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Source: Reuters -
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Australian authors have launched a campaign to get much needed history text books into Papua New Guinea's schools on the back of talk of an aid policy shift.
PNG is a country where more than 800 language groups fiercely protect their identities and cultures.
The complexities and differences of an estimated 1,000 tribes, many in rugged remote places, has hampered PNG's progress in achieving true nationhood since independence from Australia in 1975.
PNG's divided, fractured state and poor education standard play their roles in the government's inability to deliver basic services like health, law and order and education.
Earlier this month, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said, historically, too much aid money to PNG has been consumed by consultants and not enough went to essential services like education and health.
This has given hope to those pushing for history books to get into class rooms.
Australian National University professor Hank Nelson, who taught and lived in PNG, said the issue was crucial for PNG's development.
"For a country of six million, PNG has one of the world's poorest distribution of books," he said.
"There are very few functioning libraries, in the whole country there is maybe one bookshop the others are religious or for tourists," he said.
"Teachers, often facing large classes and without the promised support for major topics in the syllabus, need relevant textbooks, for themselves and for every student.
"At the moment that's not happening.
"Papua New Guineans need a consciousness of what they have in common.
"A knowledge of a shared history is basic to the building of a nation-state."
Eric Johns, a retired PNG teacher trainer, wrote a history text book for young PNG students but publishers dropped his next more ambitious book project when AusAID stopped funding such projects.
Johns continues work on his history text despite the risk it will not be published let alone distributed by the PNG education department or a supporting European Union program.
"AusAID stopped putting materials in schools around 2002," he said.
"But I hope the situation changes as there is a crying need for a more detailed book in schools.
"Until this has been written, PNG school students, and therefore PNG people in general, will be largely ignorant of the main forces and motives that shaped their nation."
Johns said a few books existed but none were in PNG's schools and they didn't cover the important role Papua New Guineans played in early settlement circa 1850 to 1975.
An AusAID spokesperson said: "Australia's focus in the education sector, as agreed with the PNG Government, is on teacher training, school infrastructure development and strengthening education administration".
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