As part of its emergence, the National University of Vanuatu (NUV) has undertaken to set up a research pole, a founding element, and is committed in this context to animating research through the organization of seminars and symposia bringing together researchers from universities in the Pacific region in particular.
In May 2021, the NUV, the Ministry of Education and Training in collaboration with the Vanuatu Cultural Center (VKS) have jointly organized a symposium on the issues of education and culture, which intertwine custom and academia in a perspective of recognition of the identity of Vanuatu.
These questions, which take into account the difficulty of not sacrificing parts of culture by striving to integrate them into the educational process, are regularly addressed by the Vanuatu Cultural Center, which believes that there is an urgent need to document/preserve/value traditional knowledge and practices that sometimes tend to disappear. As Pacific nations continue to develop, it is imperative that traditional knowledge and cultural heritage be taught in schools as a means to adapt to the natural and social environment.
How can we ensure that education includes traditional knowledge? How can the cultural richness of Vanuatu be used to promote success in school and enable more young Vanuatu people to go on to university? These are the main lines of approach to understand these notions which cover several disciplinary fields, such as anthropology, history, archaeology, educational sciences but also language sciences.
