ABSTRACT
CO-OPERATION OR COLONIALISM? A PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATION OF THE SCHEME OF CO-OPERATION BETUEEN NEU ZEALAND AND FIJI 19241975
A.G. Hopkin
Fiji's education system is a uell-established one. It greu and developed steadily from the time that the Methodist missionaries introduced schooling in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. In 1916 the Colonial Government assumed responsibility for the education system through an ordinance passed that year, and it took over a pattern of schooling that uas uell distributed throughout the archipelago. From that time school places uere provided through the co-operation of the Education Department and non-government agencies, and this continjes to be the case. It is true that the indigenous people of Fiji, the Fijians, uhilst beiny profoundly conscious of their cultural heritage and traditional uay of life, also accept schooling as a normal part of childhood. They have done sc for about a century so that schools are as much a part of the social fabric as are the Christian churches and chapels. Although schooling amongst the numerically most superior group in, the population, the Fiji Indians, has only developed in the last seventy years, education is nou more prized by that group than by any other. A hundred years ago the first school for Europeans and part-Europeans uas establisned at Levuka and another shortly after at Suva, and this has ensured that this racial group has had adequate access to schooling for their children. It must be borne in mind that for many years the system of schooling in Fiji is both extensive and uell entren ched compared uith the systems of other developing countries.
