Community Education & People Centred Development

Abstract

Although the theme of this conference is "Community Education", this paper will discuss developmental issues for the following reasons: 1. that the primary goal of governments in any country is to achieve a level of improved life style (development) for its people. Education, in whatever form it takes is crucial to the achievement of the country's developmental goal and in a very real sense, the failure of development to benefit the masses is itself a failure of education in meeting the societies developmental needs. Education therefore is an important tool in redirecting development to benefit the measures. 2. that most education systems of Pacific Island Nations have primarily concerned themselves with the production of manpower that engages itself in economic activities geared towards the improvement of the countries overall Gross National Production. Such emphasis on quantitative aspects of development has ignored the qualitative aspects of development. 3. there is a strong need for the redirection of educational goals at the grass root level in line with the peoples needs in development and resource utilisation. These discussions will focus on Papua New Guinea since this in the Pacific country that I am most familiar with but it is hoped that other countries represented at this conference can reflect and draw upon issues relevant to their specific situation.