First day at school begins new phase in life

LIFESTYLE

Marfuka is a fictional character who enjoys a good yarn. He tells stories that capture his life from when he could remember as a small boy to his adult life now closing in on the 60s. There is a twist though as some of these accounts can be tweaked as he juggles reality and his own imagination on what life should be. 

FIRST day at school is an experience that differs for each individual.
It is a day which presents some very interesting situations for everyone involved. But the actual planning for the day starts well before that, in most cases one or two weeks leading into that day. School uniforms and stationery like exercise books, pencils and rulers have to be purchased. The mad rush between home and the shopping centres becomes a norm during this time.
Once the uniforms are purchased the child tries these out at home as each member of the household is exposed to the new student. The situation is different for the rural schools and the remote parts of the country. It is another story which requires a full chapter.
The first day finally arrives. He or she gets a shower, then that set of uniform is now ready to perform its function. Breakfast for the child and then that trip to the school moves into in action.
After the first few days of uncertainty, the child is settled and everyone falls into a routine. The responsibilities are set on who drops the child off and who picks them off after school. These are the key players – the new student and the person or persons who support the child to school.
These can be the parents, guardians or an elder sibling of the child and another relative.
If the child has been exposed to some early learning at home – he or she settles into the routine of formal school without much difficulty. If nothing like that has happened – it is a completely new experience for the child. Papua New Guinea has three national languages – English, Tok Pisin and Motu.
Formal education uses English as the preferred language. There are some who use the local vernacular to start education but later the child has to continue their education in English. So, depending on where the child goes to school on their very first day the experiences would differ. We would end up with several books if every different experience of each child was documented.
First experience would also be categorised into different levels of education. Schooling begins with early childhood education (ECE) which caters for children from birth to around eight years old.
ECE programmes in Papua New Guinea aim to provide a solid foundation for children’s development, focusing on literacy, numeracy, social skills and health education. These programmes may be delivered through community-based centers, pre-schools or kindergartens.
There are others that incorporate classes aimed at the spiritual development of a child as well which are mostly prioritised at education institutions run by churches.
The child then goes through primary education and spans six years, theoretically catering for children aged six to 12.
The primary curriculum covers a range of subjects including English, mathematics, science, social studies among others. Primary schools are often the first formal education institutions children attend, and efforts have been made to improve access to education in rural and remote areas.
These are the areas which pose major challenges and contribute to illiteracy. In these areas children start school much later so that age levels differ compared to urban centres.

School in the 1970s
Marfuka switches his memory back to the 1970s when he first went to school.
His mother had given him some insight into school at home. She wasn’t a trained teacher but had her own style of teaching.
Marfuka remembers those sessions vividly but is thankful her good intentions to provide a solid foundation for her child gave him a decent education. Maybe the methods were questionable. But she wanted her eldest child to make the most of the opportunity she had missed in life.
She had been schooled to vocational centre standards – after undergoing basic education at primary level under the Catholic missionaries. Marfuka was exposed to some very interesting styles of learning. It was the mathematics that was mind-boggling for want of a better word. The math went 1 plus 1 = 2. That was easy but when it started moving to the next stages of sums, shifting from additions and subtractions to multiplication and divisions – things started getting complicated.
Not because Marfuka didn’t have brains. He did but if he got the sums wrong – a stick was his punishment until he got it right. Thinking back, it was mostly the fear of that hibiscus branch that was transformed into his punishment stick that may have interfered with the learning process. Mathematics became a subject Marfuka never called his favourite if he was asked to rate which one he liked better.
He only started to warm into the subject when later in life he needed good math to be a salesman for a newspaper. The sales weekly and monthly targets was a priority for him as the supervisor to reach together with his sales team.
English was not such a difficult one to master as the family spoke it at home. They had their own lingua franca but Marfuka’s father was a primary school teacher and taught at a school away from their home village. Most interaction with the neighbours was in English.
So Marfuka could roll through English lessons without much difficulty. It was not surprising that many years later when he decided to become a secondary school teacher, he chose to specialise in teaching English as a second language.
At primary school he noticed the majority of his school mates struggled with the lessons especially because they didn’t really understand English. They spoke their own language at home. So, this was a completely whole new experience for them.
Trying to communicate in a new language that their teacher was using would have been a daunting experience, most importantly understanding the words coming out of her mouth.
Tests are written in English which is the monitoring system used in formal education. So if one struggled to comprehend English that contributed to how they fared in school.

English and local lingua franca
Marfuka’s first grade teacher was a female – a new graduate who had come out of college. She spoke English quite well. Her father was a district court magistrate. And the family used English as their main language.
Her siblings all spoke English quite well. Her three brothers after her, then sisters and the rest of the siblings spoke English quite well. They struggled to speak their parents’ lingua franca, using English as their main language. They also spoke Motu quite fluently too.
The younger siblings had a better command of their parents’ language – something his elder siblings struggled to master. One of them chaired a village meeting at the weekend, and the ease with which he shifted from English to “tok ples” and versa verse versa was quite interesting to watch. A meeting like this in an urban environment becomes quite an interesting juggling act – as you switch from the lingua franca of the group to English, Tok Pisin or Motu, depending on what is considered the most common for the particular ethnic group. Marfuka recalls his first day at school like it was yesterday. They were shown the first-grade classroom so together with his new class-mates they waited outside the door, standing in a straight line.
The senior teacher had organized them in that formation then ushered them towards the centre of the school yard where the flagpole was. This was surrounded by a garden of flowers. There were stones neatly laid around the floor bed.
The school led by the senior students rolled into the national anthem “O Arise, all you sons of this land. Let us sing of our joy to be free, Praising God and Rejoicing to be, Papua New Guinea.”
Marfuka had learnt it at home so he felt confident as he sang with the rest of the older children of the school. The rest of his class-mates just mumbled whatever they could, humming it as they went along.
After introductions on who was who at the school – they filed to their classroom to wait for their new teacher.
She got in and the first lesson – which was to learn the national anthem by heart.

During Marfuka’s time they didn’t have the national pledge.
Many years later Marfuka brings one of his sons to his new school. This child couldn’t find a space so he had to find one which was in the Gerehu suburb, quite a fair distance by bus away from their Gordons home.
His older siblings were attending Ward Strip Primary School which was in the Gordons area so they would walk to school.
After the formalities of registration at the headmaster’s office Marfuka took his son to his new classroom. The new student was introduced to the class by his teacher and he took his seat. The classroom was partially covered so those outside could see what was happening in the classroom.
Marfuka joined the rest of the parents and guardians of the students outside the classroom. The scene could have been likened to a live show with the teacher and the students the key performers.
The teacher asked a question and Marfuka watched his son’s hand go up to have a crack at it. That was confidence Marfuka didn’t have during his first day at school so the boy was going to be fine. But he kept reassuring himself all would be fine with his son. Most young parents go through similar experiences and will relate. The child has now started a long journey, which is a pathway that will differ depending on how it unfolds for each of them.

Tertiary education
The parental responsibilities are a lifelong challenge until their children leave school. The students then move to the next stage of their education which is secondary school. If they score the relevant marks – the children, who are now teenagers, move to tertiary education.
Colleges and universities became the homes for the children as the young men and women now go through the process of maturity, physically as their bodies go through the stages of adulthood and mentally through their studies.
Most of Marfuka’s children have completed formal education and are now adults save for his youngest child – his only daughter – who is now studying overseas.
The responsibilities of someone who wants to be a father or mother must include ensuring one supports their child until they leave school.
When parents are not involved in the upbringing of their child – it is unfair on the child and because there is little care in how they develop. That in itself is a topic that requires a number of chapters to cover it adequately.