3 - The Pedagogy of Everyday Life at School

Summary

In this chapter I ask to what extent the boarding schools had the power to shape thought and action and, relatedly, what capacity individuals had to subvert that power. There are several ways to look at this question, but generally they revolve around how school orients individuals towards the formal sector and the life it promises (Hicks, McDougall and Oakeshott, 2021). Pacific Islanders who went to school during the colonial era or the early independence period have written that their schooling left them alienated from life in and knowledge from home (Educational Policy Review Committee, 1973; Bugotu, 1975; Watson-Gegeo and Gegeo, 1992; Sanga and Niroa, 2004, 15). Other observers have described how foreigners, in designing the education systems of Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Solomon Islands, first directed formal schooling towards Christianisation and then subsequently to formal employment for an elite few (Laracy, 1976, pp 144–57; Fife, 1995; 2001; Demerath, 2000; Maebuta, 2008). The focus on elite education in turn connected schooling to the emergence of class distinctions between that ‘educated elite’ and their ‘grassroots’ kin in the village (Bugotu, 1975, p 79; Fife, 1995; Gooberman-Hill, 1999; Cox, 2018, pp 151–3). Still more research concerns the implementation (and critique) of education policy reform and its compliance with international agreements and priorities surrounding quality, access and management (see Le Fanu, 2013; Thaman, 2015; Eldridge et al, 2018; Tracey et al, 2021), which are believed to contribute to economic growth (Tolley and Coxon, 2015).

One prominent means to investigate the power formal schooling exerts has been to simultaneously take inspiration and depart from Foucault's early work (Foucault, 1977; see de Certeau, 1984). In PNG, evidence from Adam Reed (2006) and Alice Street (2012), who wrote about Bomana prison and Madang's public hospital, respectively, have demonstrated persuasively the challenges of a straightforward application of Foucault's analytical concepts in Melanesia (see also Hirsch, 2014). Thus, analysing the way schools act as disciplinary technologies on students and teachers is only half the task, The ‘everyday’ as de Certeau defined it then becomes a useful guide because it was aimed at elucidating the tactics individuals use to subvert the institutions trying to discipline thought and action.