A bold Experiment

Utopia is described as an imagined perfect place or state of things, an ideal society where everything is moral, social and political conditions are perfect and it promotes the growth of people and happiness.

All sort of cultures and civilizations have myths and legends about some kind of perfect place in the past before conflicts or social and economic inequalities, you can consider the garden of Eden in the bible as a form of utopia; a paradise where there was no sin.

The term Utopia was coined by an English Humanist and statesman Sir Thomas Moore, in 1516 for his book titled of the same name. And it was derived from Greek words (Ōu)No and (Topos) Place meaning a non-existent place. He was famous for being executed by Henry the eighth who was the Head of the church of England because he was against Protestant Reformation.

However, the word also has some associations with another Greek term similar in sound EU which means good. So, Utopia means both good place and no place, presenting a type of central contradiction of the word which is that these good places are always somewhere else or nowhere. Perhaps we get this sense in which Utopia is always a word which is associated with a sort of aspirations towards social perfection but with the realization of the limitations of that aspiration.

Utopian thinking has always existed, even before the word was invented. Philosophers, authors, innovators and architects throughout history, have proposed ideas about a perfect society. Take Plato’s Republic, it is considered to be the first utopian novel where an ideal city, kallipolis is governed by philosophers selected by their wisdom driving the city into a just and harmonious society. Or take the Italian architect Paolo Soleri who in the 1970s, designed and built his utopian city Arcosanti , in the Sonoran desert in Arizona. Although, not finished the city was his visionary architectural design to imbue a balance between architecture and environment. For these ideas to be real they have to be static because how else can a perfect world be if it isn’t permanent, but that is just not possible in an everchanging world.

From economic utopias, where there is no poverty to health utopias, where there is no diseases and to one that is most popular now, an ecological utopia where humans live in harmony with nature. One, thing we learn is that Utopianism has developed corresponding to changing conditions of material productions and religious movements. So to think of an utopia, there needs to be chaos. One, might ponder that in today’s time and our quest for a righteous and equal society we end up creating more chaos in the process.

I chose Utopia to describe my home ‘Atenisi, because my childhood and the environment my father built for me captures some of the ambiguities of the term. I grew up in an island country named The kingdom of Tonga, located in the Pacific Ocean. Tonga is consisted of over 170 islands and my home is in the main island of Tongatapu. To the world in its Tourism ads, is a Paradise. But in the mind of a young Tongan male who just returned from Sydney Australia, with a western education, Tonga was far from a social paradise. Futa returned in the 1960’s to a feudal and religious Tonga and the cultures he was importing was democracy, critical thinking and Greek philosophy. It was difficult to apply his modern ideas laden with modern value judgements to the members and attitudes of an antiquated society. So, in a place where schools where either owned by the state or church, he chose to build an independent school with a different curriculum, a different teaching method and a different education ethos which he felt served Tonga’s youth better.

I wouldn’t call my father a utopian, because I think he understood the perceived unreachability of this ideal place in the school he was about to build — my home, ‘Atenisi. But he was optimistic. The clamour he initially detected was that he won’t be able to exercise critical thinking in a rather intellectually demotivating environment. He had a less authoritarian approach to education and he was determined to sparking a critical spirit, departing from the kind of rigor in thinking which I think he thought embodied most of the church schools.

After 19 years living overseas, I think of my home frequently. As a Tongan female who had lived independently in a western country, I come to grips with the novel concept that was ‘Atenisi and the rich trove of aspirations that had taught me, to embrace both western and Tongan cultures and therefore made me self-reliant.

In these series I will delve in to the survival of this school in a conservative island country and how it had shaped the way had learn to survive in western countries. Each week I will upload each of the remaining parts of this story.

Forthcoming posts:

Part 2 A kid from Lotofoa, Ha’apai very briefly talks about my father’s childhood in Ha’apai, his family and when he returned from Sydney

Part 3 Growing up in the world’s smallest university looks at ‘Atenisi, describing what it looks like and its role in Tongan Education and Futa’s students

Part 4 What survival has taught me Delves into Futa’s philosophy and how it has shaped my way of thinking.