Transcript
MARY UDU: Civics education involves teaching people about participating in governance processes, in their families, around their communities, even in the sub-national and national level. So TIPNG had a programme called Good Governance Anti-Corruption Education. They had identified there were no civic education materials in the schools in PNG. So the project developed a teacher resource book. The resource book went out to about 240 schools in PNG, and then in 2013 it was further discovered that teachers needed more resources, so TIPNG then created the school based civic education which is the current one that I am managing. And the materials were expanded from one resource book to what we have now - one book of posters, a student reader and book of background reading for teachers and ten big books for low literacy students. In 2013 there was also a baseline survey in 30 different schools, trying to identify [that] student by Grade 10 had knowledge of civic concepts or skills to apply when they are participating in the school or their community. So from those works the publications were determined.
DON WISEMAN: OK It is all very passive isn't it? Do you think this is enough to excite all the teachers to get them to embrace civics?
MU: Yes, the books are not in final publication because we don't have funding for that, so what I did with what we have got already is trial them with a few schools, selected schools around the country. So far we have gone out to seven schools - three primary schools and 4 secondary schools.
DW: What has been the response from the schools?
MU: There are no materials to teach about human rights, democracy and how a government works, and all those concepts are found the TIPNG publications. So the teachers are finding that very handy and at this point in time some of the schools are trialling the materials on elections, and the feedback is that the teachers couldn't teach about elections before because they were not confident, but this material is giving them the confidence to teach about election processes.
DW: Papua New Guinea, for a long time there has been this problem with corruption, which as far as PNG is concerned has been called systemic. To what extent is it seen as an attempt to have people understand how corruption occurs and what to do about it?
MU: Power is abused for personal gain because people don't have the confidence to say no or don't have the knowledge to articulate that something is not right, and so it shouldn't happen. And so through this project TIPNG is hoping that in 10 to 15 years time or 20 years time, we will have a population that knows about governance processes, how a democracy looks like, sounds like, and therefore demand good answers and good practices and tell leaders where their services should go. And that resources should be used and distributed in proper transparent ways.
