The idea of education and reforming has been there for a long time. For continuous improvement of human capabilities, the education system needs to evolve, but there has always been a restriction on broadening the horizons.
This is mostly due to psychological immurement that is perceived by education recipients or created by those in authority.
Just feeding information to students may seem to be the norm, but it is of a little help in the real world because the world changes so rapidly and reform becomes a necessity.
There have been several reforms done by the Fijian Government. Some may have irked, but it also has benefitted people for some period.
However, education needs inspiration and not just information, since transformation can only come to inspired human beings, who are willing and ready to transform their lives.
Some learning could come from our roots when sugar was the backbone of Fiji and people were heavily dependent of their farms for livelihood and survival.
How this worked was that it had workers whose formal education level normally reached primary level or a bit higher because of their inability of performing well in the external exams.
There may be other factors such as financial constraints, family responsibility, domestic problems, etc.
However, this filtered only the mediocre, above mediocre, or best students in terms of Fiji’s formalised education and who moved to higher classes.
Out of the left, some repeated and moved ahead, while others just dropped out either in class 8 or form 4 or form 6.
Mostly, the masculine dominated the farming occupations and blue-collar jobs. Back then, man’s first choice was engaging in farms and this ensured the flourishment of the sugar industry. School dropouts were aiming to make it big in the local communities just by planting sugar cane. The hope of advancing to the next class or form, despite failing in external exams, broke the backbone of Fiji.
Exams were removed with the intentions of keeping students the schools in the hope that they would not turn to criminal activities such as drug peddling, stealing, liquor related troubles, and other juvenile cases.
Students reached form 6 with a better IQ levelQ. However, the attitude of students changed, for example after reaching form 6. They do not want to look back at the way their parents earned generally, which was mostly through sugarcane farming.
Though now the government is trying its best by providing farming equipment, tractors, fertilizers, land lease renewal arrangements and the best-selling market, the industry is still reducing in size day by day.
This indicates that if options are available, the young would not choose to work in farms. This attitude continues after reincorporation of external exams. This significant decision by the Education Ministry was to reincorporate external exams into the school system.
The decision included the idea that the students would continue to advance with or without passing the standard external exams until form 6. Those who want to reach form 6 would continue, while others can continue on to vocational/technical institutions.
Vocational programs offered by technical institutions largely have benefitted those who underperformed under the normal curriculum of the Education Ministry and have gone into various work fields to strive for their daily needs and even making their lives better.
The government had progressively provided free education up to the early years of high school in the best interest of the public with free education from preschool up to until form 7.
Over the years, there has been a drastic change in the quality of students enrolling in universities, especially, in terms of reading and understanding the subject.
Though one may regard the English language as secondary, it has been the medium of communication in almost every field, whether it is work related, for teaching and training, or just everyday communication.
We cannot just ignore the fact that we desperately need English hence it is our obligation to enjoy the generosity of the government, improve our English and develop the capability to educate ourselves.
Only if the youngsters appreciate, utilise, and functionalise this generosity, then only the true education will happen.
Some of them do not care about results and some of them just shy away from assessments such as oral or group presentations because of the lack of preparation or just the lack of confidence in their spoken English.
Conclusively, the idea of students taking advantage of these will materialise only if they are inspired. Now, how do we inspire them when people perceive different ideas differently?
It is known that not everyone is a born genius, and everyone can strive to be their best.
Some of them are just lost and are not even aware of being here; while most of them just aspire to meet the daily needs.
However, if we only make them aware, that whatever they are, in whatever state they are, to perform to their best, I think, outstanding results are feasible.
There are many students who after completing their education do not go into their fields of study.
Then the question arises whether they have studied what interests them?
Who is to correct this and when should the corrective measures be implmeneted so that these government reforms work at its best for us.
For comments or suggestions please email Vikrant.Nair@fnu.ac.fj
• VIKRANT KRISHAN NAIR is a lecturer with the Department of Aviation Studies at the Fiji National University. The views expressed are his and not of this newspaper.
