This is the old-fashioned way, always used when there were no names to the days of the week, and no numbers to the days of the month, and no writing materials, nor any who would have known how to use them even if they had possessed a whole stationer’s shop full. Now school is changing all this, and much of the missionary’s time is spent in school.
At Delena school meets in the church, and at once you would notice the absence of seats and desks. So far we have followed the native custom, and all the children sit on the floor, but now we are busy making desks for the seniors from material given by Birmingham friends. As they come in the boys sit in rows on the one side and the girls on the other. To form into rows may seem a simple matter to those of you who have been through a course of drill, but it was long before the children could be got out of their native habit of squatting down in two compact bunches one on either side of the church.
Our numbers may be anything between 60 and 100, for except when they are away with their parents on trading or hunting expeditions, we have now little difficulty in getting the children to school. We begin sometimes with a hymn, and always with prayer, and then divide into classes. We aim mainly at teaching the children to read and write, but add arithmetic, some geography, and the Catechism and Bible knowledge.
While reading the children are indifferent as to which way they hold their books. Right way up. Wrong way up. Looking at them from either right or left side. Neither comes amiss. I could not understand this till I noticed that the South Sea teachers more often than not hold the card from which they teach the young children the alphabet, so that it is the right way up for themselves. Some of the children, therefore, see the letters the wrong way up, and some get only a side view. As the child does not always occupy the same position in the class, it comes to recognize the letter from any angle.
In one respect only is the Papuan scholar ahead of those who have to deal with the English language. He finds no difficulty in spelling any word in his language, unless it be one with a lot of H’s in it. It is a different matter, however, when it comes to writing. You will never find him wrong with a vowel, but he plays ducks and drakes with the consonants. T’s and D’s, P’s and B’s, L’s and R’s are interchanged as the fit takes him. Vada may be all right at the one end of the line, but at the other it will be vata. Pa does duty for ba. This does not matter so much in the language the native knows, but it is a serious difficulty in the way of teaching him to write English. The pig may loom big in importance in the eyes of the native, and the bigger he is the better they like him; but one does not want his name to be written big every time, and it is decidedly awkward when hat becomes had, and bat turns into bad. This careless use of the consonants seems to extend throughout most of the Islands of the Pacific, so the Papuan is not exceptionally dull or careless.
I remember reading that a chief in the South Seas once saw John Williams make some marks on a piece of wood, and was then asked to take the piece of wood to Mrs. Williams. She looked at the wood and then gave the chief an axe to take to her husband, afterwards throwing away the bit of wood. The man saw that the piece of wood had procured an axe so he picked it up, made a hole through it, and hung it round his neck for future use, no doubt looking forward to an unlimited supply of axes. Similar experience has produced a peculiar effect upon the Papuan. As soon as he can write he makes all his requests, even the most trivial, upon a bit of paper, and seems to think that no letter can be complete without a request for something. There is a difficulty about the practical application of some things we teach, but none whatever about writing.
If “multiplication is vexation” to young folks at home, what must it be in a village where written figures are quite modern? We are fortunate that the natives in our district have a good system of counting, but I have never been able to understand why they have words for ten thousand and a hundred thousand. They never use them in their daily life, and I cannot see that they ever could have had occasion to use them. Their counting is done upon their fingers. In school you can see a child adding away with the help of his fingers, and then if he wants to go beyond ten he has the advantage over an English child in that he wears no boots and can make use of his toes, and so can go to twenty without beginning again.
After a time a straightforward sum presents no difficulty, but there is no practical application as in the case of writing. The boys have never been taught to think a matter out, but they are beginning to do so, as the following story shows. Ume had got as far as addition of money, and could get his sums right nine times out of ten, except the farthings. Again and again I explained, and one day found out what his difficulty was. Here is his explanation: “I cannot understand the ways of you white men. You write one over four, and count it one; one over two and count it two; three over four and count it three. Why do you not count all tops or all bottoms, and then I could get my sums right.” He had thought the matter out and discovered why he had failed.
Another illustration of their thinking matters out for themselves. I had just given the English word for fingers, and then giving the native for toes asked what it was in English. A pause, and then one boy shot out, “Foot fingers.”
When the lessons are all finished the calling of the register would interest you if you allowed me to translate some of the names as we read them out. Kasiri does not seem to be troubled by the fact that his name means “unripe”; and Ogogame (the orphan) is decidedly out of place for a boy who has both father and mother living in the village. The cassowary and the rooster are represented by boys bearing the name of VIO and KOKO-ROGU. Death (Mate) and life (Mauri) are both lively youngsters, in fact it would not be easy to decide which is the more alive. Boio, the equivalent of “lost,” is rather appropriately the name of a girl who is not at all a regular attendant at school. Place names are rather poorly represented at present. One girl who was rescued from death by a Samoan teacher’s wife is called Papauta, after the Samoan girls’ school, and another girl has to answer to the name of Purari, because she was born while her father was away with Chalmers, on his first journey to the river of that name.