Last year, we shared a range of articles throughout most of the year on education titled “Across the Divide” largely because Fiji is a multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic country.
We developed a conceptual framework for education where parents, children and teachers were allocated key positions.
Our discussions focused on changes in roles, attitudes and orientations of all three parties in this framework towards education.
Numerous factors were analysed in an attempt to draw a contrast between what changed over time, why and how these changes came about. At the end of the series we arrived at the following conclusions:
Changes in Parents
THE most glaring difference is seen in the focus and intensity that parents brought to their involvement with their child/children’s education; this has both waned and weakened.
We have experienced a marked difference in the manner in which parents relate to their children and vice-versa. The pressure or demands on children to dedicate time to studies and to take schooling seriously have taken an interesting turn.
Parents don’t demand effort from their children anymore, they try to sound reasonable and go to great lengths to get their children to do what they themselves took as their sworn duty when they were children.
Nowadays, parents are so relieved if at least one child takes education seriously.
And they simply accept with resignation if another child does not. In the process the power and control in decisions relating to the child’s input and effort towards his/her education has inexorably continued to move from the parent to the child.
Changes in children
Striving for excellence is no longer a key concern among children. Those that do focus and put in the necessary effort, inevitably excel at schoolwork. The difference in orientation towards studies is clearly evident when they become tertiary students.
Cursory research has revealed that those that show promise among these students largely have education focused parents who have involved themselves and “pushed” and guided them to ensure that they prioritise studies and do not see education as something that simply has to be juggled among other obscure priorities.
Children these days do not view educational institutions (schools, teachers, etc) and achievements with the same level of reverence seen in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.
This lackadaisical attitude appears to stem from the fact that students do not really have to toil to pass their FSLC exams, they have relatively easier access to a plethora of financial assistance schemes and there are always options that can be accessed in a path that is filled with opportunities for negotiation.
Changes in teachers
The orientation and role of teachers has undergone significant change in recent times. A teacher who attempts to incorporate wider learning in classes tends to lose the interest of students.
A teacher who insists on student punctuality and invokes and enforces rules is quickly disliked and, over time, hated. A teacher who appears to “push” students to greater effort is avoided if possible.
In the process, the role and input of the teacher in building character as well as learning in a student is reduced. This tends to weaken the involvement and psychological proximity between the teacher and the student.
The relationship between the teacher and the student has deteriorated to the extent that it is no longer uncommon for teachers to feel insecure and under threat from students.
The changes outlined above have led to a drastic and troubling reduction in the quality of graduates that our education system continues to produce. There is little arguing that education has lost its rigour in Fiji.
We have widely documented lamentations from industry leaders like Ram Bajekal, Jenny Seeto and ex-PM Frank Bainimarama that the bulk of our graduates do not make the mark as expected.
In fact, many have pointed out shortcomings in literacy and numeracy skills. This is emphatically captured in an article written by a promising, prolific and ubiquitous contributor to this very newspaper.
On the recent alarming fallout between the Fiji 7s coach Ben Gollings and rugby great Jerry Tuwai this respected writer wrote: “The man who has two Olympic Games gold medals and mesmerised himself on the international 7s (scene)…” It is clear that he meant to say, “the man who has two Olympic Games gold medals and mesmerised the world on the international 7s (scene)…”.
This is because performers (of whatever kind) do not mesmerise themselves; they mesmerise the audience. Researchers have linked this deterioration in quality of education, quality of graduates and the incursion of mediocrity throughout the system on a range of factors that are linked to reforms that continue to be implemented in the education sector.
This is part of the larger public sector reform agenda. We need to first understand the rationale for these reforms and the related expectations before we can delve into answering what has been going wrong or right.
It is only after this is done that we can attempt to propose corrections and improvements. Let us thus look at the whole phenomenon of public sector reforms.
Public Sector Reforms
Public sector reforms have been an ongoing concern since time immemorial. These reforms were focused on attempting to improve performance in the public sector.
In the late 1800s, efforts in Prussia to professionalise its public service led to the emergence of the bureaucratic model which widely underpinned the manner in which the public administration system was designed almost everywhere in the world.
Concerns began to arise for further reforms as early as the 1910s, but widespread dissatisfaction with the public administration model (that followed the bureaucratic model) only gained momentum in the 1960s.
By the 1970s, the concern had become acute especially in light of the spiralling global debt crisis and the fact that most post-1945 public bureaucracies had grown unwieldy and cumbersome to the extent that they had begun to operate as a government within the government.
These bloated entities were sucking up public funds at ever increasing rates while there were no visible parallel improvements in public service delivery. In other words, we were not getting the best bang for our bucks from the public sector.
In fact, if there was any bang at all, it was happening away from the eyes of the public. There was urgent need to cut down on government expenditure while steadily improving public service delivery.
It was a clear case of “do and you are doomed; don’t and you are doomed”. Governments had to make quick decisions. British PM Margaret Thatcher was the first to embrace the new form of reforms in 1979.
US President Ronald Reagan followed in 1980. That set the ball rolling as the key international financial institutions began to insist on these “new public management” reforms as a prerequisite for accessing further funds.
They, of course, were primarily concerned about the debt crisis that threatened both individual countries as well as the world economy.
Thus began a series of reforms throughout the world that, in the developing world, appeared at times like haphazard undertakings, experiments by consultants and forced projects that were inadequately contextualised.
It was only later on that cohesion entered the scene as would have been expected.
Reforms in education
The education sector also became a target of the reform wave and after a continuing series of ill thought-out and non-contextualised neo-liberal reforms, considerable concerns have continued to arise that education has consequently lost its rigor.
It is important to note that within the framework being used to conceptualise and guide reforms, education is viewed as a commodity and students are seen as customers.
Thus, in providing service to these customers, customer comfort has dominated discussions on both quality and type of education. Education providers, be they early childhood care centers, primary schools, secondary schools or tertiary institutions, all began to base their decisions on the business model. Consequently, two things happened: one, education became less rigorous, and two, quality gave way to quantity of students passing.
Given the above, it should be quite clear that reforms have yielded mixed results so far. It is this context of reforms that we will use to discuss critically the changes that have taken place throughout the education sector in Fiji through a series of linked articles.
Contrasts will be made between what was then and what is now as we dissect and analyse lived experiences as well as examples from a number of sources who have continued to show concern about the state of education in Fiji. Until next week, sa moce mada.
• DR SUBHASH APPANNA is a senior USP academic who has been writing regularly on issues of historical and national significance. The views expressed here are his alone and not necessarily shared by this newspaper or his employers subhash.appana@usp.ac.fj
