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Abstract
This paper describes a case study of language development in rural Papua New Guinea, in which parents felt the local school was not meeting the educational needs of their children. In this case study, the local, national and global narratives concerning use of the vernacular in education were apparent in the negotiation leading to an apparent consensus to start a vernacular-only preschool. However, several years later the preschool had ceased to operate. The case study illustrates the complexity and fluidity of language development decisions, as located within a mix of narratives, types of capital, ‘symbolic violence’ and the cultural value of social harmony.
Notes
In a TPPS, the instruction is done in the local language with culture-specific resources, using curriculum designed for the specific situation, and taught by Sam speakers to Sam children. It seems that the parents feel that using Sam to teach their children is a deeper, more meaningful medium of instruction. As parents have told me, ‘Tok Pisin is a surface language’.
The speech variety spoken in Songum is very similar to that spoken in Buan and Wongbe by an outsider's viewpoint, but there are enough loan words from neighboring languages that the two speech varieties are seen by Sam speakers as two dialects.
ISO 639-3 code: snx, according to SIL International (Citation2013b).
This estimate, based on discussions with some Sam friends, depends on many variables, such as an ‘average’ person's work output, the status of the road which allows cash crops to be driven to Madang, variable market prices and other clan and immediate family responsibilities which take time away from cash cropping.
SIL is a nonprofit organization motivated by religious principles that serves language groups by working with them in linguistic, translation of the scriptures, literacy and developing materials in the vernacular (SIL International, Citation2013a).
It is interesting to note the extent of involvement of NGOs in non-formal education. Siegel notes that ‘the role of NGOs has been crucial in the promotion and development of both preschool and adult vernacular literacy programmes in the country’ (Citation1997, p. 209). Litteral reports that SIL personnel seconded to the PNG DOE worked the equivalent of 22 work-years. He also notes that ‘20 work-years of assistance were provided to the East New Britain Province between 1983 and 1992. Many more decades of service were provided for other provinces and specific language’ (Litteral, Citation2004, p. 6).
In 2003, UNESCO published a position paper maintaining its earlier stance (UNESCO, Citation2003, p. 6).
Wan bel feasts are special meals the parents cook when they are raising money to pay the school's fees for their child to attend classes. But they are not only raising money, though this is a very important aspect of the feast. They are also gathering support, by showing hospitality and good will through cooking a meal for anyone within the clan. The guests come, eat, give money and participate in a prayer of blessing or a similar voiced assent to the fact that they wish the best outcome for the student. If people are wan bel, the Bang people believe the student will successfully pass their classes. However, I have been told that if even one person does not think the student should attend school, the student will have difficulty in achieving good grades. This topic of wan bel appears to have a performative function and shares some similarities (but is not the same) with magic. Thus, it seems to mean more than simply being in agreement with someone.
I have observed people invoke the need to be wan bel in intense situations as well, in which the group needed some special assistance to survive or to succeed. In August 2008, in preparing to drive through the flooded Kabeneo River, I asked the men in my vehicle whether we should cross now or wait until the waters subsided. One man said, ‘Yumi wan bel na go.’ (‘Let us be one stomach and go’.) His eyes were serious and his voice was low and intense. Another man repeated it, and when I yelled out of the window to the men in the back, they repeated it too, as if we were communicating not just the statement that we should go, but that we all believed that going would work out well for us. It was a statement that when we were all united in thought and feeling, of ‘one stomach’, we could not fail to cross safely. It turned out that we indeed crossed the river safely. Later when I was on the far bank, I asked what would have happened if one of us had doubted that we could cross safely. My friends told me that we would have been washed downstream.
The scope of this paper prevents me from going into detail concerning the performative mechanism of being wan bel (Searle, Citation1989; Sweetser, Citation2001).