Education for Our Pacific Wards

Abstract

S INCE the end of the Second World War, the United States has focused an unprecedented concentration of educational and scientific attention upon the islands of the Trust Territory. From universities, scientific institutions, and government agencies throughout our country, educators, anthropologists, economists, and investigators in many fields have been called upon to contribute to this important work. The reason for this intensive activity is twofold: first, we have become responsible to a higher power-the United Nations Organization-for the welfare of a people; second, we are starting from scratch in assembling information necessary to the undertaking. This is true because during the three decades when the natives were under the successive regimes of the Spanish, Germans, and Japanese, the area was interdicted and little basic material fell into our hands. Incidentally, this terra incognita has broad scientific significance to the world at large, for it forms an important link in the spread of species, including man. The studies of the Trust Territory originally conducted at the request and with the co-operation of the United States Navy, which received its authority from our government, are now under the Department of the Interior. Preliminarysurveyswere made by the United States Commercial Company. Some of the studies have been administered by the Pacific Science Board of the National Research Council through Scientific Investigation of Micronesia (S.I.M.) and Coordinated Investigation of Micronesia Anthropology (C.I.M.A.). One of the most active institutions engaged in this work is the University of Hawaii, whose scientists are on familiar ground; whose quarterly, Pacific Science, publishes current findings in the area; and some of whose top agricultural personnel became members of the United States Commercial Company, an organization formed by the R.F.C. to foster economic self-sufficiency in the islands. Thirteen University educators are members of the Advisory Committee on Education in Guam and the Trust Territory, other members having been drawn from the Bernice P. Bishop Museum and the Territorial Department of Public Instruction. This Committee, established by the United States Navy, meets both in Honolulu and on the Trust islands themselves. The University of Hawaii, which has long stressed Pacific languages and culture as a part of its regional responsibilities, has conducted summer school on Guam for three years.