Me: I really admire the Marshallese sense of community. Throughout most of history, most of the atolls had one or maybe two hundred people living together. The closest community might be weeks away by canoe. It was a time when people truly depended on each other. Everybody is your neighbour; everyone’s family. I appreciate the strong sense of togetherness that people have here.
Moi: Isn’t that part of the problem today? Can you imagine a company or government running itself if everyone in it is part of the same family? I won’t fire anybody because I won’t put my cousin out on the street. But then that means there’s a lack of incentives to work hard. And there’s certainly no punishment for incompetence.
Me: But would you rather live in a world where old people die in their apartments, only to be discovered because the stench offends the neighbours? Or perhaps we want the Marshall Islands to experience shootings in schools?!
Moi: What’s your point?
Me: My point is that a strong sense of community is a good thing, as annoying as it can sometimes be. In our part of the world, that gets lost and we see more crime, drug abuse, murder and suicide.
Moi: We may suffer from a lot of problems, but at least things work! In the Ministry of Education or other government ministries, some people sit on their hands or don’t even come into work every day. Teacher absence is a huge problem. If the system doesn’t work today, then the next generation’s gonna suffer from the same problems. Kids are missing school. When they get to high school they’ll be woefully unprepared.
Me: These are serious challenges that the Marshallese have to tackle. But does that mean we have to start canning everyone? Think about what that might do to the fabric of a society that is so intimately linked. You don’t have to see your former boss at the supermarket, at the bank, at the hardware store or at the few eateries in Majuro, not to mention at your cousin’s barbecue. Don’t imagine that we’re in a small town where everyone knows your name. Imagine that this small town is the only town.
Moi: Maybe you should get in a time machine and go to Russia, circa 1919, and see how things operate over the next 70 years.
Me: Don’t be sarcastic.
I agree that communism didn’t work in great part because people weren’t motivated to work hard. But incentives don’t only come in the form of the stick. An equally important measure is to encourage solid work through praise and financial incentives. A good tap on the back can itself work wonders. But if you add in structured bonuses for the best performers, then I guarantee we’ll raise the bar.
Moi: I’m not completely convinced. Dead weight is dead weight. Call me cynical, but sometimes the only way to gain air is to dump the ballast. Your solution won’t get rid of the coasters that benefit from a guaranteed job.
Me: My idea isn’t perfect. Certainly a carrot and a stick would work better. But we need to be realistic about the situation. We simply can’t take our western corporate mentality to the tiny Pacific islands. The personal nature of things is just too important here. It’s easy for us in North America to erase a bad job from our resume or move to a new city. On the other hand, starting fresh in the Marshall Islands is almost impossible. That’s why the society has developed numerous mechanisms to avoid conflict… or at least keep it at a bearable minimum. We may not like everybody, but we have to live with them.
4 comments:
If the problem is conditioning the community labour pool to the grind of 9-5 education-in-a-box, maybe the school is the institution which needs to adapt? Are there any cultural heritages towards learning that can be appropriated?
That's an interesting idea. What I'm told is that in traditional Marshallese society, everybody had a role to play. The Old men might be sitting together giving advice to the younger people and telling stories; the younger men will go out and fish; the younger boys will help with smaller tasks; and the women and girls had a role as well. The lesson that perhaps the MOE can take away is to get communities more empowered to regulate and participate in education. Our model of education kind of leaves the parents out. But besides the idea that the Marshallese might respond better if you relate the issue to people (ie - I'll work hard because I'm helping my friend so and so), it's also a logistical issue. Decentralizing authority over teachers to the community would help manage the situation much more effectively, since the MOE might send a boat out once or thrice a year... not sufficient to monitor the teachers. But if the community understands their role, then they can take care of that, since they care about their children's education. The key is to actually train the communities to know how to undertake their responsibilities. The MOE is thinking about it, but not very much is being done to achieve that.
What strikes me the most about your conclusion is it highlights how learning was supposed to occur in a more traditional society... even early western education favoured apprenticeships over rote and examination...
I think you are right about exploiting the personal. Do the schools have equivalents of home room? Do they have programs similar to CRHS P.S.I. program where older kids educate younger? These might be beneficial...
I was also curious about their oral history. I imagine it to be a culture more driven by oral storytelling than say literature ... What kind of extracurricular activities are available? Is drama one of them?
I take it their is no local school board or PTA?
Unfortunately there isn't much in the way of extracurricular. Right now there isn't any phys ed in elementary school. I'm writing a grant to start up such a program (after school). A Masters Program at Dartmouth College that sends teacher trainees here usually organize a Shakespeare play at the Marshall Islands High School each year. There's also a rich tradition of playing the ukelele, but it seems the younger people are a little less interested. One really cool education project is run by an NGO called WAN. They take school drop-outs and train them to build the classic outrigger canoes. It's an example of learning a useful skill (carpentry) and retaining cultural pride and a sense of history.
Regarding oral history, there seems to be. But I don't get the impression the youngest people are getting it. They're becoming pretty westernized.
The schools typically do have Parent-Teacher Associations, but their effectiveness varies widely - and tends to be weak when the school itself is weak.
I don't know whether they have homeroom or PSI type programs. I'll try and find out.
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