Pitfalls of half-knowledge

Weekender
COMMENT

By FRANK SENGE KOLMA
I CAN see the smiles forming on the faces of those of my mates who might have this image of a beer mouth which they think I am misidentifying above as a fountain.
But their mirth at my expense would not be too far-fetched as my inspiration is actually drawn from a pointed reference to alcoholic beverage or rather, the inebriation end of it.
I was emboldened to key the lines above by a companion of a different short, a far distant poet by the name of Alexander Pope who had once written:
“A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring; There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
“And drinking largely sobers us again.”
The fabled Pierian spring of Macedonia was said to impart to those who drank deeply from it magical properties of deep knowledge. And that was the source that gave the Muses of Greek mythology their famed excellence in musicology, the arts and sciences because they drank at nowhere but the Pierian spring.
Some anonymous wit shortened Pope’s exertions to:
“Sips of knowledge intoxicates the brain but deeper drinking sobers it up again.”
And there it stands to warn all posterity of the dangers of little knowledge. We, as a people, seem to be particularly afflicted by the malady spoken of by Pope.
A little knowledge is indeed dangerous. A nation built on an astounding collection of ignorance will not progress. It was recogniSed early in the life of this nation what mischief ignorance can make.
And so it was set as the very first goal of PNG to rid itself from the bondage of ignorance through total immersion in education, described loftily as Integral Human Development in the preamble to the National Constitution.
It was not without reason that the University of PNG and the University of Technology were established just two years after the House of Assembly convened for the first time in June 1964.
By the time the House convened for the last time in August 1975 to dissolve itself and re-emerge as the National Parliament, a fair number of graduates from our own universities were holding down senior positions in government and were panning out into the private sector
But a problem existed which was hard to manage. The bulk of the population was illiterate. And because the bulk of the population was youthful, this illiteracy and its dire consequences were destined for a long haul in the nation.
The education system designed at Independence added to this situation by being selective with a standards based focus. Far too few were processed through a very discriminatory system where students were weeded out at Grades six, eight, ten and 12.
Out of 40 students in a Grade One classroom only four or five ended up with any tertiary education. Those spewed out by the system joined the ranks of the illiterate population swelling it, rather than diminish it, as per the aim of the first national goal.
This increased dejection, frustration, and hopelessness in the country. The end result was social evils such as unemployment and lawlessness.
And so a gulf between an elite class and a common class was unwittingly created and encouraged from the very beginning by our choice of education system.
Ours would be a different scene today had universal primary and secondary education, buttressed and secured by free education, been employed in the formative years of PNG. Had the narrow tunnel selection of students on the basis of academic excellence been applied at the university end and those selected carted off to the best universities of the world at Government cost the result would be pleasantly and startlingly different today.
The entire K300 million per annum in untied aid from Australia could have been poured into this enterprise and what surprising harvests we could have reaped repeatedly across the years. The cumulative value of our Human Resources would have matched or surpassed our combined natural resources. Taken together we would have been singing and yes, we might have become the richest black nation on earth. Christianity would have been an added bonus.
There is a certain suspicion that lurks in certain more ignorant quarters that our choices were made for us by our colonizer, Australia, and that a stratagem exists to keep PNG suppressed and dependent.
The strategy might have been Australia’s but the more powerful weapon, Choice, was ours right from the word GO!.
PNG is today the end result of the series of choices we have made as a Government and as a people across four and a half decades.
Blame, if it must be apportioned, lies right at our door step. It is our door mat, greeting every visitor entering the house and ourselves as we exit our abode.
We cannot take back PNG from anybody or anywhere. We just need to give the door mat a sound beating and dry clean it or replace it.
Ignorance, that which we set as our first national goal to expunge, has remained and has grown and has turned around to whip us soundly.
Development cannot be had, it cannot happen, unless and until, the nation wakes up to honour its first national goal.
Then, and only then, can it aspire to or attain its full potential.

One thought on “Pitfalls of half-knowledge

  • An insightful post Frank. Obvious after 47 years of independence. Hope that some in the new Government are also reading this and may mend the shortcomings of education in PNG where some classes have over 50 pupils for one teacher. and so called high schools have no science labs or even libraries.

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