This paper compares traditional education with national schooling in the Solomon Islands, concentrating on the nature, meaning, and transmission of knowledge, and the impact of an imposed Western model of schooling on social change. We examine: micro-level structuring of teaching-learning interactions which embody knowledge as content, and teach important social values and ways of thinking; and macro-level processes in formal education as it developed in the Solomons, together with societal changes contributed to by schooling as a social institution.
Our primary focus is rural West Kwara'ae, where for the past ten years we have conducted research on culture and children's language socialization. Our discussion of schooling is based on historical sources, government publications, observations at a rural primary school, interviews with headmasters, teachers, and parents, and data we collected on children's socialization
