 Welcome to likeable science. I'm your host Ethan Allen here on Think Tech Hawaii. Likeable science is all about how science is a vital, interesting part of everyone's life and we should embrace science, encourage science, and enjoy science. We're going to do one of our slight sort of side trips today in science, we're talking about more about education but obviously you've got to have education, you've got to have learning as a key part of science. And to help me today I have Paul Haddock here. Paul is the CEO of Perrell, an organization where I work, Pacific Resources for Education Learning. Welcome Paul. Thank you Ethan. Good to have you here. Paul has a great perspective on Pacific Island education, having spent about 30 years out in the region, right? And Koshai and Chuuk, classroom teacher, education leader of various sorts. Just moved back to Hawaii after being gone for 24 years. Right, just, it's wonderful because you have such depth of knowledge of the whole region and what the challenges are. And I wanted to sort of break into this by looking a little bit at these, the compacts of free association. These are sort of an odd political animal that a lot of people I don't think I understand but they have some really profound effects on our education here in Hawaii as well as in the region, right? Yes sir, they do. So can you tell us briefly what the compacts sort of are and do? Okay, the compacts are agreements between the United States government and three regions in the Pacific, Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. What they constitute is the United States, pretty much after the Cold War, during the Cold War, wanted to lock up a huge section of the Pacific. So these agreements, they provide for the islands, you know, defense, sums of money for education and health. And in return, the United States, if the situation ever arose, they get strategic denial in the region. Meaning they can. They can pretty much keep the bad guys out if they had to. Okay, well, that's good. And so these agreements, you say the US essentially funds some education and governmental functions in these entities, right? Yes, during the first compact was from 1986 to about 2003 and the United States just gave money, about a billion dollars to the region, pretty much with no strings attached. And as can be imagined, it was a disaster. The renegotiated compacts started around 2003 and these stipulated where money's had to be spent, mostly in education and health, especially in the Federated States of Micronesia and in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. And that brings up a good point because there are really significant health issues in the region. People suffer from sort of two classes of diseases. Diseases typical of the developing world, tuberculosis and various things. And also diseases typical of the more developed world. They have very high rates of heart disease, diabetes, these kind of sort of lifestyle associated diseases. The health care system in the islands is. It's spotty at best. Okay. The joke we make down in the islands is you go to the hospital for two reasons, to give birth and to die. And sadly, the compact has brought in a large amount of western types food, which are heavy in salts and sugars. It's resulted in the higher cases of diabetes and heart problems and high blood pressure. It's really had a negative impact in the region. We just don't have operating rooms. We don't have the proper amount of trained surgeons, especially for a number of the smaller islands. And that's resulted in a large number of people in that direction who are getting sick coming this direction or heading off to the Philippines for advanced medical treatment. Right, right. And there's sort of a parallel in education, right? That while some money has been put into education, the system there suffers from a sort of under-trained workforce, right? Yeah, the largest amount of money is being spent on education within the region and there are some bright spots within the federated states of Micronesia, Kosri, Ponpe, Yap seem to be doing fairly well. Chook is rather dismal in this area. So a large amount of money is being spent, but what has happened is this has become, these schools have become payroll distribution centers. Places to hire to get jobs and you don't always have to show up to work. You don't always have to come to school. There's numbers of instances of schools being closed for a couple of weeks at a time, especially on some of these smaller outer islands. You brought up vocational training. There's almost none to be spoken of in the region. There used to be a very good school in Ponpe called Pats, which did very good vocational training. That school has been closed down for a while. So sadly, a large number of students on outer islands, especially in Chook, are getting very little education. And they're transferring here. They don't have the skills to get a job. And their English level tends to be way behind grade level when they come. All right, because there's a sort of general policy across Micronesia that large that K-12 schooling or grade 3-12 schooling is all done in English. But that's really the only place that English is commonly spoken, if I'm not mistaken, right? Well, yeah, and it's rarely spoken there. It's more of a policy than it is a practice. So when we talk about how the FSM is one of the few countries in the world where education and all of its education standards and assessments are supposed to be in a second language. So I bring up the idea of what would happen if in America every eighth grade or sixth grade had to take all their yearly testing in Japanese. We don't use English at home. We rarely use it in our churches or in our stores. But that's the language of assessment. And when they transfer, when they come here, when they go to Guam, that's the language they need to be fluent in when they come into the school system. At the same time, though, the schools then do not, as I understand, teach much of their own native language skills, again, beyond a fairly rudimentary level. They don't deal with sophisticated things like looking at Chu-Hee's literature and poetry and that kind of stuff. And the main problem there isn't much local language of literature outside of translations of the Bible, older translations from the early 1900s. Most of them have been upgraded. But there aren't like the equivalent of a Dr. Seuss collection or the Hardy Boys or the things we read as children. There aren't those in Chu-Hee's or Koshrine or Pompeii. So they're not learning to read in their local language. And we all know that learning to read in your mother language helps you to learn to get a second language. So that's not taking place. It's making the transition all the more difficult. Right, because what you've got is, in many cases, people who do not really speak English very well, teaching subjects they may not know very well, to students who don't speak English very well. And surprising, surprise, surprise, the whole education system doesn't exactly produce the results we would all best hope for, right? And that's what we're seeing on a lot of the smaller islands. When we talk about the outer islands of the Marshalls or Chuuk, you've got a large number of teachers, some of whom have only finished high school. They don't speak much English. They may be teaching science or math without any science or math background. And since that's been going on now for 20 or 30 years, you've got a cycle of a failed education system that's continuing. 50, 60 years ago, that wasn't too bad. But now that they're transferring out, they're coming over here to Hawaii or they're going to Guam, it's becoming much more noticeable. Right, which brings us actually back to the compacts. One of the parts of the agreement is that Micronesians can travel freely in the US, can work in the US. They don't need to apply for a visa or anything like that, right? Yeah, in fact, we say it's easier for someone from the Marshalls or the FSM to come into the US than it is for a Canadian to come in. And from their viewpoint, it's one of the best parts of the compact, this idea of free entry. The only problem we're seeing, and this is, I don't want to generalize, there's a large number of Micronesians coming in who are very, very successful. In fact, Father Fran Hazel, who's done a lot of study on this, has come up with his own little graph that shows the farther east they go, the better they do. But for some reason, there are a group that are coming here that are having a hard time adjusting to the school system and assimilating into the culture. Well, understandably, if a high school student comes in without, essentially, no English writing ability, limited English speaking ability, very limited quantitative background, not very good math skills, right away there. And on top of it, a whole cultural, a brand new cultural milieu, they're going to face a number of challenges. It's a big shock. I've told people, I'm now back after 24 years. The shock to me, getting on a bus, I didn't know whether I'd get on the front door, go in the back door. I mean, there's two doors there. If these are difficult adjustments for me, and I was born in Philadelphia, imagine what it is for a young person coming from an island of four or 5,000 people without a road, without cars, without crosswalks, without federal government buildings where things start when they start and they end when you get around to ending. Time is not money. It's like the ocean, there's plenty of it. These are big adjustments to be made, and because they very often get put right into the middle of a school year, they have to make the adjustment very, very quickly. And very often for some of them, especially from the outer islands, they're being set up to fail. Right. Yeah, I mean, that gives them sort of insurmountable barriers right away. And again, there are huge differences as you point out the sort of attitude towards education in many of the outer islands, it's taken rather casually, right? I mean, why do you and I go to school? Because we know that at a certain time, mom and dad are gonna say, I love you, get out of the house and take care of yourself. But when you're from an island in the Pacific, you'll grow up, you'll live on that island, you're surrounded by food, you're always gonna have a place to stay. So the motivations that we have in the West to get a learning, to go out on your own and take care of yourself, aren't natural motivations for some of these smaller Pacific Islanders. So for example, if you wake up late on a school day in the islands, you'll go tomorrow. If it's raining really hard, they won't have school anyway. These are adjustments that you have to make when you come to a place like Hawaii or Guam where school is much more serious. Right. And once the kids start having trouble with the system, not understanding it, particularly not understanding why necessarily they're having trouble, not having good support system in the sense that their parents know less about the system than they do probably, naturally the response is to get back away from that, right? Yeah, and they fall farther behind. Keep in mind on a small island when I go to school, every teacher there is my aunt or my uncle or my mom or my grandmother. So any trouble I get in, everybody knows about it. If I fall behind, somebody takes care of it. Versus coming here where suddenly nobody knows who I am. And sadly, I think too much of the blame is being put on schools and principals and teachers here who, you know, I've been a teacher for 24 years. I know what it's like to be in a classroom with 30 students. It's hard to suddenly have a student come in in the middle of the year who's five grade levels behind and I'm expected to catch that student up and assimilate that student. Yeah, because again, you've got 30 students, how much time can you put to the one? Yeah, it's a growing problem. And again, sort of circling back to the idea of the compacts, the compacts in 2023, according to many people, are likely not to be renewed, right? Or do these again? Yeah, one of the things most people don't understand about the compacts is they don't end. They're perpetual agreements. What'll happen in 2023 is the money part will end. Now part of the money that's been going into the compacts has supposed to been being set aside for trust funds so that after 2023, the US won't give any more money, but these trust funds should be up to hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe a billion dollars, and the nation can continue on its own. This may be wishful thinking on everybody's part. The biggest concern is probably the federated states of Micronesia. These four island states, Koshai, Pompeii, Chukunyap, really aren't a nation much like RMI or Palau as a nation. If the compact financing ends, will they stay together as an entity or will they split apart? If they split apart, what does that mean for that region? What does it mean for the concept of free entry? What does it mean to these trust fund monies? And of course the big question mark in the region is China. If the compact finances start and the FSM starts looking to other avenues and China suddenly shows up and wants to play an active part, do we want to see Guam and Quajolin split in half by a Chinese presence? So there's a large number of question marks about what will happen after 2023. But if the funding does either decline significantly or disappear, one thing you can be assured of is that many more of the residents from there will head this way, right? It's a very good possibility. There's free entry as far as I know the free entry will continue because the treaty continues. They're coming now, especially from Chuk because the hospital system and the education system is so dismal, they're transferring for a better life. Not so much because they want to, but because they care about their children. If the financing ends and they've had a difficult time working with $135 million a year and that drops way down to zero, what will happen then? And I think most people think larger and larger numbers will move this direction. So and on that sort of cliffhanger note, we're gonna take a brief break at this point. I've got Paul Haddock here from the CEO from Prell talking with me about a vision for Pacific education. I'm Ethan Allen here on Likeable Science. We'll be right back. You can be the greatest, you can be the best. You can be the king, come pray and know your chest. You can be, you can talk to God, go bang and know your chest. Bring the facial expression. Good afternoon, you're back here on Likeable Science. I'm your host, Ethan Allen. With me today here in the Think Tech Studio is Paul Haddock, CEO of Prell. We're talking about issues around Pacific education, Pacific Island education in particular, the migration of Pacific Islanders into Hawaii particularly and what challenges this puts on both the migrants and on the systems here. Certainly the Micronesians are underemployed in the state and they're employed when they are employed at fairly low levels. The Micronesian population as a whole has faced significant health problems. At the same time they have trouble accessing and working with the health care system because of again cultural differences that we talked about. They're overrepresented I think in terms of negative interactions with law. We need to break the cycle somehow. You're on. That's great. Let me start by saying there's, we should not underestimate the large number of Marshallese and Micronesians who've come here and are doing excellent work. I think sometimes they're not spoken about as often as they should be. With everything else, the few bad apples make the news and there's this reputation that Micronesians are coming here, they're using up all of our healthcare dollars, they're plaguing our education system. I'm not sure that's really the case. I would first try to reach out to people here and remember we're all sister islands within the Pacific. We're the small kids on the playground. We need to stick together before we start blaming each other for problems. That being said, it is true that there are people coming here who are having difficulties adjusting. What can we do about it? How can we help? From this side, having just come back after 24 years and getting used to things and seeing how difficult it's been just for myself. I think a couple things. There are some basic trainings we could do at schools with teachers and principals to help understand how Micronesian students act in the classroom. So for example, I like to tell the story how my first year teaching on the Big Island, we had a large number of Koshrayan students in our school. And I remember asking one of the young lady students in my high school class, do you understand what I'm telling you? And she did this expression. She lifted her eyebrows like that. Now where I come from when someone does that, it means what? I didn't hear you. So I said, again, do you understand me? And she did that again. And now I'm, you know what, in the world. So I got closer to her and I said, do you understand what I'm telling you? And she started rapidly doing this. And finally, one of the other Koshrayan students said, you know, Paul, where we come from, that means yes. And I, well, wow. How do you guys say no then? And she went, whew. And I kind of pursed her lips and shook her head and so I started realizing there was a whole different way of expressing. So for example, as a teacher sometimes when we discipline a student or get upset with them, we use the same phrase our mothers would use, look at me when I'm talking to you. Well, Microsnesian students, that's considered disrespectful. Put their eyes downward, they won't let, they're being respectful by looking to the ground. But they are taught to be quiet around adults, to not to sort of volunteer, not to speak up. Yeah, and sometimes too, if you get on a student in class, the worst thing a student can do when a teacher is disciplining them is to start laughing. But in Microsnesian, when we're ashamed or we're embarrassed, we laugh. So sometimes you'll, again, I had that same problem my first year in Hawaii. I was upset with a student and the student started laughing and the class is laughing and I'm, this is so disrespectful. Same thing I learned later when a student is embarrassed. That's what they'll do. They come from an area where most education is memory-based. So they're very, very good at memorizing, but they've not had to do much critical analysis. So if you'll ask them to answer a why question or to give up, you know, stamp and give a presentation, they need a little bit more time. They can be very shy, because that's, again, they come from an area where young people are not to be heard. And especially if there's young ladies in the class with family members, brothers or cousins, it's considered disrespectful sometimes for them to speak in the presence of other family members. These are some small things I think teachers can learn to just help that initial adjustment from their side. Now, obviously, the younger the child is, if they start in kindergarten or first grade, it's much easier. They'll adapt as children always do. What can be difficult is when they come in and they're 12, 13 or 14 years old and the language barriers exist and the cultural barriers exist, and everybody ends up getting a little bit frustrated. Right, because these cultural sort of signals that we give one another who are often unaware of, I mean, your example was very good with her facial expression saying, yes, I understand. And she's been wondering why you're making such a big deal out of the whole time. She's telling one thing, I'm reading the exact opposite. And yeah, this kind of thinking rapidly lead to a very deep misunderstanding and builds distrust and confusion and doubt. And the whole issue about kids speaking up again, the move these days in science education particularly is to have, be sure to get active learning, right? To have kids be active participants, creators of their own knowledge. They have to speak up, they have to talk about it with their peers, consider ideas, think about alternatives, exchange viewpoints. And that may, you have to draw that out. The children from the islands do love using their hands. They would rather do something than sit behind a desk. So I think they can be brought out that way, but then to get them to actually stand up and publicly present something, that'll be a little bit more difficult and you need to be a little bit more patient with them. Right, but these issues are not small issues. We have 10,000, 15,000 Micronesians in Hawaii at this point, something like that. We're, the number is growing every year. All signs are around 2023. This number may start. Explode, yes. Right, grow very quickly. And our education system needs, just as our healthcare system does, I mean there are now issues I gather when Micronesians show up at a hospital and because again, because of more clearly defined sex or gender roles in traditional Micronesian society, they have these same kind of misunderstandings, right? Or they're uncomfortable. And one of the things we're suggesting and keeping in mind again, that a large number of students who are coming from Koshai, Pompeii, Yap, are doing well. They're fitting in. It's some of the Outer Island students that have never had to use English and they're coming in their already high school age or their junior high age. Possibly we should begin to consider some sort of assimilation program before we just throw them into a classroom. That's never fair to the teacher. It's not fair to the principal and it's desperately unfair to the student who's suddenly surrounded. I mean, you know what it's like your first day at school imagine your first day where you have no idea what's going on around you. So I don't know why we haven't considered, I'm sure it's been considered, but maybe the older they are trying to set up a couple of months long assimilation program, maybe during the summer or when they come to help them with their English skills, their math skills and just how to get around in a school setting. All right, it'd be great for instance to develop a network of their peers who have been here for a little longer, understand the system, know the language a little better, understand how you go to a hospital and what you do there. Have them sort of almost paired up one-on-one or with several new migrants to really work with them. A peer mentoring can be a powerful way of learning and very good for the mentor as well as the mentee, right? If you teach something, you learn it. Right, right. And they'll be much more comfortable with people they recognize who understand and appreciate the culture. That's a good way to help slowly get them in. Right, so that kind of program could be, as you say, sort of incorporated with an immersion program to make sure that when they show up at school, they have somebody who they know sitting near them in class who can helps. Yeah, and it's not meant to segregate them. It's meant to help them be successful. Yeah, because of course as kids do fall behind in school it tends to get into a self-reinforcing rather vicious cycle and that's to no one's advantage. It hurts them, it hurts the schools, it ultimately hurts the culture. And that's when they start to get in trouble when they feel uncomfortable, they know they're falling behind. It just goes downhill from there. Yeah, and as you point out, it's a matter to some extent of recognizing different kinds of skills. If the Micronesian child may be very good sort of mechanically with their hands, get them to be the project leader on the next science fair project or whatever, and really do the hard part of the building of the new robotic, whatever. And we had a robotics program down in Koshrae. Right now, one of the Yap Catholic High School, the robotics team is on their way to Washington, D.C. I think it would be interesting to get a number of teachers and principals and send them down for maybe a summer workshop on some of these outer islands so they can see what a school looks like, where there may not be desks or chairs, where it's 95 degrees, humidity is always 100%. Down there, there's no breakfast or lunch programs, so kids are hungry. To see what it is, the system they're coming out of, and it may make them a little bit more sympathetic when they get here. Right now, one would think. That would be another great idea. So we should be considering sort of this multi-pronged approach, right? Some support systems in place, some maybe an immersion academy kind of thing for students coming on in, giving them ready, peer mentoring, and I like the idea of transferring, getting more people here, more intimately familiar with the situation there by sending them down. One program we'd really love to do is get new graduates who are coming out to go down to the region and teach for a year in the high schools to help 11th and 12th graders who may be coming here for college to build up their English skills, their math skills. Peace Corps, groups like World Teach have had huge impacts in schools down there and immediate impacts just because the students are seeing young people a little bit older than themselves coming to work on time, dressed professionally, speaking English, and we have seen test scores rise quickly, and we'd like to see some sort of tie-in maybe to UH or some HPU that education majors go down there, spend a year in the region, teaching to build some of these bridges. That'd be great, we should work on this. Oh, would like to, love to. And I look forward to it then. Excellent, well it's been great, very informative dialogue here, I learned a whole bunch, I always do in the show. Thank you. And thank you very much for being here. Yes sir, thank you Ethan. Paul Haddock has been here on Likeable Science, I'm your host Ethan Allen, I hope to see you in a few weeks, bye bye.