context, other positive responses are engendered out of the expatriate's position

as teacher, particularly the unequivocal responses from the students. 21 Transcript # 5, p. 15.

22 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, Basic Books Inc., New York, 1973, p. 79.

230

/ remember the first day, after I'd arrived, walking down to the river to bathe with some of the senior bods, and they said 'now that you're here, everything's going to be a/right. And that was repeated in different ways by al/these lads. It was a bit disconcerting.23

Disconcerting as students' faith is in their newly arrived overseas teachers, it is, I suggest, largely due to the very factor of the teachers

being expatriate and the high expectations, historically, of their role which has always been portrayed in PNG. The expat had the expertise, the headmaster, first of all, then the expat, the whitey who had the expertise, who the expectations were high for.... The expectations on me as an expat were absurdly unreasonable, from al/levels, from the Secretary of Education down to the students. Absolute, totally unreasonable. / suspect that there's such a gap between village life and modern Western society, that they glimpse on TV., that they don't comprehend. They think with us here, and a//the things we've got, with our technology, that we can do anything.24

The views expressed by this teacher concur with those of other expatriates, especially Australians who have discussed the matter with me.

But I contend that expatriates' experiences of their classrooms are as much a result of the parameters set by their students' cultural mores as they are structured by the colonial mythology of expatriate expertise. And, as I will address below, issues arise from the culture of the

classroom require the teacher to have an understanding based on cultural expectations as well as on their teaching practicalities.

Those

requirements of their classroom context address the question of ambivalence that I have identified in the expatriate teachers' place.

For PNG students and staff, the pedagogy they are familiar with differs from that used by Australian teachers.

23lranscript # 6, p. 5. 24 ibid., p. 8.

In Australia, contemporary

231

teaching practice favours the encouragement of vocal reflection and response from students in class.

In PNG, as with other developing

nations, rote learning and lecture methods are accepted as the norm, and active response on the part of PNGn students is neither expected nor enjoyed.25 As a consequence, Australian teachers initially regard their students as unresponsive, or lacking in specific knowledge. All the teachers in this study mention in one way or another that they made

adjustments in their classroom practices that specifically addressed their students' identity, as well as to aspects of their academic needs. Teachers acknowledge in varying ways issues of status, gender, and tribal affiliation as they affected the teaching context of students from diverse regions of PNG.

One example of an issue raising concern for teachers is the attitude towards status among young men in some PNGn tribal groups. Male students may worry about ridicule and loss of 'face' from peers if they

give inaccurate answers to general questions. Where a teacher insists that a student stand up and supply an answer in the presence of those peers, resentment and lack of co-operation can ensue.

In another

case, encountered in my own experiences of PNG, the son of a Big

Man attempted to exert his influential status to persuade an expatriate

colleague not to take marks off for a late assignment. When the request was refused, several members of the student's language group suggested to the expatriate that he alter his decision. Mainly, they

feared reprisals on the teacher, but they also intimated that the student in question would lose status and power by not being able to influence the teacher. The result would be a concomitant loss of status for the

father, influencing his position in the village hierarchy. No physical harm came to the expatriate teacher in this case, although pressure was applied by more senior staff in an attempt to make him change his

decision on the marks. The pressure came from staff who had tribal 25 T.A. O'Donoghue, 'Transnational knowledge transfer and the need to take cognisance of contextual realities: a Papua New Guinea Case Study', Educational Review, Vol. 46, No. 1,1994. p. 76.

232

affiliations to the student and father in question. The situation illustrates the intricate relationships within the classroom that expatriates are often not aware of until they are brought directly to their attention.

For female students in the Highlands, questions of status do not

manifest so openly. Rather, young women will prefer not to answer questions in class at all because they expect their opinions to be

shouted down. In that region especially, a woman's input is discounted by males.

In some districts, too, expatriate teachers expecting male

and female students to work together in class can create uncertain tensions. Similarly, putting students into groups that cut across

disaffected tribal relations can cause conflict. Students will rarely tell

their teacher that these are problematic issues. They will simply not respond to requests.

In such cases the lack of response gives

expatriates the impression that their students do not understand their direction, or that they are being difficult. Conversely, the teacher may assume that his or her presence is not welcome in the classroom, even

though the PNGn students are instead attempting to diffuse what could be a conflict situation.

The classroom circumstances for female expatriate teachers are more complex than for male expatriates.

There are parts of the Highlands

and less urbanised coastal areas where students and National staff may be hard pressed to accept that a woman has something to teach. This attitude does not mean that it is unacceptable for a woman to have

qualifications or experience in teaching, rather that as a result of past and present traditional discrimination, it is not easy for some PNG men to understand how they can learn something from a woman.26 [my students were always] polite and friendly, although I found it difficult to get used to them agreeing with me and then doing their own 26 T. ODonoghue, (The Quality of Primary School Teacher Education in Papua New Guinea: past, present and future, South Pacific Journal of Education, Vol. 20, No. 1, 1992, p. 62) has identified this situation as an even greater problem for indigenous female teachers than is likely to be the case for expatriate female teachers.

233 thing... As a female I had to sometimes be quite firm - only a few of the male students and usually from the Highlands because they could be a little aggressive, but I'd speak with them in my office because they are very proud, and don't like to be singled out in class. They eventually understood and accepted my direction.27

Australian women teachers have been disaffected by attitudes they encounter among students, and their attempts at altering traditional

views taken as rank interference on issues that are not the teacher's concern.

Administrators, indigenous staff and the PNG Education Department pay lip service to equality of access, female rights, and the

condemnation of any form of corporal punishment in schools.28 Yet female students continue to be systematically blamed for being the cause of, rather than the victims of, a variety of predicaments in schools

that range from a lack of access to education to physical violence and rape.

A lot of topics revolved around San guma [magic] and traditional life, although it did tend to come into problem areas, like if you were, say, looking at domestic violence for example. People would still - a lot of

students maybe didn't see that there was a whole lot wrong with domestic violence, and so you had to be pretty careful.29

The despair felt by teachers, especially female expatriates on behalf of the victims, results in their attempting to change entrenched attitudes towards women by openly discussing aspects of feminism and women's

rights with their female students. Another interviewee supplied anecdotal evidence that such action by a female teacher at his school in the Eastern Highlands resulted in the termination of her contract and her being returned to Australia.30 I was unable to interview the female

teacher in question to confirm details, but another female interviewee in

27 Transcript # 17, p. 7.

28 For example, Directors' Instruction No. 114, 'Corporal Punishment in Schools in Papua New Guinea', A. Tololo to all School Principals, 1975, specifically outlawed the use of corporal punishment in schools. That directive stands, but does not prevent the frequent and blatant use of physical violence against students in schools I have visited. 29 # 3, p. 6. 30 Transcript # 21.

234

this study agreed that the action was likely. In recounting her own experience of, literally, fleeing her first posting in the Highlands to beg at the National education headquarters for a coastal school transfer, she spoke of not only being denied the possibility of opening a dialogue for female students' rights, but also the problems of her own safety as a woman. / just questioned the whole idea of sending someone, a single female out to Margarima, and well, it was just a ridiculous thing to do... And I talked about this to staff at the Education Department. They said that was bad luck, 'it's up to you, you're stuck wherever you go'. I felt at risk a lot, for a start there were a lot of guns around and they became dangerous. There's a lot of rape that goes on in the Highlands and people, a lot of people warned me, like other girls - students, that it was dangerous being there. My house was quite, quite close to the main road and there wasn't any security, no locks or anything like that. And also the road to Mendi, there were hold ups that would occur. So I had this underlying fear anyway.31

Within these alien circumstances, that are normalities in their students'

daily lives, expatriates struggle with the dichotomies of what they perceive as a need to engender change at the same time as a

necessity to accede to accepted practices. And whether they agree with those practices or not, expatriates are guests of their host country. That teachers challenge what they encounter in the course of their interactions with their students' lives is a component of the dilemma they face in finding their place as part of the school community. Additionally, given such encounters, it is not surprising that teachers question the assumptions made about their ability to successfully make the transition from the Australian to the PNG classroom without preparation or training.

A further area of concern to expatriates is in their understanding of appropriate and comprehensible examples to use as aids to teaching.

O'Donoghue, too, has recently raised questions regarding the validity

Transcript # 3, p. 3.

235

of transnational knowledge transfer in formal education.32 Yet this

continuing imperative of understanding cultural context in relation to knowledge was a factor identified by Bullimer back in the 1 960s.33

Although the following example is lengthy, it succinctly reveals the complexities faced by expatriates in today's PNG classroom.

That's a problem...the fact that you get a lack of feedback to know whether students are understanding the concepts at all, and then trying to find the appropriate cultural examples to demonstrate - such things as magnetism - that's an example if I can expand on that. Theory of magnetism, electricity coming down a wire, and you use the representation of the direction of the flow as a dot as being coming out of the page, and the loss as a tail, so you get the two dimensional representation on a blackboard, a dot would mean that the electricity is flowing towards you and the tail would mean it's going into the blackboard. Now, from our perspective of course, the dot means an arrow head, and the tall means an arrow traiL But for some regions in PNG it's the extreme reverse, because the tip of the arrow head as it appears, the cross represents the front of the tall and for them a dot represents the back of the arrow. So / was curious as to why a certain group of students were persistently getting problems associated with magnetism 100% wrong. I later found out that because in other problems they got the exact 100% round the other way, in the opposite direction. And I think that's just one example of the upward battle for expatriate teachers and is where National teachers have the edge on expats in that they are able to put into context some of the scientific or other subjects. They can come up with appropriate cultural examples to describe those things.34

It is a factor of the PNGn context that such a situation could continue without comment from the students to their expatriate teacher. In Australia, students are vocal on a very wide range of issues and open in challenging whether their needs are being adequately addressed.35

In

PNG, student views surface much more obliquely, and do not provide the signs that Australian teachers know to look for.

They are too well

32 ODonoghue, op. cit., 1994.

Ralph Bulmer, 'Why is the Cassowary not a Bird? A Problem of Zoological Taxonomy among the Karam of the New Guinea Highlands, Man, vol. 2, No.1, 1967, pp. 5 - 25. Bulmer discusses how categorisations of animals and people within the Karam of Kaironk valley are made on the basis of their particular world views. Similarly, the perceptions of PNG students are based on their own world views, which are often widely at odds with those of their expatriate teacher.

p.14. Elizabeth Hatton, Understanding Teaching, Sydney, 1994, pp. 181 -190.

236

behaved.., as high school students these children know they are

privileged, they know they might be getting 'bad' teaching, but they will never give a sign that there are bad teachers, they're too polite'.36

Trained as they are to meet Australian teaching standards which might

well be above those of their PNG counterparts, the expatriates nevertheless do not have the implicit knowledge that addresses all their student needs.

The privileging of access to education in PNG is part of the conundrum addressing the ambivalence of expatriate place.

Students are all too

aware of the finite places available in high schools, and the competition

that follows for further education. Hence they will strive to get whatever help they can from their teachers and in whatever form it is available. The students' attitudes towards an emphasis on studying, and the strong classroom relationships with their expatriate teachers that ensue,

fuel the assumption that, as a previous extract noted, teachers 'can do anything'. However, as another teacher revealed, while students were

Wonderful, eager to learn, to soak up any education that they could get out of me or squeeze or con from me.

in his view, Certainly I was used as a means to an end... The students were aware of what they thought I could offer and made the most of it.37

As suggested in Chapter VII, there are a number of teachers who arrive in PNG retreating from an Australian system they perceive to have all

but rejected them in one way or another. They arrive into a PNG system that, through the underlying tension between cultures in the staff room, creates a further sense of rejection. So it is not surprising

that expatriate teachers welcome the enthusiasm, and what they perceive as friendship, of their PNG students.

36 personal comment, Hank Nelson, May. 1997.

237 During my own stay, I cannot recall a single occasion, despite

invitations, of a National teacher coming to our house for anything other than work related reasons.

Students, however, were constant and, in

our isolation, extremely welcome visitors.

At times they came to

discuss their work, but more often would come simply to sit and talk and exchange information about our vastly disparate backgrounds. It would seem that PNG's long and familiar alliance with Australia has given students a closer interest in Australian expatriates, as distinct from

those from other countries, except perhaps their American visitors.38 One reason is that students are more likely to have an opportunity in the future to travel to Australia than to another country, and so their

questions have a definite purpose. Over the years is has not been uncommon for Australian teachers to take students back to Australia

during the holidays. Such visits were more frequent before a rise in airfares made the expense prohibitive for teachers.39 Whatever the basis of their interest, I, as well as other teachers interviewed, recall our

associations with students as our most valuable experiences of PNG.

The bonds between student and teacher are not confined to PNG. Studies of teachers and their work in Australia, Canada and the United States,4° have asked questions about student / teacher interactions as

distinct from other school-centred relationships. When separated from the harsh practicalities and inconsistencies teachers are required to

deal with in the structures of their workplace, there is evidence to suggest a consistent theme of respect and regard between teachers and students.

Indeed, Clandinin & Connelly emphasis that

p.4

Where there is electricity, television has arrived in PNG, along with a vast number of American programmes. Transcript # 19. p, 11. 40 For example, R.w. conneD, Teachers' Work, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1985; Jean D. Clandinin & Michael F. Connelly, Teachers' Professional Knowledge Landscapes, Teachers College Press, New York, 1995; lvor F. Goodson (ed), Studying Teachers' Lives, Routledge, London, 1992.

238

There are two fundamentally different places on the [professional knowledge] landscape, the one behind the classroom door with students, and the other in professional 41 places with others. Expatriate teachers in PNG see the different places especially clearly.

They make strong distinctions between their experiences of the classroom with their students and their other experiences of PNG.

In

agreeing with the authors cited, I suggest that in PNG the differences

teachers feel about their place are enhanced by their split experiences. But, as I have indicated, an ambivalence exists within that place; the

student' teacher relationship is not always a clear cut distinction.

On

the one hand, what place the teacher might have in the school community is made tenuous by the distrust and resentment of their local

counterparts. On the other, the welcome they receive from students suggests to expatriates that there is indeed a space they might occupy

in the PNG classrooms and even beyond. Just as teachers cannot be certain of where they stand within the school community, or know at

what level they are accepted, they will continue to question the reasons why they are being so effusively welcomed by their students.

41 Clandinin & Connelly, op. cit., p. 5.

239

Relations with other expatriates Within Chapter VI I illustrated how expatriate teachers in the pre-

independence period, while actively perpetuating the structures of

Australian administration control, were concerned that what they were doing was overtly paternalistic. They were also dismayed at the racist attitudes towards PNGns that were prevalent among other expatriates at the time.

Despite the advent of PNG's independence and a

diminution in expatriate numbers, the contemporary teacher can encounter that same discourse of paternalism and racism from the expatriates they meet beyond the confines of school.

And, as was the

case for the expatriate teachers in the previous period, such a discourse continues to mediate a teacher's interactions with other expatriates. / came across the them and us stuff in Madang, but / wasn't there very often... there's the Madang Club, which was National oriented, and then there was the Madang Country Club, which was a white clique. And / only went there once... / wouldn't go back there again because / found their remarks and their comments to the Nationals were very, very ordinary. / did not like them at all, didn't like them. So I steered clear, I thought at the time, "well, I've got to work with these [PNGnJ people, I live with them, and work with them, there's no way I want to get tangled up in anything like that". So / steered clear.42

In analysing the experiences of teachers and their understanding of their place, I have argued that it is through their unique position as

expatriate teachers that they becomeaware of the ambivalent and limited place they might occupy within the PNGn community.

I have

suggested that teachers may comprehend such ambivalence especially because they are able to make certain connections through their school position in PNG that are not open to other expatriates. Further to that argument is my contention that due to their same unique circumstance, teachers come to a realisation that there are also complexities and limitations upon what place they might have within expatriate society;

240

For the expatriate teacher, finding a place to call home is not just

about geographical location. Teachers must adjust to conditions that in their own country they would find less than adequate, while to the

average PNGn villager border on the luxurious and opulent. At the same time, expatriate teachers are required to deal with their

conditions on a culturally and physically isolated basis. On a personal level, there were many occasions in PNG when I thought,

'I

want to go home'. Yet by 'home' I did not necessarily mean an address in South Australia, rather, home was a metaphor consistent with the need for family, friends, familiar customs, feelings of security,

and even telephones that worked. These were minor, somewhat symbolic, and certainly intangible factors, that added up to an entirely concrete and real entity. That entity, however, was bounded by questions of understanding and dealing with my identity, as well as my difference, in an unfamiliar setting.

I would argue that entirely similar

needs, either symbolic or real, are implicit in expatriate teacher constructions of their place within the wider expatriate community.

In

order that they might build a space that is congruent with a distant

home, teachers necessarily seek out the company of other expatriates - even those whom they might not normally associate with. Self identification as an Australian isn't hard when you're the only one around. The cultural isolation led to a small but very close expat community relying on each other for all sorts of support - because of our isolation, we were forced into a situation where differing opinions were not voiced. Any spilt in the group would have been seen as fuel for the locals too. The expat group was a motley lot, I wouldn't have been seen dead with most of them outside PNG. But it would have been difficult to suivive psychologically without them!

Expatriate teachers make friends with other expatriates in order to find

some of the lost familiarities of home. Through such alliances they attempt to reinforce their identity, a sense of shared logic, that Bourdieu

42

# 6, p. 7. 43Transcript # 5, p. 9.

241

has described as 'habitus' - a relationship existing 'fundamentally through recognition by other people.'44

Yet in this attempt at

recognition and affirmation, the teacher is caught at the margins.

On

the one hand teachers perceive themselves as excluded from PNGn interaction, either by peer resentment or by fears and anxieties for their

safety among PNGn communities. On the other hand, in seeking to make an identifiable space for themselves within the expatriate

community, teachers encounter contrary, yet analogous, issues of exclusion arising out of an opposing discourse of difference. A lot of the other people / came into contact with, I would never have associated with in Australia. They just had the weirdest attitudes, like they'd been caught in some sort of time warp for the last at least fifty years. Like, there was a Club there, and we'd go down to The Club fairly often... And they were beer drinking, sexist, racist, and just really coarse. I guess similar to what you would get in a hick counta'y town, but in the Club, in New Guinea, I found they could get away with their sort of attitudes and behaviour, whereas they wouldn't have if they were living in a city in Australia.45

My own encounters with non-teacher expatriates, in this case women, brings into clear focus the intermediacy of the teacher experience and its difference.

Discussions with wives of army personnel based in

Mendi revealed a maintenance of their otherness fed by what can only

be described as a culture of fear. The majority of these women had spent at least two years in the country, yet even after that time few would shop on their own, or walk alone down the main street of the provincial capital where they were stationed, and none would travel via PMV (bus/public motor vehicle). The protection of their self imposed environmental bubble, and their fear of contact with difference, deterred them from an acquaintance with PNG beyond what their security guards or haus men could bring.

In a remarkable continuation of the

pre-independence period, a number of the army women further isolated themselves from contact with the local populations by sending their PNG staff to buy produce from the local market. P. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1991, p. 224.

242

While it is acknowledged that these women are but one group and should not be taken as an example of the entire expatriate community, their approach is not confined to the better known dangers of Port Moresby and Lae, or the exclusivity of Madang's white society.

The

example of the expatriate women in Mendi who had requested that the local supermarket be closed to locals for two hours each week so that they 'could shop among their own kind,'46 is an indication that colonial

culture is still strong in expatriate society. The women's request is also indicative of the ways in which expatriates might still negotiate issues of difference and identity while they perceive themselves to hold the dominant position of power.

It is from such encounters with members of the expatriate community

that teachers begin to understand how their unique position takes them beyond the self-imposed barriers set up by those expatriates.

My own recollections, of shopping, visiting village markets, or attending a village sing-sing, do not contain memories or fear or

threat; nor do other teachers have such recollections. The occasions when I was accompanied by a group of Year 12 students, who supplied a constant flow of information and explanation about each of my new and different experiences, are especially memorable for their cross cultural association. However, these experiences became more important to me in PNG when I was made aware that the

expatriates who were isolated from PNGns tended to regard teachers such as myself with some suspicion because we did have closer associations with local people.47

I was criticised, not only for driving

into town from school on my own, but for giving local villagers en route a lift, and letting students sit inside the utility, rather than on the back. Transcript # 3, p. 4. supermarket manager agreed to the shut down - on the proviso that at all other times the store would be open only to National customers. Not surprisingly, the women dropped their demands. (personal comment, Julian Moore)

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It is reminiscent of D.M. Cleland's pre-independence views on employees and their relationships with local

But it must be noted that despite such contradictory issues the teachers might confront during encounters with other expatriates beyond the school, as white people they remain an indivisible part of that wider and highly discernible community.

The expats were known as the biggest wantok group in the country. In Port Moresby, with fresh-arrival sensitivity, I had noticed how in the streets white people caught your eye in a message of recognition, us amongst them, people who wouldn't have done it where I came from.49 In a recent study exploring the complexities and interactions that result from the ways in which space and place are conceptualised through

identity, Massey suggests that 'responses by less powerful groups to

the definition as Other are diverse. Some groups, especially if they feel threatened by the consequences of this process, may insist on their own alternative sense of place'.5° Following Massey's argument,

I am suggesting that in their search for an alternative sense of place, expatriate teachers in PNG look within structures that, as with their expatriate counterparts, are both symbolic and real. The real is clearly epitomised by The Club, or what passes currently as its postindependent representation.5'

Through the white wantok system

teacher expatriates turn to an alternative place also. And while this place is more symbolic than real, it is nevertheless one which, constructed by the same 'underlying structures of power,'52 addresses

the hierarchical relations of difference in PNG through the wider expatriate place. Expatriates I knew quite well would not join our table of teachers at the provincial capital hotel if there were National school staff or local government staff there with us. As this happened only on occasions when PNGns were with us, the expatriate reasoning was quite clear. South Pacific Post, 14 November 1961, Speech by D.M. Cleland. lnez Baranay, Rascal Rain, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1994, p. 122. 5° Doreen Massey, & Pat Jess (eds.), A Place in the World? OUP, Oxford, 1995, p. 105. 51 In Mendi 'the Club' is currently the Australian Army officer's mess, but open to all Australian expatriates in the area.

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As a minority Other in contemporary PNG, Australians consider themselves to be vulnerable, especially teachers in their isolated localities without access to the organisational attachments enjoyed by

other expatriates. And precisely because of this vulnerability teachers quickly learn to take advantage of what their own wantok system can offer. / engineered my transfer myself... I'd been on a curriculum development committee with a guy who was working at Kere vat, a British fellow, and he wanted to go to Moresby into curriculum. But before he could get to Moresby the national liaison office there said he couldn't transfer without getting someone to fill the gap in Kere vat. So

he spoke to me and asked if! wanted to go. But / had to fill my position at Aiyura. It happened there was a teacher in Moresby who wanted to move across to Aiyura... so I spoke to him and he said 'yes I'll move there'. I don't know what happened to his position at Sogeri - he probably found someone.. It was a classic case of wantokism.53

Through, or perhaps because of, the delicately balanced but necessary alliances with other expatriates both in and beyond school,

teachers must face many ambivalent aspects in their position.

I

reiterate here Loomba's point regarding the effects of colonialism on the formation of communities.54 In this case, it is the degree to which

expatriate teachers find it necessary to integrate themselves into the constantly re-forming expatriate communities that, since last century, expatriates have been forming while taking apart PNG's communities.

In discovering that there are limitations to what space they might

occupy in contemporary PNGn schools, teachers turn to their expatriate community and the both symbolic and real benefits of the

space it makes. Under different circumstances teachers might choose not to be part of a community that is constructed by its whiteness and its lack of interaction with the host people who are

52 Massey & Jess, op. cit., p. 98.

Transcript # 21, p. 16. Ania Loomba, Colonialism — Postcolonialism, Routledge, London, p. 2.

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integral to teachers' work.

But, drawn by the desire to place

themselves among familiar points of reference precisely because of

their noticeable difference, teachers position themselves within the sphere of the environmental bubble that encompasses this wider community. Sarup's discussion of similar positioning, of a sense of

place - an identity, through allusions to what makes home, suggests that it is the simple sense of place or belonging that allows a person their stability, even though they may not be clear on what home represents.55 Through associations with the expatriate community,

therefore, teachers can build those frames of reference within which • are the furnishings of familiarity, stability and acceptance. They are

allowed an opportunity to experience some semblance of home in a world that they must come to terms with as not being their own place.

M. Sarup, Home and identity' in, George Robertson, et. al. (eds.), Travellers Tales, Routledge, London, 1994, PP. 93- 104.

CHAPTER X - Conclusion

The Spaces Between: Australian Teachers in Papua New Guinea State Schools

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I have argued throughout this work that expatriate teachers occupy a particular yet shifting place in PNG that they understand as not the same

as that of most other expatriate workers. The teacher interacts with the PNGn population in a way that is both different to, and more extensive

than, that of many other expatriates. The teachers belong neither to the PNGn community in their schools, nor completely to the expatriate society outside the campus. In this exploration of how expatriate teachers experience their place in PNG, I have shown what it has been like for

those teachers who live in-between communities, rather than examining closely the events that created such a situation. From their experiences I have shown that teachers across the period under study often understand

their space in somewhat ambivalent terms specifically because of their

positioning between two cultures. And in considering their position, teachers do so in relation to their National counterparts, to their students, the host country bureaucracy that employs them and to other expatriates as well. I have suggested also that teachers' experiences have resulted

partially from the construction of PNG by the pre-independence Australian Administration.

I further contend that in contemporary PNG, such

constructions have had a continued impact upon teacher experiences in state schools, even though those teachers are now employed by a PNGn indigenous bureaucracy.

In order that some conclusions may be reached regarding the expatriate

teacher's place in PNG, a brief summary, below, of the preceding chapters will bring together the major implications that have arisen from the teachers' memories, from the archival records, and from the available literature and its commentary.

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Different times, different places? I have argued that PNG was constructed out of a representational and

positioned discourse that was particularly orientalist in nature. In Chapter II

I demonstrated how that discourse legitimised an appropriation of PNG's

past and future that denied PNG recourse to either agreement or dissent. With the necessity for a post-war reconstruction and the United Nations pushing for PNG's independence earlier than Australia had accounted for, Hasluck's decision was to scale down the universal primary education programme in favour of preparing an educated elite. The recruitment of

expatriate teachers for administration schools in PNG was crucial to such a policy.

If PNG's emerging leaders were to take PNG beyond independence to a national outlook that complied with Australian strategic, social and economic requirements, their education was a means of continuing

colonial control. And, whether they understood that role or not, teachers were the agents of such control. In Chapter IV, an exploration of the Administration's recruitment during the pre-independent period provided evidence as to the Australian Administration's regulation over the recruitment and training of teachers to ensure that their criteria for staff in

the government run schools were met. The Administration was able to employ only those staff deemed to fit the requirements of the education programme for PNG.

Applicants needed to be native English speakers. Hasluck's 1955 directive made English the language of instruction in PNG schools so that it would, in his view, be like Christianity and thus a force for 'social cohesion'.1 As

Peter Smith Education and Colonial Control in Papua New Guinea 1871 - 1975, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Papua New Guinea, 1986, p. 309, quoting Hasluck to Secretary, Department of Territories, 1955. 1

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an indigenous educated elite became the imperative of the 1 960s, the

demand for more native English-speaking teachers who would educate

that elite became more pronounced.

Hasluck discounted the growing

language of tok pisin or the idea of local language schools. Although not specified in the recruitment advertising or public service vacancy bulletins,2 the Australian Administration also required their English speaking

applicants to be sympathetic to Christian beliefs and practices. Through education it was expected that PNGn's traditional values, their ethics and morals, social attitudes and relationships with each other would be

changed. The values, attitudes and ethics held by the colonial

administration were to replace them. As demonstrated in Chapter V, the primary school syllabus provided by Australian educators gave very clear directives regarding such teachings.

The Administration preferred their applicants to be male and white. As distinct from the teachers who would be exclusively teaching 'A' school students, the teachers going to 'T' schools located beyond urban and expatriate populated areas would suffer the privations of isolation and

basic accommodation. Teachers in the remote areas would need skills beyond normal classroom activities to succeed, and the Administration did

not consider that women had those accomplishments. More importantly, white women were not considered to be safe in bush postings — nor indeed

anywhere on their own in PNG. The Education Department's promotional literature did not specify that applicants for PNG teaching needed to be white. It would seem, however, that such a requirement was implicit to

overseas staffing needs. Ostensibly, and according to the records cited in Chapter IV, the Administration rejected non-white applicants on the basis that PNGn school staff might demand pay rates commensurate with those of expatriates if they worked alongside overseas teachers who were themselves not white. 2

I have argued, though, that the preference for

CRS A/452/1, 60/3462; 60/4427; 61/210; 69/1848.

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expatriate teachers to be white and look European said more about an Administration discourse that upheld expatriate status and privilege, than it did about PNGn pay demands. I suggested that teachers in the pre-independence period were inculcated

with an understanding of their place in PNG through a variety of bureaucratic messages.

As holders of correct knowledge, which

included the smooth functioning of administrative structures, they perpetuated institutional knowledge regarding educational systems and their functioning.

Such institutions were to mould the PNG society as

much as they functioned to reflect what expatriate administrators

considered as their appropriately held positions of power. Even funding allocations for buildings, resources and student needs differed greatly

between A and T streams. The unequal allocations added to the demarcation between cultures, indicating to teachers the higher status of expatriates and their children as compared to local students and their families.

Within the induction and training courses for teachers were clear

indications of how education would overwrite traditional PNGn values with Australian values. Such an overwriting gave other indications to teachers: of PNG as a devalued society, and the society represented by teachers as

having better or higher values. In clearly binary terms, the early Administration contact with teachers set in motion how they were expected

to place themselves. Values were to be Australian not PNGn; Australian attributes were good, PNGn bad. The values being taught were worthy Christian values, not the unworthy traditional PNGn values.

Chapter V also discussed the ways in which teachers from the preindependence period acknowledged and justified much of their role in terms of the paternalism that had been encouraged by the Administration

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rhetoric. But at the same time, teachers were motivated by their own

needs. They looked for adventure and an opportunity to break out of what they viewed as a restrictive and compromising education system in their

Australian classrooms. Teachers in this period reflected much of what Australian society was grappling with at a time of change. There were new ideas about identity arising in Australia that were moving sectors of the

community away from the influences of their British colonial settlement.

Teachers arrived in pre-independent PNG with a clear understanding of

their place in PNG as agents of a change that would be brought about by the influence of the modern world they introduced through their classrooms. It is also just as clear that they were agents of colonial

control. But what is not so clear is whether they understood themselves to be so in such absolute terms. As their recollections indicate, their experiences of their PNG classrooms did much to mediate their preconceived attitudes and understandings of the relative values of Australian and PNGn cultures.

As Chapter VI indicated, for some of the teachers, interactions with their students and the wider PNG village community was the beginning of a dialectical process that allowed a cross cultural interchange of ideas and values. Their work in PNG caused some teachers to reassess the

assumptions that the new approaches they were instigating were the most

appropriate for PNGns. Such a change in attitude also caused them to question the validity of Administration structures and values as they

pertained to the construction of PNG. Those teachers most influenced and challenged by PNGn cultural ideas were the staff posted to the more

remote and isolated regions, especially the primary 'T' schools. There were inter-related, but at the same time separated, factors bringing about such a difference to those in the more urbanised areas or regions of higher expatriate population.

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One factor was the cultural isolation from most other expatriate society.

Without the influence of and access to an environmental bubble, teachers instead had to access what was offered by their local school and village community.

Although helped to a degree by Administration supplies,

radio contact and interaction with what few other expatriates might be in the local area, teachers joined with local people to use local facilities, such as the trade store and the village health centre, and were involved in the

mundane but imperative necessity of finding basic food supplies for student boarders.

In doing so, these teachers viewed first hand the

conditions and social relations that governed the lives of their students and their families.

Often required to mediate on behalf of students between

tribal factions, they had a heightened awareness of how the change they were being asked to implement would affect people at the local level. And

in asking whether those changes were valid, or even possible, they were not only questioning their place, both within the administrative structure they represented and in PNG, but providing a link between PNGns and the society that represented the structures.

Isolated teachers had both the opportunity, and the need, to rely more

heavily on their local PNG communities. From building a new classroom to working with a PNGn primary teacher, isolated expatriates had to depend upon local resources rather than administrative structures. Although the education delivery had been systemised to represent PNG conditions to a certain degree, it was done so on Administration, rather

than indigenous, terms. Thus expatriate teachers had to learn to negotiate change at a local level, otherwise both the practicality, and the relevance,

of their work would be open to challenge by those local recipients. Once again it fell to teachers, in particular, to face the need to negotiate. But that need also opened up opportunities to establish a link; a bridge between

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PNGn and expatriate that might not otherwise have occurred at the local level.

It is my contention that teachers, who, through their in-between place had a greater awareness of the complexities surrounding issues of relevance in development education, have greater difficulties in coming to terms with

what their place in PNG should be. Teachers have seen those other expatriates as being bounded and protected by their environmental bubble, neither needing, nor expecting, to negotiate with their host country people.

That protection also denied the other expatriates an interaction with the local people whose values they were discounting.

It was left to teachers

to question whether the imperatives of development were consistent with

the local point of view, and it was teachers who began to inquire into the

political exigencies that put them there in the first place. Their questions are similar to those still being raised in the 1990s by Crosbie-Walsh, for

example, who suggests that 'development is political and all aid is actual or potential interference', and asks 'who is aid really for?'3

The contemporary expatriate teacher in PNG occupies a space that has both similarities to and differences from that of the teachers in pre-

independent PNG. The most obvious similarity is the arrival of both cohorts as privileged strangers. They are offered higher salaries, and given gratuities, allowances and noticeably better accommodation than the National staff in similar work positions.

Prior to their arrival in PNG,

today's teachers are unaware of their privileged status, although as discussed in Chapter VII, the interview process indicates to them .that their

presence in PNG will be valued and welcomed by all members of the PNGn communities.

I have also noted that contemporary teachers do not

have the preconditioning of Administration teachers in the preindependence era. Their assumptions about teaching in PNG are not

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based on a paternalistic ideology that suggests they will be bringing the benefits of modernity and development to an ostensibly backward and pagan group of tribespeople. Instead, teachers' expectations are that

they, too, will benefit from the cultural exchange that offers an opportunity to experience adventure and difference while securing a position that was

not available to them in Australia. Teachers now go to PNG expecting to make friends across cultures.

Teachers from Australia are now recruited on the basis of their qualifications and their ability as it pertains to the Australian school system.

Expatriates therefore arrive in PNG with an expectation that although their students might look different to Australian students, the schools and the administrative structures will nevertheless adhere to principles similar to those in Australia. Superficially, perhaps, this is the case, for the

educational structures put in place by the previous colonial power have not been dismantled by the PNGn bureaucracy. School systems, curriculum, whether relevant for PNG or not, and attitudes towards educational outcomes, remain largely intact.

Despite the Australian teachers' privileged status in schools, when

compared to other contemporary expatriate workers who visit PNG, these teachers cannot access the benefits or protection offered by the

organisational attachmerts available to those other workers. Without an environmental bubble to shield them from everyday encounters with PNG, the teachers observe that they are ill prepared to meet differences between

cultures. Teachers currently have no training or preparatory induction and their early contact with their new environment surprises them into an immediate sense of alienation.

Chapter VIII provided some insight as to

how Australian expectations must be put aside for the different reality that

arrival at Port Moresby brings. Other ways of regarding time, issues of A. crosbie-Waish, 'Ten reasons why what were doing may not help: Aid, poverty and development,

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personal safety and a very open segregation of cultures, are impressions

that challenge the new arrivals' understanding of the place they will have in PNG.

All interviewees for the contemporary period of this study spoke at

length of the lasting impressions of culture shock, and are dismayed that such issues are not covered in the recruitment process.

Teachers, however, are able to make contact with the day to day normalities of PNGn life in a way that is often denied to other expatriate

workers. And as they develop interactions with students, local staff and the PNG bureaucracy, the teacher begins to question his or her

assumptions of continuity from Australia and the basis upon which they are

recruited. As I indicated in Chapter IX, such questioning adds to the confusion they had already begun to feel regarding their place in PNG.

In the contemporary period, expatriate teachers continue to be endowed

with a status that is similar to that of the pre-independent teachers. Their status in relation to the National teachers, however, does not sit so

comfortably with present expatriate teachers. Relations that ensue with National school staff have been highlighted by interviewees as being the area of greatest challenge and the most confusing aspect of understanding their place in contemporary PNG. Until they arrive in PNG, the majority of

teachers are unaware that the high schools which take expatriate teachers

are a direct result of PNG's dependency paradigm. Such dependency is, nevertheless, a factor that is obvious to the local teachers, whose resentment of expatriate teachers appears to be based upon connotations of their explicit and implicit subordinated status in relation to expatriates.

I have shown how, in the most obvious way, National staff are

subordinated to expatriate staff by unequal rates of pay and conditions. The consequent resentment that expatriates experience results directly Development Bulletin, vol. 33, October 1997, pp. 30 —33.

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from a continuation of pre-independence administrative structures. It is unquestionably the case that the current government cannot hope to

attract qualified Australian teachers without higher rates of pay, although volunteer teachers do not expect such comparatively high rates. However, as long as the current system remains in operation and the bureaucracy

continues to differentiate between staff cultures with respect to housing, travel allowances and gratuities, expatriate teachers cannot expect to elicit

favorable attitudes from their National school staff counterparts. Until this issue is addressed more democratically, an expatriate teacher's place will continue to be questionable in the eyes of National staff and expatriates

will continue to be concerned by the ambiguous welcome they experience.

I have shown that expatriate teachers acknowledge that their own cultural background and ways of knowing can be inadequate for the task of bringing relevance to certain teaching situations.

Expatriates are further

disadvantaged in their relationships with PNGn staff by their lack of

knowledge about societal affiliations that exist in PNG. The inadequacy of their local knowledge affects not only their dealings with students but, and

more importantly, their understanding of relations between local staff members and those students as well as their own tenuous relations with indigenous staff. Expatriates can fail to perceive that what they

understand as logical actions relating to known situations are not necessarily so to people whose ways of knowing differ.

I have argued that teachers' difficulties in getting across the divide exacerbates that divide, and in PNG they are required to deal with a sense

of place on at least two apparently divergent levels. On the one level this sense of place is constructed through identification by the local population and the understanding that comes from acknowledging that they do not belong. At the other level, teachers identify themselves in relation to their

home and where they come from; a now essentialised identity that they are

257 'not free to dispense with'.4 At this second level teachers reinforce their

identity through relations with the second sphere of influence in PNG, the expatriate community.

However, the teachers' positioning at the junction

between societies makes them confront relations between expatriate and local societies in ways that they do not see other overseas workers experiencing.

Making Expatriate Places: Australian Teachers in PNG At the time I began to write up these findings, a crisis over the PNG

government's hiring of mercenaries was reaching its zenith.5 A team of professional soldiers from overseas were hired to quell rebel forces on

Bougainville. The PNG Defence Forces were in revolt over their presence in the country and the mercenaries became pawns in the PNGn political

process. The mercenaries were being publicly shunted out of PNG by the very defence forces they had come to join. There is a curious parallel

between the mercenaries' predicament and that of expatriate teachers in contemporary PNG.

Col. Tim Spicer, who led the mercenary force, said

that they had been brought into PNG to 'provide expertise and support for the government'.6

This, he went on to say, was often the case in

developing countries that lacked well-established systems and

infrastructures. Col. Spicer further commented that during early discussions on what his team were going to undertake, 'no disquiet of the overall concept was expressed' by anyone in PNG.

The parallel I see here is that expatriate teachers are also brought into

PNGto supply 'expertise and support for the government', although in their Angelika Bammer (ed), Displacements, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1994, p. xv. Sean Domey, The Sand/me Affair, ABC Books, Sydney, 1998. Members of the PNG government, led by then PM Julius Chan, hired a group of mercenaries from the British-based Sandline Company, led by Col. Tim Spicer. Ostensibly the mercenaries were to advise the PNG government on how to quell rebel forces on Bougainville as PNG forces had proved spectacularly unsuccessful. It transpired that the mercenaries were hired to do the actual job of quelling Bougainvillieans. The hiring and deploying of the mercenaries caused a diplomatic crisis in the region as well as in PNG.

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case it is in the area of school staffing and curriculum advisory services. The hiring of expatriate teachers is an interim measure until enough PNGns are both qualified and willing to take up all the educational vacancies.

As with the mercenaries, in their initial meetings with PNGn

bureaucrats expatriate teachers do not experience any disquiet about the

overall concept of their presence in PNG. But on arrival in the country, the teachers find themselves at odds with sections of the bureaucracy and the

staff they work amongst. They are welcomed by students and the educational bureaucracy for what they can do, but are resented by counterpart National staff whom they have come to join in the schools.

And those staff may indeed be offering similarly justifiable objections to the presence of expatriates as were those offered by the PNG Defence Forces towards the mercenaries. Both expatriate teachers and the mercenaries

have been offered far better salaries and leadership opportunities than local staff, and the positions of dominance and status they are given explicitly and publicly denounce local staff as inadequate by comparison. While I acknowledge that expatriate teachers are not being asked by powerful government figures to leave PNG en-masse, nevertheless, as I noted in Chapter VIII, teachers in this study have been subjected to National staff demands for their removal.

Despite the voicing of such disquiet by certain PNG factions, the Australian teacher prefers to think that in their work, often alongside PNGn

counterparts, their whiteness no longer represents dominance. Yet leaving aside the issue of colour, it would seem that simply in the capacity of their being expatriate, dominance and expertise is expected. The expat [always] had the expertise... the expat the whitey, who the expectations were high for. I didn't necessarily find that a burden as much as things were getting done But in retrospect that was possibly the biggest mistake... I shouldn't have fixed so many damned things, I should have guided people, so that when - / guess I was hoping they'd see by 6

Radio National, interview with Colonel T. Spicer, The 7.30 Report, April 7, 1997.

259 example how to do things. With leadership and teaching and all sort of things. But I don't think that worked terribly well. I should have thrust them into the situation and taken steps back.7

Experiencing discomfort about the underlying structures of their expatriate power is part of the dilemma faced by the teachers in attempting to understand their place. It sets them apart from the general expatriate, and

is the result of them finding themselves 'uncomfortably inside the residue of power structures they profess to oppose, and [as] ambivalent beneficiaries of those structures'8

Part of the ambivalence that teachers experience is compounded by the complexity of whether teachers, as surrogate9 aid donors, and other expatriate workers should think about the implications of what they do in relation to the underlying power structures of PNGn society as well. In the

context of the many notions of reciprocity and compensation that underscore PNGn social relations, aid work and its supply of goods is akin to giving.

As Strathern has pointed out for the Melpa people of Western

Highlands, although local clans and villagers have wholeheartedly embraced commercial developments, cash cropping, and consumerism, most of their acquisition and dispensing of wealth continues to be

regulated by a disciplined exchange system.1° Numerous anthropological studies of PNGn contemporary tribal customs indicate similarly reciprocal systems across much of the mainland. It is not unreasonable, therefore, to ask whether the presence of Australian teachers, as part of the whole aid process, might constitute a problem for local PNGn communities as to how reciprocity might be addressed.11

Transcript # 6, p. 8. Chris Tiffin & Alan Lawson, De-Scribing Empire, Routledge, London, 1994, P. 232. I use the term surrogate to denote that government school teachers are not directly employed through aid agencies. However, a high percentage of the funding for education, and consequently expatriate salaries, does result from Australia's input of approximately 370 million dollars per annum in aid to 8

PNG. 10

Andrew Strathern, 'Struggles for Meaning' in Aletta Biersack (ed), C/jo in Oceania, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 1991, pp. 205 - 230. It is worthwhile noting that during May 1999, Dr Mary Anderson from Harvard University presented a series of lectures in Australia concerned with aid and the ways in which its dissemination in conflict areas can inadvertently cause harm when aid workers are not aware of underlying cultural issues between groups.

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The PNG practice that continues to name expatriates as masta and missus may be one that is effected in order to make a separation from established reciprocal alliance structures. Keeping expatriates in the realms of distant, but powerful, governing bodies as in the Australian Administration era,

would mean that the giving of aid does not require addressing in kind. However, the expatriates' lack of confidence precludes judgement or analysis, and they are necessarily forced into one- sided assumptions

made as part of their daily encounters with PNG. Such assumptions are part of the dilemma teachers face in evaluating what space they might occupy within the varying PNGn communities.

In Chapter Il I noted the absence of literature on contemporary expatriate teacher views of their experiences of PNG.

I suggested that lnez

Baranay's account of her Australian Volunteers Abroad work in the highland province of Enga provides some alternative insights through which the issue of expatriate place might be further explored.12 As Baranay's account and the reaction to it is pertinent to my concluding remarks, I turn again to a number of issues it raises about expatriatism.

Baranay went to the Highlands as a volunteer adviser and project officer

with a local women's group. She was assigned to assist the women in gaining better access to government services and education, and to advise on ways in which the women might more adequately address issues of

male domination. The unfolding account is her attempt at dealing with the dilemma of being multi-positioned; as a co-worker, a woman, an employee, an advocate, and an Australian expatriate.

All these designated positions

are experienced by Australian teachers, too, as they attempt to position themselves within and alongside a society that is itself dealing with the dichotomies and tensions between forces of change and desire to retain tradition. 12

Inez Baranay, Rascal Rain, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1994.

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As with the teachers interviewed for this study, Baranay finds on the one hand that PNG, through the advent of formal education, air travel and a modern communication system, has become part of a globalised world

system. Within the system, bureaucratic structures mimic those assembled in the colonial period, and continue as the means by which government agencies and monetary funds distribute the largesse of development aid.

But as Baranay and many teachers struggle to

understand, PNG has retained much of its traditional approach to the

dissemination of power within those structures. The structures reflect the politics of affiliation, kinship and gender relations. Little of these socially embedded relations are clearly seen from a Western point of view;

incomprehension forces teachers - as well as aid workers like Baranay - to ask uncomfortable questions about what they are doing in the country. Development had become a big industry, self-sustaining, selfsupporting, and self interested. Organisations got rich, people got rich - those, that is, that were doing the developing, not those that had the development done to them.... We arrived and began working and new questions arose. Who had a National counterpart? No one. Who thought a National could do the job as well? Who wondered if this country really needed volunteers? Were we participants or spectators? What was success in the job? If you stayed the two years were you a success? A failure if you didn't?13

Several elements of Baranay's chronicle have been roundly criticised.14

These include her apparently stereotypical representation of the 'third

world', her imposition of Western representations of PNGns, her expectations of a 'sorotorial (sic) exchange of views, unguardedly, with

other women', and particularly, the 'bitter narrative' of her disillusionment and betrayal by them and by the Australian aid organisation generally.15

13

ibid., p. 155 Susan Ash, Aid work, Travel and Representation: lnez Baranays Rascal Rain and Alice walkers warrior Marks, Linq, October, 1997. 15ibid., p.51. 14

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Yet, in making demands for political and cultural correctness, the critique makes its own stereotypical and inappropriate assumptions.

I am not so

much defending Baranay, but rather looking at the ways in which those expatriates who find themselves working within PNG structures perceive the world around them.

I highlight the critique because I, and certainly

most teachers in this study, might also be assumed to be guilty of

stereotypical representations. The guilt, though, is not due to an inability to question preconceived assumptions, but rather that expatriates can see only through the filters that exist within them because they are expatriate,

and therefore situated. And they are situated by both their own cultural assumptions and those conferred on them by the host country.

The

preconceived assumptions, which are filters, and then the associations with a society whose own signifiers and assumptions are not clearly understood, create the dilemmas that unsettle the visitor. I also propose

that, by being expatriate, teachers cannot disassociate themselves from assumptions that are addressed by, and formed through, structures of both

the colonising and the colonised. To explain this further, I return to a point from Thomas's discussion on colonial discourse where he reminds us of Foucault's work.

If Foucault's theme of the 'productive mutual constitution of knowledge

and power' is acknowledged, it is then possible to deal more readily with the sort of contemporary reality in PNG that has been produced out of colonialism's 'rituals of truth' and the procedures that 'aimed at knowing, mastering and using'.16

In interactions with PNGn bureaucracy, the

expatriate confronts ways of knowing, mastering and using that, while set in familiar Western bureaucratic structures of power, are nevertheless the cogent reality of a more contemporary PNG.

Despite the expatriate's

status and assumptions predicated on information received prior to leaving 16

M. Foucault, [p. 143], quoted in N. Thomas, Colonialism's Culture, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994, p.

40.

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Australia, in PNG they must deal with a bureaucracy that has evolved beyond that constructed by Australian colonialism. My question here is whether, in a postmodern and political correctness, the presence of other systems, institutions, and logics are being denied by the suggestion that Western representation does PNGns an injustice in looking at them through Western eyes.

It would be the same as denying PNGns their own

ways of dealing with the West. On a simple level it would deny students the luxury of laughing at teachers for the cultural faux pas made in

classrooms. On a more complex level it denies legitimacy to a PNGn social ordering that has wrought change in the underlying directives that address bureaucratic structures. If we are concerned to deal more adequately with the presence of 'the colonized' in colonialism, with the autonomy of their enunciations and strategies, we need to adopt a theoretical perspective that accords more importance to competence without lapsing into an uncritical, subject-centred humanism

So to return to the critique of Baranay and any other author who might justifiably accuse her, as well as many expatriate teachers, of 'othering' through their representations, I submit that my teacher informants, like Baranay, did have to recognise their different status from the PNGns. Expatriate representations are often produced from a knowledge and

understanding of their own difference, one that is brought about by

interactions with those other ways of knowing. Expatriates cannot claim an identity in PNG until they have been identified by those who make a space

for them. And it is an identity that expatriate teachers understand when their isolation and difference creates their own sense of being 'othered'. I found friendships with the locals were difficult to form, I guess they saw me, as a white fella as being a source of income, but had no interest in knowing me as a person. I really felt too unsettled to tiy and overcome this barrier. Anyway, there's little opportunity for an Australian to get to know

17Thomas op.cit. p. 58.

264 the locals 'cos of the enormous difference in cultures and the relative in flexibility of the locals approach to anything outside their own ways of seeing.18

But at the same time as their unique position allows an interaction across

cultures that is the cause of their questioning of their place and purpose in PNG, it is that positioning, that bridge between cultures, that is the function of their place. Teachers are aware that they have to accord with the

principles that underly the processes of their educative role as agents of development and change. But through their role as teachers, they can reflect upon the impact of their presence and the relevance of the changes they attempt to instigate.

The views and understandings they then

engage with among PNGns bring about a contradiction, one that asks them to challenge what they are doing in PNG.

To emphasise this point, an example of my own experiences, taken from a

journal entry, may indicate more clearly what I mean here. A short time after a geography lesson conducted by an Australian colleague on preserving the PNG environment with sustainable practices, / watched a group of students from that class throwing stones at birds settled in the trees outside the staff room. / was angry and upset at their actions, firstly upbraiding them for 'not taking any notice of what Mr. ... had said' and then walking away in despair at what / presumed to be unthinking cruelty and environmental vandalism. Only when I calmed down did it occur to me to look at what the students were doing from their point of view, rather from mine of righteous indignation. And discussion with them proved my ignorance. They were not idly wreaking havoc, they were seeking protein to supplement the poor school diet of rice and occasional tinned fish, and they were doing it in the normal way that village hunters do - by killing animals and birds and eating them. 19 These are the ambivalent and contradictory positions that teachers have to

take with respect to the local situations. As educators and visiting 18Trariscript # 5, p. 6. 19 Taken from Journal entry.

265

'experts,' Australians demand that traditional attitudes change so as to

accede to what development parameters have been set for PNG; whether it is on environmental issues, attitudes towards women, or bringing electricity to far flung villages.

But at the same time, teachers and other

expatriates demand that PNG does not throw away its traditionalism — by

referencing to stories and customs from their culture that students are encouraged to write about in class, or through buying artef acts and locally

made craft items that are 'truly PNGn' to take home and hang proudly on walls in Australia.

Teachers do not struggle to account for such contradictions until they are immersed in the contextual reality surrounding their PNG campus

employment. The confusion they then experience is as a result of their prior assumptions, many of which are fed by a 'discourse that reverberates with values of the centre'2° that teachers take with them from Australia.

It

is a discourse partially fed by the recruitment process itself, and by the initial advertisements for PNG education positions they see in Australian national newspapers.

Applicants are invited to fill positions in the field of higher education that range from lecturers in fashion design and theatre production, to tourism marketing, and civil engineering.

Schools, as well as seeking teachers for

mathematics, English and social sciences, request staff versed in

expressive arts, computing and commerce. The range of subject matter perpetuates expatriate expectations that conditions and structures similar to those of Australia will prevail in both PNGn educational institutions and across wider community infrastructures.

It is only evident to teachers after they arrive that the advertisements are

contradictions in themselves. They then ask, as I did, what correlation

20

N. Thomas, op. cit., p. 71.

266

there might be between a world that asks for such apparently inappropriate

expertise and the world that surrounds their campus. Situated among local villages, teachers question how a diploma in fashion design will bring a clean and regular water supply to those villagers who continually face

outbreaks of typhoid. Or if there is no electricity for the average PNGn, where could they be employed to teach computing and stage lighting. [The curriculum] didn't quite meet the needs of PNG. You don't teach topics such as nuclear physics in a PNG high school in countiy that has no nuclear energy, no nuclear warfare... I suppose you can teach the subject as social science, but there's no value in teaching certain subjects, there's no correlation between the curriculum and the needs of the people.21

I have indicated elsewhere that awareness does exist within the education community for the need to make curricula, and education delivery in

general, more relevant to the expressed needs of PNGns. However, teachers encounter the dilemmas of change and development first hand, rather than through the pages of a journal, handbook or class syllabus.

Their space of knowing, or rather of acknowledging that perhaps they do

not know, is again at the nexus of two spheres of influence. One sphere encompasses the varying PNG communities of school staff, students, village, and bureaucracy, and the other, that of the expatriate community and the status its presence implies. In the highlands / definitely got feelings that ... females had a definite place and! didn't fall into that... A woman questioning their authority was not acceptable. There was resentment about us being European, and getting paid more than the local staff, and like, the Big Man didn't want to be pushed around by Australians. It wasn't the case all the time, for example, at Margarima, / probably got some preferential treatment because! was •

Australian.22

Being positioned cautiously between the two spheres obliges teachers, as agents of the processes of change, to question the precepts and structures 21

22

Transcript#21. p. 16 Transcript # 3, p. 4.

267

put in place by their pre-independent counterparts. This is especially so in

light of those structures having taken up other ways of knowing and whose administrator's occasionally equivocal dealings engender confusion for expatriates.

I posit that such dealings are one result of the prior administration's attempts to reinvent PNGn society.

Loomba's study of postcolonialism,

as experienced in the present, suggests that the meaning behind the

'definition of colonialism as being 'the process of forming a new community' should be more deeply interrogated'.

It is too easily forgotten,

Loomba argues, that the formation of those new communities 'necessarily meant Un forming or re-forming the communities that existed there already'.23

Situated between the communities of PNG and the expatriate

community, teachers occupy a space from where they see and experience

the results of that unforming process. And where, arguably, there exists an active remnant of the colonialist past that has not only taken too little account of the inherent dilemmas found in the re-forming process, but that requires teachers, perhaps as mercenaries, to continue as parties to the process.

From the beginning of Australian-imposed rule, expectations were that PNGns would adopt the standards that expatriates had set for them, rather than any particularly Melanesian paradigms of interaction.

While the

majority of teachers have always grounded their classroom practices and judgements of their students on their own cultural identity, some believed they could accommodate local expectations whilst simultaneously exerting the required degree of influence. In the pre-independence period, such

beliefs indicated that teachers accepted the Administration's ideology, but were concurrently able to mediate that acceptance in terms of their PNG experiences.

23Ania Loomba, Colonialism - Postcolonialism, Routledge, London, 1998, p. 2.

268

[We] got on better with the locals, and remember, teachers were not in the same conflict interface with the community, they weren't putting people in jail, they weren't the council advisor saying 'No, you can't have money for that'. The teacher was looking after children and at that time, and presumably now, education was greatly prized... The teachers were interacting with the community, introducing things like baseball, sports carnivals, fetes, things that engender community spirit in order to raise money... [We] were friendly, not in conflict and that makes them well

placed to be agents of change within the community. But it was a benign influence, rather than a conflict influence.24

Without the certainty, voiced by this pre-independence teacher, emanating from an imbued paternalistic ideology and the power of attachments to a colonialist administration, contemporary teachers are forced to confront the

question of their place. How benign or not their influence has been might well be reflected by the place of endless liminality expatriate teachers

currently occupy in contemporary PNG. And it would seem that without that absolute certainty of place, today's teachers, along with their prior colleagues, must continue instead to function as a bridge between PNGn society and expatriate society, or else they, too, will be considered merely mercenaries.

But in the teachers' case, the bridge is formed in the spaces

between communities and is a structure over which knowledge and

awareness may pass both ways.

24Transcript# 13, p. 10.

EPILOGUE

VOICES OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA

270

Following my return to Australia from PNG in 1995 I commenced

correspondence with a former Year 12 student, Judy Nandape. Within our letters we discussed the situation of expatriates as teachers. Our

discussions led to Judy offering to survey a group of her fellow students

who were studying at the University of PNG. We were interested to find out how they viewed the presence of expatriate teachers in their country

and wondered whether they could offer a range of differing insights into the

place the teachers have. The speculations resulted in a short questionnaire being answered by thirteen young adult PNGns.

As with my former student, the majority of the students surveyed were also

in their first year at UPNG. All of the students come from either secondary or National high schools where they had, at some stage of their upper schooling, been taught by both Australian and other expatriate teachers. The students are from a diversity of language groups and regions across PNG.

I

had stressed in a covering note that as their opinions were important,

I

hoped they would talk about what they thought on the subject, not what

they thought I wanted to know. Thus the survey made no requirement for any particular Melanesian consensus, and it would seem that the voices below have given openly and freely their views on expatriate teachers and their place in PNG.

What was it you liked about your expatriate teachers? 'They were very helpful, very encouraging'.

'He made me fearful and so I worked for better results' 'But he was very discreet, very kind and good at job'.

'They don't criticise us about our clothes. They appreciate our culture and don't try to change us'.

271

'The Aussies were experts in their field. They were entertaining while they taught as well'.

'They were there when I needed help with my assignments'.

'They were understanding and associated well with the native students'. 'They helped me and were very kind and always gave the best advice'. 'They help me a lot in my understanding of English'.

'I liked them because they all knew how to get a student's interest'. 'They were always committed'.

'They seemed fair and just towards all students and didn't express any racist feelings. They were open and understanding in discussions on school'.

'They have good teaching skills and experience, they are open and precise in their teaching'.

'Yes, all my foreign teachers were committed in teaching, even when out of the classroom they showed better example in terms of behaviour'.

Do you think that being taught by an expatriate has made any

difference to your education and outlook, and if so, why? 'Yes, it broadened my outlook, made me more organised and responsible'. 'It provided models for me'. 'I learned to work hard and keep my standards up'.

'No. They teach the same things as are being taught by PNGns'.

'Yes, if! had been taught only by PNGns I wouldn't know what it's like to be discriminated against. But also / learned that not a!! people are the same or all 'No, because PNG teachers are more arbitrary in their marking. With whites I am always a stranger in the class'.

'Not really, they did not seem to be difference from my local teachers'.

'Yes, white teachers have made me value myself as a female, unlike

PNGns who like to suppress women. And when I am around expatriates

272

they make me fee/just the same and no difference between black and white'.

'Yes, it has given me a better understanding of people from different p/aces, / have more idea about their cultures and traditions, and / have learned how to treat different people from different places'. 'Yes, they were better in formed and it made so much difference with their experience'.

'Yes, I was taught at a level higher than / would have been with a National teacher'.

'Yes, they teach you a lot about their own country and other things which / am sure the PNG teachers are not aware of'.

'Yes, their work commitment, caring attitudes (sometimes) and their level

of knowledge and skill. But their high expectations make life difficult when PNG students compete with other overseas students'.

'Yes, they helped me and made a difference to my education. The quality of expatriate teaching made a difference to my results'.

What, if anything, was different about expatriate as compared to PNGn teachers? 'They have more experience, are better qualified, more knowledgeable in

'More confident and did not use the wantok system at school'.

'Very open and most got on very well with the students'

'There is a lot of difference in what they have. They are so we//paid and are provided with better facilities and houses at school. But some of them do not speak English as we/I as the National teachers'.

'They are quite racist in certain aspects of their lives, thinking themselves superior and blacks as second c/ass 'They are different in punctuality, dress, manners, willingness to help, spending free time having fun with students'.

r

273

'More punctuaL More committed to their jobs. But didn't care about what happened to students after they left school — Only cared about the jobs they were paid for'.

'They respond differently. You have to learn when to go to an overseas teacher and when to go to a PNG teacher for help. It is different'. 'They seemed the best in their field and spoke English as a first language, also had years of experience'. 'The overseas teachers are more open-minded and dedicated than PNG teachers — they carry on with classes and don't take unnecessary days off'. 'Expatriates were always on time'.

'Expatriates took time to discuss work after classes with students who had problems. And their teaching methods were different'. 'All their approaches and social lives, and appearances are different. They tend to act more superior than PNG teachers'. 'Commitment to the job and punctuality in the workplace'..

Do you think it is a good idea to have expatriate teachers in PNG, and

why? 'Yes, PNG is not yet developed, needs better qualified teachers to bring students up to other county 'Yes, They broaden our ideas and beliefs about the outside world'. 'Yes, because they are well trained and committed to their profession. They are broad minded too. and work harder than

'Yes, because it gives students a chance to understand people from overseas'.

'Yes, there is a lack of commitment by PNG teachers, some don't even bother to turn up for class, but not all.

It was obvious that overseas

teachers taught at a much higher standard'. 'Yes, they bring with them lots of experience and expertise — we need them

to raise our

274

'Yes, they are better trained and are always willing to help'.

'Yes. Because education is basic and important seivice and need for people of PNG. They are bringing new learning experiences that develop the education system in PNG'.

'I think it's a good idea to have them in the country because they offer qualities that National teachers do not'.

'Yes ands No. They work better than PNG teachers but are much too expensive for the country'.

'Yes and No. No, because the government spends too much on them and

this could be better spent on National teachers. Yes, because they are better qualified and it helps students to be opened out to foreigners and see that they are not all racist'.

'Yes and No They have a lot of knowledge and talent to input to PNG

students. But some are just there for sake of money and don't care at all

for 'Not sure — but a mixture of staff could encourage interaction and

communication, and enhance administrative and teaching at higher levels. Expatriates should have better skills at speaking Pidgin'.

'No, we should make use of the teachers we have here'.

What ideas do you have about a solution other than bringing expatriates into PNG? 'Educate more PNGns in overseas situations — where they can compete'. 'Improve the level of education in PNG'.

'Stop recruiting. 'Hire PNGns but keep them under stricter surveillance to make them teach properly'.

275

'PNGns will be more willing to teach if we provide better accommodation and increase their pay'. 'Many are reluctant to become teachers because of the facilities'.

'The government should increase PNG pays and give benefit schemes and so increase numbers of National staff'.

'Send top up and community school teachers overseas to train and get Bachelor of Education degrees'. 'We should develop our own by sponsoring them to study overseas'.

'Stop bringing in expatriates who take local's jobs and increase unemployment problems'.

'The government should increase PNG salaries, accommodation, facilities, etc. to make teaching more attractive to

'National teachers are deprived of jobs by overseas teachers, but our teachers are not paid enough. Our government should improve our teachers' packages and stop bringing in others'.

'Increase the qualifications of local teachers. Raise it to degrees and not simple diplomas'.

'Make sure that PNG teachers have a degree in their specialist area as well as a teaching qualification'.

'The government should invest more money into the training of teachers here instead of bringing in overseas teachers'.

'The main problem is inefficiency of the PNG Educ. Dept. If they can cater for expense of overseas teachers, why not spend money on local teaching staff'.

'We need both now, but we also need to build the lives of PNG teachers so they benefit to the fullest'.

'Bringing in quallty lecturers for teachers' colleges would be a better solution than bringing in teachers'.

276

Which of the expatriates did you prefer and what differences did you

notice about Australian expatriates in comparison to other expatriates? 'No differences'.

'I only had Australians'. 'I prefer Australians — because they are more down to earth and co-

operative and just easy to get along with'. 'Australians were critical and judgemental, at times almost outright racist. Other overseas teachers appreciate us for what we are and mix with us.

Australians isolate 'Australians are well trained and work harder'. 'I had none from Australia'.

'Australians are more snobbish, though some are more kind hearted. Americans more down to earth and involved with the natives. I prefer others to

'Australians have an attitude problem. They think they are some sort of super human, other teachers from overseas are more down to earth.

It is

better to go to them than the Australians'. 'Australians seemed better informed about PNG than did the others,

Australian teachers could better relate lessons to PNG and its histo,y and topics'.

Australians were more fluent in English. 'I only had Indian teachers'.

'Australians tend to be more superior and racist whereas other overseas

teachers are not. But the ones that are normal are really understandable and dedicated to their profession and basically to PNG people'. 'Americans seemed to feel more superior than other teachers, although they taught well'.

'Australian teachers are easier to understand, but they all get pampered by the government — why not say No to all overseas teachers instead'.

277

The consensus on expatriate teachers is that, overall, they are encouraging and helpful, committed to their work and fair to students.

The consensus of differences to PNG teachers are that expatriates are more punctual and more committed to the job of teaching than PNGn teachers.

Expatriates are also viewed as more racist and thinking

themselves more superior. All of the students believed that expatriate

teachers were more experienced at their profession. As well, their teaching methods differed in that there was more interaction in the classroom.

Student consensus on the value of expatriates agrees that expatriates bring experience and skills not available in PNG and they are helping to

develop PNG and broaden students' ideas. The majority of students believe that expatriates offer higher standards to schools.

At the same

time, a number of students also agree that expatriates are too expensive for the country and that the money would be better spent on National teachers who deserve equity with expatriates.

The students believe there are alternatives tobringing expatriate teachers to their country:

1. Improve the training of local teachers. 2. Send local teachers overseas to train at the same level as expatriates. 3. Improve the pay and conditions for local teachers to a rate that would not only attract a wider range of personnel to train as teachers, but would keep those teachers in the education workforce.

-o00000-

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313

APPENDIX ONE

I

Expatriate Teachers in Papua New Guinea

The purpose of this questionnaire is to gain an insight into your experiences of place and work in Papua New Guinea. Obviously this format is not as flexible as a face to face interview, but the questions attempt to be quite free ranging and expansive. Please feel free to be open and spontaneous, and to write as much or as little as you would

prefer on each page. In some cases you may decide not to answer the question at all, in others you may wish to add further pages to the document - if you do so, please apply the appropriate question number to those pages.

You are requested to give your name and address on this front page for record keeping purposes only - whatever is answered in these pages remains private and confidential, unless you have noted previously in the Project Consent Form that you wish your views to be acknowledged. If there are any questions you would like clarified, please do not hesitate to contact me - leave a message with the University of South Australia office, (08) 302 6251, or fax (08) 302 6752, and your call will be returned. Thank you for your time and your interest.

Sue Gelade

Name:

Address:

Telephone:

Date:

2

I. Please write something about yourself and your current situation.

3

2. How long were you in PNG? Where did you work while you were there? - Please provide detafis of different types of schools, grades, or areas you were sent to.

4

3. What was the general political situation in PNG while you were there. How competent do you think the AdmlnistrationlGovernment were in what they did? - Any other comments?

5

4. What reasons did you have for wanting to go to PNG? - When were you first aware of jobs being offered in that country? - What did you know of PNG at that time? - What sort of motivations lay behind your application? - What can you remember about the interview process - were you given any indication as to the selection criteria? - What did you expect to get out of the job? - Other comments?

6

5. Your training for your position in PNG

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Looking back, can you comment on your level of preparedness to undertake the job of a teacher in PNG? (for example:) - What sort of preparation (if any) were you given by the government while in Australia? - What indications were you given as to the admininstration's purpose in you going to PNG? - Were you made aware of any cuttural differences you might encounter or difficulties that might arise, how was this indicated? - What sort of indications were given to you about where you would fit in to the 'scheme of things' in PNG? What sort of expectations did this lead to before you went away? (scared/excfteci/concerned/posftive attitudes etc.) - What sort of formal or informal training did you get in PNG? - Any other comments?

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6. First impressions What were your very first impressions of PNG and your work situation? - The place, the school, housing, classrooms, remoteness, etc. - Other comments?

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7. How were you made welcome? - By any other school staff 1 the local big men! the students or their parents /the local people in general? - Other comments?

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8. What were your students like?

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9. As Time Went By After you had been there for a while, what sort of feelings did you have about where you were and what you had come to do? - Were there any changes - radical or otherwise, that you experienced in regards to the your attitude about being in PNG, about what the Administration expected of you, or how you felt about your position there? - Other comments?

ii 10. Were there opportunities that took you beyond the school community and gave you an opportunity to make friendships with the local people? - How do you feel that you fitted in and were able to work or socialise with the local community? - What sort of opportunities were there to experience local village life? - What sort of understanding did you have of how (1) the local people - and (2) your students felt towards you were you wanted/unwanted? were they scared of you? -Did you get any feelings of being more than 'just' a teacher to them - why do you think this was so? - What sort of understanding did you have of how either students or their parents/village felt about you and the opportunities you offered for western style education in their village I town / community I country? - Other comments?

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11. Please describe your teaching duties in PNG How did your working day differ from that of teachers in Australia? - Did you encounter any problems, what were they, and how did they differ from what it might have been like to teaching in Australia? - Other comments?

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12. How did you spend your time when you weren't teaching?

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13. If there were Papua New Guinean staff atyour school, How did you feel about your working relationship with them? - What sort of feed back did you get about you being in their country? - what understanding do you have of any particular or especial welcome I resentment - How do you think they felt about expatriates in their country? How was this manifested? - Other comments?

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14. Contact with 'home' and your Australian identity abroad. - How did you identify yourself as particularly Australian rather than Papua New Guinean? - What was your relationship with other expatriates? - Was there a separate expatriate staff community and how did it function? why do you think it was separate? - Were there many opinions amongst the expatriates, and how were they sorted out (amicably! with difficulty/by request for transfer, etc.?) - What sort of attitudes did you notice among the other expatriates and/or their communities that you came in contact with? - Did you find yourself being friends with people you normally wouldn't have associated with back in Australia? - Were there any ways that you felt Australia in particular had a special job to do in PNG? - Other comments?

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15. Being in someone else's country - Did you ever experience attitudes of racism towards you - as either being white or Australian, or just plain different? How did this manifest itself and how were you able to either deal with or rationalise it? - On the other hand, were there any resentments or unfavourable attitudes within yourself that you noticed building up? How did you deal with this? - Other comments?

16. Effective Teaching How did you view your effectiveness as a teacher in PNG? - Were there adjustments you needed to make to either your methods of teaching, or to your initial views on what you considered correct teaching methods? (in order to cater for students whose language and culture were different from those whom a curriculum would have been designed for in Australia?) - What did you understand about your position within the school hierarchy? Did you feel clear about this from the beginning, or did you need to get a clearer understanding for yourself, or from the staff, or the students? - Were there any other adjustments you made as you got to know the system more? - Other comments?

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17. How did you feel about teaching in PNG? - What sort of changes did you make, if any, from your initial perceptions at interview as to your value in and to the country and its students? - How did you qualify or modify Western education to suit your PNG students and their traditional ways of thinking? - any other comments?

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18. Working conditions. What sort of conditions did you work under? Isolation, school buildings, housing? - do you think any of the above had any effects on your attitudes and abilities to work effectively? How so? - Did any of the above have any effect on how you were able to enjoy your time in

PNG-howso? - Other comments?

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19. Can you sum up your views on where you think Australia, and more specifically, you as an Australian teacher, have fitted into Papua New Guinea, its life and society?

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20. Did the Government - PNG or Aust. Admin. - provide for you in regards to medical, security or any other personal needs? If so, what were they? If not, how do you think this could be improved?

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21. Is there anything else you would like to comment on?