A Case of Culture by Snigdha Nandipati

Author:Snigdha Nandipati
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-63730-952-0
Publisher: Snigdha Nandipati
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

The Art of Teaching

“Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of minds to think.”

― — Albert Einstein

Dr. Hla Thein grew up in Burma, where he was taught by monks for most of his early education. He later attended medical school in Rangoon, then moved to Thailand to work for the United Nations where he provided medical care to Khmer Rouge refugees. Eventually, Dr. Thein settled in Fiji, where he lived for eighteen years with his theologian wife, Florence, and his pro-golfer son, Ederil.

However, this peaceful life in Fiji wasn’t enough for Dr. Thein. He wanted a challenge. So, he decided to move to Pukapuka, a small isolated three-square-kilometer-wide part of the Cook Islands, to focus on the treatment of chronic conditions among Pacific Islander populations.

There had not been a doctor in Pukapuka since 2005. Doctors signed two-year contracts to stay on the island and provide care for the 450 people who lived there, but many of them would break their contracts early. Pukapuka was notorious for its boredom, isolation, language barriers, and difficulty of disease management. Naturally, no one wanted to be the doctor there. Other doctors would even try to discourage Dr. Thein from taking the position. He didn’t heed their warnings. He wanted a challenge, and this seemed like the perfect one.

The islanders of Pukapuka traditionally followed a healthy diet that included taro, crab, fish, pumpkin, and other locally sourced foods. But over time, the islanders grew to develop an unhealthy dependence on canned, processed, and fast foods. As clinical psychologist and local islander Amelia Hokule’a Borofsky inquires in her Atlantic article, “How do you get a Pacific Islander who, thanks to WWII, loves canned corned beef, Spam, and rice, to start eating arugula?”

This was precisely the question that had stumped every doctor who had previously been in Pukapuka. How were they supposed to treat the islanders’ hypertension, obesity, and diabetes if they could not even convince the islanders to change their eating habits?

Dr. Thein understood early on that his patients would not heed his words if he simply educated them with facts and science. Facts meant nothing to these islanders whose eating habits had become entrenched in their daily lives. In fact, studies have shown that mere knowledge does not produce behavioral change, especially in the early stages of intervention. While people may know the facts, they exempt themselves from the consequences because of their tendency to believe they are the exception to the norm (Raynor, 2007).

So, Dr. Thein decided to use two different techniques:

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