A PACIFIC theologian and educator has called for a fundamental rethink of education systems in the region, saying they must move beyond employment, imported standards and narrow disciplines to become community-based, ethical and healing.
Dr Upolu Luma Vaai, Vice Chancellor at Pasifika Communities University, said education institutions had a responsibility to train leaders for the future but questioned whether they were doing justice to that mission.
“Are we doing justice to that mission and to that mission as educators, as education institutions?” Vaai asked during the 2nd Pasifika Philosophies Leadership Weaving Futures Conference
Speaking from three perspectives, “as a village poet,” “as an educator” and “as a theologian,” Vaai outlined four principles for education in the Pacific: self-review, community-based learning, multi-skilling and ethical education.
Vaai said education must begin with an honest examination of the systems and people it was intended to serve, including the effects of colonialism within Pacific institutions.
“Most of us in the Pacific we are really proud to say that the ocean is us, and the ocean is in us,” Vaai said.
“But hardly do we say that about colonialism in us.”
Pacific education had addressed colonial systems and structures since the 1960s and 1970s, Vaai said, but decolonisation had focused too heavily on social ills while paying less attention to personal flaws and immoralities that contribute to them.
“We have to decolonise ourselves first before we point to the decolonisation of others,” Vaai said.
That required curricula that taught people to recognise their own limitations, manage power and examine the ego, Vaai said. Leadership, the professor added, must include the ability to listen and to conduct self-assessment.
Vaai also challenged education systems to reconsider how they define inclusion. Creating access to speaking spaces was important, but it was not enough, the professor said.
“When we are given that space, are you able to manage yourself within that space respectfully in a way?” Vaai asked.
“Are you able to deal with the complexities, with the contradictions of relations when you are given that space?”
The second principle, community-based education, would require a shift from learning knowledge as something foreign to children towards ownership of knowledge, Vaai said.
Empower, Educate, Engage and Evolve
“A child walks into the environment. It’s not his or her environment. It’s someone else’s environment that was forced upon a child, taught in English,” Vaai said.
Vaai referred to information received from leaders in Samoa about a reported failure rate of almost 90 per cent in Year 8 mathematics and 13,000 students dropping out of school between Year 8 and Year 12 over the previous two to three years. Vaai said the figures had not been checked in detail and did not present them as a definitive explanation of school failure.
The professor argued that education must return to communities and create environments in which students could take ownership of learning.
“If you let the child own that knowledge, that child will thrive,” Vaai said.
Community-based education also had implications for research. Vaai criticised researchers who spend only weeks or months in communities, claim expertise in community knowledge, publish the findings, and never return to give something back.
“It’s still an extractive business that we are in,” he said.
Research in Pacific communities must also recognise that knowledge is not automatically available to outsiders, Vaai said. Some knowledge is free, while other knowledge is closed and belongs to particular families.
Vaai questioned whether academic excellence in the Pacific should continue to be measured primarily through British accreditation standards.
“Our accreditation system in the Pacific is still British,” Vaai said. “Can we have our own education standards, standards that are based and grounded on our values?”
The third principle, multi-skilling education, would respond to the realities of Pacific communities, where people often perform several roles rather than work within a single discipline.
“In the community, many of us are multitasking,” Vaai said. “We need multi-skills in the community.”
Vaai described moving between roles as a farmer, carpenter and helper when working in communities, and called for education to become more transdisciplinary and strength-based rather than needs-based.
The final principle was ethical education, including a place for theology, spirituality and faith within institutions.
“We need theology back to the education system,” Vaai said.
Vaai criticised what was described as a colonial division between secular education and spiritual or church education, arguing that institutions must weave together institutional knowledge and ethical knowledge.
The professor called for consideration of a Pacific ethics framework to guide leaders on issues including mining and other matters affecting the region, with ethics grounded in Pacific cultures and shaped by local issues.
Vaai also questioned narrow definitions of accountability, saying the term was often linked to economic measures, growth, and money, while overlooking obligations to land, people, and ancestors.
“When we talk about accountability, it normally talks about economic metrics,” Vaai said. “But it hardly talks about accountability to the land, to our people, to our ancestors.”
Education in the Pacific, Vaai said, should be liberated, service-driven and healing. Its purpose should be to serve leaders and communities while helping address the conflict and disconnection that continue in everyday life.
The four principles, self-review, community-based education, multi-skilling and ethical education were presented as a way to weave institutional knowledge together with ethical memory.
“Perhaps we can start with finding first this ethical foundation,” Vaai said.
“What is ethical? What is moral? What is just to us?”
