PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT

Pacific Islands Development Program/East-West Center
With Support From Center for Pacific Islands Studies/University of Hawai‘i

Dr. Steven Ratuva

SUVA, Fiji (Fijilive, Nov. 29) – The term "consensus" is now a politically correct buzzword, which almost everyone who claims to be democratic minded wants to be part of. In fact I’m a great believer in consensus as a way of building communal confidence and addressing differences. However, there are limitations to what it can do. Ironically, sometimes the opposite of consensus, in this case, forced adherence, maybe workable.

I’m thinking in particular about education as a potential tool for integration and ethnic harmony in Fiji. No doubt education has contributed significantly to the development of our country, however, at the same time it has created conditions for ethnic separation. Since the colonial days, schools were separated along ethnicity and even class. There were Fijian schools, Indian schools and European schools. Upon independence we tried to undo this segregated system by renaming explicitly ethnic names e.g. "Chinese", "Fijian" or "Indian" schools and encouraging integration. This worked only to some extent.

In the last few years a new trend has emerged. Fijian students are enrolled in large numbers in Indian schools and some multi-ethnic schools like Marist Brothers High School and Suva Grammar School have become so Fijianised that they have lost their multi-ethnic character. Fijian students are moving in large numbers to Indian schools because of their relatively better academic achievements. Some Fijian and Indo-Fijian schools still remain largely ethnically exclusive in terms of management, policy-making, enrolment and character. Perhaps the most multi-racial schools today are elite schools such as International School and Yat Sen.

Moreover, there is still an uneven mix of ethnic groups in schools with some groups more predominant than others. Despite the new mobility and some promising trends, we have not really achieved full ethnic integration in schools. This is where tactical forced integration may come in.

Tactical forced integration refers to mandating that schools be made to reserve a certain percentage of their places for certain ethnic groups. I use the word tactical here to suggest that the forced integration process should be systematically carried out and that there should be a good and universally accepted rationale behind it. This may sound authoritarian and even fascist on the surface but there are fundamentally good reasons for this. Mandatory policies in education are not new. In fact we already have a policy on compulsory basic education, although this is not fully enforced due to some reasons.

Apart from other factors, separate education in the past has contributed to segregated cultural and political consciousness. It has been a barrier to ethnically integrated socialization and unity. This has been detrimental to the wellbeing and stability of our country as we have seen in recent times.

Tactically mandated integration will work like this. Schools which are accessible to various ethnic groups such as those in urban areas should have a quota system where a certain percentage of the places should be reserved for students from various ethnic groups. This may not be workable in some rural areas where there is dominance of Fijian or Indo-Fijian population. Nevertheless, despite this, the policy should still stand in anticipation of possible population changes in the future or as a symbolic gesture aimed at encouraging inter-cultural education.

The rationale behind this is to ensure that our children grow up in a multi-cultural school environment and this should be reinforced by multi-cultural and multi-lingual education. The latter should involve students learning English, Fijian and Hindi as compulsory subjects. Multi-cultural studies should not be taught as purely academic subjects but as part of the lifelong intellectual and social project aimed at bringing out the best in individuals and creating a broad discourse which could act as a fulcrum for national integration.

I’m not saying that this is the ultimate panacea to our political woes, but at least we can contribute to shaping the consciousness of our young people as a means of paving the way for greater understanding of each other. Sometimes it is better to force people to do something for the general good, rather than allowing people all the time to voluntarily do something in the name of consensus, which will destroy us all.

[Dr. Steven Ratuva is a political sociologist at the University of the South Pacific.]

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