Education: Growing Up in Samoa

Tattooed clan chiefs wearing lava-lava skirts still stroll across the main square of Pago Pago just as they did when young Willie Maugham stopped off and scribbled the notes for Rain.

But in other respects, American Samoa —seven volcanic islands and two coral atolls 2,300 miles southwest of Hawaii —is trading old romance for new bustle. It has a jet airport and zip code numbers for outlying villages; a Pan Am subsidiary has leased a 100-room tourist inn to compete with the old Rainmaker Hotel. Most striking of all, the whole Samoaft school system has been turned over to television.

Antennas & Thatch. Last week, while natives sang and guests drank a toast in kava (a paralyzing concoction of powdered pepper root and water), Idaho-born Governor H. Rex Lee dedicated an educational TV network that in two months of operation has transformed the islands. The net centers on a big (40,000 watts) transmitter, lifted to the top of 1,600-ft. Mt. Alava by a new, mile-long cable tramway that sways giddily over .Pago Pago Harbor.

Fts signals go to islands as far as 60 miles away, to be caught by antennas near thatched-roof one-room schools or new consolidated schools of three to 24 rooms.

Lee, a farm specialist, arrived in Pago Pago in 1961 to find the territory’s schooling in a mess. Most of the 300 teachers had educations equivalent only to a Stateside fifth grade. Teaching for the 5,500 pupils was supposed to be in English, “but the teacher’s own English was unintelligible. It was merely a case of the blind leading the blind.” With an assist from Ohio’s Democratic Representative Michael J. Kirwan (whose son John is assistant director of the U.S. Department of Interior office responsible for overseeing American Samoa), Lee wangled $1,600,000 from Congress.

Clarifying Confusion. School in American Samoa used to begin any time; if a teacher had some faalavelave (personal business), he might close school all day. Now station KVZK broadcasts from the two-story Michael J. Kirwan Studios at Utulei, just outside Pago Pago, from 8:05 a.m. until 2:05 p.m., and attendance at the tuned-in schools is close to perfect. Teachers from the U.S. mainland carry the burden of the TV instruction, live or on tape. Every classroom has a receiver with a 23-in. screen, and Samoan teachers with lesson guides follow up when the TV instructor is done. A U.S. principal lives in the village, helps teachers follow the curriculum.

Basically, the courses are the three Rs geared to Samoan culture, though math, history and science are taught on a secondary level. Much time is spent on introducing the concept of change. “It may seem simple,” says Vernon Bronson, research and development director of the National Association of Educational Broadcasters, which helped to set up the new system, “but to the tropical Samoan, such concepts as change in season in temperate climates are enormously confusing.” Also difficult is teaching world history to isolated students who may not even see a stranger all year.

Adult Education. “Our aim,” says Lee, “is an education system that will allow a Samoan student to compete on equal terms in mainland colleges.” As a dividend, the new schools, designed in Samoa’s traditional open-sided fale style, are becoming nighttime community centers with television programs to combat adult illiteracy and improve public health, farming and self-government. And with 275 million children in the world getting no formal instruction, the ETV project in American Samoa has drawn the attention of education officials from half a dozen nations in Asia and Africa.

Just as on the mainland, TV makes celebrities. The elastic, expressive face of English Teacher David Lommen, who comes from Minot, N. Dak.., made him famous within a week. Lommen had been told that Polynesian children could not learn to distinguish the th and z sounds of English. He accepted the challenge. Now when he takes a walk, he is sometimes followed by kids dancing after him and hissing, “Th . . . zzz . th . . zzz!”