TOK PISIN FOR AUSSIE DEFENCE AND FAMILIES

This blogspot is about Positive Living in families. But the focus is on the Australian army teaching Tok Pisin to soldiers on posting to Papua New Guinea in the period immediately before and after independence.

Soldiers came to work in the Papua New Guinea Defence Force often with their wives and children. Married quarters were built in the army bases to house the soldiers and families. The children attended the international schools. Most families had a wonderful time over the two year posting.

It was important to the armed forces that families be happy. So the start came with tok pisin teaching in country at the hands of teachers taken from the military chaplains.

Father Ray Quirk taught the language at Taurama Barracks. There was a man with a handle bar moustache who led the field in teaching tok pisin in Murray Barracks. Wives and children were allowed to attend courses so that they could live comfortably among the PNGDF families.

There was an earlier contingent of Australian army personnel in the 1960s. These were the National Service teachers who had been called up for service in the Vietnam War and had been promoted to sergeant and posted to the PNGDF to train the soldiers. A group made a nostalgic tour back to Port Moresby in August 2011.

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In the 5 years prior to independence, the main contingent of service personnel came from the Army. A request went from the Army HQ to the RAAF HQ for tok pisin training to be held at the RAAF School of Languages.

A terse response came back from the Commanding Officer to say that he was not interested in teaching broken English. After all this was a language school that had to maintain standards. No pidgin english allowed.

So the army set up its own language school at the Recruit Training Battalion at Kapooka near Wagga Wagga. The first staff came from the newly opened Military Cadet School at Igam Barracks.

That school took in army personnel from 1972-1978 with a few Royal Navy officers and ….horrors….RAAF personnel. The barriers were falling. In 1979, the decision was made that the RAAF School could conduct Tok Pisin training.

One of the first to start at the new site at Pt. Cook in Melbourne was Captain Bruce Copeland. He was too slow off the mark when the army was looking for training staff. But the armed forces did well because he stayed for 14 years.

The focus of the courses was on language and culture. The people of Papua New Guinea were explained to the Australians usually in positive ways. At times the wives who attended the courses were horrified at what they were hearing. But all 3000 stayed to complete the courses and move to Papua New Guinea over a 14 year period.

But the course was really the key to Family Positive Living over that time. Families were happy with only a few problems. After independence there were great numbers of Australian personnel working in Papua New Guinea. But slowly over a 15 year period, the positions were localized.

At Point Cook, then Major Copeland expanded the courses to training and familiarization of personnel on posting to the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. Over the time, he became skilled in two dialects of the Tok Pisin language. Or was Tok Pisin the dialect of the other two?

During the time Copeland was in PNG, he was highly critical of Australian training of officer cadets. Many were straight out of rural schools and knew little about the world. PNGDF personnel certainly were not familiar with the vocabulary of the technical courses, particularly those posted to the RAAF and Navy training schools in Australia.

In recent times, we have the same basic comments coming from the University of Papua New Guinea on the problems of students in reading reference books. We made comment based partly on the Australian Defence experience. Click on:

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In the posting to the Joint Services College at Igam Barracks 1996-1997, Copeland was involved with Officer Cadets Singirok, Ilau, Agwi and Fabila, all top officer cadets.

He wrote several articles to the Defence Force Journal on aspects of training. This caused problems particularly in the Army that had just started the Army Training System and was very sensitive to criticism, almost like AusAID advisors on HIV/AIDS. Good practice.

Defence force journal 14 1979 Jan_Feb

JANUARY/. FEBRUARY 1979. No. 14. HB. DEFENCE. FORCE. JOURNAL ... 34 A Programme
in Problem Solving. Captain B. D. Copeland. 43 Some Thoughts on ADFA (Australian
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Defence force journal 71 1988 Jul_Aug

5 Conventional Deterrence and Australian Military. Strategy ... Captain J. E.
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6 - Welcome to Australian Defence Force Journal

Think Systems - TOPIC: Education and Training - By Copeland, B.D. Major ... as
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Army led the field on training Tok Pisin. Now it was the turn of the RAAF to lead on familiarization training for PNGDF personnel. The key to the message was that training should be practical within scenarios that permitted mastery learning by continued practice of categorized exercises. Army said this was being done already.

Yes, for rifle drill and marching. But not for tactics and leadership training that required decisions and appreciation of factors. How does the technique of drilling with rifles help an officer trying to balance books as mess treasurer? Or a duty officer making a decision to respond to an emergency? Soldiers have to use their heads as well as follow basic drills.

Army Training tended to be on the "Monkey see Monkey do" principle. Not good for training overseas personnel. The RAAF and RAN were more logical in training techniques.

A special course was set up. Major Copeland and his PNGDF colleague conducted week long courses in Australian Defence Training schools.

The schools were shown how training for foreign students had to involve teaching the vocabulary particularly for technical courses and progressive mastery of tasks. He received the 10 Year Independence medal in 1985 for services to the PNGDF.

Students at the Universities of PNG have the same problems today. They just do not understand the reference books. Major Copeland retired in 1993.