Education the way forward

 HUMAN beings, by nature, are comfortable with the familiar and frightened of the new.

It is a survival instinct, well-served because new things in life have not always been friendly or welcoming.

New territory, new people, new flora and fauna and new ideas are fraught with their own dangers.

And yet, confronting the new has always expanded knowledge.

And knowledge has advanced mankind. In the end knowledge will sustain us when earth’s eco-system fails finally to support life as we know it. 

Knowledge will someday free us from the comforting gravitational pull of earth and send us soaring into the cosmos to confront the unknown, renew our fears and create our future world – if we survive the experience.

Greek philosopher Aristotle advanced the notion that the world is made up of four elements – earth, fire, water and air. 

A fifth element which he termed quintessence made up the heavens – or the perfect spheres of the sun, moon and stars.

For two centuries that was the view held by man or those who had the curiosity and time to dabble in matters scientific.

Drawing on this body of knowledge, the Church advanced its own view that the earth was the centre of the universe with heaven above and hell below.

One half of Aristotle’s theory, that of the composition of the earth, has stood the test of time. But the other half, that of the quintessential heaven was disproved by Italian scientist Galileo Galilei in the 1400s.

After  looking through his telescope he said there were mountains on the moon and further advanced the idea that the earth revolved around the sun.

Of course the Church saw it as blasphemous to divine truth. Galileo would have  been burnt at the stake as all the other heretics of the time had he not had influential friends in the courts of Europe at the time. 

In the end he was excommunicated and placed under house arrest. 

And that is how it has been for much of history.

Our fears have fed on the dark shroud of our own ignorance but  knowledge has slowly peeled back the darkness to bathe us in the sunlight of enlightenment.

Since this is the truth, it follows that no efforts should be spared to break the shackles of ignorance and advance knowledge.

Indeed, this is spoken of in PNG’s own first national goal which calls for integral human development.

Across the world, knowledge is the difference between first world and third world, industrialised and industrialising and developed and developing countries.

It makes sense to set education and matters educational as the number one priority of government. 

Where this has happened, the results are nothing short of astounding. 

Take Enga and Morobe which have been advancing a form of tuition fee support for students ever since 2007.

Enga in particular, under the stable governorship of Grand Chief Peter Ipatas, who introduced the scheme, has benefited tremendously.

Once dubbed the last province in terms of development, there is an Engan to be found in all higher education institutions in Papua New Guinea and scattered across the universities of the world. 

Those nurtured under the tuition fee free education policy are now entering the workforce and it is no mistake that more and more Engans are filtering into the workforce in every field.

If this policy been applied with some consistency and discipline in the 1980s or the 1990s at the national level, ours might have been a 

very different Papua New Guinea today.

The O’Neill government’s insistence upon education being its topmost priority might have started as the most politically popular decision at the time he rose to power. But it also is the correct policy priority.

He must now turn to not just fee subsidies but other aspects of education such as schools and institutions infrastructure, curriculum, instruction aids, teacher training and so on.

Government should also invest in serious scientific inquiry through the establishment of dedicated research institutions and laboratories.

Investment in education is the only way PNG can advance in this world of knowledge. That is how the Asian, South American and the Arabian worlds have advanced and they are advancing so very quickly up the development ladder.