It seems so long ago but in fact it was only 'yesterday' when one thinks in terms of Solomons' history! Today's story begins in 1958. It was my first experience with gathering children for our small school in Tarapaina, Small Malaita. I had only come recently landed in country sailing from Australiaand I was completely raw to Solomon Islands life.
Traveling along Malaita's East Coast by small launch I was tasked to pick up school children for our small school located at the northern end of Small Malaita. When I would arrive at a coastal village I was suppose to convince parents, especially the father of a child, that it would be great thing for him and his whole family if one of their young offspring would return withme to our small school.
It proved to be a hard selling job! Convincing parents of those days to allow their little ones to travel to a distant school more than three hours away by hard rowing was not something they easily accepted. However, when I thought a father of a child was beginning to come around to my way of thinking, I resorted to a bit of bribery. Producing two sticks of tobacco--a strong currency of that time--out of my hand bag, I was able to convince most fathers that it was a good idea to have at least one of their childrengo to school.
So there it was! School fees during the late 1950s was two sticks of tobacco that I gave the father of the school child. When I tune in these days and listen to SIBC's nightly Surface Messages sent by different schools across the country, I'm speechless. Today's schools now demand hundreds, even thousands of dollars, which parents somehow find and pay it out, year afteryear.
Within in a few years, however,--the 1960s and 1970s--many schoolmasters were actually asking for and getting school fees. Modest amounts, for sure, by today's 'big money' standards but a whole lot more than what I wasreceiving only ten or so years before.
In less than 50 years, then, how far this nation has traveled. In the late 1950s I was forced to bribe a parent to send a child to school. Now, parents actually line up in front of the school, hand over hundreds and in some cases, thousands of dollars to secure class room places for their childrenin schools across the nation.
Back in the late 1950s, as said above, it was hard work convincing a parent to allow his child to attend school, doubly hard if the child was a girl. Yet, slowly, very slowly, people's view of education began to shift. Families experienced the difference that an education could do for their
children. The educated child, at that time basically Standard 7 for the majority, won the job, the overseas university place, the government position, etc.
In other words, it didn't take Solomon Islanders centuries to recognize now valuable education was even if it demanded an investment of 'big bucks' paid up front. The villagers' Education Love Affair has journeyed far. They had originally thought that schooling, education, training being 'a while man's thing' to a worthwhile investment for Solomon Islanders. Society, in less than 50 years, had turned a corner! What had been seen as a strange, foreign idea has now became main stream and has become a major influencethat defines present day Solomons life.
These personal memories are shared with those workers who currently labor in the nation's development trenches, those working to have more women in the halls of power, youth seeking employment, etc. My villager experience has been an eye opener. These people are not dumb, not completely welded to the past and certainly not simply locked into old ways of doing things just because they have always been done that way. Yes, my story of the 'two sticks of tobacco' turning into 'thousands of dollars' took a few decadesbut it shows that it can be done.
J. Roughan
26 March 2007
Honiara
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