Department of Arts (Papua New Guinea Studies)
Background
It is a serious task of a Catholic University to provide the nation with men and women competent in their skills as accountants or journalists and guided by strong moral standards. Yet there is also a more direct role that educated people must play for the country. The University takes on a role challenging society and bringing informed critique to some of the conventional wisdom of the day. Divine Word University therefore has a department dedicated to the social concerns of Papua New Guinea
Committees of interested citizens helped to draw up the first curriculum for this department, and they urged the University not to compromise on its goals. The studies should remain firmly fixed on Papua New Guinea as their starting point, and as their ultimate purpose. While it was clear that the mistakes of the past in other countries should be taken to heart, and that wisdom throughout the world is a treasure readily shared, the central focus of the new Department had to remain with PNG
The Arts (PNG Studies) Department is therefore within the general faculty of Arts, where streams of literature, history, social science, management and religious concerns can readily be combined for a truly humanistic discipline within PNG
Students in this program develop a clear sense of their identity as citizens of Papua New Guinea. They are able to recognise their personal beliefs and national ethos as part of their unique cultural reality. They develop a deep understanding of the roots of this reality in the political, socioeconomic, judicial and religious traditions of the many communities that make up PNG society. Graduates are equipped to understand the effects of the rapid exposure of PNG’s culture to the wider world where many of their traditional values are threatened. They learn to develop solutions for themselves and their communities to these invasive cultural influences as a way of managing change in a positive and ethical way
These studies are not so narrowly defined for the workplace as other programs. Yet no one seriously concerned with nation building can fail to understand that a broad intellectual tapestry needs to be woven to enable students to think about social concerns and form legitimate comment and action from wide-ranging contexts
There is no shortage of demand for these skills in the workplace; in tourism, in education and public relations; in jobs dealing with the mining industry; and in rural community education projects where a “hands-on”, grassroots approach to the needs of the rural majority is essential
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