Kindergartens and Culture in Fiji

Abstract

It is Tuesday morning at Methodist Central, a small half-day kindergarten attached to, and run by, a Methodist church in a densely populated area in central Suva. This is Preschool Week in Fiji. Some of the children in the class attended a festival in Sukuna Park in downtown Suva a few days before where the kindergarten children marched to the park and sang and danced for the assembled parents. Today, many of the 30-some children in the class have come in costume. One little girl wears the traditional indigenous Fijian masi (tapa or bark cloth) to honor the family of a child giving his or her first public meke (traditional indigenous Fijian dance). Others have come in the favored dress for public performances by school children and at resorts, remotely linked to Fiji’s ethnic cultures, plastic Hawaiian hula skirts with coconut bras; still others are dressed as things such as carrots and superheroes. Teacher Grace, an Indo-Fijian woman, and Teacher Luisa, an indigenous Fijian woman, call the children over to sit on a rug where the class usually assembles.